A Bizzare Christmas in Bali

Bali – Christmas – 22-27^th

In Thailand Christmas is not widely celebrated as it is a Buddhist country, however unlike a lot of my teacher friends I managed to get a week or so off over Christmas. I decided to go away to the island of Bali in Indonesia and meet my friend from home Sophie who is also teaching in Jakarta.

We arrived on the island of paradise to pouring rain, and it did not stop raining for three days. This put a drastic stop to our plans of lying on the beach for the week. We spent the first few days just chilling and doing a bit of shopping and squeezing in a lovely relaxing Balinese massage.

Christmas Eve

It was still raining when we woke up on the eve of Christmas so we decided to embrace the weather and take a trip out for the day. We hired a driver who took us to various attractions on the way to Udon a town inland on the island. These attractions included a Hindu temple, some rice fields and a coffee plantation.

Each were beautiful in their own right, but my favourite stop was the coffee plantation. Our tour guide showed us how the coffee was produced at this particular plantation. An Indonesian cat called a Luwak eats the good coffee beans in their shells. They don’t digest them but poo them out, the beans are collected cleaned off and removed from the shells. These are then roasted and ground down in to what we know as coffee. We then sat on a beautiful terrace overlooking the rice fields on the edge of a mountain and tasted the “poo coffee” along with lots of other flavours such as ginger, vanilla and chocolate.

  

After tasting the surprisingly delicious “poo coffee” we ventured off to the small town of Udon to find some lunch and do a bit of market shopping. For lunch we had an Indonesian dish called Soto Ayam which is like a chicken noodle soup, it was very tasty. It was nice to try different food, as the area we were staying in was very tourist it was hard to find Asian food.  Another yummy Indonesian meal is Padang, you have a portion of rice and then lots of added extras like spicy veg and this delicious pork marinated in yummy spices I also tried catfish for the first time (bit bland I wouldn't recommend it)

That evening we put on our party dress and wondered off to a bar which had free drinks for travellers from 9-10 so we took full advantage of this, maybe a bit too much of advantages as we woke up on Christmas day with a slight hangover.

Christmas Day

Waking up to glorious sunshine (yes it had stopped raining) on Christmas day was very bizarre. It did not feel like Christmas at all in 28 degree heat and not being with family or heading off to church and then returning for turkey and champagne. But Sophie and I had each other to get us through. We opened a few presents (no stocking with an orange in the bottom this year) and then headed off to meet some of Sophie’s friends at a bar on the beach nearby. After a dip in the sea, a nap on the beach and some yummy food at the bar we headed back to our hostel (guesthouse) to skype the family after seeing the most beautiful sunset ever!

Boxing Day

This sun was still shining!!!!!! It was our last full day in Bali so we headed down towards the beach and found a glorious pool to sunbathe by. We read our books, napped and took a dip in the pool until our stomachs decided it was time to find some food. As it was our last day we treated ourselves to the Hard Rock Café it was very filling but delicious.

We then had an evening of entertainment. We headed south to a temple and cliff to watch a traditional Balinese play while the sun set in the background. The dance/play was interesting to say the least but the costumes and dancing was incredible it was mesmerising and bizarre to watch. The perfect end to the first part of our holiday.

With Love from Thailand xxx

Katie's Surprise!

On Thursday 5^th of December it was the Kings birthday meaning a national holiday. This meant on Wednesday we could celebrate! People from Speak EZ joined with a few added friends from my TEFL course went for dinner followed by a few (too many) drinks, making a fun random night ending back at our apartment (four of us that work together all live in the same apartment block) playing drinking games to the early hours. It was then decided in our hung over state the next day that we would go and surprise our friend Katie in Mukdahan for the weekend.

On Friday Jess, Tom and I got on a bus to travel overnight 10 hours north-east to the town of Mukdahan near the border with Laos. We arrived at about 6.30am which meant we got to spend the whole day being shown round the town. It was so nice to get out of Bangkok and see where Katie had settled and was making a very different yet very exciting new way of life. She is one of very few foreigners living there so we were stared at the whole weekend, attracting lots of attention. There are no taxis or motor bike taxis unlike the capital but everything was close enough to walk too. It was a lot cooler up north that I actually wanted to wear a jacket for the first time since being here. Katie has also had the opportunity to make Thai friends and see so much more of the culture here and the Thai way of living – there’s no McDonald’s in site!

