Singapore

  We had one night in Singapore en route to Australia. Enough time for Iain to try his favourite dish – Singapore style noodles.

This man cooked them.

     Whilst  Sarah enjoyed a Singapore Sling of course.

Sadly we weren’t staying here.

   A fat bird.

   Our second Christmas tree.

  Iain making the important decision of which dumplings to order. Sadly we weren’t allowed to take photos in the restaurant. Sarge told us about this place, it was wonderful thank you.

Koh Raya

  After a few raucous nights in Phuket we needed a bit of isolation so we took a treacherous speed boat ride to Raya Island. We had wanted to try some Malaysian islands but found out it was rainy season so then thought about Koh Tao but it was rainy season there as well. If only we’d listened to Allan before we left we would have known all this and saved ourselves a lot of planning time. I blame Iain.

  A nice hand painted map of the island showed lots of good snorkelling spots. We didn’t find Nemo though.

Map symbol for snorkelling spot.

  Iain hitches a ride on the local transport.

  Food pic #22 - “Fish of three tastes”

  Home looked nice but it was right in front of a stinking canal. You could get a room at the non-smelly resort for up £1600 a night but they wouldn’t give us a discount.

  A frog we upset by waking  up. He was hiding in some flippers.

We had this bay to ourselves for a day – complete with abandoned reggae bar:

   It wasn’t really a happy morning for Iain because Sarah had been moaning again.

The speed boat looks like a pleasant way to travel but all I could think about whilst clinging on for dear life was Donald Campbell and whether the big bumps could rupture my spleen. I could hardly walk in Singapore because my back ached so much. Still it was pretty exciting.

  Sarah had to wear this mask as her goggles are no more, sob.

Phuket

Sarah is looking so happy because we got to Phuket and managed to swap the usual grotty backpacker places for this 4* hotel.

 

This was the reason for coming to Phuket, Paul that is and not the bucket.

There was a fire competition at the local beach so we got our fix of people setting various things alight and trying to outdo each other with the different ways they could twirl them about.

This guy lost votes when he set fire to the audience.

This was the winner with his Michael Jackson themed routine that included wearing white underpants over his black jeans – no one could remember Jackson ever doing that but somehow it worked. 

  Feeling festive, this was the first Christmas tree we saw this year.

We visited the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project. This chap is called Sam and he can’t sing (due to maltreatment) so he can’t find a mate. Even Sarah shed a tear on hearing this.

After leaching on to Paul’s holiday, with wife Amanda and friends providing an instant group of drinking buddies, we stayed a few extra days for fear of returning to nights on our own running out of things to stay to each other.

  Food Pic #21. Carrot served as embellishment to bright green Mojito.

Siem Reap

After a few weeks lazing around at the Beach we had to get back to some sight seeing. Siem Reap is the Cambodian town from where you can see the many temples of Angkor, supposed to be the most impressive temples of SE Asia.

Iain had been having a few foot problems so he tried out a fish massage in preparation for all the trudging around temples that was to come.

 

   Trudging around temples.

  We tried to see sunset at Ta Prohm but there were a few people in the way.

  We were the only people at Angkor Wat for sunrise but we had a terrible time keeping our eyes open after having to get up at 5am.

Iain having to deal with Sarah’s moaning again.

  The temples were worth all the trudging.

Our favourite – the Tomb Raider one, with the jungle trees clinging to the buildings as they’ve grown through them.

 

Silk worms.

  Giant pig on a bike.

We managed to meet up with Amanda and Tony (from Hove) on the last night in Siem Reap. They had the temples to look forward to the next day.

Cambodian Beaches

Sarah purchased some lovely new goggles for the occasion and we headed straight for Sianhoukville, believing it to be the undiscovered beach paradise we were looking for. Unfortunately we found it to be thoroughly discovered (by 18 year olds) and that the beach had been washed away by a particularly stormy rainy season.

So we headed off up the coast and found this nice spot.

Food pic #19 – Fresh shrimp delivered straight to our sun lounger.

  But that wasn’t deserted enough so we chartered Captain Sang to take us to a nice little island called Ko Ta Kiev.

This was our house for a few days.

After lying in the hammock or on the beach we thought we’d get some exercise but Iain couldn’t really be bothered.

  Orion over bungalow, umm nice.

Our second home on the island was this tree house at Jonty’s Jungle Camp where we had the place to ourselves being the first customers of the season.

  The view from the tree house just before the noises from the creatures of the night tried their best to stop us from sleeping. When we took this picture there was nobody on the beach or so we thought, ooh spooky.

Food pic #20 Freshly caught crab from the beach.

  Jonty’s staff were better at sucking the flesh out of crab claws than us.

Sarah enjoying her new goggles.