Bang up to date
Apologies for the lack of blog action. I got a bit behind in Krabi and have just spent the last three nights on an island where it was $2 for 15 mins on a dial up connection. We’re now in Cairns airport heading to Brisbane to pick up the car to commence our road trip, first stop is Byron Bay.
Below is a lenghty blog in a sort of diary style (if at work I suggest printing out and taking to the toilet with you). I refer a few times to where I am at the time of drafting, I’ve done this update in Word in a few installments and am now uploading it, so apologies if it jumps about a bit….
Andy
Picking up where I left off, day 2 in Krabi…
We got up at a reasonable time and headed for breakfast, it was a bit cloudy but the sun was slowly winning the battle and it was obvious it would clear up in no time. Today was spent by the pool – a whole day of nothingness (if you’re Pezza that includes not putting on suncream – I am currently in Cairns airport waiting to transfer to Dunk Island sat opposite a peeling tomato).
After such a stressful afternoon enjoying my Motley Crue book (cheers for the recommendation Clarkey) and dozing in the sun it was time to head back to the beach at the other side for some Monkey Action – everyday at about 4pm the monkeys swing down from the hills because they know they’ll always be blokes like me (and Mr Dalowsky) anxious to pay 20 baht for some sweetcorn or bananas from a local in order to feed the little dudes.
They are brilliant and like nothing better than a quick game of ‘hide the banana’ before they get their treat. After they were full and we had stepped in all sorts of monkey poo we pretty much repeated the routine of last night – aiming for a bit of an early night as we had an early start for our boat trip the next day. No sign of Maddy yet but Pezza did say that if she saw her she would keep hold of her until Kate and Gerry turned up to get her.
12 November
Monday morning we strolled down the beach to out boat and it took us to a few islands in an area known as Phi Phi (pronounced ‘pee pee’).
The boat trip was excellent. We had the weather for it and some knowledgeable tour guides. The day was spent stopping of at a few beaches, including Maya Bay – this is the beach from The Beach. We arrived at Maya Bay expecting it to be just like when they found it in the film: tranquil, serene and deserted however you can see from the picture that Leonardo’s map must have fallen into a few more people’s hands since he got it from the ginger bloke out of Trainspotting (what’s his name? it’s annoying me!).
Undoubtedly we were looking forward to this stop and were a little let down but take a moment to think about the highly annoying French couple who were incredibly excited about Maya Bay, thought it was the only stop on the whole trip and had geared themselves up for a whole day there – we all thought it was funny. So, with Maya being a bit of a disappointment we were consoled with some other stops at some amazing bays with swimming and snorkeling in the crystal clear waters below the boat. I had learned a trick from some bloke in Cancun and took a banana into the sea with me, the fish were for mental for it and you are surrounded by hundreds of fish, some preferring to nibble at Pezza’s arm.
With the trip coming to an end and Pezza going more and more red it was time to drift into the regular pattern for the evening – only this time bumping into Aussie singer Mark Moffat. This was our last night in Krabi and we were looking forward to heading to Australia.
13 November
Checking out of this hotel was an amazing experience. The hotel said they could provide transfer to the airport for 1000 baht (about £14) and as I hadn’t seen a taxi in three days I went for it. Instead of merely booking a car to take us the the airport they popped us on their boat and then one of their cars. With us all of the way was a dude to hump our bags about but best of all he sorted all the check in stuff for us inside the airport – we nearly asked him if he fancied coming to Australia with us.
It was a three flight journey from Krabi to Brisbane (Krabi – Bangkok – Hong Kong – Brisbane). The flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong was the beast yet, only a couple of hours but with the new Cathay Pacific business class seats which Pezza very quickly got comfy in. Most of the cabin were the type who go business class and sit there miserable; I found another French bloke who is excitable as me and we started taking lots of pictures in the cabin to the sound of disapproving ‘tuts’ mixed in with our camera shutters.
This flight was a little delayed and as we were only scheduled to have an hour in Hong Kong I began to go through a series of emotions. Was I worried that we may miss our connecting flight or was I happy that the only thing I left in my wallet besides credit cards was my ‘Bulldogs Top Crew Card’ just in case we got stuck in Hong Kong for a night and needed entertaining?
That would have been fun.
Anyway, we made the Brisbane flight with some dude running us and 7 others through the airport and we were ready to get some serious sleep on the 6 hour flight ahead of us. This was a non-starter as there was an Aussie couple behind us who wanted to (a) stay awake, (b) laugh at the movies, (c) recite the movies and (d) commit the worse heinous aviation crime of them all, grab my seat back when they got up – at least 5 times, and again when they sat back down again. Please please please can people like this be rounded up and shot.
14 November
Arriving in Brisbane was good – it was nice to be in Western civilisation again after a while away. It was only when we got on the 70s style airport train to the city that you realise you’re in a developed nation. Compare this to the airport train connecting deprived cities and airports like Hong Kong or the subway in Bangkok – these countries have state of the art facilities with signs saying stuff like “Your train will arrive in 17.6 seconds” but the rest of the city is enshrined in poverty. The 70s train in Brisbane let you know that this was a country that had been developed for years and it didn’t need a fancy rail link to gloss over the poverty behind it. (Anya – that’s for you, reminds me of the Traumatizer in may ways).
We needed some sleep when we got to Brisbane and crashed out in our room. Upon venturing out we realised that this is a pretty cool city as we headed for the trendy Brunswick Road side of town for a bite to eat and some drinks.
