After a few months in Japan, I'd made some good friends, and we'd planned to escape the coldest Iwate winter in 50 years by going on an exciting (and warm) trip together over the winter holidays. The plan was to fly from Narita to Bangkok, Thailand, and then from Singapore back to Narita 21 days later. No plans were made as to how we were going to travel the 1500 or so kilometres in between and it was quite interesting at times! All my travelling companions were JETs in Iwate prefecture and of the 7 of us, Suzie, Adrian, Jon, Ognen and Phil are originally from various parts of England, Greg is from the U.S. and I am the lone Canadian. I'm telling you this so you aren't surprised if words like "knackered", "snog" and "chuffed" start popping up! It was an "amazing, crazy, exotic trip", to quote the cheesy intro to the soundtrack I made of the trip upon our return, so read on to find out what we got up to!
Enjoy!

Jon, the organizer of the organized bits of the trip, discovered that you can get cheaper flights if you fly on Christmas Eve, so we ended up landing in Bangkok at midnight (so technically Christmas day), knackered, but happy to be hot. We stayed in a posh hotel and found out when we woke up, that it included a "free" tour of the city.

Our tourguide taught us some useful expressions in Thai, like "sawasdee karr" (hello), "mai au karr" (no thank you) and "cha lux ther" (I love you)! He took us to see some beautiful temples, organized a boat ride for us on the river where I fed bread to the catfish, drove us to a great place for spicy curry and then somehow we ended up at a lapidary* (a gem shop) that pays the tourguides for every person they bring to the shop. Everyone inside was so friendly...until we decided not to buy anything! This photo is of Jon and Adrian, showing their Christmas spirit at one of the many temples. In the evening we all somehow ended up at one of Bangkok's famous "ping pong" shows...truly a Christmas I will never forget!

*The name of the above mentioned lapidary has been removed in response to the following email from their sales department:

"Refer to the complain from our customer which find on your Website www.naomikay.com refer to our name which destroy our reputation and good image for more the 40 years please let the customer contact our Website direct ... we would appreciate your help and please delete all of the mail which refer our name and our reputation from your website as soon as possible.

We do appreciate your assistant in advance."

After checking the internet, I found this link, which might be of interest.

Our second tour wasn't quite as successful. It turns out that many tours involve visiting a lot of places you didn't plan to in order for the organizers to get their commissions. We booked a tour to go to the floating market and that part of the day was great...all one hour of it! Then we were taken to see an alligator show, and then to a handicrafts market and then (surprise!) to more lapidaries. We ran away from the tour at the lapidary and took a tuk tuk (try saying that three times fast!) back to the hotel. Isn't lapidary a funny word?!

While we were in Bangkok, tuk tuks, three-wheeled open sided taxis, were our mode of transportation. The drivers were nice and always let us know about great shops we could visit in the area. Some of them insisted that if we just went inside for 15 minutes, they would take us anywhere we wanted for free! Hmmmm... The rides were fun, sometimes hair raising, and often frustrating (like the time we were told that China town was closed so we should go to another ping pong show instead!), and after a few days I realized that Bangkok is not really my thing.

So, Jon, Adrian, Suzie and I jumped on a bus and headed for the islands. It was supposed to be an overnight bus that would get us to Koh Samui early the next morning, but at some point in the night, the bus pulled over and the driver yelled to all of us "get out!!" without any explanation. When we did, what we found was a hut in the middle of nowhere and no one could tell us when another bus would come to take us the rest of the way to the ferry docks! Isn't it amazing how bitching about stuff brings people closer together? Within a few hours we had met a bunch of cool people and had decided to join forces if we ever made it to the island. We did, of course. Here we are on Chaweng beach, where we stayed at a place called "Your Place".

