Round The World

We were not up too early the next day and met most of our room mates while we were lazing around in bed. They were all either English or Irish, but we all got on pretty well and over the course of our week or so there, we went out drinking together quite a bit.

There was a few favourite spots in Cairns, Gilligan's was one of the biggest but it had some quiet nights too, and so for those nights, there was PJ O'Briens, which was an Irish Bar. Or the Woolshed which we weren't that fond of, but there was something on every night in one of the bars so we always had somewhere to go and something to do.

we hadn't really done much in Cairns until Day 6 when we booked a trip out on the Great Barrier Reef. It was an early boat leaving at 7:30am. The idea was to get an early night before heading off, but of course, I chose the not going to bed route instead, and stayed up all night before getting on the boat. It was a Catamaran so it wasnt going to be too pleasant a trip. I was feeling very ill on the way out, so I got some sea sick pills from the crew foir the way back and I was fine. The weather that day was absolutely gorgeous, sun was blazing down. The crew on the boat were great fun, and really made the difference on the day. The boat was called Passions of Paradise and I would highly recommend it.

The boat took us out onto the reef and then offered us an introductory dive where they would show us exactly what to do, and if we liked it, we could pay more and go for a proper dive. We did the introductory, and eventually, I got the hang of the breathing and went down below. The coral and the fish were absolutley amazing down there. I had never seen anything like it in my life. I managed to see a shark, and a turtle, which the others didnt get to see that day. The diver then fed the fish around us and they were swimming right by our faces which was really amazing too.

Walking around with all the gear on was virtually impossible and so we were laughing our heads off trying to get off and back onto the boat. The water pressure didnt really agree with my ears and I suffered a bit that day but it didnt last too long thankfully. We were brought back onto the boat then for lunch, which was pretty good, and then the boat moved off to another great spot on the reef where we could go snorkling.

I had never been snorkling before but I found it really easy, thanks to the diving I guess. Again, I saw absolutely loads of different types of fish, they were all so close to us too. One of them got a little too close. His job is to clean other fish from stuff that has become attached to them. He though the scab on my leg was one of them and so he came at me and tore it off. I got a fright initially and then got out of the water to have a look, it was so funny, the crew said it happens all the time and so all I could do is laugh. The salt water and the cleaner fish did my wound the world of good though and so I was chuffed.

After that, they hoisted sails and brought us back to Cairns. The trip back was great as we were cruising along with the sun shining down on us, and there was some pretty spectacular sights too.

It was a 10 hour flight over to Cairns as we had to stopover in Darwin for a bit first. We landed in Cairns on the Tuesday morning, 3 weeks after leaving home. We had no details of our Visa's or bank balances on us, but we were welcomed in none the less. After a quick sniff from the fruit & veg doggies of course.

It was a strange feeling when we walked out of the airport, we had finally hit Australia. It was early in the morning and it was nice and hot, not too hot though. We had booked a hostel in Cairns called Gilligan's so we hopped in a taxi and headed for there.

We arrived there at 8:30 in the morning so it was too early for us to check in, but they took our bags into storage free of charge. The hostel had a huge bar, pool tables, big screens, a nice swimming pool, and of course a games room for the Pokies!!

We went for a walk around Cairns and I have to say it was really beautiful. It was an old looking town but the weather was beautiful and the pier was very easy on the eye, even at that hour of the morning having had no sleep. Then there was the lagoon which was so beautiful and relaxing.

We stumbled across a casino amongst all of this natural beauty too, and of course our inquisitive nature got the better of us :o) The place was massive but it did not have Texas Holdem in there so after a quick game of Blackjack, we just ended up watching a movie in there and eating the free popcorn.

We went back to the hostel to check in but of course it was still too early so we hit the bar for a game of pool, and a quick one!! We met two other Irish lads in there that were playing pool so we had a few beers and a few games, and before we knew it, we were drunk again, and it was 2 in the morning...

The rooms in the hostel were really nice, 6 beds, but we had our own bathroom, and a huge locker each that we could put our bags into. Coming in so late that first night, I just took a free bunk and passed out for the night.