Laos in the background

Katie showed us the huge murky river which is the border between Thailand and Laos, my first view of Laos which I will be sure to visit when I start travelling. After breakfast we wondered round a market before finding a quite lunch spot looking over the river. The afternoon was very chilled and we discovered a temple full of monkeys. However these monkeys were slightly different to the ones in Lopburi at the festival, they were little scarier and slightly aggressive. We had no food to give them so before being attacked made a quick exit!

 

 

That evening we went to a local bar for some drinks the Thai way – order a bottle of whisky and mixers and drink away. We were the only white people in the whole bar so created a lot of attention. We then created even more attention when we moved on to a Thai Club. This was a whole other experience. With lady boys to our right, Thai men saying how beautiful we were (Tom included!) to our right (because of our white skin) and a stage full of Thai girls only wearing their underwear at the front. A few songs were western, a few Thai (which we knew from hearing them out here) and a few we had never heard but still had a good dance. You know you’re the minority when you go to order drinks at the bar, they ask where your sat, you respond with “the Falangs over there” and they know exactly where to take the drinks. Falang is the word Thai use for foreigners.

We woke up the next day after sleeping in to go to one of the local hotels to use the pool and sunbathe before having to say goodbye to Katie and catch the overnight bus back to Bangkok. We arrived back at 6am in time to get to work to start the next week. Luckily Tuesday was another public holiday so we could catch up on sleep.

 With Love from Thailand xxx

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya is a town about an hour north of Bangkok it used to be the old capital of Siam (This is what Thailand use to be called) from 1350 to 1767. 33 different Kings ruled during the 417 years it was the capital until 1767 when the Burmese Army invaded and looted the city. They destroyed the capital by burning down the temples and removing the heads of the Buddha statues. They stole many of the treasure’s which have never been found and the remaining are now in museums in Ayutthaya. Now what remains of the historical site is protected on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites.

Jess had a friend visiting for the weekend, who also happens to be called Jess, so the two Jessica’s and I travelled to Ayutthaya on the Saturday. We checked in to a cute hostel, where we could hire bicycles for the day to explore. After a quick bite to eat for lunch we cycled around taking in the ancient ruins. They were very peaceful despite the number of fellow tourist mingling around.

After cycling between all the temples and nearly crashing in to the elephants wondering the streets with tourist riding on them we headed back to the hostel. That evening we went on a boat trip around the Island. Ayutthaya has been made in to an Island by a river splitting and going either side of the land. It was a night so all the temples along the riverside were beautifully lit up. With just the three of us in a little thin long-tail boat with our Thai driver, it was very tranquil motoring along the murky water, with our eyes peeled for crocodiles. We got dropped off at a quite night market, which was a must see in the guide book but ended up being very small and closed early, but we ate dinner and then headed back to chill at the hostel.

Another must in the guide book was the floating market so after a lazy morning we headed there for lunch. However it turned out to not be that traditional but more of a tourist attraction of how a Thai market would be perceived. Having said that it was still fun and full interesting stalls.

We had ticked off everything on our Ayutthaya list so it was time to head back to busy Bangkok, and get stuck in traffic for hours because of the political protests going on.

 With Love from Thailand xxx

Loi Krathong

After a busy weekend of lots of people visiting and an awesome night out on Soi 11 again, we escaped the hectic-ness of Bangkok by retreating to one of the local parks on Sunday evening.

Loi Krathong is a special festival held in Thailand on the evening of the full moon of the 12th month according to the Thai Lunar calendar which this year worked out to be the 17th of November.

Loi means to float and krathong refers to the lotus-shaped container which floats on the water. The "boat" is traditional made from a slice of the trunk of a banan tree and then banana leaves are elaborately folded over for decoration along with flowers, incense sticks and candles.

Thai’s celebrate Loi Krathong for various reasons, but for the most part it is to float away any anger and bad feeling you may have and start afresh. You can place a hair or fingernail on the Krathong which is seen as letting go of the dark side. Once the Krathong is then released on to the water you can watch it float away and it will bring you good luck for the year. The further it floats and the longer your candle stays alight the more good luck you will have. A small coin is sometimes included as an offering to the river spirits to pay respect to them as they will bring you all the luck. 

