Luang Prabang

Simon writes:

This is a wee Canadian:

This is a night market in Luang Prabang (Northern Laos), selling the wares of the local hill tribes:

This is the resulting bill:

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Teehee!

Vientiane, Laos

Simon writes:

Not much time to update the blog. Busy eating. Don't see why we should miss out on the annual glut. Happy Christmas.

Khao Yai National Park

Noelle writes:

We are now heading towards Laos where we will be spending Christmas and New Years. On our way we have stopped off at Khao Yai National Park which I've heard many mixed reviews about (some people have said they've gone and seen nothing). It's known for its abundance of wildlife, including tigers (now only 3 to 10 left), elephants, leopards, gibbons, hornbills, bears, you name it!

We had an amazing day on a small tour with a guide who could pick out snakes in the bushes from the truck we were driving in on the road. I have no idea how he did it.

Here are some of our picks including the great hornbill, whose wingspan measures up to 2 metres. We saw some of these in flight and it was truly awesome. The sound was quite spectacular as well.

Snakes:





Deer:




Waterfalls:




A great hornbill. There are loads of hornbill species in the park. This is the largest.




We saw lots of monkeys but unfortunately no gibbons so Simon had to improvise.




And of course the elepants. This first pic is just before this huge male started to charge our truck. Pretty frightening really.





The park at sunset.

Everything's political

Simon writes:

I expect literally nobody has been wondering what the penguins have been getting up to in Thailand. I guess it was inevitable really: our flightless friends couldn't resist trying to take advantage of the fluid political situation in the land of smiles. But they soon found that there is no place in the country's evolving political spectrum for their particular brand of violent, neo-fascist penguinism.

Fed up with it all, they then decided to take to the sea and swim home to the Arctic (see pic below)

They soon found out that four months of bone-idle mooching in a backpack does nothing for anybody's fitness levels. They came waddling back in shame. As I knew they would. Little vermin.

But speaking of returning home, the world appears to be conspiring against our plans to do it "sans avion" unfortunately. Our budget doesn't quite stretch to paying pirate ransoms so it would appear taking a boat from Bombay up the Red Sea to Egypt is out and the train route through Pakistan and Iran is apparently now a hotspot for the laughably misnamed war on terror. People are so bloody inconsiderate! Honestly!

So this is my plan: a direct appeal to Roman Abramovich, the sandpaper-faced Russian money hoarder with a penchant for bikini models and relentlessly annoying football teams.

"Roman old buddy! I hate Chelsea more than short people with umbrellas but I know you read this blog and I know you love it, so how about you sling us one of your yachts for a few weeks so we can take it round the Cape and back to Blighty?"

I fail to see a flaw in this plan. Comments on the plan are unwelcome, unless they're welcoming of it.

PS I lost my long johns. Cock.

Long awaited entry

Noelle writes:

Sorry for the lack of blog entries of late, we're been beaching it in the south of Thailand.

We are now on our fourth island, having bused it down to Krabi from Bangkok a couple of weeks ago where we caught a boat out to Ko Lanta. We spent four days swimming in the Andaman Sea, playing beach volleyball with a group of 18-20 year olds from Alberta, Canada and we even managed to get in a good deep sea fishing trip for Simon. Simon provided for us and brought in a tuna that we took to our trusty drinking venue to have barbequed for us that night.

Then we set off for Ko Ngai which is the most amazingly beautiful island. It has a handful of resorts and nothing else. Very peaceful and relaxing, so much so that we really didn't take our cameras out of their cases. The island itself has crystal clear waters with a sandy bottom and about 50m out there is a fantastic reef for snorkelling. So we basically spent our days sunnying on the beach and snorkelling on the reef with a one day kayaking trip around the island. Oh yeah, and more beach volleyball. We'll be trying out for the Canadian team when we return.


Ko Ngai was actually pretty amazing in terms of marine life as well. We saw a turtle on the reef and on our second to last day there were loads of fish mating in the shallow waters which soon contained millions of fish eggs everywhere, very cool.

Our next destination was Ko Samui where Simon had arranged for us to stay in a very swanky resort for my birthday. It was fabulous by the way and I was spoiled rotten.


We are now on Ko Tao and will be heading out on a snorkelling trip tomorrow. Ko Tao is a great place for diving but there is limited choice for Simon given we doesn't have his PADI certificate so we figured we'd check out the snorkelling first and then decide on the diving.