Still somewhere in Ko Samui...

I have completely forgotten to tell you that we have done a proper thai massage in Chiang Mai. It was a recommended place by our american friends ( we got a personal booking by them. The name of the owner was Mr. Nut and Pedro's masseuse was called Big Boy:) ) and it was a thai massage place just with blind people. We didn't believe with Pedro that we have agreed to pay for such a "torture" :) Our bones were cracking like that we are 100 years old, but after two hours we felt soooo great. Everybody who is coming to Thailand - don't miss this opportunity! (everybody who is not coming - still don't miss this possibility and find a thai massage, wherever you are)

Today we have hired a jeep and drove around the island of Ko Samui, exploring all possible beaches and fantastic resorts.... It was excellent. A romantic dinner by the beach, swimming and enjoying the left hand driving (thanks God Pedro got all these business trips to England to practise) For a lunch break we have found a great waterfall with small lagoon and a natural jacuzzi:) To make the story short it was a great day.

Unfortunatelly the weather could be better - very often it is quite cloudy, windy and from time to time it rains. But well, we can't have everything.....

We will be leaving on 1st February to Malaysia, to Georgtown so we will let you know how the journey went and we will upload all the photos from Ko Samui. Start looking forward as we have visited transvestite cabaret and thai boxing match!

Somewhere in Ko Samui....

We have survived the 24h journey by train! Was an experience which took us through every means of transportation possible - started by a small tuk-tuk (3-wheel moped), then train, then minivan, followed by a ferry and finishing with a songthew (pronnounced song-tao and meaning two benches - a pickup truck with two facing benches at the back, the most common means of transport in Thailand outside Bangkok). Thanks for all the comments on our train journey (Timea!:) We are staying in Buathong resort on the Lamai beach with 7-8 bungalows owned by a French man (so we can practise our French as well not to forget it completely). Beach and sea are lovely here ( even some small waves for Pedro to be happy - it is not soo flat as on Koh Chang), but to compare it , Koh Chang was more magical.... We might be moving towards Ko Thao later on if we want to do some diving as the prices are really high here.... We will let you know. Otherwise we will be in this area for a week, our last week in Thailand and we will be heading down to Malaysia. Almost one month of our journey passed! Does it seem like that? not to us:)

Let us know how are you doing in wintery and snowy Europe or wherever you are:)

Somewhere in Chiang Mai....

So we have made it and survived the night train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai. It was actually perfect, we slept all night like babies (better than business class in a plane:)... but let's start from the beginning.

After Siem Riep (Angkor) we left to the capital city of Cambodia - Phnong Pehn. Here, as it is a big town, you can spot the differences between people even more than in Siem Riep. We have seen the Royal Palace and the Silver Buddha (he is actually from gold, but called Silver - that is why we couldn't found him) and after some cultural experience we headed to the FCC (Foreign Correspondence Club!) THE place is Phnong Pehn... Great bar, with mystical atmosphere and above all we have arrived in happy hour!

Next day in the morning we caught a plane to Bangkok and from there a train to Ayutthaya - city of thousands of temples, fantastic night market with great food and not such great hotels.:)

Anyway.... we ended up for 4 days in Chiang Mai (north of Thailand), where it is good to have jeans and pullover in the evening and where we tried for the first time Couch surfing possibility (thanks Kubicku!). There is an American couple (Daniel & Kelly), who kindly offered us their guest room for two days (they live in Chiang Mai for two years already). It was great, you do see the town from completely different perspective! We have visited an umbrella factory, night bazaar (the skills to reduce prices of goods were very good here), flower festival (special section for my parents - tak by se vam tam libilo, orchidej za orchideji! Urcite budu mit pozdeji vice fotek) and we have seen another million of temples.... I think we start loosing track of the names! Today we have been on a tour with Elephant safari, visited village of a northern tribe and finished the trip with bamboo rafting,which soaked us completely.... Anyway it was really fun!

Tomorrow morning we are heading towards south.... Train from Chiang Mai at 8:30 am, arriving to Bangkok at 21:00 and continuing from there directly to Ko Samui (3rd biggest island in Thailand). So we are almost ready for 24 hours long train journey (no sleeping this time!) and we will let you know how the send is white and what amazing sunsets we will be experiencing again....