While on the island, Suzie and I got henna tattoos (I got a sun on my back and Sooz got a turtle on her shoulder), played pool by the ocean, Greg and I kayaked to see "Popeye the Goatman", I got a wicked sunburn and sunstroke, we all went to the "Reggae Pub", I sang "Killing Me Softly" in a family restaurant (it was a dare, I swear!), we went to the "Green Mango" club (see the photo), and had the craziest, wierdest New Year's Eve ever on Koh Phangan! That night is full of blanks, but I remember going to the "Mellow Mountain Cafe", getting caught in a tropical storm, seeing "fire aliens", possibly eating a toad and being surrounded by good vibes, Greg, Suzie and lots of great music. Whew! Did you get all that?!

Koh Samui was crazy and fun, but after a while a few of us wanted to chill out for a bit. "The Family" (Greg, Adrian, Suzie and I) headed off and found a little piece of paradise called Ton Sai, near Krabi on the Phuket side. When we got there, we needed to find a place to stay, so I went off in one direction and Adrian went in the other, to look for something. I met a really nice guy called "A", who told me that his family owned some bungalows in the forest. They were full, but he could put us up in their convenience store and we could get rooms the next day! When I went back to find the others, I discovered that Adrian had also found a place. We decided to check them both out before picking one. As we got closer, we realized that we were both going to the same place and it turned out that Adi had met A's brother! We had a bit of trouble explaining that there would only be 4 of us staying in the shop, not 8, but after that it was great! They treated us like family, fed us great food and were really sweet.

Ton Sai is breathtakingly beautiful. The cliffs tower above you and challenge climbers to try their best. They also throw really creepy shadows at night, right Adrian?! One night we stayed on the neighbouring beach too late and missed all the boats back to Ton Sai. Greg figured we could go around the razor sharp rocky outcropping and get back that way, in the dark, with no flashlight! We somehow managed it, and then found that all the lights leading to the bungalows were out, so we had to do that in the dark too. It was really freaky! When we finally got back, Adi realized he'd given the key to A's family, who were all sleeping. When he found a piece of paper with the price of toilet paper written on it, he thought all his problems were over. "They've left us a code!!!", he cried. It was a fun part of the trip and I laughed constantly! I just wish we could've stayed longer.

After a brief (and unplanned) stopover in Hat Yai (don't go there!!), the four of us headed across the border to Malaysia. The first thing we did (after finding a hostel) was go to the KL tower. When we got there, the man selling the tickets asked us where we were from. When I said Canada, he exclaimed "CN Tower!" and when Suzie said England, he said "Spice Girls!!". It's interesting what pops into people's minds when they think of your country, don't you think? When we got to the top, we looked around, took a NEOPRINT photo sticker, got our fortunes told and then headed back down to get Suzie some new shoes and explore the rest of the city. Here we are in front of the tower. Can't you picture this as a cheesy 70's album cover?!

Suzie used to live in Malaysia, back when she was little, so the next day the two of us went in search of her old house. It was really interesting to get out of the touristy area and we found the house! We were let in, given a tour by the little boys who lived there and then their driver took us to Sooz's old school! After that, he took us to the Islamic art museum and we had a little butchers (well, around the gift shop anyways!). While we were doing that, Adrian and Phil went to visit a mosque. Adi kind of looks like he's about to walk across water or something in this photo, doesn't he? In the evening, we went to an Irish bar named Finnegan's and nothing at all interesting happened. What did you hear? I swear, we were just sharing french fries!!

Our last stop before heading back to Japan was Singapore, where we met up with Wendy, tried to find little India, did some shopping (buying the inevitable omiyage), caught a flick, and generally felt very under dressed! I enjoyed the night tour of the zoo, the Raffles kids' museum and drinking Singapore Slings in Raffles - how posh! Singapore reminds me a lot of Yorkville, Toronto, where everyone dresses up in the latest designer labels, people watches, and hopes other people notice them. After 3 weeks of being a grungy backpacker, it was a bit of a shock! Oh, and the age limits for the clubs are just silly; 28 for women and 30 for men? What's that all about?!

We partied until the wee hours on our last night in Singapore, then woke up the poor hostel owner to get our bags, rushed to the airport and jumped on a plane back to Japan. When I got home, I found ice coating the inside of the windows in my apartment, my kotatsu was broken, and the deadline to decide whether I'd be renewing my contract for a second year was looming ever closer...

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