Wrapping up South East Asia
We’ve spent the last fortnight of our trip, in Thailand, just having a holiday, shopping, going to the movies, shopping, 10 pin bowling, sleeping in, minor sightseeing, and more shopping (yes 4 whole days in total). We also took a week’s trip down to Koh Samet an island 200kms south of Bangkok which was everything we had imagined Thai beaches to be.
Tonight we leave for Dubai, a 6 hour flight which will put us 8 hours behind NZ time. We have 10 days in Dubai, and Mark has been busy working on his CV to hand out should we decide it would be a great place to drop anchor for a while.
Now, I wouldn’t be a true beanie if I hadn’t been keeping some ‘numbers’ these past weeks, this may or may not be of interest to you…
Since leaving Auckland on 9th May we have been away 71 days and spent approximately 110 hours traveling on:
9 minibuses
7 boats
6 buses/coaches
4 planes
2 trains
3 private taxis
To get us to:
14 cities/towns
Where we stayed in:
24 hotels/hostels/guest houses
Other (un)interesting facts…
Between Brannan, Petra and I, we have broken/grown out of/lost 8 pairs of jandals. Mark, however, is still proudly wearing his NZ $2 Warehouse jandals I tried to get him to leave behind!
Brannan lost 4 teeth (no violence involved) and suffered our only major health issue (plus a bee sting in Hua Hin)
Mark celebrated his 40th birthday
Petra discovered that she can’t get a tan, even after 10 weeks in the sun she is still luminous white
The most memorable journey was our 3 hour taxi ‘ride’ from Siem Reap to the Thai border. The thrills and spills we endured on the Cambodian highway exceed any theme park thrill ride Mark can remember.
Brannan lists his highlights as visiting the ruins in Angkor and our recent stay at the beach in Koh Samet. He’s discovered that Asian toothfairies have a payout rate similar to the NZ one. The one in Cambodia even paid up in USD.
Petra has trouble understanding some of the finer details of our tripping around (I’ve explained what a border is countless times :-) ), and she can’t tell you which country we’re currently in. But with all the photos we’ve taken and her diary full of souvenirs she has a good recollection of our adventures. She tells me she can’t wait to ‘..visit someplace where they speak ‘New Zealand..’ And despite her claims that she doesn’t enjoy all the attention she gets, we’ve noticed lately that she will stand directly in front and stare out someone who doesn’t immediately go ga-ga in her presence. Boy is she in for a shock when we reach the UK where she’ll become just another kid again!
Having Mum with us for the Vietnam and Cambodian leg of the trip was very special and we wish she didn’t have to leave at all!!
We’ve been quite lazy with language along the way as basic English is understood just about everywhere. There’s plenty of wonderful mis-translations on menus and signs, my favourite stated you should not ‘… put paper towers down the toilet’.
We justified taking the kids out of school for 3 months because of the ‘informal’ education they would get and indeed along the way they have learnt, its ok to:
Tonight we leave for Dubai, a 6 hour flight which will put us 8 hours behind NZ time. We have 10 days in Dubai, and Mark has been busy working on his CV to hand out should we decide it would be a great place to drop anchor for a while.
Now, I wouldn’t be a true beanie if I hadn’t been keeping some ‘numbers’ these past weeks, this may or may not be of interest to you…
Since leaving Auckland on 9th May we have been away 71 days and spent approximately 110 hours traveling on:
9 minibuses
7 boats
6 buses/coaches
4 planes
2 trains
3 private taxis
To get us to:
14 cities/towns
Where we stayed in:
24 hotels/hostels/guest houses
Other (un)interesting facts…
Between Brannan, Petra and I, we have broken/grown out of/lost 8 pairs of jandals. Mark, however, is still proudly wearing his NZ $2 Warehouse jandals I tried to get him to leave behind!
Brannan lost 4 teeth (no violence involved) and suffered our only major health issue (plus a bee sting in Hua Hin)
Mark celebrated his 40th birthday
Petra discovered that she can’t get a tan, even after 10 weeks in the sun she is still luminous white
The most memorable journey was our 3 hour taxi ‘ride’ from Siem Reap to the Thai border. The thrills and spills we endured on the Cambodian highway exceed any theme park thrill ride Mark can remember.
Brannan lists his highlights as visiting the ruins in Angkor and our recent stay at the beach in Koh Samet. He’s discovered that Asian toothfairies have a payout rate similar to the NZ one. The one in Cambodia even paid up in USD.
Petra has trouble understanding some of the finer details of our tripping around (I’ve explained what a border is countless times :-) ), and she can’t tell you which country we’re currently in. But with all the photos we’ve taken and her diary full of souvenirs she has a good recollection of our adventures. She tells me she can’t wait to ‘..visit someplace where they speak ‘New Zealand..’ And despite her claims that she doesn’t enjoy all the attention she gets, we’ve noticed lately that she will stand directly in front and stare out someone who doesn’t immediately go ga-ga in her presence. Boy is she in for a shock when we reach the UK where she’ll become just another kid again!
Having Mum with us for the Vietnam and Cambodian leg of the trip was very special and we wish she didn’t have to leave at all!!
We’ve been quite lazy with language along the way as basic English is understood just about everywhere. There’s plenty of wonderful mis-translations on menus and signs, my favourite stated you should not ‘… put paper towers down the toilet’.
We justified taking the kids out of school for 3 months because of the ‘informal’ education they would get and indeed along the way they have learnt, its ok to:
- Ride in a car without a seatbelt
- Sit on mum’s lap whilst riding in a car without a seatbelt
- Ride on a motorcycle without a helmet
- Squeeze 5 passengers on a motorcycle
- Spit in public (but a sign in Penang forbids spitting in restaurants)
- Pick your nose in public
- Cross the road in front of oncoming traffic
- Drive a vehicle on the footpath
- Drive a vehicle on the wrong side of the road
- Let the neighbourhood dogs roam free around a restaurant
At the end of it all we have some wonderful memories, we’re not yet sure of the final cost (approximately 10,000 USD – excluding airfares to Bangkok) and missing Myanmar (Burma) and Laos are our only regrets… but then that gives us plenty of reason to come back some day!
Speak to you soon from the Middle East
Hayls
xx
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