heading to Oz

Our time in Thailand is nearly up as we head to Sydney this evening. We've had a great time here and really enjoyed our time on the islands. Bangkok is an experience and I'm glad we've seen it but it's just so busy here, you don't really want to spend much time here. We would love to come back to Thailand and see more of the islands one day.

After we completed our diving course on Koh Tao, we headed to Koh Phangan for the Full Moon Party. The Full Moon Party is a monthly event held on Haad Rin beach and goes for about 3 days straight. It was mental!!! We got to the island on Friday the 23rd and had an hour long "taxi" ride out to our bungalow where we were staying. The roads were horrendous - probably the worst I've seen in my life. The erosion is horrible b/c of all the rain they got this year. The roads are dirt to begin with and then they are filled with potholes and huge crevasses where the water has washed away the dirt. It was a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride with 10 of us packed into the back of a pickup truck w/ all of our bags loaded on the roof.

We met up with some of our diving friends at the bungalow and had just enough time for a quick shower before heading back into town (via the same long drive) for a night of pre-Full Moon partying. Side note about the shower... Chuck thought you had to turn the handle really hard to get the water to turn on and ended up unscrewing the handle from the wall. Water was shooting out everywhere at very high pressure. It was a minor mishap in our plan to shower quickly that night. Luckily it was easily fixed and the problem was sorted by the time we got home the following morning.

Saturday night was the "official" party but we managed to stay up until around 9am Friday and Saturday night making the most of it. It was definitely the craziest party we've both experienced!!! There were about 15,000 people at the party and the beach was absolutely trashed each morning with beer bottles and buckets.... oh the buckets! They served drinks in little buckets with a handful of straws so you could share your concoction with all your friends. It was an interesting experience and one we're glad we did but are now done with!!! We were so thankful to meet up with our diving buddies as that made the experience even more enjoyable.

We headed to another beach, Haad Yao, for our last night on Koh Phangan to relax and recover from all the partying. Our bungalow was right on the beach, literally about 50 feet from the edge of the water, and we could hear the waves crashing in all night. It was very relaxing and we wish we could have stayed another couple of days. But, it was time to head back to Bangkok so we can fly on to Australia. The trip back didn't seem nearly as long as the trip to Koh Tao. The sea was very rough though so there were some pretty seasick people on our ferry - not too pleasant. We were both okay - Chuck has pretty good sea legs, I took an anti-seasick pill otherwise I probably would have been hanging off the side with the others.

So, one last night in Bangkok and we decided to spoil ourselves with an air-con room (our first) and boy did it feel great! We slept like babies and now we're just hanging out waiting for our bus to the airport. We're having some issues with downloading our pictures so I apologize once again for not posting any pictures but we're hoping to get our problems sorted out in Sydney and then I'll post some, I promise!!!

We hope everyone at home (both homes - States and Ireland) is doing well and getting ready for the holidays. It doesn't seem like the holiday season to us at all - a bit weird to hear our families talking about buying Christmas trees... :) We miss you all and would love to hear from you either on the blog or by email (yes, we are still checking email).

Talk to you all again soon - from Oz! And be sure to check out the map, I've updated it so you can see where all we've been!

Renee & Chuck
xoxoxoxo

diving in koh tao

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone at home!!! I had the best of intentions of posting something yesterday but it just didn't work out. I hope everyone had a wonderful day and ate lots of turkey for us!!! :) Our Thanksgiving dinner was a bit different... I had fried noodles with vegetables and Chuck had pineapple and chicken with rice. Not the traditional turkey dinner, but still good nonetheless.

After 6 very relaxing days in Koh Tao, I'm happy to report that we are both PADI certified Open Water Divers!!!! We thoroughly enjoyed our diving classes and the dives were amazing! It's so cool being under water with all the fish and seeing all the beautiful colors and coral. We had an awersome instructor, Camilo, who made us feel very comfortable in the water. We completed our 4 required dives (2 at 12 meters and 2 at 18 meters) and on the third, we were very fortunate to see a 3 meter Whaleshark! It was beautiful! It's the largest fish in the ocean and adults can get up to 18 meters long. They are known to be seen in waters around Koh Tao but the sightings can be few and far between. There are diving instructors who have been here for 7 years and still have never seen one. So, we were incredibly lucky and priveledged that the whaleshark made an appearance for us. The waters were very choppy yesterday but we toughed it out and the results paid off! We have a DVD of our last dive that we'll be happy to show off to you all once we get home. :)

We're catching a ferry to Koh Phangan in a few minutes so this post will be quick and w/o pictures but I promise to put more pictures up soon. If all goes to plan, we'll be in Koh Phangan until the 27th when we head back to Bangkok to fly to Sydney. There's a full moon party on Koh Phangan on the 24th that's really popular (supposed to be the 3rd biggest party in the world) so we've been talked into going there and we'll hopefully be meeting up with some of our fellow diver friends from Koh Tao. Should be good fun followed by lots of relaxing on the beach, snorkeling and maybe even an elephant trek through the jungle.