With love from Thailand xxx

Lopburi – Monkey festival

Last weekend was spent visiting Faye, Jenny and Liz in their placement town of Lopburi. It is a cute town just over 2 hours away from Bangkok, so we managed to get there after work on Friday evening with enough time to go to one of their local bars for a few drinks and meet some of their work colleagues and friends.

Saturday was packed full of adventure. The 9 of us (the visitors Jess, Leigha, Hanisha and Lindsey with the locals, Jenny, Faye, Liz and Ruth) took a pickup truck taxi for the day which firstly drove us to some beautiful sunflower fields. We spent a while here being typical girls taking hundreds of photos in different poses.

Next stop was a tranquil lake. We chilled here for the rest of day having a casual dip in the lake and waiting about 2 hours for our food to arrive. Standard Thai etiquette.

As dusk fell we headed back to Lopburi and stopped at a bat cave to watch them wake u and venture out for breakfast. Unfortunately even Jess’ amazing camera couldn’t catch the thousands of bats that flew out over our heads.

After grabbing some cheap street food (was so nice not to pay Bangkok prices the whole weekend!) and a little nap we headed out for a few drinks at a bar nearby. It was a lovely chilled evening chatting to new people that were also visiting Lopburi for the weekend either as travellers or fellow teachers. The night soon turned as the drinking games started along with dancing in the street.

We woke up with a trip to a local restaurant for a hangover breakfast to cure our needs before heading to the monkey festival. On a normal day in Lopburi monkeys roam the streets like dogs do in any other Thai town or city. They steal food, jump on cars, and climb up street lamps. Wherever you look you are bound to see a monkey cheekily staring back at you. But don’t get too close or taunt them as they can be vicious and attack. The monkey festival was slightly different as all the monkeys, hundreds of them, were gathered at the monkey temple (an old ruined temple were they live) to be fed. The people of Lopburi had bought a variety of food to the temple for the monkeys, from fruit and vegetables to ice and lollypops. Lots of tourists and locals showed up to give them food and take photos. The monkeys did not hold back they took food out of your hands and would jump on you if you let them. Jess and Lindsey were brave enough to let this happen. I was happy to just watch.

The monkeys were satisfied and so were we with an awesome weekend exploring a new town so it was time to head back to the city ready for the next week of teaching ahead of us.

With love from Thailand xxx

Teacher Beth

So I've officially been a teacher for 2 weeks now (how grown up does that sound?) and been loving every second of it. I work for a company called Speakez, and I live about a 20 min walk from our office in Bangkok. So the commute is nice and easy each morning. Everyday I go to a different school, but my schedule is the same each week. So every Monday I go to the same school and teach the same classes, so still get to know the students, its great as it's a bit of variation each day.

I teach from Kindergarten all the way to P6, which are the oldest students in Primary school. The kindergarten students are adorable and always want to give you a hug, however they can be very hard work as their English is at a very basic level, and it is hard to get them to remember words. P4-6 can be a bit more fun as you can play games which they understand and have a bit of a laugh with them.

(Sorry this photo is from the summer camp I

 taught at not got any photos of me teaching yet)

Each lesson I introduce new vocab and get them speaking it as much as possible throughout the lesson through the use of games and activities, they then get to do a fun worksheet at the end. The lessons fly by and by the end of the day I'm shattered, but still finding it so much fun.

I think my biggest struggle so far as been trying to get them to say my name correctly. Thai's can't pronounce the TH sound, so I'm either Bet or Bes. Thanks Mum and Dad for not giving me a universal name!


With love from Thailand xxx

Escaping Bangkok

We left the beautiful island of Koh Samui after 3 weeks of our TEFL course and making some best friends for life. It was time to go back to busy Bangkok and go our separate ways off to our placements. Some people were up off north, some down south, some a 10 hour drive away some only an hour. A few of us, myself included are staying in Bangkok to teach.

Between finishing the course and finding an apartment in Bangkok, I had about a week off, so instead of stressing that I couldn't move in to an apartment and rather than staying in the city, Jess (who was in a similar position) and I decided to escape Bangkok and go to Koh Samet.

Koh Samet is a small tranquil island about 4 hours drive on a bus and a short ferry away from Bangkok to the south! The perfect get away for a few days. We decided the night before to go and booked a random room in a hotel. Well I'm not sure you could call it a hotel, it was more of a block of rooms, the reception area was in a shed next to it. We turned up on the last ferry on Thursday evening and had no idea how to get to the hotel. Luckily it was next to the pier we landed on and Jess recognised it from the photos! The hotel/room was basic but was great for what we needed, a bed, shower and air con!

