The Real Wedding McCoy

As Hannah has had to pay the trip done by so many to the hospital following tubing (don't worry she's just had some weird allergic reaction making her look like Lilo) I thought I should probably catch up on some blogging!



So apart from last nights blog which is in real time there are a lot of gaps that need filling in. So annnoyingly chronology is going to get a bit lost, but it means I'll be back up to date and you'll all know why the blogs got a bit behind! We've been VERY busy!

Obviously the royal wedding has probably been the highlight of the year so far in England so I feel it's important to let everyone know that we managed to do the Brits proud and spread the wedding love throughout Chang Mai.

At about 1pm our time so 6am your time the hunt for wedding footage began. We searched around many different streets and were getting pretty angsty. We asked soooo many people who just told us to owatch it in our guest house which we didn't think would really match up to the street partys that we had heard about at home. Besides, they were only showing it on American Fox TV which was not going to be up to standard - we needed BBC. So we trapsed around in the boiling sun when all of a sudden an oasis of Britishness appeared... The Old British Pub.

We went in and were thrilled to see wedding invitations, bunting, heart balloons, teapots, cucumber sandwhiches, scones, pimms and even a recent Daily Telegraph with Kate on the front looking lovely as ever.

So after our customary scones and pot of TETLEY tea was finished, the wedding began and the Brits started rolling in. Pimms was obviously being drunk by all and we even had champagne at the balcony kiss.

Obviously after the real footage was over the endless stream of highlights began - good old BBC News 24- which meant that the drinking started to get serious. By this point we had bonded with a little English crew. We were all sitting round playing cards when one of the Thai waitresses decided to up the stakes and start attempting drinking games.

Lesson to be learnt. Never take on the Brits at our favourite pastime. She ended up losing by a mile and after owing us all several shots of tequila and being covered in illuminous paint we thought we better leave before she got sacked.

Hannah, Jan, Kelvin and I then carried on up the street spreading illuminous paint and rose petals where ever we went (Jan decided it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of flowers for the occassion- he proceeded to eat half of them later but that's another story).

The carnage ended at Spiceys where we managed to paint half the people there in our body paint and definitely make sure everyone knew about the wedding!

At 6am the marathon was over. 18 hours of drinking is clearly the only way to celebrate a wedding properly. We should've had an invite to Harrys survivors breakfast.

Travellers getting drunk by a river... best idea ever.

So having arrived at Vang Vieng and seeing hoards of backpackers dressed head to toe in illuminous 'Laos' branded clothing, body paint and bandages we decided that it would be a really idea to join the droves of whiskey intoxicated revellers down at the river.

Tubing is a pretty strange concept really. A ridiculously dirty river combined with wasted travellers and zip wires seems like the most stupid idea in the world. Stupid and sooooo much fun.

Hannah and I were originally going to go tubing just for a couple of days as we're now on a race against time through the rest of south east Asia. But 7 days later we have only just arrived in Luang Prabang having destroyed our bodies and our souls.

We thought that Full Moon was pretty messy but its been decided that Tubing reaches new heights. Having literally drunk from 1pm until 5am everyday for the last week we decided that the time had come to leave. The problem is that Vang Vieng is one of those places that you just get stuck in. I want to say in a similar way to what happened in Buenos Aires but this took a whole new extreme. There are only 2 buses each day and the chances of you being up for either of them and not feeling more than a little bit sick is pretty low. We tried to leave three days ago but it just never happened. There are people that have actually been trapped there for 14 months, so our 7 days seems like nothing really.

On the bus on the way down we made friends with a group of about 10 Brits that then took over the hostel that we were staying at. We found that the best way to test whether they should be worthy of our friendship was to

1) Assess their drinking capabilities... they were necking vodka whilst still on the bus. Pass.

2) Request a rapping performance.
Pass. (kind of... Bradley managed to utter the words 55 several times to some weird beat, but its the effort that counts)

3) Perform a handstand
Pass. (kind of... it did end in a fall)

4) Celebrity claims to fame
Pass. (We were with both Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Radcliffe VI and the sporn child of Leona Lewis and Rio Ferdinand).

Alongside out Stats list we also have a dare list. This has to be regularly updated and the competition has got pretty intense. I am now successfully ahead having held a snake the other day, but where the comp really hotted up was in the Lying Competition.

Originally we were just supposed to attempt to swap names and to lie about our nationalities... anyone that has been travelling before will understand how boring the 'getting to know you' questions are so we thought we would spice it up a bit.

The lies reached whole new heights. We spent our time passing ourselves off as mother and daughter, claiming that I was 14 and Hannah 32. We managed to meet my step father and birth father and introduce them to each other, whilst also maintaining that we were South African. This is only the half of it really... the more red bull that we drank the worse it got until we basically became ridiculously annoying. But the girls managed to roll with it and it made way for A LOT of giggles and very VERY confused boys which obviously we enjoyed.

So now we're basically looking forward to a bit of a detox now. It will be weird to sit eating breakfast looking out on people that don't look in horrendous amounts of pain with crutches and hangover combined.

The Wedding from Afar

Well... I guess I have to write a blog on the upcoming Royal Wedding as it would appear that it is all anyone can talk about at home. For fear of losing any blog readers that I already have I feel it needs to be included in order to retain interest!

Now, the wedding hype over in Thailand is basically non existant. When asked by a travel agent why we would like to keep the dates on the 29th and 30th free we looked at her baffled and said 'for the wedding of course', to which she replied 'what wedding?'. How anyone has not heard about it I don't know but apparently it is possible.

In fairness we have only heard from various relatives (the mothers and grandmothers) going mental for it, sad that we will be missing the most watched TV spectacle since Diana's funeral in 97. But never fear.... T Mobile is here with another gem...