Talk about a shock to the system. Singapore was so completely different from Thailand. There was high rise buildings literally everywhere. However, the whole place was a lot more civilised too. It was almost like being back to normality. We had pre-booked a hotel here for 50 euro so it wasnt too bad, and when we got there, it was a fancy enough hotel too.

After a well deserved nap, we went out to watch the Chelsea V Liverpool Community Shield match. We found an Irish Bar there that were showing it, but after having ordered our two pints, we were asked for 30 Singapore dollars (15 euro) which was not nice considering the prices we had been paying the day before. So we toasted to our first, and last drink in Singapore and watched the Chelsea scum be beaten by the Pool.

The food in Singapore was pretty expensive too so it was a good thing we were only there for one day. We decided we were going to use up our day by going to Singapore Zoo. This place was absolutely huge, with different sections for animals from each continent.

There was so many animals here, it was amazing. The best thing about it though was the open sections where we were able to walk in among all of the animals. Birds of all sorts were landing on peoples shoulders, monkies were coming close to us, while lemurs sat down literally beside us. We were inches from all of the fruit bats who were busy guarding the food they had managed to hijack from the other animals. Unfortunately, the camera went dead half way through our trip here so we didnt get all of the pics we would have liked to.

After the zoo, we went back to the shopping district. All of the electronics were so much cheaper than at home. I would have loved to buy all of them, but with a nice tight budget, we managed to pick up some ipod cases and a memory card for the new camera, for very good prices.

After that, it was back to the airport......We were finally off to Oz.

While we were in Phuket, we done one of the organised tours. It was called the James Bond Tour. It was great fun and involved a long boat out around some of the smaller islands. There was a short stay on James Bond Island which features scenery from the film Dr. No. The island was really nice but even that had stalls set up on it selling all sorts of things trying to get more money from tourists. The women there were very annoying too and kept grabbing at us, and our wallets!!

After that we were taken to an inlet where we transferred to some Kayaks, which were manned so we didnt have to do any of the work. We were brought through some crazy rocks and some beautiful scenery. It was very relaxing and beautiful though.

Lunch was at a floating village which was pretty cool looking and the food was gorgeous there too. Then we were back on the boat and back to the mainland for some Elephant Trekking. The trip on the elephant was short enough and it was a good thing to because they were none too comfortable. The seat mounted on the elephants back moved awkwardly when he did. The Thai's were using some pretty cruel looking instruments to direct the elephants about so we kind of felt sorry for them too. There was an elephant show there too which was brilliant, they had the elephant doing everything from taking peoples money to buy his own bananas to basketball, and then even Thai massages.

This was on our second last day on the island and in Thailand too, and the next day was the Queens birthday so everything was going to be quiet and selling alcahol was prohibited. That was kind of a good thing for us, because our flight out of there to Singapore was in the middle of the night. We booked this with Tiger Airways before we left for very little money. Flight was great and we had no problems whatsoever again.

One of the features of Thailand was the taxi bikes. These were just mopeds with drivers that were willing to carry two passengers on them too. I made the mistake of getting on one, on a drunken night out because I was too lazy to walk back to the hotel. He took one of the corners too sharp and sent us both to the ground. I was only in a t-shirt and shorts and so I was very lucky to come away with only a minor injury on my leg. Of course, being drunk at the time, it didnt hurt so much, so I got back on another bike and finished the journey.

I managed to rent a bike in Phuket for two days too. It was a Honda CB400 much like my hornet at home and I had a great time cruising around the island on that. And the best part was two days only cost 30 euro.

In the daytime, Patong was just like Chaweng. Traders were everywhere, Tuk Tuk's plentiful, although they were a different sort than the other two places. Again, we found an Irish Bar. This was more of a themed pub though and didnt hold our interest for very long.

When it got dark, Patong was a completely different place. There were really only 3 types of places to go at night. First, the big resorts had entertainment on, mainly focused on couples or families and so didnt really suit us. Then there was a small selection of pubs like the ones we had been in, bar, pool tables etc. These places were fairly quiet here though. The third type of place was the Go Go bars and they were in plentiful supply here. There was one area in particular called Bangla Road which was full of them.