Somewhere in a train to Chiang Mai

"Portuguese are very good" confides the tuk-tuk driver with a big toothless smile. He is showing us around the impressive ruins of the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya which, like the Portuguese nation, has seen better, glorious days. He takes us to see a giant budha figure carved out in a cave of sandstone, and from there we fed some huge catfish in a tranquil pond nearby. "Portuguese and Thais are very tied together, very old friends". He continues to say he does not like americans or the burmese. The Portuguese provided weapons and military training to the Thais in the 16th century to fight off the burmese threat, which the Thais succeeded to do until the mid-1700s when the burmese conquered and destroyed Ayutthaya, and defaced all the Budha statues they could lay their hands on. A Portuguese settlement nearby, in a piece of land given as a gift by the Thai king, also fell to the same fate. The graveyard and the old church have recently been uncovered and are now one of the tourist attractions in Ayutthaya, where of course we were also led by our tuk-tuk driver.

"I know Luis Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo" he proudly announces, about the twentieth time I hear their names when I make my nationality known. They are the modern-day ambassadors of Portugal to the world, footballers taking over the brave men whose bones are neatly arranged before me in their graves buried so far from home - who introduced to the Thais a number of portuguese deserts which I recognise in the Thai stalls still today, and even bread, called "pang" in Thai, pronounced like in portuguese.

Late in the evening, we are in the Ayutthaya train station, backpags in hand, on our way North to Chiang Mai, a 12-hour overnight journey. "Hey, Luis Figo!" the stationmaster calls out to me, "your train is the next one!" We are on our way!

Somewhere in the year 2550....

Yes, we haven't eaten or drunk anything strange, we feel great and we didn't forget what year it is (may be what day or date, but not what year!) but we went "back to the future":) According to the thai calendar it is the year 2550, the new years Eve celebration will be in April and this year is a special year for Buddha. So as you can see, we are back in Thailand. The nice thai immigration office gave me a visa for another 14 days, so we can enjoy a bit of North (Chiang Mai) and bit of South of Thailand (no idea yet, what island we will choose, but I guess white sand beaches will be lovely everywhere).... Today we have arrived to Ayutthaya (world heritage town and ancient capital city of Thailand). It is full of temples (like in Angkor), but the food is much much better than in Cambodia. We have actually realised that we have missed the thai food! so great it is! I couldn't resist today as well and I have joined a free class of tai-chi (or how do you write the marsial arts:) It was really great....

Anyway this was just a quick review of today, to let you know we are back in Thailand, we are getting to know more temples (from a seat of a bicycle) and we will let you know a bit more about Cambodia, or thai food or anything we have experienced!

Keep in touch!

Still somewhere in Siem Reap...

Continuing our adventure in Angkor and exploring the temples all over the place, we have decided as well to visit the "floating village", which is on the biggest lake with sweet water in Asia. Taking bravely our tuk-tuk driver at 7am (like going to the office), we started our journey and we were driving slowly towards the non-existing roads again. The place was rewarding! We felt like in national geographic documentary, we have taken hundreds of photos (which you can admire together with the Angkor temples on the photo link). It was like a different world - people having their houses on boats, living their simple lifes on water (it is easy to move though:), together with a small culture shock (which we were as well expecting) Different life, different world. Cambodia is completely different to Thailand, even though it is so close, on the other site it is too far from anything you can imagine. Lenka has as well refreshed or actually added some geographical and historical information about this place as they were almost non existing and she felt that if the small kids around her know where Czech republic is and what is the capital city, she needs to improve:)

Tomorrow morning (again 7 o'clock - i think we don't get to relax at all:) we will take a bus for another journey for 5-6 hours towards the Phnom Penh, city with lots of differents faces. So again we are not sure what to expect, but we will let you know.
Now we will go and enjoy our hotel, which we prebooked in France and it feels like holidays (this is definitely not a place for backpackers - but it is nice to have a nice place to stay)...

