Okie dokey – home safe all!!!!
Thanks for all ya reading and posting comments – it really helped us while we were on the road.
Hope you are all well and we will try to catch up with u soon! 
– Sam and Pete!
26 January 2007 at 8:33 pm (pete, sam)
On our way home!
25 January 2007 at 11:09 pm (Bangkok, sam, singapore)
Well we have survived the first of our flights home (Bangkok –> Singapore) and are currently residing in the Singapore Airport where the toilets are clean and the internet is free. 
We like it here. Ones standards do drop dont they?? We have an hour to kill before we board our next flight (Singapore –> Sydney).
So last night we went exploring the night markets in the “not so classy” end of town. We met some lovely ladies… and wanna be lovely ladies…. and on the way home we were (only just) not involved in a head on collision with our taxi and another taxi – who had both decided that “that” particular lane was “on their side of the road”. Both came to a screeching halt about 15metres away from each other and nobody was hurt. The driver was lucky i paid him – lucky that i had just spent 5 hrs at the markets bargaining ma lil’ heart out and did not have the energy for an arguement. I just threw the 100 baht at him (which i had had to bargain for too) and got out of the cab glad to have survived our last cab ride in Bangkok – Shame we forgot about the minibus to the airport this morning. He was a freaken pyscho too. Will be glad to be home will the regular sydney psychos.
But we will be home safe soon – its 8.11pm here in Singapore – but we are on Thai time so its actually 7pm…. but it will be 4am Sydney time when we land – but actually 7.15am – so….. hmmmm if i times that by pi and carry the 3 i think we will see you on june 5th 1986. It will be lovely to see you all.
–Sam..
P.S – MUM sorry about all my spelling mistakes throughout my travelling blog land. Im of course blaming the EXPENSIVE *cough* internet and my lighting flash typing.
but thats a lie of course.
It only takes 24hrs for your brain to convince your nose that the world is SUPPOSE to smell that bad.
21 January 2007 at 4:08 pm (Uncategorized)
Allo kiddies!
We were in Koh Sumui for 3 days – lazing about in the sun having a real holiday which was nice. Nothing much to report on that though – ate, drank, sunbathed and swam mostly.
We did go and do the touristy elephant riding thing though, which i have mixed feelings about. Bit worried about the whole animals as a tourist attraction thing. But i went anyway,even though i wasnt sure. We of course got the fruitloop elephant with the fruitloop handler who had trained it to stray purposfully off the path, through river beds and large bushes and trees… and down cliff ledges etc. Yeah. thought i was going to fall off the elephant and i figure that would be a pretty SAM thing to do. SO at times it was all a bit scarey, but i suppose it was good.
So Bangkok is awesome. But it smells really bad. Never mind, getting used to it. Getting used to alot of things actually. Im eating chilli and curry and my little burning lips are making me smile. Peter is walking out in front of traffic without looking knowing that they will just swerve around… *sigh* you gotta love asia.
We havent taken many photos of Bangkok really yet because we are here for 5 days so plently of time for that. We are staying at supposbly a nice hotel (so not) but its kinda in the hub bub of all the Bangkok craziness so thats cool. Basically we dont fit in here at all – for once not because we are white tourists – but this time because we are not ferals. Bangkok (well where we are anyway) is FULL to the brim with white dreadlocked feral backbackers. Yesterday – im assuming because i had brushed both my hair and teeth we got bagged out on the street by a bunch of – oh we are so cool because we havent washed ferals. Bangkok is where all the hippie backpackers come when they run out of money it seems. Its really cheap and no body sleeps.
We rocked into Bangkok at 5am after a fairly ok 13 -or something like that- hour train trip.
Us on the train:
Bangkok 5am – the streets were buzzing. It was cool. And at one am this morning (almost 24hrs later)- still awake and feeling preety crappy mind you – the streets were still buzzing.
Its dirty and it smells but it makes you smile.
The markets near our place a cool. Heaps of bargains and the hawkers dont hassle you like the way they did in Kuala Lumpa. In KL they kept grabbing at Pete – handsome boy! handsome boy ! Something for you!!!! They loved him. But here its cool. Most of them leave you alone. The taxi drivers are classic. Yesterday the same guy come up to me 4 times – Australia! Australia! 10 Baht! Good Price!!!!! So classic. But im getting really good at the smiling and the no thankyou!!!
Yesterday we also went on a tour to the Wat Poh (big temple with the famous reclining budha).
It was good but we were exhausted from the train and our group was useless. I felt sorry for the guide. We also went on a river boat (which didnt sink thank goodness) and saw all the river houses. Again would have been an excellent tour if we all hadnt been zombies. Was a shame really.
