Travel Journal Entry - Day 1

Day 1 - 7-8/4/15, Bangkok

The flight was 11 hours but seemed to take forever! I didn't get to sleep much so I'm pretty much aligned with Thailand time - its 1am right now and I can't wait to go to sleep. 

Thailand is mental. We managed to work our way round the train system (which uses tokens instead of tickets!) and get a tuk-tuk to our hotel after about 4 hours. Tuk-tuks are like the happiest death traps ever. Our hotel is lovely, and everyone is overly friendly, in a nice kinda way. Everything is super cheap.

Khao San road is like the biggest assault on the senses ever - so many lights, and people, and noises, and so much hustle-bustle. There's vendors everywhere asking if you want pad Thai, scorpions, ping pong shows, bracelets, and funny little frog instruments. It's amazing.

Now I shall fall asleep, listening to the air con and feral cats, whilst staring at the awful hat Nick bought. x

The flight did indeed seem to take a hell of a lot longer than 11 hours. I watched a couple of films, tried sleeping, read an entire book, ate food, and still I seemed to have too much time to twiddle my thumbs. Oh well, it was the excitement I suppose. I struggled with sleep for the next few days actually, sleeping about 6pm and waking up around midnight, then on and off sleeping with pins and needles for the next 7 hours or so - none of which fits either English or Thai time. Maybe it was the malaria tablets, maybe it was the heat, who knows?

Excited to finally get off the plane!

Bangkok is full on bat-shit crazy. So noisy, cars everywhere and people everywhere, with bikes and food vendors in between. Khao San road is like they thought, "Let's ramp this up a bit!". We turned the corner and literally stopped in our tracks. 'Woah' was all I could say. It's too much to take in at once. The noise level is incredible. Just one walk from one end to the other will get you offerings for a suit (why on Earth you would need a suit for backpacking, or even for Bangkok, is beyond me), several ping-pong shows (we asked where one was and the guy tried to lead us to a tuk-tuk saying "20 Baht, 20 Baht!!". No thank you! Never let them take you somewhere in a tuk-tuk for that sort of thing and never fall for the 10/20 Baht tuk-tuk scams. You'll end up in trouble. Always take a tuk-tuk or taxi to a place you would recognise and walk the rest of the way), bug delicacies, all sorts of random foods, clothes, and a whole lot of weird and wonderful tack.  

Hill tribe friend!

We sat outside an abandoned building (that actually had a club inside it) and listened to some guys play guitar and one of those boxes you sit on and bang; they were pretty good actually, even if they did miss out the bigger English words. Whilst sitting there, we must have been approached by no less than 20 vendors, most of which are women from the hill tribes selling little bracelets and such. I bought a couple of bracelets and then this one lady picked up that Nick was tipsy, shoved this ugly ass hat on his head and he happily bought it. When he took it off, his face was just like, 'WTF is this?'. Creased me up.

Nick and his happy hat.

ENP and Chiang Mai soon! x

Female Packing List - Thailand/Australia

Okay, okay, I know. I'm a terrible blogger, and this post should have been done before I left the country - but do you know how busy it makes you when you leave the country?!

So I'm currently waiting for a bus to Bangkok from Chiang Mai (it's a long bus) after spending a week at a beautiful elephant sanctuary (more on that later). My bag is considerably lighter than when we first started, and that's a good thing. I read loads of packing lists on blogs and websites before we left and although they were helpful, they never tell you what they chucked out a week or two down the line. So there, my tardiness will be helpful.

Shoes
1x Converse, pump style - for when you need light, closed in shoes
1x Walking boots
1x Sandals - these broke about three days in so I've now got a basic black flip flop pair

Clothing
10x underwear, all types, comfy and pretty. You can probably cut down on this to be honest, as these are relatively easy to wash in the shower, but I just packed as many as I could roll up into a walking boot. 
2x bras - because, let's be honest, who actually uses more than that?
3x Pairs of socks, plus 4x odd socks, because life is too short to match your socks
4x Old T-shirts - I never wore these for their intended purpose. They were supposed to be for the elephant park, something to get dirty that didn't matter. I ended up wearing some nice stuff and cut up two of these t-shirts into new vest tops. I donated two old t-shirts to the elephant park.
8x Normal tops, varying styles. This was a bit excessive. You don't need this many tops, even though I had them for different occasions, especially when you're headed somewhere cheap like Thailand. I've donated two vest tops that were ruined by Songkran/elephant poo, but the rest has stayed. I will probably chuck a couple more and replace them with lighter, breezier items from the markets.
3x Shorts, 2 denim, 1 fabric-y type. I donated one pair of denim shorts because they were too tight in this heat and uncomfortable. The other pair are my favourite and try as I might, I can't get the dusty elephant poo colour out of them. My fabric ones are being worn for comfort on long buses - a definite recommendation.
1x 3 quarter length light trousers. I never wore these and knew I wasn't going to. These were donated to ENP. You can get lovely breezy trousers out here in a multitude of patterns for about 100 Baht (£2). I've bought two and they take up less room and are far comfier than the ones I brought with me.
2x Summer dresses. Worn both and, for the time being, keeping both. Good for if you want to look a little pretty for the evenings.
1x Pyjama set. Only a shorts and vest top set, but these are good if you are in hostels or sleeping somewhere that other people have access to. You will be ridiculously hot in any clothing you wear to bed, so bear this in mind; we thought about bringing our comfy fluffy PJ bottoms but these would definitely have been chucked within the first couple of hours.
1x Light cardigan. Haven't worn this yet, as too pretty for the ele-park. This will probably be worn on the beach in the evenings.