Takze mili ctenari, teste se na historky o neexistujicich silnicich a lidech zijicich v domech na vode. Verte mi, ze bych si zde vzala kazde dite domu a vychovala bych ho podle evropskych standartu - otazka je ale - jestli by jim bylo lip. Asi ne.... Kambodia se vubec neda srovnavat s Thajskem. Nevedela jsem, co ocekavat a kulturni sok, ktery jsem zazila, si budu urcite pamatovat. Nenechte se vyvest z omylu - chramy v Angkoru a plovouci vesnice jsou uzasny a opravdu si budete pripadat jako v dokumentu na BBC nebo Discovery channel, ale ta prava Kambodia ma jeste mnoho co dohanet....

Somewhere in Siam Reap

Yesterday we have arrived to Siam Reap, located in Cambodja. Yes, it is a very different country to Thailand, in many respects. Visibly much poorer and disorganised (begging and children working on the streets, non-existent in Thailand, is overwhelming in Cambodja). We are also as tourists strongly recommended to use the american dollar which can make day-to-day expenses significantly more expensive than what we were used to with the Thai baht.

The drive from Bangkok to Siam Reap (Angkor's nearest city) was in itself the most adventurous, and simultaneously the worst travel, we have ever been in (brought back memories of that back-slapping adventure and a nasty doctor 28 years ago!). We had to change buses at the border, for a number of reasons: opportunity to sell more things like food and drinks, etc., but mainly because the road from the Thai border to Siam Reap is absolutely non-existent, a rollercoaster ride which I will certainly recommend to implement to the Disneyland Resort manager once we are in Orlando. And I can assure you, this would be the scariest ride you have ever been in, 3 hours of back-breaking, suspension-cracking, dust-infected, 20-years old taxi ride - and this was the best option - we met up with some Fins with whom we organised the above mentioned taxi, otherwise the rest of the bunch from Thailand was stuck 21 people in a normal-sized pickup truck on a 6 hours journey which changed the colour of their skin, hair, backpags and probably even the typically white cells in their blood a disgusting hue of orange.

And why did we go through all this hell? Simply for this:

Angkor is truly the eight wonder in the world, and although it is hard to convey just how beautiful it is we hope that the photos we will at some stage upload will do justice to the magic of the ancient place, with its enigmatic faces looking out of imposing temples, amazing real-estate I tell you! (incidentally the photos on Ko Chang are all uploaded)

Plans have yet changed again incidentally. Bureaucratic reasons forced us to do a "small" detour to Phnon Penh, the capital of Cambodja. This should allows us for a 6-hour bus across this enigmatic country of Cambodja, and from then we catch the local RyanAir (called Air Asia) flight back to Bangkok, from where we move on straight away to the north of Thailand, more precisely Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai.
Until then, we have two more days of temple hopping in Angkor, with our private tuk-tuk driver named Boner (no joke!)

Somewhere in Ko Chang..

This is what our beach looks like... Kwai river will, needless to say, have to wait a bit longer! We have prolonged for a couple of days our stay in the paradisical Ko Chang island in the east of Thailand, bordering Camboda, where we are staying in the Blue Lagoon bungalows, a collection of only 11 bungalows in a wonderful setting of a blue lagoon surrounded by mangrove forest, a very short walk from the above mentioned beach. Ko, incidentally, means Island in Thai, and Chang means Elephant (it also means a very nice Thai beer, although not as nice, nor cheap, as the czech variety!). The forest, which is a national park, does indeed have elephants, aswell as other assorted animals and beautiful landscapes (including jungle, waterfalls and thai restaurants!). In our own bungalow we have the nightly visit of what must be the biggest lizzard / smallest dinosaur, we have ever seen (I am certain we have discovered a new species which I have named Lenkus dinossaurus, but I may need to review that back home)!

Otherwise we have finally taken this opportunity to finally wind down, forget what day of the week it is, just focus on sun, beach, sea and lovely thai food (a restaurant near our bungalow, a lovely one run by a german lady, serves delicious food for 25 bath, around 50 cents, which means that so far our budget has been seeing a most lovely surplus and no Western Union help is required).

