London - day 104 - THE END

We arrived at London Heathrow at 4h45. Pierre had to fly onwards to Bordeaux from Gatwick and Nat to Amsterdam from terminal 5. We parted ways at the exit of the plane. We both arrived safely in Bordeaux and Amsterdam, where our families awaited our return...

The trip was amazing! We are both incredibly happy that we went through with it!

A big thank you to all those of you who followed our blog and left comments on it!

WE WISH YOU ALL A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!


Nat & Pierre

Singapore - day 103

We woke up late, then packed our bags and headed out to Chinatown. We got a bit lost on the way, but eventually we got to where we wanted to be. For lunch we had some delicious springrolls and curry puffs, accompanied by some fresh mango shakes. We walked around Chinatown for a while, looking at all the little shops. Then we walked to a place called Funan Digitalife which is a big shopping mall that's specialized in electronics. We went to the top floor and worked our way down through all the shops to find the one where they sold the cheapest external hard drives. After the shopping we went to a Starbucks to rest our feet for a bit. We were surprised to see that although the place was nearly full, we were the only tourists there. All the other people in that Starbucks were business men in suits having important conversations and typing away on their laptops... We walked around to find a toilet somewhere and ended up in another shopping mall. Nat finally found a Swatch shop and managed to get her watch fixed after more than 2 months of useless attempts to get the battery changed! We took the metro back to our B&B and then tried to copy the pictures onto the external harddrive and USB sticks... unfortunately the computer was full of virusses, meaning that every one of our memory cards got infected... We also found out that one of the cameras is missing. Luckily it's the broken one, but it did have a memory chip in it with our Japan pictures... it's still a big mystery how that camera could have disappeared! Around 20h we took a taxi to the airport. We checked-in and had some sushi for dinner. At 23h we were on the plane flying back home. We flew over Kuala Lumpur and had an amazing view over the city by night. The Petronas towers were incredibly bright, making it a pretty awesome sight. The flight to London took about 13,5 hours, which we spent half sleeping half watching movies.

Weather: warm and cloudy

Singapore - day 102

We got up very early and took a taxi to the airport in the north of Phuket. After checking-in, we got all our money back from Air Asia for the flight that had been cancelled due to the Bangkok airport situation on the 1st of december. From Phuket we flew to Singapore with Air Asia, an asian low cost airline. From the plane we had a nice view over the Thai islands and at the end over the Singapore bay. We were picked up and brought to our hostel (this turned out to be a big rip-off! the pick-up service was A LOT more expensive than a regular taxi). We were staying in a bed and breakfast place in a penthouse in some tall building. The view over Singapore was quite nice. Not long after getting there, a friend of Nat's father came to pick us up and show us around the city. He drove us to Faber Park from where we had a nice overview of the city; then he took us to the old Parliament buildings, the cricket pitch, Clarke Quay, the CBD, Chinatown, Arab Street, Little India, etc. He taught us a lot about the city! He dropped us off at Orchard Street where we went shopping without buying anything. Orchard Street is a concentration of very expensive shopping malls and hotels like the Marriott. Everything was decorated for Christmas: lots of Christmas trees and lights everywhere. For dinner we went to a place called Newton Circus, which is basically a food court where they have all kinds of food. Nat's father's friend joined us and ordered a whole bunch of typical dishes, including some prawns, beef and chicken satay, a peppered crab, duck-noodle soup, carrot cake (like an omelet with prawns in it) and more. Most of it was really good. After dinner we were dropped off at the B&B.

Weather: warm and cloudy, a bit of rain in the evening

Koh Phuket - day 101

We spent the entire day on the beach. It was very sunny and very hot, so we spent quite some time in the water, which was beautifully blue and refreshing. We walked all the way up and down the beach in an attempt to find some of Nat's friends from the South of France who might or might not have been there... anyway, we never actually found them. Since it was our last day on the beach, we stayed as long as we could, and were one of the last one's there when they'd already put away all the other sunbeds and umbrellas. After a good shower, we went back to the pedestrian street and sheltered from the sudden rain in a covered shopping area. The rain was amazing; A LOT of water in a very short time, but it didn't last very long. We had dinner at a little local restaurant that was very busy and turned out to be very cheap, but very good! After dinner, we returned to the Blue Lotus bar where we'd spent the previous night, and sat down at the same table, only this time the couple on the other side turned out to be two Australians on their honeymoon. They were very friendly and we had lots of fun with them cause they had been counting the number of "old-guy-young-thai" couples that had walked down the street since they sat down at the bar. We joined in around number 31... but by the time we left the bar, we had seen more than 100 different "old-guy-young-thai" couples!! An insane number if you think about it! Most of them walk hand in hand, but the weirdest thing of all is that some of these girls are clearly guys (although incredibly sexy ones) and you can't help but wonder whether the tourist at his side knows about this or is just too blind to see the obvious... We spent a good deal of the night staring at a ladyboy that should have been dancing in a FAME musical. He was incredible! Even when the rain started pouring down again, he just kept on dancing and looked like he was having the time of his life. I think he made just about every woman in the street jealous of him, not only due to his dancing skills, but also because of his body! He attracted a very big crowd and several people started giving him money and placing it under a strap attached to his thigh... I guess it was a good night for that ladyboy!

