Martijn & Judith, 3 augustus 2006
Nederland , Lemmer

Thailand part 2: Between paradise and hell!!

Holland and Germany have us back!

But first:

Thailand, a country of contrasts:
Between paradise and hell

As we don’t want to disappoint our faithful fans from all over the world, always following our travel-route with excitement, we now update our website for the last time with the latest news from far away Thailand.
Sorry, that it took us so long ( we’re back in the safe lap of our family and friends since more than 4 weeks now ), but the people back home and the new duties of the everyday life we have to face and deal with from now on again ( what for sure needs some time to get used to it after more than 9 months of freedom whilst travelling ), simply kept us busy.
Hence, the first weeks we spent with seeing all the family members and friends again, getting to know finally the families and friends “in law” in Holland and Germany after half a year of relationship ( we hope that we could satisfy their expectations they already had according to the pictures on the internet and the stories we told on the phone !), organising the backpacks, administration-stuff, preparing the studies which gonna start in September and October, finding work to fill up the money-resources for the studies again and finally not to forget: arriving also psychically and not just physically back home – not an easy task to face after having had a couple of great months of a life full of adventures, different sceneries and people!

But enough from our new ( or more or less old ) life back home - we gonna take u now into a land 13 flight-hours away from Europe, a land that goes beyond your experiences and expectations ( it was the same with us ), a country full of contrasts as the headline already promises: Thailand, a state between paradise and hell!

After our wonderful time together in New Zealand, the moment came to say goodbye on the Auckland airport at the end of may – not an easy thing to do, cause we did not just say bye to each other, we also left our new “adopted family”, the Crawfords behind. They simply picked us up from the street in a suburb in Auckland where we parked our van over night, took us into their house and integrated us into their family, just as if we were members of it already for years.
We really enjoyed the time with them, had loads of fun and got to know, what real friendship and hospitality means! Thank you very much for giving us the feeling, of having a home and a family so far away from our home - we’ll never forget these great moments all together in the living room playing games with a Kiwi-Family!
Anyway, we said goodbye and Martijn flew to his father in Thailand who was already waiting impatiently there to see him again after such a long time and Judith flew back to Australia, to experience OZ again alone for about 3 week.
As u know Martijn´s story already, I quickly tell mine: After landing in Sydney, I stayed there over night, booked a connecting flight to Adelaide for the next morning, where I jumped into the Indian Pacific in the late afternoon, to cross the Nullarbor Plain (a distance of approximately 3000km, with the longest part of around 440km just straight going railway-line). That train-ride took 42 hours, which means one and a half days and two nights in a train! After having arrived in Perth in the morning, I went directly searching for a travel-companion to spend the next week with, exploring the southwest of Australia! It was not as easy as I imagined it to be, but I finally found a nice Israelian girl, Ela, and we hired a Campervan! We had fun together, experienced a lot and a great friendship developed! The last days in Perth we spent together, until Larry and Christel, the older German couple Katrin and me spent Christmas with already ( they live in a suburb of Perth ) picked me up. I spent one night with them, until they brought me to the airport, where I took the plane to Bangkok in the middle of June!

The countdown to come back home again began – our last days of travelling in Thailand have come and we enjoyed that time a lot!
Martijn picked me up from the airport in Bangkok in the middle of the night and we took a taxi back to the hotel. Already when I went out of the air conditioned arrival-hall onto the street, I could feel the difference: I’m in Asia now! The climate is humid and extremely hot. Suddenly, the sweat is running through every pore of your body you can imagine or you didn’t even know, that it exists and you have the impression, that the air is standing still and it feels, like as if it’s old and you have to breath it in for the third time already, without that it regenerated or mixed with any fresh air! You could see the dirt flying through the air, coming from the exhausts of cars and factories, having no chance to escape in the higher spheres of the sky, because of the smog-bell covering the whole city of Bangkok constantly – causing the fact, that in Bangkok itself you can never see the blue sky and the full sun! And not to forget: the noise of the thousands of taxis standing there with a running engine, waiting for innocent tourists to rip them of and to get on their nerves with the constantly screamed questions ´if you need transport and where you want to go´ – with the aim to get as much money out of you as possible, of course!