The riverboat – you can see me in pink up the back contemplating my swimming skills:
All posts updated.
21 January 2007 at 3:29 pm (Uncategorized)
Just a boring quick one to say we have FINALLLLLLLLLLY found internet connections that werent estasbilished in 1994 and have managed to upload a heap of photos onto all those non-photo’ed blogs below. Im sure you cannot be bothered to re-read them you all have much to much excitement going on for that kinda nonsense but maybe a scroll down to check out the photos now referenced throughout??
Ta!
– Sam
“No take tuk tuk – get cancer!”
20 January 2007 at 11:11 pm (Penang, ko samui, nakhon si thammarat, pete)
Previously on ”samnpete”: Arrived in Penang, bodged together a blog post about the past few days detailing absolutly nothing of use or substinence..
Penang – our second day here was spent mostly sweating. We travelled round the island to a beach resort and paid too much to use their pool and facilities Drinks were weak and exhorborant at 29RM, which works out at about $10 for probably half a standard drink. Food was about the same. The air conditioned shopping centre was a nice break in the afternoon, but after being totally spoilt in KL with 2RM street kopi (thick and rich 
) the coffee here was a total let down – gah! Penang was nice, but our time there could have been better spent.
Nakhon Si Thammarat – Crossed the border into Thailand, customs was a mostly non event (mostly thanks to the 20 baht “processing fee”). Stayed in a nice little town a little smaller than Newcaslte. The locals here aren’t really used to seeing tourists (or Potatoes as the white folk here are known) and kids tend to stare, smile and wave – in that order. Plenty of families on motor scooters, with drivers as young as 12 and passengers of ALL ages. When it rains, they get out umbrellars that fail in the wind; or big sheets of plastic with holes cut out for the driver (not necessarily the person at the front). Just here for one night to break up the journey to Ko Samui.
Ko Samui – 3 day stay on an island resort Prices were expensive (apparently) for Thailand, but we managed dinner and drinks for around $15 Went snorkelling in a marine park off a nearby island, and rode the elephants Swimming and lying around also featured here.
Bangkok – from Ko Samui we had an 18hr trip to Bangkok. This involved a minibus, public bus, ferry, public bus and the overtight train. Slept well on the train, but the 5:30 arrival followed by breakfast and a river tour made it a long day – some people don’t cope well in the mornings and had trouble with this ( ).
– Pete
20 Baht and a smile will buy ya into Thailand… (updated)
20 January 2007 at 11:11 pm (Bangkok, Penang, nakhon si thammarat, sam)
went to penang – lazy days – non event.
So we rocked across the border from Malaysia to Thailand without any problems. Didnt get shot and didnt get locked up which is always nice. Also havent died in a road accident which is always a nice way to end the day, but i will get to that in a second. Did have to bribe the officials at the border to let us through but whats new in Thailand – and it was only 20 Baht which is like nothing so good luck to them i say.
The difference between Malaysia and Thailand was INSTANTLY evident. The landscape is much more interesting to watch than Malaysia – which was really boring.
Ok – So. Let me begin with the driving.
Singaporian and Malaysians drive like physcos. But Thai drivers make them seem like old ladies on the way to church… the slow calm and collected, slightly swerving ones. Malaysians have sort of a share and share alike road system whereby they agree to drive ON the bichaman road - but refuse to acknowledge lanes. The road is there to share man – dont let the system tell you WHERE to drive or WHEN to change lanes. My goodness – it is so amazingly scarey – or it was. Unfortuantly we are used to it all now. So yeah they sorta just weave in and out of lanes whenever they feel the need and the traffic just sorta flows around each other. Whoa man its just really chilled driving bro. FOR THE LOCALS. Ok now Thailand. Thats a whole other story. IF one WANTS to acknowledge a bichaman road by driving on it that is a good start – because whats a gravel cliff edge between friends, really i mean? Now the REALLY advanced drivers stay on the correct side of the road, especially when they are travelling at 90km/hr in a 60 zone and the oncoming semitrailer is only 20metres away.
There arnt any advanced drivers in Thailand- to my knowledge.
Basically as a Thai driver you acknowledge that 3 cars/trucks or 2 buses and 3 motorcycles or… any other combination of as many vehicles as you like really can fit sideways across a road…. ever played “frogger”? or… “space invaders” even. Thats a start for the visualizations.
So this is the part of the blog where my mum gets up to hang the washing out and I mention *with a cough* that for quite a few of these hair raising trips (one of which i video taped for “oh you’ll laugh at this all later” prosterity) i have been sitting in the back of essentially and open air ute. Some times standing on the back foot step up bittys…. yah. Thats me in blue up the back there…
Organised tour….. ahem…
And then there are the motorcycle habits which are SO SCARY but sometimes cute…. but i’ll leave the photos to demonstrate that – pete has one of my favs in his blog above, but heres another:
Anyways – in general I like Thailand better than Malaysia and i cant really put my finger on why – just do.
