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This week started off kind of bad, but it got better, thank goodness.

I was feeling really sad and lonely. It’s hard being away from Rosemarie and the rest of my family and friends. And most of my old friends from Melbourne don’t live here any more. So… time to make some new friends, which is hard as a generally awkward and introverted person. Finally I decided to stop being a baby and follow Leslie’s tips about making friends in a new city.

So now I am a yes person.

I already met some nice people at an internet meetup the other night. And I stopped wearing my headphones at the gym. I think I’ll try and join some kind of board game group? Or maybe take some lessons in something. I dunno.

The other thing that got better this week is that SCOTT GOT A JOB!!! Woohoo!!! Things were getting a bit stressful in that department! He got the call on Tuesday for an interview A FEW HOURS LATER. And then that night they asked for him to come back the next day for a second interview. And then he STARTED the next day! SO FAST. It’s only a 3 month contract for now but at least he got something.

So now I have the house to myself to concentrate on my Netflix studying.

Scott is feeling much better these days. He is able to eat bad things without pain but he’s still not drinking alcohol and keeping the healthy diet except for Sundays. So that means I have to drink our trivia prize pitchers by myself, haha.

Weightlifting is going well. It’s so good to get back to it after six months off. I’m weaker, obviously, but I don’t get as sore… so I think there is still some memory in the muscle. Excited to get strong.

I did a little re-design of the ol’ blog. It should look a bit better on mobile devices now. If you are on a phone or tablet you can find the sidebar with the search, Twitter feed, links and stuff if you click on the little gear icon on the top left.

 

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Every avocado I’ve bought so far in Australia has been perfect. In Vancouver we always had to plan ahead and buy super hard avocados at least 4 days ahead of time, otherwise you’d probably be buying a mushy avocado skin bag full of brown yuck. Here you can buy a perfectly ripe avo ON THE DAY, with no bruises. It is incredible.

I think I’m up to about 70% looking the right way when I’m crossing the street.

I still can’t tell if trams are coming or going though. Why does the front and the back have to look the same??? LOL.

We’ve moved in to our apartment in St Kilda. We even have furniture and stuff now! Including my first real bed ever. How grown up. We also made sure to get a table big enough to play Agricola and 7 Wonders because we’re not actually that grown up. ;)

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July 16th – July 21st, 2016

July 16: Our overnight bus was supposed to drop us off in Bangkok at 6AM, but it got in early… at 4AM. It was still dark and there was nothing around except extremely annoying taxi drivers. I was very sleepy and quite annoyed. Eventually we figured out that we were pretty close to Khao San Road where there was a 24 hour McDonalds. I had a burger for breakfast with all the drunk people and we just waited around for a couple hours. Eventually we took a taxi to our hotel with hopes of being able to check in early, but instead they said to come back at 2PM… approximately EIGHT hours later. Sigh. At least we were able to drop our bags off though.

So then we went to Chatuchak weekend market. One of the largest markets in the world. It has EVERYTHING, like new and used clothes, snacks, art, (possibly endangered) animals and fish…

Best way to kill time in Thailand: massages!!

Finally we could check in to our hotel. I can’t remember what else we did that evening but I’m pretty sure I was asleep by 8PM.

July 17: We took a taxi to Khlong Lat Mayom floating market. This market is much smaller than the one tourists normally go to, but it’s way closer and way more relaxed. There were a few people selling things from boats, but most of the market was food stands on the land part. I saw tons of things I have never even heard of. It was really hot though and I don’t have much appetite when I’m overheated, so we didn’t actually try that much. I did enjoy my passion fruit slime over soda and ice very much though.

We also took a 20 baht boat ride around the area, paddled by a funny Thai man (see above lilypad hat). It’s too bad we couldn’t understand him because it seemed like he was giving A LOT of info about the area. It was still a nice relaxing tour though. It was by far the cheapest boat tour I’ve ever been on (about $0.75!).

That night we went out for boat noodles. These are very small bowls of noodles for 10ish baht each ($0.37). People have competitions to see who can eat the most bowls. I had 4.

July 18: Shopping day!! We went to Siam Paragon, Siam Discovery and MBK mall. We thought we might buy phones but chickened out. Actually I don’t think we bought much at all, just did a lot of browsing. That night I got the most vigorous Thai massage of the trip. She really worked my muscles. I decided it was like someone else foam rolling you for you. I did feel pretty great afterwards, once the torture was finished.

July 19: Temple day. It was Asalha Puja (a Buddhist holiday) so the temples were extra busy. We went to a few. There was singing, praying, sermons etc. At Wat Po you could also pay for a zodiac candle that you throw into a melting pot and then ladle a scoop into the gigantic candle mold. You could also line up to get patted on the head by a monk with a wooden stick brush thingy. We did that.

Coke in a bag after overheating in Chinatown. I don’t drink Coke very often but that was dang refreshing.

That night I planned dinner at a nice fancy restaurant a short cab ride away from our hotel as a treat for our anniversary (on the 14th). But pretty sure our cab driver ripped us off, and then dinner ended up costing twice as much as I expected, and then no cab would use the meter on the way home so we had to walk. Didn’t end up as fun as I had hoped.

July 20: Our last day of Bangkok, Thailand, and vacation. We did last minute shopping at Platinum Fashion Mall and Central World. We got jeans and t-shirts, and gifts for the nieces and nephews. Then we saw the BFG… what a nice movie.

That night we went to one of the open air restaurants near our hotel that was always filled with locals. I had minced chicken with morning glory and a fried egg, and sticky rice. Scott had papaya salad (duh). Really nice and really cheap.

And then we went for one final Thai massage, at the vigorous place. It was great.

