I'm baaack

[Chaos Butterfly]

Did anyone miss me?.......Come on even just a teensy bit [img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]

I left Vienna airport at 2.55pm European time and started my stopwatch. I sat at Heathrow airport for about 6 hrs. I then flew to Bangkok where I sat at the airport for about 7 1/2 hours. Then I flew to Brisbane where I sat for about an hour. Then finally to Auckland where I stopped the clock at 40 hours and 10 minutes Legend! [img]graemlins/plane.gif[/img]

I'm still trying to get used to being back in my own country, its quite funny to think that I have to re-adjust so much.

I had a most awesome time which I will document here as soon as I've managed to tidy all the stuff I brought back with me.

I am also totally broke both my credit cards are pretty much used up and I owe my mum about $2000 but I have no regrets and at least I can be poor yet dressed stylishly. [img]cool.gif[/img]

Speaking of which, how cool is my mum, when I got back she had washed and polished my car and I've just learned that there is kinda a surprise (well not anymore) welcome home party for me tomorrow night. She has managed to get hold of most of my mates and they are all coming over for dinner at our house.

My mother really does surprise me sometimes
[img]biggrin.gif[/img]

[RichC]

Welcome back Chaos! Sounds like you had lots of fun and I'm all kinds of jealous. Are there pictures to share?

[Exotic Ginger]

Looking forward to hearing your stories Chaos.

[Neophobic Man]

Oh yeah...stories!

[dwim]

welcome back chaos... and we gotta have the stories...

[Jadian]

*gets comfy in anticipation of good storytime*

[Chaos Butterfly]

Eeep! The pressures on. Yes there will be heaps of pics I only took oh... a moderate *ahem* 26 rolls of film's worth. I'm getting them back tomorrow, unfortunately it may take me a while to get a few of them on here as I will have to get my sister to scan them for me and I think the free site I stored my other pic on only has room for 25 pics at a time so if anyone has any other free sites for hosting the pics on tell me, I'll probably load them up in sections any way then change them after a couple of weeks. This also relies on me finding the site I put my other pic on and remembering my password. I will make the 3peanuts Sarabiga and I photo a priority tho' [img]wink.gif[/img]

I am going to attempt to at least try to get on the net quite a bit over the next week or so and relay my exploits although at the moment I'm looking at the first few pages of my travel notebook and seeing 5 word sentences and hoping that is enought to jog my memory, I'm sure I was a bit more eloquent in the later pages surely *frantically flicks thru notebook looking for longer sentences with bigger words*

OK here goes you'll have to forgive me and correct me if my history and art and geography facts get mixed up it was alot to take in and I never did much of those subjects at school.

First of all I am travelling with my friend Tarin whom I used to work with, she's the one who inspired the frantic saving, she was actually planning her big OE - overseas experience (Kiwis and Ozzies automatically can apply for and get a 2 year working visa for the UK as long as they're under 30)but she wanted to do a Contiki of Europe first so she would have some idea where she wanted to go back to on her working holiday.

We agreed to meet at the airport about 2 1/2 hours before our plane was due so we could check-in together, of course neither of us rang the airport in the morning to check the flight time (that would be just too responsible) so when we got there we discovered the plane was running 3 hours late so we had to hang around for a while. My mum had had a really bad cold all week and I knew as I sat at the airport that I had just caught it *sarcastic Yippee!*

We checked in and unfortunately struck the most unhelpful woman in the airport, we accidentally almost got our bags checked all the way thru to London ( not good as we were spending 3 days in Bangkok) but managed to realise just in time. She asked us if we were together and we said yes (well that's why we checked in together so we could get seats together) So we get on the plane and she has managed to put us at completely opposite sides of the plane [img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img] What part of We Are Together didn't she understand. At least at this point the plane wasn't too full and we ended up just changing seats and sitting together. We left NZ at 4:30pm and arrived in Bangkok at 2am which is 7am NZ time. Flight was uneventful, food was good, we flew Thai Airways and I definitely had a cold by this point so I fell asleep halfway thru Xmen2. We'd already arranged transfers from the airport so we met our driver and went outside the airport building and were greeted by a blast of very warm, very humid air it was a bit of a shock to the system how hot it was in the middle of the night. Our drive to the hotel was a bit of a hair raising experience, I was sure some one was going to hit us at least twice, but we made it in one piece.

[Chaos Butterfly]

Day 2

I have a cold, luckily I came prepared because I know I'm prone to sinusitis, my Dr. gave me some tablets that are basically pure pseudo-ephedrine so they wake you up and help clear your sinuses (and if you know how you can grind them up and make Speed that's why they make you sign your life away when you buy sinus relief tablets containing pseudoephedrine from the chemist in NZ)Luckily with the heat and humidity it also helped me avoid sinusitis.