Nikon si Thameratt – totatly spelt that wrong – was our first Thai town we stayed in – everyone keep raving about how cute and lovely and quaint and friendly this town was – i found it really boring. The locals were really friendly but i suspect because they themselves were bored and we were a novelty. This was our first real taste of Thailand and a TOTAL shock to the system. Throughout Malaysia almost everyone spoke at least SOME english so we totally survived – plus were able to communicate with locals enough to learn some of the Malay language ourselves. So we kinda rocked up in Thailand unprepared for the fact that NO ONE in the town really spoke English even semi-fluantly. Wacko. So then there was this random beeping noise in our room and we thought maybe it was the smoke alarm battery going flat (yeah right like they have smoke alarms in Thailand – oh how very smartypants she is now, like a week later 
). A series of halerious rounds of charades with hotel staff and many many minutes later we did figure it all out. But it was all very embarresing and taught us a valuble lesson. The entire travel group is now transfixed by my phrase book – or at least they were for a day…. to be continued when i find more coins…
– Sam
Two Fat White Tourists
13 January 2007 at 7:16 pm (Kota Kangsar, Penang, Sukasuka, pete)
We’ve spent the last couple of days in a home stay at a place called Sukasuka Island in a man made dam just outside of Kuala Kangsar.
Our hosts for our stay, Aziz and Asiah were fantastic Aziz’s knowledge of local history seems to be limitless and Asiah’s cooking really opened our eyes to the amazing food found here in Malaysia.
Aziz lead us on a tour of a local village reached by a short boat trip, he pointed out many of the local plants that sustain the village financially and food-ily. Rubber is BIG here. They cut a slit in the rubber tree and the white sap slowly drains out into a small bucket tied to the tree. According to Aziz – it takes about 6 months to fill a bucket and with the recent increase in demand for rubber, they sell the raw rubber to processing plants for around RM3/kg (around AUD1/kg). It’s causing a few of the younger people who’ve gone to the city looking for work to return to the villages to become rubber farmers. Once the tree reaches extends it’s usefullness, they sell the tree as wood for furniture etc.
We had a great time trying to guess once again all the local herbs and spices (though no one did as well this time round). We found curry leaves (smaller this time), tumeric, some kinda ginger flower and tapoica It was great to be able to taste these in the food served to us for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Lots of relaxing was done by all – they play a game with marbles here very similar to Mancala called Chonka which was very entertaining, but seemed to go on for hours and many games were left without a conclusion.
We’re really starting to stand out as tourists now – not that we didn’t already, but in a small village of mostly Muslium people, it’s hard not to notice. Our trishaw rider in Melacca had to get off and push us up the hill (clearly not enough Weetbix for breakfast as none of the other riders suffered this fate). We’ve visited a few Mosques where they wrap you up head to toe to get in
We caught the bus and a ferry to Penang today (the bridge out to Penang Island is the largest is SE Asia at 14kms, but the ferry seemed more senic). We’re here for a two nights, then off to Thailand. Looks like a nice place with heaps to do Ate at an awesome resturant for lunch called the East Xiamen Delicacies, we’re still a little paranoid about getting sick but it hasn’t really stopped us trying the food
– pete
Today marks the Half Way point.
13 January 2007 at 7:14 pm (Penang, sam)
The Homestay
So we just spent 2 days on an island that APPARENTLY doesnt exisit. It was a homestay with locals on an island in the middle of the lake that is near Kuala Kangsar if you look on a map. But you wont find our island. Its not there. Its all a little bit nutts. Apparently when they filled the lake in (with water) that the island (which we stayed on) is in – they miscalculated and didnt flood it enough – hence the creation of the island that doesnt exisit on any map. pretty cool. Homestay was excellent. We ate and drank and hiked and chilled and all that. OH meanwhile the jungles are completely infested with leechs – and they are so gross. But i didnt get leeched… but i did have to flick them off my shoes alot. But i was so brave. After the first one I stopped whimmpering “Petey Petey Save Me Save Me” and just started flicking off the bastards myelf.
Here is an icky leech:
And here is what it and its many many icky friends did to our friend Winnie:
We hiked up through jungle to a waterfall thingy and then people had a swim and i flicked leeches off my shoes. Its one thing to flick – i wasnt gunna swim with them!!! But Pete did of course.