July 21: Relaxed morning and then packed our bags to fly home. :'(

I really enjoyed Bangkok this time. I have been there a few times before but this time we really crammed in a lot of fun activities and it ended up being really great. Plus it seemed easier to do things? I’m not sure if it’s because the city has changed or I am just less young/inexperienced. But yeah for the most part it was way easier to get taxis, directions, information, and use public transit, and I don’t think we really got scammed at all either. Success!

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July 2nd – July 16th, 2016

Perhaps I was a bit ambitious trying to get all the way from Berlin to Phuket, and then Phuket to Ko Samui (by land/boat) all in one continuous trip. It ended up being a VERY long trip.

  1. metro and bus to the airport (0.75 hr)
  2. fly to Cologne (1 hr)
  3. fly to Phuket (12 hr)
  4. go through immigrations (2 hr)
  5. airport bus to bus station #1 (1.5 hr)
  6. truck to bus station #2 (0.25 hr)
  7. bus to Surat Thani (4 hr)
  8. bus to ferry terminal (1 hr)
  9. ferry to Ko Samui (2 hr)
  10. taxi to hotel (0.75 hr)

Total: 25.25 hours. Yeah… a bit much with all those steps. At least it was cheap?!

But we made it to the fancy boutique hotel in Lamai in time for my 30th birthday the next day. Birthday morning I got woken up by Scott grabbing my foot from the door and yelling “THERE’S ONLY 15 MINUTES OF BREAKFAST LEFT!!”. What a wakeup.

The breakfast was amazing. Breakfast each day started with fresh juice and a platter of fruit (mango, watermelon, dragon fruit etc.), then pastries and pancakes with amazing homemade jams (passionfruit, raspberry, lemon etc.) and ham and cheese slices. Then they would make you an omelette or plain eggs with bacon or potatoes.

We got a much needed post-Camino foot scrub, and then I went for a fancy birthday massage on the hotel rooftop. We lazed around in the pool/beach/AC all day, with Scott making me a new cocktail he invented: The Belt Buckle (passionfruit nectar and champagne).

We had dinner at the hotel. We shared papaya salad, and Scott had satay (which we later realized has quite a bit of coconut milk in it and is therefore on the banned list) and I had a chicken and cashew dish. It was all nice but the best part was that Scott had organized an amazing chocolate birthday cake for dessert. It was SO GOOD. Then after dinner the hotel people surprised us with one of those giant paper lanterns to set off. Pretty sure it’s still flying to this day.

After a few days at the fancy hotel we moved on to Chaweng. We went to the beach every day to swim and read. There was a lady on the beach selling chilled mango and teeny tiny bananas. The mangoes were SOOOOO good, I never used to like them that much but now I can’t get enough.

Scott got a foot massage that made his baby toe turn purple and swell up. Bahaha. We took a break from massages for a bit after that.

One of the highlights of Ko Samui was taking a cooking course. It was so well organized, and we learned a lot about the ingredients. The actual cooking part took about 1 minute per dish in the super hot woks. We made shrimp salad, panang curry paste, panang curry, and pad see ew with pork. I liked the panang the most.

Ko Samui was a bit too city for my liking so the next day we took the ferry to Haad Rin on Ko Phangan. We purposely avoided going during full moon, so there weren’t many people around, and the beach was lovely.

One day we went on a snorkelling trip around the north part of Ko Phangan. It was cloudy and windy, so the snorkelling wasn’t life changing, but it was still nice to get out. There were lots of different types of colourful fish. And we saw monkeys on the drive back! They were sitting up on the power lines. V cool.

Haad Rin was nice but it got a bit noisy at night, so we moved onwards to Ban Tai. We found an awesome shack restaurant that was super cheap and delicious, and our hotel had a very nice pool, so we were set for a few more days.

Favourite foods at the moment:

  • Mango shakes. Pretty much daily.
  • Mango crepe. With nutella and condensed milk.
  • Papaya salad. This was one of the only foods that Scott could eat in Thailand, since almost everything else was fried, or made with coconut milk. Good thing it’s a delicious dish.
  • Spicy fruit salad. This was the other thing that Scott could eat. It had dragon fruit, pineapple, apple, tomato, green beans, shredded carrot and peanuts in a chili fish sauce sauce.

There was also a night market that we could walk to that had all sorts of cheap food stands. Scott was able to eat bbq chicken skewers and I had things like curry puffs, samosas and spring rolls.

After a few days of relaxation in Ban Thai we continued on to Bangkok via ferry and bus.

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June 28th – July 1st, 2016

For some reason every single hotel, hostel and AirBnb in Berlin was booked for 2 out of 3 nights we wanted to stay, so we had to come up with a new plan. Instead we decided to kill a couple nights in Rostock, Germany.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do there but at least our AirBnb was nice and the internet strong. It rained a lot. We had a nice dinner in the big square, at a restaurant that actually had stuff that Scott could eat. I played a lot of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, and we watched the one DVD the host had in her flat… Shrek.

In an attempt to maximize what we could see in Berlin in one day, we decided to finally take one of those hop-on-hop-off tourist buses that we had seen in every single other city in Europe.

It ended up being a terrible idea because the bus moved so slowly, stopped all the time for very long periods, and the commentary was pretty awful. Plus you couldn’t even see stuff that well since you’re so far away. Sigh. It ended up taking almost 4 hours to do the circuit that was supposed to take 2. Won’t be doing that again!

Once we finally got off the bus we went to Checkpoint Charlie and the Holocaust Memorial. It’s such a unique monument. At least we got to see that close up.

And then after that we met up with Daniel (Erb), who I used to work with at the Queen Vic Market. We had Turkish food, then went to a humongous beer garden that was showing the Euro. It was great catching up with him again. He loves living in Berlin!

And that was that for Europe! The next morning we started the journey to Thailand, our last country of the trip.