Weather: very warm and sunny

Koh Phi Phi - Koh Phuket - day 100

After checking out and leaving our luggage at the hotel, we walked around on Koh Phi Phi for a while, ending up on a beach we hadn't been to yet. It was a wonderful spot from where we could enjoy the beautiful scenery of the steep cliffs and turquoise water, as well as an unobstructed view of Koh Phi Phi Ley. We were wondering why the hell we were leaving this island and thinking about maybe moving there to start a diveshop or something... :-P Unfortunately we had a boat to catch that would take us to Koh Phuket, one of Thailand's biggest islands and probably one of the most touristically developped ones as well. On arrival at the ferry pier, we were told Patong Beach was the place to go, so that's where we went. We were dropped off in the centre of it and walked around until we found an affordable guesthouse on the beach. After getting rid of our heavy bags, we walked around the pedestrian street of Patong. It was lined with bars and more bars and a few souvenir shops. We ended up having dinner at a Dutch restaurant cause Nat was really tempted by a good "kroket met friet en mayonnaise" and she hadn't seen a Dutch restaurant in a very very long time!! We walked back to our hostel, got changed and then went back out to sit at a table on the terrace of a bar overlooking the pedestrian street right in front of it. We had the best time ever! We laughed so much because we spent several hours just people-watching... and Phuket really does attract some of the worst people!! We were amazed by the amount of ugly fat white guys walking around hand in hand with young thai girls. Another thing that's amazing about Patong is the amount of "ping pong shows" on offer. You can't walk down the street without being invited to watch at least 20 different ping pong shows! Also, the "ladyboys" in Patong are amazing! Some of them were dancing on a little stage in front of our bar all night long. Most of them wore sexy dresses or fancy feathers. From where we were sitting, we could see about 5 girls (actually, they may have been guys...) dancing around poles on the balcony of one bar and at the same time we had a view over another pole dance at a bar on the other side... We saw a girl (or guy??) walk around in what were definitely the shortest shorts EVER: her thong was in plain sight and the shorts were more like a belt worn low around the bottom of her ass... This same street is also a place where families walk by and where the kids look up in a shy way cause they're not sure whether they're actually allowed to look at any of it... Anyway, at our table, there was another couple, a guy from Norway and a Thai woman... they started talking to us and it was just weird... she was asking questions that suggested that Pierre had found Nat in the street somewhere and had hooked up with her for the night! I guess she didn't quite understand the concept of people being together without paying for it...

Weather: sunny and warm

Koh Phi Phi - day 97,98,99

We stayed on Koh Phi Phi for another three days because we fell in love with the diving around Koh Phi Phi Ley! We managed to find a cheaper hotel for the rest of our stay; unfortunately it was right next to a nightclub that played very loud music until 2am every night... not the best thing when you have to wake up at 6h30 to go diving! We did 4 dives around Koh Phi Phi; we went to Koh Bida Noi, Koh Bida Nok, Palong North and Maya Corner. The visibility was great and the marine life even better!! We saw a leopard shark, which we got very close to (look at the picture of Pierre next to it!), we saw so many blacktip reef sharks that we lost track of how many we saw! They are very shy sharks, but really beautiful and impressive! We also saw three turtles that we got very close to and an endless number of angelfish, parrotfish, butterflyfish, pufferfish, porcupinefish, etc. We saw a frogfish (very rare!!), a few lionfish (poisonous), lots of moray eels, a few scorpionfish (nearly impossible to see; poisonous as well), a sea horse, fighting trumpetfish and lots more! Diving here exceeded all our expectations! We passed by the beach where "The Beach" (with Leonardo di Caprio) was filmed and were amazed by the number of speedboats that rush to get loads of tourists there. It is a beautiful spot (it's called Maya Bay), but it is also the most crowded place around Koh Phi Phi! When we weren't diving, we were relaxing on the beach or walking through town. The water is incredibly clear and blue; this place really is paradise on earth! We really loved Koh Phi Phi and wouldn't mind to come back!!

Weather: warm and sunny every day!!

Koh Phi Phi - diving pictures