There were no tracks in the rainforesty jungle and we were being led by a local – who, in his flipflops (thongs) was moving about 3 times as fast as we were in proper hiking boots. He lost us a few times and apparently malaysians dont know about “Kooeee’s” cause that made no difference. But he always came back and found us. I fell in the river like 4 times… so now my sneakers are muddy feral dirty wet and smelly. But so are everyone elses cause pretty much they all fell in…. except pete.
The island was beautiful – not traditional beachy beautiful – just peaceful lakey beautiful and neither of us was ready to leave this morning. 
Our hosts Aziz and Asiah were soooo lovely.
But we had to go so we chucked our packs back onto the speed boat and a boat, mini bus, another mini bus, a big bus, a ferry and a taxi ride later we were in Penang. That was an EASY travel day
We havent had a chance to explore Penang – just got here a couple of hours ago – but the internet is pretty cheap so chances are we will post again soon.
Petey and i have both picked up English accents and have started using Norweign sentence structure with Asian grammer (members on our tour mixed with market place haggling) …. OOOHHH yeah. Teaching English this year is going to be FUN….. <– please note the “dot dot dot”
Hope all is well in Oz land. Post again soon.
– Sam
11 January 2007 at 3:31 am (Bangkok, Kuala Lumpar, Malacca, pete, sam, singapore)
Hey guys - sorry this post will be quite disjointed and a bit rushed – we will post again soon when we return from…. actually we have quite a few days ahead of us that will be disconnected from the internet world. We will post and photo accessorize asap. Come back and scroll down again some other time cause then it will be pretty.
- Sam
Singapore Botanical Gardens – were real prreeety – wandered and chilled and layed under trees for a while. more info soon.
- Sam n Pete
Tour - We met our tour group in Singapore 3 days ago. We have done preety well as far as tour groups go. We like everyone in our group… mostly, well actually its only really our tour leader who we are a bit “meh” about – she makes me look like a quiet little retireing sheep. MAJOR DRAMA QUEEN :) there is us and 2 other couples (one much older and one our age) and then like 6 other single young people…all girls (poor pete ) We spent one night in Singapore with them. We wandered the markets in China town and it was actually really nice because we felt all knowledgable and homey… a week can be a very long time apparently – and in the week prior we had made ourselves muchly at home here. We didnt realise HOW much so until we saw the looks of overwhelm and fear in the eyes of all the noobs that had just gotten off the plane from England, Norway and Australia – and landed straight into the tour. It was a nice feeling for the night – and then we left…. and were noobs again ourselves.
- Sam
The bus from singapore to melaca left early and took about 5 hrs. First time for both of us driving across the border into a new country :) kinda cool. Melacca’s a nice place, very historical and we had a great tour provided by one of the local trishaw riders “Kamal”. He tooks us round to a few of the local temples and finished up down at the docks talking about the Portugese, Dutch and British battles for the great shipping port providing spice trading to the world. He had a bunch of the local plants that we squished up and smelt – Sam was great at picking the various herbs and spices. We found a great art gallery/tshirt shop called the Orangutang House and picked up some nice shirts and had a chat to the artist himself , check out their website..
- Pete
i loved malacca – dunno why – just a good vibe. Bought awesome t-shirts too (but wont be returning yours, sorry Brie ) Ben H – we thought of u while we were in the Orang Utan House. Very you.
-Sam
So we are in Kuala Lumpar at the moment. We had a tour of the city this morning – did all the touristy things aparently – towers over looking the city, war memorials – and those sorts of things. We visited the National Mosque – and I had to robe up head to toe have some photos.
- Sam
We’re finishing up our stay in Kuala Lumpur. We spent last night at a Reggae bar (come America Pop/Rock at midnight) – it turned out to be a great night partying with the tour group and the 6RM (AUD2.22) Mixers for girls all night was popular with our mostly female bunch.. especially our leader who piked at about 11 . We caught up with Jane and Sandy tonight, had dinner with Jane’s family in the Ex-Pat center of KL – the Western meals were appreciated as we’re heading off to Kuala Kangsar tomorrow to stay in a Bungalo for a few days before going to Penang.
- Pete
Bangkok - Update about Bangkok – we have decided to stay in Bangkok for our original bookings… so at the moment home on the 26th Jan.
Thank you – to all of you for reading and commenting our blog!!! We really appreciate it and it gives us smiles and warm fuzzies to know that you are out there…. Really. Thank you so much. As you all know we are mega computer geeks and so this really is our connection to home…. and normality.
- Sam n Pete
Photos
7 January 2007 at 2:32 pm (pete)
Oh yeah – we’re uploading a few of our choicest photo’s to our image host http://zooomr.com
They’re mostly lame (the photos, not zooomr), but we like them
– pete