This place was so hard to believe initially. There was like 8 girls in every bar waiting on you to come in, people on the street were offering all sorts of sex shows, and of course lady boys looking for business on the side of the street. We had a good look around this place but it was a bit too much. Luckily enough, we found a nice normal bar right in the middle of all this called The Aussie Bar. Again, it was just a normal pub with pool tables. It was pretty big and had an upstairs where we spent our time. We had a great time in this place and met loads of cool people. The staff were a great laugh here too, and so we spent quite a few nights drinking in this bar. There was good music there too and the DJ played our requests too. The girls working there racked the balls for each game of pool and it was winner stays on and there was always someone to play against. We did manage to hold this table nearly all of the time that we were in there so it was great.

We had been in Samui 5 nights already so it was time to move on. Our next stop was going to be Phuket, but this time we really didnt fancy all that travelling, so we booked a cheap flight with Bangkok Air. The flight cost about 100 euro for both of us which was worth it I think..

The only flight time was very early in the morning so we had to check out in the middle of the night and head for Samui's open air airport. The airport was pretty small but efficient at the same time. We boarded on time and the flight went smoothly.

We had no accommodation booked in Phuket so we knew we had another door to door fiasco ahead of us. This time though we pretended we had booked so that the bus driver would not take us all over the place.

We chose to go to Patong Beach as it was supposed to be the most lively one in that area. It was pretty difficult for us to get accommodation this time, and we had to walk to about 8 different places before we found one. We think it might have been that they didnt like Backpackers in their resorts as some of them were pretty swanky. We finally got a room though in Baumanburi for 1000 Baht (20 euro) a night. This place was the dearest of all our accommodation, but was dirt cheap and was actually a 4 star hotel. The hotel had a pool, restaurant, pool bar, and the staff were very helpful.

We only went to the beach a couple of times in Chaweng. The weather wasn't that great there though so we got ourselves a Thai Massage instead. It was only 400 Baht (8 euro) for an hour long massage, that was pretty great, and completely relaxing. It really made us ready for bed, at 3in the afternoon. We had to remove our bum bags for this and that had us a little worried, we had everything in these. But the Thai people were all lovely and nobdy ever tried to steal from us.

One of the most annoying things in Samui was the Indian people who worked in the suit shops. They would grab a hold of you on the street, shaking your hand, playing nice, trying their best to get you to come into the shop. They didnt like taking no for an answer, and so we had to be pretty ignorant to a lot of them to get rid of them. There was one of these shops every 10 steps so you can imagine how annoying it got.

By night, Samui was completely transformed. There were lots of bars and restaurants and a buzzing go go district. We went through there a few times, but the serious amount of lady boys in there would scare most people away, and it did us :o)

So most of our nights in Chaweng, began in the Irish bar, as their food was excellent, and there was a few people we knew there, and then continued on in clubs which were big open air discos, nothing like at home.

As soon as it would get dark, a lot of young kids would appear on the street, kids as young as 8. They all had the game Connect 4 with them and they would try to play against you for money. I saw a few people play against them and lose, but if ou ever looked like winning, you would be conveniently distracted by something so that the kid could cheat...

The streets were full of Thai ladies on mopeds at night too. They would drive by looking for business, beeping their horn at you to try get your attention, and when they succeeded, they would cart the punter off on the back of the bike.

Our accommodation was right in the middle of Chaweng. It was a much more relaxed place than Bangkok though. It still had plenty of stalls and shops, lots of restaurants, even a Burger King and a Pizza Hut which of course we ate in both at some stage. There wasn't as many people hassling us on the street here, taxi men just beeped to get your attention, instead of grabbing a hold of you like they did in Bangkok.

Tropical Murphy's was the Irish bar of choice in Chaweng. This was a prety cool pub. The food was amazing in there and there was some form of entertainment every night. Pool competitions, live bands, and table quizzes. It was the pool tournaments we enjoyed the most though, and there was one on the first night so we stuck around for that. Didnt do too well that night though but had great craic and met a good few people. Again, drinking Chang beer meant we were getting pretty drunk too.

Going to bed again that night, we were shattered and needed to have a very lazy second day. The travel had knocked it out of us, and so had the Chang..