I actually LOVE LOVE LOVE their adverts so much... they at Saatchi and Saatchi are going to be down for some big prizes this year.

So, if for some unknown reason the wedding fails to be beemed into an Irish Pub near us, all will be OK in the world because I will have seen this beauty.

Paying a visit to the clinic

Next stop was Singapore home of the Clinic Bar. The strangest place I have ever had a drink (and possibly the most expensive). You can purchase a range of  syringes, drips and Petrie dishes all containing your favorite beverages. I know that hannah and I have developed a slight alcohol problem but this takes addiction to a whole new level, I now know why the traditional drink is called the Singapore sling. 

Obviously this wasn't the only highlight of singapore but it was definitely among them. 

We also managed to pack in a fair few slights with the assistance of the lovely bus tours that run all round the city and the handy hints from the lovely lauren who let us stay with her for the duration. 

The best bits were going to visit china town and little India where we got to sample the local cuisine. Amazing fresh noodles cooked in the wok straight infront of you to fresh India curry that you eat with your left hand- no cutlery involved! I don't really know how I'm going to cope with moving back home to he world of the knife and fork instead of the chopsticks or paw.   

We also paid a trip to the night safari which was amazing. They design the whole park so that there are no fences and you are up close and personal with all the animals. We saw lions, tigers, hippos, rhinos, hyenas, wolves and elephants all without the horrible wire fences that normally ruins all the piccies!

She Jumped from 14000 feet.

I did a sky dive

and it was amazing

end of.



Ok so I probably have to tell you about it a little bit, as everyone knows its rare that I can shut up!! Pretty scary but not as scary as you might think. The instructors are amazing and don't really give you a chance to realise what your doing before your plummeting towards the ground with them strapped to your back, screaming your head off as your face does that weird flappy thing and they start spiraling you towards the floor.

Next thing you know parachute is up and your floating back down to the ground. I even got to steer the parachute in some pretty circles before coming in to land.

Best experience ever. EVERYONE should do it. Even if your scared of heights its worth it. And you get a cool certificate and tshirt to prove it.

Its the sailing life for me.

It may be a couple of weeks later (yes I know I have been very slow on the blog recently) but I feel like I'm still rocking from our idyllic boat... Spank Me.

Yes that's right, where normally boats have beautiful girls names conjuring images of sailing through calm crystal clear waters, we were changed from 'The Matador' which sounds quite exciting - speed and sophistication coming to mind to Spank Me. Not quite the same connotations there.

Spank Me did somehow suit the boat as it was far from luxury with its tiny leaking beds and very strange smelling below deck toilets. I felt like I'd stepped back several years and was aboard a merchant sailors ship or something. I think this was particularly helped by the gale force winds and rain that we ended up having on our first day. Lots of boats going out on the same day as ours had been cancelled so we boarded not too optimistic about the beautiful weather that we had been hoping for on the Whitsunday Islands. Instead we thought it was more likely that we would be experiencing the Wetsunday Islands as lots of backpackers have affectionately named this set of islands by the Great Barrier Reef in North East Aus.

However, after a rocky nights sleep we woke to glorious sunshine, which made shots like these possible...

Yep, I reckon we probably jumped for that photo about 15 - 20 times and its still not great. But jumping on white sand in wet suits apparently is how pretty much every backpacker on that route rolls judging by the many photo shoots that took place on White Haven Beach, some guides even take props... plastic ducks, beach balls, beer cans, you get the picture.

You may recognise those two ladies in the photos too from the Fraser blog... we managed to meet up with Caroline and Sarah again having already been on Fraser with them. Most people take the same route up the coast, so on one stretch of beach we were reunited with 3 different sets of people that we had met on our way.

We got to open the boat up to full sail and bounce along the waves through the islands before stopping off at various snorkeling points, donning our highly attractive 'stinger suits' apparently its high season for these little treasures about now so we had to rock the not so Baywatch look before going in the water at all.

The fish that we saw were beautiful and we were even lucky enough to see a turtle popping up to take a look before diving back down and hiding away from us as we all launched off the side of the boat to chase it.

As the sun came down and the goon came out everyone was in high spirits... especially when Steph our hostie performed an amazing feet... Roast dinner on a boat, it was impressive! No idea how she did it, but it was the first roast I have had in a very very long time and it was preeettty good.

So that was our taste of boat life. I was pretty pleased to be back on dry land again, even if it was to shower outside by the public pools as we were hopping back on the Greyhound that night. We thought our fellow bus riders would probably appreciate O' du Chlorine rather than O' du Salt Water.

The Stats...

As we've reached the half way mark - well over it now anyway, we thought it was time to update on some of the stats from our trip. So our combined totals are.....

Countries visited - 9
Time spent sober - 27 days out of 98
Time spent on buses - 166 hours
Ice cream consumed - 52 scoops
Time spent away from each other - 21 hours
People kissed - 19
New foods tried - 57
Alcohol consumed - 100000 (recurring)
Foreign swear words learnt - 8
Botanical gardens visited - 5
China Towns visited - 4
Hours spent lost - too many
Number of showers - not enough
Loads of washing done - 8
Cultural landmarks visited - 25
Bars danced on - 2
Items of fancy dress purchased - 22
Tshirts purchased - 21
Items we have stolen - 6
Items lost - 8
Drunken journeys - 6
Number of bank cards cloned - 4
Number of shampoo explosions - 9
Postcards sent - 41
Items donated to charity - 6
Museum/Gallery/Zoo excursions - 6
Hours spent underwater - 12
Drinking/card games learnt - 11
Dares completed - 4
Number of raps created - 2

Obviously this will be updated upon arrival in the UK.