We will be leaving this green paradise friday - a boat trip back to the mainland then a long bus trip back to Bangkok. The day after, early in the morning, we head off to see the Angkor ruins in Cambodja. We shall keep you posted.

Greetings from Ko Chang!

And now for a small czech interlude...

A pro ty, co na me cekaji v Cechach, trosku cestiny, abych se procvicila.
Tak tohle je nase uzasna plaz, kde travime tento tyden. Blue lagoon si urcite zaslouzila svoje jmeno, je to kousek od plaze, 11 schovanych bungalowu a k spanku urcite nepotrebujeme nic do usi a spime jako zabiti (je to hezky rozdil k Bangkoku). Sloni ostrov, thajsky preklad jmena, ma nejen slony, ale taky uzasny lesy a ruzny hmyzy, ktery me vyvadi z miry (podivejte se na ty fotky - to je nevetsi jester, kteryho jsem kdy videla:)
JInak se jdu ucit varit (jak rika Pedro - konecne!), podivejte se na www.kochangcookery.com:)
tak se zatim mejte krasne, ja se zase ozvu, a ne abyste mi opravovali chyby, je to fakt tezky (snazim se:)

Somewhere in Krung thep mahanakhon amorn ratanakosin mahintharayutthaya mahadilok pop ...

Or otherwise called Bangkok (that is part of the official name, which Guiness states that it beats all those strange welsh and german names in terms of length)

There has been a slight change of plans - the bridge over the river kwai made famous by the film with Alec Guiness (a different Guiness), will have to wait a few days - we decided enough was enough and we really couldnt wait any longer for a sunny beach with white sand and coconut trees. So we are off tomorrow morning to Ko Chang, an island to the east of Bangkok. Already booked a hotel in the Blue Lagoon (not the one with Brooke Shields but hopefully very similar!)

Today we decided to do a bit of culture and visited the National Museum of Thailand, the biggest one in South East Asia. It had a pretty cool section on the entire history of Thailand, with a very prominent section on the best nation in the world, the Portuguese, who alone amongst all other nations had a section dedicated to them (which you can see on the photo, it seems that the portuguese drove the early development of the nation of Thailand!!). Lenka was particularly disappointed Czech Republic was not mentioned at all, not even on the list of nations which the Thais did not know existed. Buuh!

We will try to connect from the island but as we are not even sure about the reliable supply of electricity there, this may be difficult (just kidding :) )

Big greetings to all you fellow travellers who join ours through the comments, they are always appreciated!

Somewhere in Khao San Road

We are moving hotels today in bangkok... not because there is something wrong with our current one (that is, in spite of the constant din from the bar below thank heavens for the ear plugs we bought before coming), but because Bangkok is big and we want to try living in a new neighbourhood... a quieter one this time, Khao San Road is the infamous backpacker ghetto of Bangkok, with more of an Ibiza feel to it than really Bangkok (even if its low prices start attracting young Thais more and more as elsewhere in Bangkok prices go up, or so they tell me). We are moving closer to the river, and we will be planning the days ahead slowly as we visit the majestic Grand Palace, Chinatown and the Wat Po in the coming couple of days.

Oh, and we have just realised today is the first working day after the Christmas break. Oh darn!

Somewhere in the New Year of 2007

And here we are in Bangkok, having spent a different New Years eve party, a very Thai one - we were the only foreigners in the whole bar, a rare thing in Bangkok, so full that it is of tourists! In the photo, one of the new-found friends - his english was not great but he knew Figo and Poborsky, so we got along right from the beginning! Thai people are really amazingly friendly, always smiling and willing to talk to you (even if through means of free whiskies, gin&tonics, as last night!), and willing to enjoy life even in the face of tragedy as in yesterday's cowardly bombings (which thankfully did not affect us in the least - in fact we were the only ones who showed any interest in what was going on)

So we remain in Bangkok for the next few days before moving west, to the area around the river Kwai (where the POW-built bridge still stands and shall be one of our destinations).

We wish all our readers, friends, and a very Happy New Year, and should you wish to ever contact us we are sometimes reachable by mobile on +66 874933557