Bangkok - shop till you drop

The last few days in Bangkok were a hectic shopping spree led by Gil. The goal was to move all the goods from Thailand to Israel, without paying extra weight. Mission accomplished. No more shopping for me for the next few weeks.. yay!

Kho Tau - let's go dive

here in Kho Tau we had four dives. Yay!

Kho Phangan and the full moon party

The full moon party, pool parties, beach volleyball and great night life.
I will tell all about it soon.. I hope

Kho Phi Phi

Ahhhhhaaa (a sigh of appreciation) - Kho Phi Phi is sooo beautiful!

Gil and I arrived to Phi Phi in a very hot morning, after a two hours beautiful ferry ride in between tiny islands and amazing views. We find a not-so-nice aircon room, where the aircon didn't really work and made us very sad. Later we moved to a nice hotel called The Pirates House - much better!

After spending the first few hours roaming on the beautiful beach and taking loads of photos, we went exploring the island. It is just great! Very relaxed, yet with enough night life to keep you busy and not die of boredom.

We met two crazy English guys, which spent part of our second night fighting in a boxing ring for the lousy prize of two free buckets. Later, Gil disappeared and I went searching for him for couple of hours... arrrggg.

Our last day was spent on a beach hoping tour with a small boat. It was really nice to visit the monkies beach, snorkel for a while, tour Maya beach (where the movie "the beach" was shot) and some other beautiful locations around. It ended with a picturesque sunset.. ohhhh

* this is no longer a placeholder. As promised, I did say something meaningful :)

Krabi and Railay Beach

Well.. let me start this post by saying that being late to a flight is not so fun. We had a fun time coming to the check-in desk and finding out that Raz's ticket was not really issued. And after few phone calls and half an hour we figured out we can go on the flight but without Raz's belongings.. at least all the liquid ones.

Anyway, we made it to the city of Krabi, where we find a nice bangalow for three and had a nice Indian food dinner. Then a Typhoon storm hit the ground, crazy winds were blowing, wetting and flying everything on the streets. It was quite scary actually. But.. after about 45 minutes it was all quiet again and we could go back to our bangalow, after spending some time in the bars and in the Seven-Eleven store where we drived crazy the person behind the counter about hair creams. His only reply was "Shampoooo!" - whatever the product we asked him about. And that became our silly joke for the next few days. Every time we were annoyed or just in a silly mood we will shout at each other "Shammmppppooooo". So much fun - you should try it yourself.

The next day we made it to Railay beach - a tiny piece of land between two green mountains, which is sorrounded with the ocean from both sides. It is so nice! Not much to do other than to go to the beautiful beaches, see the monkeys (yes! there are so many monkeys just by the beach) and have excellent seafood. Gil and I also climbed to a really nice viewpoint on one of the mountains, where we had a great view on the area.



Our lovely resport's pool with the view to the ocean







Gil at Railay Bay










The climbing to the view point was really muddy





But the the view point was totally worth it!





Little monkey at Railay Beach

Monkies at Railay Beach





Raz got bored and decided to leave us and move to Kho Phangan. Gil and I are staying here for one more day and then we will go to Kho Phi Phi - another beautiful island near by.

Bangkok, once again

So this time we are just stopping in bangkok, before we continue to our real destination - the islands in the south of Thailand. We found a flight to Krabi only a couple of days from now and so decided to spend our days shopping and seeing around a bit more. We are accompanied here with Raz, an Israeli girl that we have met already in Chaing Mai, and now decided to join us for a short while. Also, Anna the Swiss is here with us for the next couple of days.

The biggest thing we have done in this couple of days was going to a great eat-as-much-as-you-can buffe in the highest tower of Bangkok (we ate at the 82nd floor!)

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we are flying to Krabi with Raz. Yay!

Vang Vieng

On Wednesday evening we left Luang Prabang, heading to the small touristy city of Vang Vieng. The ride was extremely slow, and we finally made it to our destination at the middle of a stormy night. Apparantly, it is not that easy to find a proper room at 3am and so we ended up sleeping in the worst room ever, that contained a bed. Yeah.. only a bed. Ohhh.. and some big spiders. Lovely. Early in the morning we left and found a much better room.


So the days here in Vang Vieng are passing by very quickly. We are accompanied by a bunch of nice Israelis: Raz, David, Neta, Shani, Noa, Nitzan and Nir (and maybe some more.) We all go to the restuarants for hours, where you can lie down, sip a chilled fruit shake and see another episode of "Friends". Pure fun!


Other than being busy self-feeding our lazy bodies, we also went tubing on the local river - this is one of the great attractions here and it is really a lot of fun. Basically, you are going tubing on a nice river, where many bars are located at its bands. On the bars everybody is getting drunk, dancing and sun bathing. Also, each one of the bars is accompanied with a swing or a wooden ramp where you can jump your way to the water from different heights (about 10-15 meters usually) and it is real pleasure. So we (Gil, myself, Raz and David) did that for few hours in one of the afternoons.

Another great thing we have done here was going on a trek to the neighboring beautiful hills. The group included Raz, Noa and Anna - a Swiss girl that was about to spend her next few days with us. We walked in a very muddy terrain, enjoying amazing views, going into a stalactites cave and talking loads of photos.. we also enjoyed one of the best meals we had on this trip - a BBQ chicken made by our great guide - Phon.

That's it. Tomorrow we are going to hit the road once again - this time it's a long ride back to Bangkok, before we head to the islands of Thailand. Good bye Laos!

More photos on facebook:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=944&l=c44ae&id=298400055

Luang Prabang

Our time here in Luang Prabang started in a very sad way. When we just arrived to the pier we saw many Israelis there. When we sniffed around a bit we understood that they are looking for Avner Bardugo, an Israeli traveller that fell into the Mekong river while kayaking and was missing since Friday. At the same moment arrived the search and rescue mission from Israel. Later on this evening we all met for an update and planning the searching tomorrow. It was amazing to see how all the Israelis here came and were ready to help in whatever way possible. Also, some of his friends from unit 669 in the IDF already came here too and were supposed to help leading the searches. In the next morning on our way to the join the mission we have heard the terrible news that a local fisherman had found his body. May he rest in peace.

Other than this horrible accident, our first few days in Laos were quite relaxed. The city of Luang Prabang is nice, full of western restuarants, and located just by the band of the mighty Mekong river. We spent our days here just walking around, enjoying the night market, the bars that close early, and the night bowling... ammm, so yeah, the most popular thing to do in Luang Prabang is night bowling - the only place with alcohol that is open after midnight.. and it is a lot of fun to see drunk English people bowling.



Gil and Raz at the bowling









Drunk Lucy - the best was when they played human bowling and she was the ball









Gil at the market










Our burned knees afetr the speed boat trip from Thailand












This girl tried to sell us about everything.. and she was very cute







Another lovely thing we have done here was going to the waterfalls near by. We stopped a bunch of Israelis (David, Nitzan, Noa, and Nir that later travelled with us for a while, and a couple of crazy kibbutz guys) and convinced them to join us for the ride. The waterfalls were really cool (and wet) and we had our share of nature.

Next we are going to Vang Vieng - 5 hours ride to the south from here..

More photos on facebook:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=944&l=c44ae&id=298400055