We spent 2 relaxing days just chilling, sunbathing and reading our books on the beach. It was so nice to just not do anything for the first time since arriving in Thailand. Unfortunately I was not very well one night we were on the island, but then the next night we made up for it and went out for a lovely meal on the beach. Although the meal wasn't that lovely.....we ordered fired noodles with chicken, Jess had hers with sea food and we ended up getting those fat, slimy, jelly like noodles, that neither of us could eat. The chicken and veg it was with was good though! We then went on to some other beach bars and shared a few buckets of cocktails. While sipping are cocktails and having a good girl night we were wondering where the best place to go dancing on the island was or even if there was a place to go dancing when we got chatting to two foreigners also living in Bangkok. They showed us one very cool and busy bar/club at the end of the beach were we danced the night away!!

The next day with a slight hangover we had to make the dreaded trek back to Bangkok to face the reality of starting to teach!

With love from Thailand xxx

I guess I should do some teaching.....

After doing the TEFL course for a few weeks it was about time we put our teaching skills to practice in front of real kids. We spent two days in the south of Koh Samui at a school doing a English camp for two days. Despite there being no air conditioning in the school in was a lot of fun.

We all taught a lesson each on our own and then in a pair two. The rest of the days were filled with group activities and games all leading up to a sports day at the end of the camp. The school was right next to a gorgeous beach so after sweating for the day we all chilled in the sea. We also found an amazing sideways growing coconut tree over the water which made for some great photos.

With love from Thailand xxx

Just keep swimming......

Koh Tao

After the sunburn had gone down and we had recovered from the exhausting hike the previous day we took another boat trip to Koh Tao and Koh Nangyuan for some amazing snorkelling. First we stopped at Koh Nangyuan, which is two small islands joined together by a strip of sand. Some of the group walked up to the top for an awesome view (thanks again Jess for the photos- she did bring 4 different types of cameras to Thailand so bound to have good photos!) but I was to lazy to do this today and just chilled watching the fishes swim past my nose, bobbing up and down. I've never properly snorkelled before so was completely mesmerized by the under water world, the beautiful coral and colourful fishes!

We also got lunch included in the trip which was a delicious buffet of Thai food with lots of salad, which strangely I had been craving after three weeks of rice and noodles! After lunch and a bit more snorkelling we crossed a small stretch of water and jumped off the speed boat in to a bay of Koh Tao. The fish here were even more beautiful and there were big schools of them too. It was then time to head home after not being able to find Nemo.


With love from Thailand xxx

500m of hell for the most beautiful view ever!

Angthong National Park

After a week of TEFL training and 2 days at the summer camp, we boarded a boat to adventure off to Angthong National Park which is a scattering of beautiful islands. We stopped to jump in to kayaks for a paddle closer to the islands. The water was crystal clear and the sky was a gorgeous blue (which can only mean one thing......despite the repeated application of sun cream I did burn by the end of the day). We paddled in to an empty bay which just had one little stall on it selling shakes (my new favourite thing is a fresh banana shake, and is great for a hangover!!), and a short climb up some very steep steps for a lovely view down into a mesmerizing lagoon.

The next hike after lunch on board the boat was just a bit more strenuous..... 500m of sheer rock climbing with just a rope to pull yourself up on. The rocks were sharp, jagged and baking hot from the sun. I don't think I've sweated that much in all my life. Hanisha's first comment when she saw us once we had returned "Oh you've already been in the sea" Nope we're just wet from sweat....lovely! Luckily I packed my trainers to climb......unlike some silly people in flip flops....Tom! We stopped at each view point and the view progressively got more and more breathtaking until the top.

After a real dip in the sea we headed back to Koh Samui to crash for the evening and apply copious amounts of after sun to the burn!



With love from Thailand xxx

Going Local

This weekend has been a weekend of "firsts" The first time I've driven an automatic car on Thai roads. The first time I've seen an elephant not in a zoo with someone riding it. The first time I've been to a lady boy show. The first Thai massage I've had.

After an exciting week on the TEFL course learning many different teaching methods and fun games we welcomed in the weekend with a few drinks and a trip to see a Lady boy show. The lady boys were astonishing, you could not tell they were once men. Jess below with our ladyboy waitress!