When we returned to the hotel we told the concierge that we fancied a visit to Australia Zoo the next day. We then received the best news of the holiday – the day we wanted to go, 15 November, was Steve Irwin Day at Australia Zoo and we booked it there and then. I checked on the internet to make sure it wasn’t some tourist scam like Lucky Buddha Day but sure enough it was true. We went to bed like excited children.
15 November
The Zoo was amazing – along with all the usual zoo stuff we had live performances from Olivia Newton John, Jimmy Barnes (Whoooo ooooh ooooh working class man) and the amazing Bindi Irwin & The Crocmen with the world premier of her new single Trouble in the Jungle (coming soon to an Australia Day party near you on January 26). My highlights were Terri & Wes’ croc show in the crocoseum – all the stuff anybody has seen on Steve’s TV shows will know and the Bengal Tiger show.
Back home we took the opportunity to ring home – Pezza informing my dad that we were in Lisbon and then correcting herself with ‘Melbourne’. See what I have to put up with???
Another trip out to the city, but not a long one as we were goosed and ready to head up the Queensland coast to Dunk Island. I’d seen reports of a tropical cyclone developing in the area but it was only a class 2 and heading further up the coast so I didn’t think it would bother us.
16 November (No pictures for this bit yet, forgot to bring my USB lead in my hand luggage)
Our journey took us back on the 70s train and then a flight from Brisbane to Cairns where we would get this plane from Cairns to the island:
Pezza really fancied the pilot.
Anybody who’s seen the Eddie Izzard bit about his flight on one of these will know what I’m on about and it was exactly like that. There were about 6 of us on the plane and yet the pilot still got in, climbed over us all and sat in the driver’s seat where he popped on his cans and used his microphone to talk to us when he could easily have just spoken to us.
“This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard flight one from here to there. We’ll be cruising at a height of ten feet, going up to twelve and a half feet if we see anything big. And our copilot today, is a flask of coffee.”
Eddie Izzard
Dunk Island is great – it’s owned by an aboriginal family and they have rented a bit of the land to a hotel so the population is made up of the hotel guests and staff and probably averages around 400 this time of year.
I did a recky of the island whilst Pezza snoozed – I wandered into the activities centre and booked a couple of things; a jet ski lap of the island tomorrow and day boat trip to the reef the day after.
I did a recky of the island whilst Pezza snoozed – I wandered into the activities centre and booked a couple of things; a jet ski lap of the island tomorrow and day boat trip to the reef the day after.
We settled down at the hotel bar and people gradually started coming in waring togas – this being our first day we didn’t have a clue what was going on but we found out that it was a staff member’s leaving do and they were having a toga and karaoke night. Excellent stuff, even the fit pilot was there, trolleyed.
We all got really tucked in and had a great time. Once the bar was threatening to close some of the staff we got friendly with suggested we go back to the staff bar. We, along with two other guest couples made our way down. It’s a bit of a treck so all the hotel buses and carts were on hand. One couple we were chatting to didn’t ,make it onto the bus, they’re in their fifties and clearly not staff. Once on the bus were were told, “Just say you work for housekeeping – nobody knows anybody in housekeeping.”
Lo and behold, it worked – we got past the duty manager who was guarding the door when he stopped the other couple who had made it onto the bus. Karen protested and said to the duty manage that they were staff, he looked at her and said, “You know they’re not staff.” We cut them loose and went in.
One free beer later and fingers began to get pointed in our direction, the duty manager had spoken to the housekeeping manager who confirmed our story was rubbish and chucked us back to our room. Booo, no tip for housekeeping and they may find something brown on a towel!!
17 November
There are lots of activities provided by the hotel however our friend Cyclone Guba had taken a turn south and was heading towards us, it was still a couple of hundred miles away and moving very slowly bit it was enough to completely change the weather here on day 2. with increased winds and a bit more cloud, nothing more than a 20 knot wind but when you consider that there is usually no weather here and no waves courtesy of the reef then when things do spice up a bit it stops half of the life on the island.
I really didn’t think the jet ski thing would go ahead as it was cancelled the day before and it was windier this morning however I insisted as the waves in front of our room didn’t look too bad. Pezza and I shared a jet ski and there was another Aussie doing the trip plus one tour guide both on their own skis. Once we got around the back of the island we were faced with fantastic conditions – waves 3 metres high crashing into our jet ski – had we fallen off it was a fifty metre ride to the rocks on the shore, we held on tight. The poor tour guide was trying to teach is about the history of the island, surrounding area and the destruction of Cyclone Larry last year but we were having far too much fun in what were, in hindsight, stupid conditions to jet ski in.
We had a lazy afternoon by the pool and were informed that the wind had put paid to our reef trip – which is an absolute gutter as it’s our last full day tomorrow so we wont be able to do it at all.
18 November
Another lazy day due to our cancelled reef trip. I did a bit of washing, looking carefully amongst the washing already in the machine for small Everton shirts.
I’m now writing all this sat on a chair on the beach outside the room watching the sun go down over the mainland. It’s been another lazy day and we’re both very excited about the road trip ahead – six days driving from Brisbane to Sydney stopping at the likes of Byron Bay, Port Stephens etc. I’ll upload this when I get to Cairns tomorrow morning and hopefully get all the Facebook pictures up to date – they only have dial up internet here – Aussie luddites.
Finally, a big ‘get well soon’ to my mum xxx
Andy
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