The next day, we went out exploring the delightful side of Bangkok – we went shopping and eating out. After 8 months of primitive backpacking, these prides were really the paradise on earth for us, because the luxury things are so cheap there!
In general, Thailand is a nice country to make holidays in, if you don’t want to abuse your wallet too much. It’s possible to get good accommodation in a range from around € 8-10, if u are good in trading down, of course!
After that one day in Bangkok, we first had enough of it and took the night-train to Surat Thani, where we had to wait a couple of hours, until the connecting bus took us to Phuket. When you are travelling in Thailand, you have to know, that they are not as precise as the Europeans are, concerning the timetables and that you have to calculate a lot more time to come from A to B by public transport, than it’s said by the travel-agents. They promised us for example, to arrive in Phuket at 9 o’clock in the morning, but we arrived at 3 pm. Six hours delay is not seldom there and no reason to complain about! Also not the fact is worth a complain, that we booked an air conditioned minivan going directly to Phuket and got a big bus without aircon, stopping everywhere instead!
But we finally made it to Phuket and we spent three nice days with Martijn´s father Douwe there, and I finally got to know my ´father in law´ for the first time! We had a relaxed time and loads of fun together!
Our days in Phuket and surroundings, we spent with sun baking on the beach, visiting the famous “James Bond Island” ( the place where one of the James Bond films is set ), a swimming Muslim fisherman village, a cashew-nut fabric and also with canoeing , elephant riding, an elephant show, shopping of course and watching soccer in the middle of the night. By the way: ´Patong Beach´ (where we had our hotel ), is the famous beach during the tsunami in December 2004, where the biggest destruction was caused by the 15m high wave – all the remaining of that catastrophe are pictures and DVDs ( which you can buy on the street ) and the signs they put there, showing the evacuation route in the tsunami hazardous zones in case of a new wave. But for the tourist’s eye, there is no destruction visible anymore, except for the fact of the constantly building-up wherever you go.
But if you speak with the locals, you get to know, how present this tragedy still is, it’s part of their lives and their pain is still sitting very deep. A strange feeling somehow, to lie on the beach and to relax, where not even two years ago thousands of people died and where now still heaps of dead bodies are buried a few meters under the sand of the beach. But if we, the tourists, would stay away because of that fact, we would take the locals´ base of living, because they depend on the tourism – and that would help nobody!
Another quite interesting thing to mention is the “sex-tourism”, which is bad in the whole country, but in the area of Phuket it was topping all we’ve ever seen: as soon as a man was walking alone on the street, the hookers and real looking lady-boys ( after a while u get some exercise in seeing if it’s a real girl or just a good fake) were approaching from all sides, making special “massage offers” or just try to get u into a bar to spend the evening and of course the following night with him. It happened quite a lot, that we saw girls or lady-boys (sometimes men probably had a surprise package, discovering in the middle of the night, that the ´girl is in reality a ´boy´! ) coming out of hotel-rooms early in the morning after their ´work´ was done. Another very disgusting thing to see were the older European men, (looking all like looser, who would never ever get a woman back home) sitting in bars close to young Asian women and touching their ass, while the women pretend to have so much fun with these cowards. Also me, Martijn, had some ‘problems’ with those Thai girls…walking on the street and discovering that there’s a hand going over my ass...and not for the first time! Is it my blond hair, my blue eyes or just the fact that I have money???

Now back to the travels:
After these three days, we went on travelling alone, while Douwe went back home. We first took the ferry to Phi Phi Island, where we stayed for two days, enjoying the beautiful tropical beach, our bungalow in the middle of the jungle and where we did a tour by boat to explore the island and surroundings.
The boat was more or less an unstable, not definable ´something´, (originally supposed to be a long tail-boat) that always almost fell over when we were turning. We had a lot of fun anyway with snorkelling, swimming in beautiful fjords, exploring lonely beaches on small islands, feeding the monkeys on Monkey-Island with rotten mangoes and bananas and with visiting the famous “ Maya Bay”, where the film “The Beach” with Leonardo Di Caprio ( yes, now the girls´ hearts are beating faster ! ) was set! The landscape was simply beautiful, a paradise on earth again!
The next destination from there was “Koh Samui” on the east coast, where we spent our days with relaxing on one of its´ beautiful beaches, driving with a hired scooter over the island, swimming in a waterfall and not to forget: shopping.
After that, our time was almost over and we got to our last destination of the island-hopping-tour, to “Koh Phangan”, where we spent our two last days with “extreme-relaxing” on the really exceptionally beautiful ´Lamai Beach` (palm-trees, long white sand-bay, clear and warm water, small huts in the background ), in the hammock on our bungalow-balcony, at the pool of the hotel ( with a view down on the beach and straight over to Koh Samui ) and how could it be different, if you are travelling with an extreme soccer fan: with watching the world-cup!

Not really voluntarily, we went back into the busy Bangkok, to ruin all our relaxation within the next three days, doing “extreme-shopping” now, to fill up the last holes in our backpacks with presents and clothes before we flew back home.

And there we are now, Martijn flew two days earlier home than me, to give me more time to do my shopping, without getting too much on his nerves.

To say it short: Thailand is really worth to visit, not just cause of the prices, but also because of its´ countryside and people. All you have to deal with and all u have to get used to be the aggressive Tuk-Tuk and Taxi Drivers, the humid climate and the visible prostitution!
But theses things are now not new for u anymore and our tip is just: Go there and make your own experiences, probably u see it completely different than we did!

We hope that you’ll take your time to see the pictures. If you want to see more pics, just give a ring; you’re always welcome!

Take care and all the best from us!

Greetz and kisses,

Martijn and Judith

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