There was actually a mall attached to the hotel se we checked that out first looking for some breakfast (hehe straight to shopping without even stepping outside) unfortunately this area wasn't air conditioned so it was very hot. I had BBQ pork noodle soup for brekkie and it only worked out to be NZ$2. [img]graemlins/bowl.gif[/img] The Thai currency is Baht which is really weak $1 NZ = 23B so you end up carrying round these 100B and 500B notes like monopoly money. There was some cool stuff in the mall, 1 shop had these amazing lifesize metal sculptures of wire/ bike chains/ scrapmetal they were of Alien, Terminator, Predator and Bobba Fett they were so detailed they looked like the real thing unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take any photos of them.

In the afternoon we went on our half day city and temples tour. By this time it was sunny and sweltering hot like a sauna, and of course because we were going to temples you had to have appropriate dress that covered your knees and shoulders *wilts just remembering the heat*

Our first stop was the Golden Buddha, its about 5-6ft high and is made out of solid gold. I found a pic on the net.



I was surprised to find you were allowed to take photos as I thought that you weren't allowed to (Aah! The seductive powers of the tourist dollar) [img]graemlins/money.gif[/img] Some of the attempts for the tourist dollar were a bit cheesy on the way into the temple complex random locals snapped digital pic of you then by the time you came out they were trying to sell you a badge with your photo on it (I wonder if anyone ever actually buys one)

Some more scary driving in a bus followed we drove past the flower and fruit markets and at one point there was an attempt to fit roadside stalls, our bus, an oncoming car and pedestrians with death wishes onto a 1 lane street.

Our next stop was the Reclining Buddha, I thoght that this was really impressive it was huge I wish I'd had someone take a picture of me standing near it. Buddha's giant feet are inlaid with mother of pearl designs and pictures showing the 100 ways to happiness. I liked this Buddha.



This was at the big Wat pho temple.

We then went to the Marble temple (the marble was imported from Italy by one of the King's of Thailand) And saw more Buddha's

We drove down a whole street selling statues and images of ..you guessed it... Buddha.

By now we were a bit all Buddha'd out so we were glad when the next stop involved cold drinks, air-conditioning (Praise Buddha!)and shopping. We went to one of the best gem galleries in Bangkok, it was amazing we saw them making the jewellery (Thailand is well known for its rubies and sapphires) and were then taken to the show room it was huge (at least 3 time the size of my housese even maybe more.) Every thing was beautiful and sparkly, the minute you tried something on that shop assistant became you're personal shop assistant and followed you round the whole room so that whenever you wanted to try stuff on you could. There were huge tropical fish tanks positioned between show cases with a fantastic array of fish including Lion Fish. The piece de resistance being the central tank which housed only baby (as in 1/2 meter long) Sharks.

And yes we were both tempted even Tarin who isn't into jewellery, for me it was like being a kid in a candy store. I now have a very nice 18K gold and sapphire ring which is lovely and compared to buying it anywhere else very cheap.

When we got back to the hotel we went straight to the pool it was so nice after walking around in the heat.

We had an included dinner at the hotel that night it was very yummy and we were also entertained by some traditional Thai dancing. We even had a bit of a go ourselves at the end, its a bit more difficult than it looks, my wrists felt like they might fall off.


<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ September 23, 2003 04:15 AM: Message edited by: Chaos Butterfly ]</font></font>

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ September 23, 2003 06:14 AM: Message edited by: Chaos Butterfly ]</font>

[Chaos Butterfly]

Before I get on with Day 3, there is this one guy who is a workmate/friend of mine, he was the only one giving me shit before I went about how I was going to be kidnapped and all. He didn't come to the dinner party my mum threw me he rang up to say he couldn't make it (talked to my mum) coz he was feeling unwell. I started back at work this week and he hasn't uttered one word to me not even Hi! I thought he would be the first person to come over and and basically give me shit.

Boys are Strange! [img]confused.gif[/img]

Day 3

We were woken up in the morning by alot of whistling, turns out it was traffic wardens attempting to lend some sort of order to the mess that was Bangkok traffic, they have to wear face masks all the time the pollution must be that bad.

Today was basically shopping day and basically there was tons of it you'd walk into a building one way, get completely lost and come out in totally different arae. There were lots of clothes in these market type stalls either inside or outside, the problem was hardly any places had somewhere for you to try stuff on, I once liked these jeans so much I tried them on sort of sandwiched in this makeshift fitting room between 2 racks of clothes and a guy holding a sheet up. (They didn't fit in the end and he didn't have a bigger size [img]frown.gif[/img] )

It was quite funny when we walked pass racks and racks of pants and jeans and then we'd suddenly appear in this shop full of sequined underwear, and kinky stuff made out of PVC and chains *sniggers*

There was alot of tropical fruit at the roadside markets so it was great to eat some of that.

Of course it was still sweltering hot, but true shoppers are tough.

[3peanuts]

Buddha's are always so attractive! *stops being a buddhist, then she realizes she can't stop being a buddhist because she's kinda buddhist and shuts up* [img]biggrin.gif[/img]