Swimwear
2x Bikinis. Any more than this is unnecessary - wear one whilst the other dries (which will take all of 10 minutes in the sun).
1x Sarong - 100% take one of these, particularly for Thailand. I've used it to cover up at temples, as a headscarf to protect from the sun, a light cover up for the evenings, and worn by the pool. 
1x Kimono. I'm hoping I wear this by the beach, I spent ages looking for these, bought about 3 and only brought 1.

Miscellaneous
In a big ol' list: sleeping bag, travel towel (it's too small! Get an extra large one!), travel journal (entries  will be typed  up later), suncream, toiletries, Scrubba, washing line, first aid kit, Lifestraw, tissues, soap leaves, travel adaptors, antibacterial gel, and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. We haven't bothered with the soap leaves, just bought some shower gel and stuff when we got here, and the Scrubba doesn't clean clothes as well as hoped. The Lifestraw has been a Lifesaver (heheh) we've used it tons. Do you know when you read those things that are like 'Top Ten Items for Backpackers', and you think, Nah, I don't need half of that? - you do. You very much do, and so will the people around you; plasters, hand gel/wipes, water, vaseline - all the niggly little bits you'd otherwise overlook.

Some actual travel blogging coming soon, woohoo! Happy packing x

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 2015 is set to be a good one. 

Well, it's been a while. To be quite honest, I've not had anything to blog about. I'm just not very interesting. After booking up all our tickets and planes and hotels etc., days, weeks, months passed without much travel news, but this is a new year! This is the year! 

Tomorrow, I hand my notice in at work. It's an extended notice, so my last working day is the end of February. I do love my job; I love the team, I love the product and I love that it's just challenging enough to keep me on my toes. But Christmas in retail is really shit. I don't mean it in a whiney 'Ooh I've got to work Boxing Day, woe is me' kind of way, there are many more people that have to work tougher, longer hours than I did (although I did like 60 hours a week. People doing more hours than that, I totally salute you). But generally those people are nurses, firefighters, police etc - they're doing something good in the world. Whatever job I have at Christmas next year, I'm hoping it's something that has a purpose in the world - I don't ever want to have to deal with irate, demanding people that, for some bizarre reason, have chosen to battle other mental people for sale items they could have bought two weeks prior, instead of sitting at home with their families, scoffing turkey sandwiches and watching films. People are so aggy too! It's not my fault your sniffly kids are tired from running riot since 7am this morning and are now complaining and crying whilst you try on shoes. I hate it when people are waiting to pay and they're like 'Oh, my child is getting restless, can we hurry it up?'. Are you fucking kidding me? You just spent 20 minutes trying to decide if you like a £19 sale shoe, another 10 minutes trying to get a discount because it's 'marked' and now you want me, me??, to hurry up? Lady, I wanted you out of my store 15 minutes ago.

Eesh, got a bit carried away there.

On the rare days I've not been working, I found myself spending it with animals; with Cleo, my loan horse, at the kennels with my Mum, or taking rescue dogs for a walk. Take a look at these beauties:

I absolutely 100% fell in love with these two, Kaiser and his sister Kira. They've moved to a re-homing centre in Scotland, and I oh-so hope they've found a forever home; they have so much love to give, and yet they didn't have a great start in life. They were pretty malnourished when they turned up in the kennels, and Kira had such a nervous disposition, it's possible they wasn't treated very well. Oh, I miss them!
But after spending all my free time with animals, I started thinking - maybe this is my calling? It's the one thing I genuinely enjoy, and no matter how shit the task at hand is, I still find it rewarding, I still feel like I'm doing some good. So I started looking into it some more - and now I'm signed up to a home college course! Zoo animal care, behaviour and welfare. I chose zoo animals because it offers so much more in terms of options, but this is the path I want to take when looking for a new career in Australia. If I'm making this big a change in lifestyle, then there's no reason why I shouldn't attempt a job in something I love.

Part of the course is getting some work experience in a zoo for a week - I'm wetting my pants in excitement! I'm halfway through the modules, trying to power through to make sure I finish them before March.

March is our organising month. Well, my organising month. Nick is amazing at geography but I'm the logistics. I want to get us together a file each, with credit history, no claims proof, references, copies of passports, CV's, tickets etc. Need to get our shit into gear.

I've got high levels of excitement for this year; it started off amazingly and there's so much we have planned - there's probably going to be so many unplanned things too. For New Year's we took an impromptu trip to Weymouth. If you've not been, you need to get your butt down there for a new year - it's brilliant! The town itself is so pretty, a lovely harbour and a beautiful beach, but for NYE the whole town - and I mean the whole town - dresses in fancy dress and congregates in the town square to count down into midnight. All the pubs have a party going on and you're free to wander from one to the other. We literally packed up the car and camped in the car park for the night, getting up in the morning and exploring around the fort, dodging the masses of dog walkers. 
For those that are wondering, because we decided about 5 hours prior to going, we dressed in onesies; I was a ninja turtle, Nick was a turkey. He was a pretty good turkey;

New Years Day started with an adventure too - start as you mean to go on, eh? We drove to Lyme Regis for breakfast and to watch the 'Lyme Lunge' - a charity event where nearly 300 people ran into the sea in fancy dress to raise money for Help For Heroes. Good on them, nutty bunch.

We then ventured to Durdle's Door, the weird rock thing on the southern coast. I know there is more to marvel at, but I can't explain to you how blue the water was, especially for England. The picture doesn't do it any justice at all, it was like tropical waters. But the whole place was absolutely beautiful. A definite recommendation, if you're fitter than we are and are able to walk up a hill without nearly keeling over.

So there we go - a quick update on life and our current adventures. There won't be so much white noise from me over the next couple of months - loads of updates and adventures coming your way!