Thursday 17 December 2009

Singapore

IMG_5677  We had one night in Singapore en route to Australia. Enough time for Iain to try his favourite dish – Singapore style noodles.

IMG_5670 This man cooked them.

 IMG_5692    Whilst  Sarah enjoyed a Singapore Sling of course.

IMG_5718 Sadly we weren’t staying here.

 IMG_5719  A fat bird.

 IMG_5729  Our second Christmas tree.

IMG_5731  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

IMG_5631  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.

IMG_5467  A nice hand painted map of the island showed lots of good snorkelling spots. We didn’t find Nemo though.

IMG_5470 Map symbol for snorkelling spot.

IMG_5437  Iain hitches a ride on the local transport.

IMG_5597  Food pic #22 - “Fish of three tastes”

 IMG_5605 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.

 IMG_5642 A frog we upset by waking  up. He was hiding in some flippers.

IMG_5496 We had this bay to ourselves for a day – complete with abandoned reggae bar:

 IMG_5511  It wasn’t really a happy morning for Iain because Sarah had been moaning again.

IMG_5667 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.

IMG_5480

IMG_5576  Sarah had to wear this mask as her goggles are no more, sob.

Phuket

Phuket (20) Sarah is looking so happy because we got to Phuket and managed to swap the usual grotty backpacker places for this 4* hotel.

 Phuket (19)

Phuket (17) This was the reason for coming to Phuket, Paul that is and not the bucket.

Phuket (10) 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.

Phuket (12) This guy lost votes when he set fire to the audience.

Phuket (13) 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. 

Phuket (22)  Feeling festive, this was the first Christmas tree we saw this year.

Phuket (44) 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.

Phuket (50) 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.

Phuket (51)  Food Pic #21. Carrot served as embellishment to bright green Mojito.

Siem Reap

Siem Reap (35) 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.

Siem Reap (3) 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.

Siem Reap (1) 

 Siem Reap (8)  Trudging around temples.

Siem Reap (6)  We tried to see sunset at Ta Prohm but there were a few people in the way.

Siem Reap (7)

 Siem Reap (21) 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.

Siem Reap (38) Iain having to deal with Sarah’s moaning again.

Siem Reap (36)  The temples were worth all the trudging.

Siem Reap (55) Our favourite – the Tomb Raider one, with the jungle trees clinging to the buildings as they’ve grown through them.

Siem Reap (61) 

Siem Reap (64) Silk worms.

 Siem Reap (72) Giant pig on a bike.

Siem Reap (80) 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.

Siem Reap (79)

Cambodian Beaches

Cambodia Beaches (30) 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.

Cambodia Beaches (26) So we headed off up the coast and found this nice spot.

Cambodia Beaches (3)Food pic #19 – Fresh shrimp delivered straight to our sun lounger.

Cambodia Beaches (10)  But that wasn’t deserted enough so we chartered Captain Sang to take us to a nice little island called Ko Ta Kiev.

Cambodia Beaches (46) This was our house for a few days.

Cambodia Beaches (54) After lying in the hammock or on the beach we thought we’d get some exercise but Iain couldn’t really be bothered.

Cambodia Beaches (59)  Orion over bungalow, umm nice.

Cambodia Beaches (69) 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.

Cambodia Beaches (72)  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.

Cambodia Beaches (74) Food pic #20 Freshly caught crab from the beach.

Cambodia Beaches (73)  Jonty’s staff were better at sucking the flesh out of crab claws than us.

Cambodia Beaches (29) Sarah enjoying her new goggles.