Saturday morning arrived and after a failed attempt at riding mopeds Jess, Lindsey, Katie and I hired a car for an adventure round the Island. I think this has to be my favourite day so far in the land of Thai. It was so lovely and relaxed, we took our time wandering around stopping whenever we felt like it. We visited two waterfalls, both of them beautiful. It hasn't rained enough here yet so the pools were a bit murky and dry from the summer months so we avoided jumping in for a swim. There were also elephants wandering around giving people treks through the jungle areas.

As the hunger pains kicked in we stopped at a random outdoor market for some lunch. There were knock off sunglasses stalls next to people selling raw pig faces! The food was incredible, for 60 Baht (£1.10) we filled a bowl with the amazing food pictured below. Although extremely spicy it was delicious.

Once our mouths had recovered from the spicy overload we carried on the adventure to visit a giant Buddha followed by some spectacular temples. We randomly bumped into Rungwit (our Thai teacher) on his moped and he joined us at the temples telling us a few traditional Thai stories and myths too.

With love from Thailand xxx

Koh Samui Craziness

After a 12 hour overnight bus journey VIP style, with a ferry trip included, we arrived at the gorgeous Island of Koh Samui. Our accommodation (which has Air Con!!!!) is lovely with a pool and our classes each day are in the training room here so we don't have to travel far each morning!!

We all chilled by the pool catching some rays of sun (don't worry Mum I had factor 50 sun cream on) on the first day before experiencing our first Thai night out on the Island. We all had a few drinks getting to know each other in the hotel before heading to a few bars to dance the night away! Ark Bar the first bar we went to which was on the beach.......providing a temptation for a dip in the sea which most of us resisted......

On Sunday after sleeping off the hangover, I got to meet up with an old friend who i lived with at Uni, Miss Pipkin, who I had not seen for a year. Ellie had been living in Australia working and was slowly travelling back to the UK via Asia and with some major luck our paths crossed!! It was so lovely to see her after such a long time.

With love from Thailand xxx

Bangkok Madness

So I have arrived in Thailand! After a 24 hour journey with a few girls from the course we made it the crazy city of Bangkok. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. There seems to be no rules on the road (the biggest and fastest vehicle on the road wins) therefore making the taxi drive to the hostel interesting!

We only had about 36 hours in Bangkok before we had to get an over night bus (12 hours long) to the tranquil Island of Koh Samui so we packed in as much as possible.

On the Thursday night I had my first experience of Thai food from a street vendor, as Liz (my bubbly American room mate) showed me the Thai ways. It was delicious.....not yet experienced Thai Green Curry but this Pad Thai was amazing and it was only 30 baht (60p)!!!

Friday was a real touristy day. Four girls off my course (Hanisha, Lindsey, Katie and Claire) and I took the sky train to catch a boat up the dirty Bangkok river to the Grand Palace. I have never seen so much contrast between rich and poor along the side of the river. There were falling down shanty huts next to sky high ultra modern hotels like the Hilton.

I'm not sure how to describe the Palace, every tiny square inch was amazingly finished and designed. I think I will just let the photos do the talking at just how beautiful it was.

With love from Thailand xxx

The Packing Nightmare!

Hi everyone, and welcome to my blog. I am going to try and write lots of posts throughout my travels to keep you all updated of where I am in the world and what I am up to. Hope you enjoy stalking me ;) 

Last week I left my job and flat in Manchester after 4 amazing years there. It was sad to leave the streets of Fallowfield but I'm sure I'll be back visiting next year when I return from my travels. Thanks everyone at work for my leaving presents and send off. Some great essentials to take with me.....I'm a little concerned the chocolate may melt, so I may have to eat that before I leave!! 

I have arrived back in the beautiful sunny (for the time being) Devon while I unpack my flat and condense it in to one backpack, nightmare! Thank god Chris and Bexs no longer live at home and I can completely take over their rooms. Chris' room now consists of yes, no and maybe piles of belongings. While Bex's room looks like a child's den with mosquito nets hung up trying to find the one that doesn't have a hole in it.  

The To Do list is slowly getting smaller as I prepare for the big travel. Visa has been sent off. My new Kindle is full of books ready for my 24 hour journey and lazy days on the beach. Just a few last minute things to sort and I'll be off on a jet plane!! 

20 more sleeps to go until I fly!!!!