I'll post more soon! We love you all!!! Chuck & Renee

crazy, busy Bangkok

We arrived safely in Bangkok after a day of sightseeing in London. We were incredibly tired but still in good spirits and we were very happy to have the time we did in London - wouldn't have done it any other way! And may I mention that our first Qantas experience was a very good one! I was very impressed with the food on the airplane, so much so that Chuck thought I was going to write to the airline company to congratulate them on their culinary skills. Maybe I still will... we'll see how the rest of the trip goes first! :)

First thing I have to say about Bangkok is WOW - It's H-O-T (and it's only winter here) and the people are SO friendly! It's truely the land of smiles! Definitely not used to the humidity anymore but we're hangin' in there and enjoying our time here. We've seen several Wat's (Buddhist temples) including the 45M gold Buddha and the Marble Temple which was beautiful! All the Wat's are being repainted or power-washed right now for the King's birthday next month. And a lot of people are wearing yellow or gold shirts in honor of his birthday.

We went to Chinatown and Siam Square yesterday/last night and realized just how busy and big this city is! We got a glimpse into the huge sex industry in Bangkok. It's very interesting to say the least and kind of sad to see such young girls putting themselves out there. We've also tried our hand at haggling with the Tuk-Tuk's and have have some favorable outcomes. It's fun riding around in those little cars, aside from all the exhaust and smog blown in your face!

We've had great food so far and have done a bit of shopping (as can be expected when things are so cheap). Our average meal cost is the equivalent of EUR 8 including drinks and tip. Can't beat that! Don't worry, we made up for it a bit at the night markets tonight...had to be done! We have also been pleased to find that the toilet situation has been much better than expected. I guess we were expecting China (holes in the ground), but we've had real toilets all around so far. Very nice and clean too!

Tomorrow we're going to see the Grand Palace, which we're very excited to see. It was closed on Wednesday because of some holiday and then we slept in too late today to see it (still getting used to the 7 hour time difference from Dublin) so tomorrow it is the #1 spot on our list before we head out of Bangkok for the islands. And for those of you wondering... we're 13 hours ahead of CST time.

We leave at 5:30 tonight (Friday) for Koh Tao and the beach life for a week. We've booked bus and boat transfer(12 hour over-night bus ride followed by 2 hour ferry), accommodation and the PADI Open Dive 4-day course (which we hope we didn't get ripped off for... but that's always a question in the back of your mind in Thailand) and will be in Koh Tao (the diving mecca of Southeast Asia) for the next week. We will decide where to go next while we're there.

We're definitely looking forward to some beach time because this type of weather can only be thoroughly enjoyed on the beach. I do have to say that the Thai people are THE friendliest people I've met so far and the heat doesn't seem to effect their friendliness or helpfulness.

Enjoy the couple of pics I've posted and hopefully we'll be talking to you again from Koh Tao with an update on our scuba lessons. Fingers crossed we (I) can handle the diving bit...

Love to all - we miss you! R&C

the end of a good 3 years

Well, here it is... our last day in Dublin and as if we had forgotten what rain was like (because of the nice weather we've had lately), it's decided to rain today. Not much but just enough to remind us where we are!

We're headed out tomorrow morning at the ungodly hour of 4:30am. We'll be sightseeing in London for the day before we catch our connecting flight to Bangkok tomorrow night. We could very well be zombies by then!

We enjoyed our time in Prague earlier this week. It was cold and a bit rainy but we made do and had a great time nonetheless. I've managed to post a few pictures from our time there. No massive photo albums while we're traveling, you'll all get a barrage of photos when we get home. :)

Our leaving drinks were Friday night and it was great to see so many of our friends one last time. We're already looking forward to the day we get to see them again!

I suppose that's it for this post, time to wrap things up before tomorrow morning. The next time you hear from us, we'll be working on our tans in Thailand and hopefully learning how to scuba dive too!

(Pictures from top to bottom: view of Prague and the Charles Bridge from Prague Castle, me and Chuck in front of the Astronomical Clock, view of Prague Castle from the Charles Bridge)

10 days and counting

It has been pointed out to me that I've been neglecting our blog. I guess I didn't really think about updating it again until we were actually gone but I suppose it doesn't hurt to let you all know what we're up to during our last remaining days in Dublin.

The movers are coming on Monday (if all goes to plan) so we're busy preparing for them to come and leave us with an empty, computer-less apartment. The thought of not having our computer readily available is a little frightening to say the least. But I guess it also means we're one step closer to getting on that plane!

We got out our rucksacks last weekend to see just how much we could cram in them. (Check out the "his and hers" picture.) I think I have everything packed on my "necessity" list and I'm up to 30 lbs. in mine. It doesn't sound like much but trust me, it's heavy when it's hanging off your back! I think it's manageable though and it was exciting to try it on with my stuff actually in it. It's hard to imagine carrying your stuff when you're trying on an empty backpack in the store. So, as long as we can keep the rucksacks out of the movers hands on Monday, we'll be golden!

In the meantime, we've been checking the wether in Thailand off and on. Bangkok looks like upper 80's (I could use some of that!) and the islands are a bit rainy. It's the end of the rainy season though so fingers crossed, within a couple of weeks time all will be sunny again!

until next time...