Category: Friends

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How relaxed can you be?

We are in Bangkok at the moment. Arrived here from Koh Chang – an island in the Gulf of Thailand – this afternoon.

We’ve spent the last 5 days so relaxed it was brilliant. We stayed in a hostel dorm room which we try to not do on a regular basis but the hostel we stayed at was really good. The beds were huge for dorm standards and the facilities were pretty good too. We slept in everyday, generally missed breakfast and chilled by the pool for the morning until we decided to go out and actually do something. For a couple of days we hired a motorbike and rode around the island. Generally in places like Koh Chang you can circumnavigate the island by following the same road. You can’t do that in Koh Chang, you can only go so far one way before the road stops and you can’t go any further so like what we did, you stop, have a look at your surroundings and drive back the other way until you reach the other end. We stopped occasionally to look at the views and one time even stopped to go check out a waterfall. The waterfall was more like a pool of water than actual running waterfalls. The climb up there was via a barely visible track covered in leaves which I was adamant would contain snakes, spiders and other things I’m scared of. Safe to say I did not enjoy the walk up to the waterfall while wearing my havaianas, especially because Mark has a tendency to walk off ahead and I was helped down a steep slippery section of the path by some locals.

So apart from riding around the island and checking a few things out we sat by the pool at the hostel because it was so hot and humid. Now normally I don’t actually go into public pools because they kind of gross me out but when it’s too hot outside I had no option but to go in constantly. When I was younger and did go into pools throughout summer my hair would always get a slight green tinge to it. I remembered this and mentioned it to Mark but didn’t actually think it would happen after only a couple of days. I was wrong. My hair is now green at the ends and I have to find a way to fix it while in Vietnam over the next couple of weeks.

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See! I’m not lying, my hair is actually green.

Koh Chang is different to other islands we have been to in Thailand. Phuket & Koh Samui can be relaxing but they also have a huge nightlight area which just isn’t present in Koh Chang. As well as the nightlight Koh Chang isn’t as built up and although there are a lot of travellers there, they all seem to be there for the same reason – just to chill out – and we did meet a couple of people who had been to Koh Chang weeks or even months earlier but were back there to take it easy before their next stops.

We are looking forward to having no plans the next couple of weeks and just travelling through one of our favourite places – Vietnam!

Until then, B 🙂

 

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Learning English

We had an overnight stop in Ho Chi Minh City so that we could organise ourselves and buy a couple of things we needed. I don’t think either of us expected Ho Chi Minh to offer much in the 24 hours that we were there as we will be going back soon and have been multiple times before. It did however offer up something to us that for some reason we had never experienced there before.

We were walking to a camera shop opposite Ben Tanh Market when we were stopped by a girl around my age asking us if she could speak to us as she was practising her English. When we looked behind her there were groups of Vietnamese students surrounding a number of different foreigners all practising English. We had to make it to the camera shop before it closed so we told her we were be back. I don’t think she believed us because she looked totally surprised when  we walked up to her half an hour later. She quickly sat us down with a couple of people and before we knew it we had people coming and going trying to get a few words it. It was a really nice experience as many of the people were our age and each had a different reason for studying English although all were loosely based around getting a good job.

Mark and I ended up having separate conversations with people. My conversation was around real estate, because go figure, the guy who first started talking to me wanted to work in real estate.I’m not sure what Mark spoke about but apart from really just talking and getting to know them we helped with any words or phrases they were stuck on. At one stage I had my group of 4 repeating the word ‘island’ multiple times each time with the ‘s’ disappearing more and more until it was silent.

We only planned on staying for half an hour, but didn’t end up leaving for an hour and a half, when we checked the time and realised that we had to race and pick up our laundry before the store closed.

We really enjoyed our experience and I honestly don’t know we had never seen the group before, especially considering they meet everyday… Maybe we’ve always just rushed past and never actually noticed.

B xxx

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Beautiful Boracay

2 flights, many tricycle rides and a ferry ride later we arrived in Boracay. As soon as we checked into our accommodation we walked straight down to the doctors so Mark could get his foot checked as some of the sea urchin stings were starting to get red and puffy. Turns out though that there isn’t really anything you can do about from cut and pick at each sting without anaesthetic which I could have done myself had Mark let me. We left after Mark got a shot of something and some other prescriptions that came in the form of a scrap piece of paper with the names of the medications on it.

Boracay itself is extremely small when you consider how much they have managed to squeeze onto the island. There are so many hotels here and even more being built. Restaurants and bars are everywhere and so many stalls and shops. It is a lot more touristy than El Nido but it is set up well that we didn’t mind at all. In fact we probably preferred it. If we wanted to be around people we could head in the main part of town, but if we preferred to be by ourselves we just stayed at our accommodation and hung out in the rooftop hammock or patio.

There are so many different beaches here and they are all so picturesque. They are exactly what you see when you google Boracay. I’m glad we came.

  

 
We’ve used the past few days here in Boracay as a really laid back and relaxing holiday. The weather here has been so hot that we have been hanging out at our accommodation most mornings and venturing outside for lunch and the afternoon. Andy, one of our hosts told us we were definitely on island time.

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You could definitely check out all of the activities on Boracay…We were too relaxed to try anything of the sort
Andy and Stephen have been great throughout our stay and I feel like they have made our time here more enjoyable especially when they invited us to celebrate Stephen’s birthday with them. They had a roast pig, which the locals call a lechon as well as a banquet full of food. It was so nice of them to invite us. The food was amazing and we got cake for desert, which for us backpackers was a real treat. First time in 2 weeks I’ve eaten desert and I love desert!

Yesterday just after breakfast Mark got a message from a guy we met in India inviting us to celebrate Holi Festival with him and his family in Jaipur. In a normal circumstance I wouldn’t rush back to India but we thought it would be a great experience so we spent the morning looking into it. I don’t’ think we will end up going though and the cost is quite huge and some of the experiences from other travellers in previous years haven’t been so positive so I don’t think we will regret not going. We will look into a bit more though before we decide.

love, a very relaxed, B xxx