Apr 2007

Arrived in sunnt Thailand and decided to head straight to teh islands for some serious relaxation and take in teh sights in bangkok on our way back... we headedstraight for Koh Samui and stayed at the Chaweng Garden Beach "resort" , first impressions of the place were like playa de Ibiza.. for those here before you nay see some changes in the main street below!

Remember this haunt anyone...!!

Boots, loads of families and constant raves - pure party central, so we decided to leave and look for somewhere more secluded...! we headed up to Koh Tao and it was fab.. we stayed at the Sensi Paradise resort just on the beach and it was gorgeous..checkout views from the room below..

More pics...sooo nice..

Needless to say the food was fab too - as usual one of our main prioirities is to make sure we eat - loads ... lol

From here we did boat trips up to Koh NangJuan and around the island and also managed to swim with balck tipped sharks which was great it was just like being in a massive aquarium!... the rest of the time was spent chilling and snorkelling around our beach as there was a huge ship that had sunk 45yrs ago that you could dive around...
we then decided to head to Koh Phangan and stayed one night in Haad Son but then went further north to Haad Salad were we are at the minute.. we would love to add more pics but teh camera had a bit of an accident in the swimming pool and so you will have to wait until some shopping is done in Bangkok til you see more pics i'm afraid... (first and hopefully only casualty!).. :-(

anyhow staying at the Haad salad resort now and its lovely, however the actual salad isnt very good... dont seem to believe in lettuce! heading on more boat trips, elephant trekking and to waterfalls in the next few days so we will keep you posted...
hope all is well back home

love Deb and Ger

We finally arrived in a very hot Hong Kong after a 5 hour bus ride, 16 hour overnight train, walking across the hong kong and china border for a hour, and a 10 minute taxi ride to our hotel - West hotel..

The first thing we noticed once across the border was a sign saying no spitting fine 1500 dollars... absolutely fantastic! it was a welcome relief not to have to hear heckling every minute, i swear they did it on purpose when they seen me coming..
Hotel was fab too, no squat / drip dry toilets to be found anywhere... found it quite odd to have a seat again lol

Anyhow headed out that night to the light show that is on each night at the harbour... small bit cheesy but hey we love a bit of that now and again, basically the lights all did their thing on each of the big buildings, the city is well cool and the buildings even more so...their lecky bill must be huge though and theres me with my enery saving lightbulbs at home...sod that!

The shopping is the best ever (surprise surprise) and the electronic section is fab.. we headed up to Victoria peak then after for the views over the city and oh my god... that was amazing, you can get the ferry across to it for nice rosemantic atmosphere as well!

heading to thailand now for some island hopping so keep you posted...

love d&g

Spent a night in Wuhan which looked nice but we were only here for a night so we really didn't get any time to have a look around. the next day we spent travelling, First of all caught an day/overnight train to guilin , shared a cabin with two chinese OAP's among a massive retirement group with long johns and a lot of snoring! we arrived at 5:30 am. NIGHTMARE. Got off this and then it was a 2 hour drive to yangshuo. Yangshuo is very tourist based and we have seen alot more western people here. Fab small village with lots of pubs and places to eat and they do a light show that is the chinese equivalent of riverdance - brilliant!

We spent a day walking around the place and yes you guessed it Deborah bought something !!!! Meet the rest of the group in a bar for cocktail happy hour which started at 6 !!! Left the place at 1 am locked. Good fun. One of the boys in the group ordered bamboo RAT, so i had to try some, not the best, he managed to eat the lot of it even the teeth!

Woke up the next morning with both of us feeling very dodgy. Both of us had stomach bugs. There was a cycle through the country side booked so we decided to go, got to halfway through it and could not go any further so we came back to the hotel. checki out pics of intels new offices on the Li river and gers new job!

Spent the rest of the night staying very close to the toilet !!!!

Well we are heading for hong kong today, so another over night train and lots of travel. Not looking forward to it, but then onto Thailand at weekend for some serious relaxing! gers attempt at growing a beard and becoming a wannabe Tom Hanks didnt last very long as he looked more like desperate dan from the beano!

will update again soon
love D&G

After a nightmare of a journey on a public bus - subjected to chucky from ChongQing who liked to eat boiled eggs.... we arrived at our cruise ship for the next three days a bit worse for wear to say the least, but our boat turned out to be ok ( lucky number 12 ) even though our guide Harry we reckon was wapped out constantly..
We chilled out for the first day and then took a trip off the boat into the 3 gorges on the second day which was really fab, seen some hanging coffins and got entertained by 2 gorgeous young chinese kids on the way home with model and singing shows..

Ended the evening with a karaoke on the boat and basically took over completely with ger joining in with the local wacko jacko all he was missing was the white socks!

The following morning we took part in the local dragon boat race - which we agreed to the night before... the whole group piled into the boat and set sail, we had to row to the beat of a drum from the chinese dude captain at the top of our boat but all went well and we actually won - surprise surprise, seeing our competition had the combined age of 500!

That afternoon we all headed out to see the 3 gorges dam project - a huge feat of planning that the doozers in fraggle rock would be proud of!

We then left our boat just as cabin fever was setting in for a lot of us and had to travel 5 hours to Wuhan and then a 13.5 hour train to Guilin... nightmare in a hard sleeper with a chinese retirement group who liked noodles and drinking a lot of tea!
Arrived in Yangsuo at 6 in the morning class place and we have sussed out the bar street so heading out for happy hour tonight but have a bicycle trip tomorrow in the countryside followed by some bamboo rafting..so that should be fun!
Will update you guys again soon, we finish the trip on sat and head to thailand so keep in touch and dont forget to check out all the photos in the photo gallery!
love D&G

This is the first chance we have had to get to the internet for updates guys as we have been staying at 2 monasteries for the past few days, up the Emei mountain, its been really surreal - and bloody freezing, but amazing!
They start chanting and banging drums at 430 in the morning followed by tai chi at 730 all of which we are supposed to join in on... so its been eventful, think i scared some of the monks with my bed head this morning too... dont worry Ger took photos to prove how bad it was! lol
Had to climb 1200 steps to get up to that last one we stayed in called Hongchunping in the mountains and that was after trekking through monkey land to get to it - felt like dorothy in wizard of oz... ger had a monkey try and get in his pocket looking for food as well well funny - cheeky buggers though, but the monkey police were on hand to sort them out!

Also had a boat journey to see the 71metre Dafu buddha that is carved into the mountain - well impressive!

Heading down the Yatzchi river tomorrow for 3 days so will update more then...no sign of shitty wok yet dec but we will keep looking, mind you have had some shitty chicken! Ger going a bit stone mad at the lack of meat too as most of the food here is veggie.. but hey it keeps you regular! hee hee
check out some pics attached
love Deb and Ger

PS just adding some pics as we meet the newlyweds - Marion and Paul in the Baoguo Monastery on the wednesday afternoon - was class totally mad to see them there, but they were in great form and in true irish style we all headed out for pints immediately, just a pity the curfew for the monastery lads was 9pm! had great craic anyhow and said our goodbyes again ithe following morning before we had to head our separate ways again - them North to Beijing and us South to Hong Kong..V. sad!