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The Countdown

Cape Town, South Africa


Loving Noordhoek

This is our first blog entry...yahoo! We are in Cape Town at the moment, seeing the family off, doing the Argus, and making last minute plans for our trip... We leave on the 16th March 2009 for an 8 month extravaganza: we plan to backpack around the world through southeast asia, china, Japan, south america and africa!

We finished work on the 27th of Feb, moved out of our house, put our stuff into storage and are preparing to say a somewhat sad goodbye to The Comfortable Life, and a rather nervous hello to The World.


Chapman's sunset


Nothing better than icecream on a day like this


Fish Hoek swim


Argus spirit


Argus agony


Argus fever

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 7, 2009 from Cape Town, South Africa
from the travel blog: wherearesteveandlisa's Travel Blog
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The Big Pack

Johannesburg, South Africa

Well we're back in Jozi and have noticed a few changes in our thought patterns for a regular Thursday morning...

Instead of wondering this: We're thinking this:
What will the traffic be like this morning? / What will 80% humidity be like?
Which parking bay? / Which malaria tablets?
What time is that meeting? / How will we keep the time?
How many kids do I need to put up with today? / How many t-shirts can I fit in my bag?
When can I go get lunch? / When will I get used to wearing khaki?
Woolies caesar salad or woolies couscous salad? / Hiking boots or off-road trainers?
Mmmmm that Urban dress..... / Mmmm that gortex rain jacket....
How will I fit all this in my day? / How will I fit all this in my bag????


How will we fit this in our bags?

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 12, 2009 from Johannesburg, South Africa
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A sweaty 'sa wat dee' from phuket

Phuket, Thailand


all ready to go
We arrived at our backpackers yesterday after a sweaty walk from the bus terminal (wishing we HAD halved the amount of stuff in our bags before we left).

our luxury aircon room

backpacker garden with hammocks
Phuket town is crammed with motorcycles, street stalls selling packets of noodles, household items, birds in cages, bunnies and other unidentified stuff.

one of the many 'spirit houses' outside thai houses
It reminds us a little of Stonetown in Zanzibar.


motorbikes motorbikes

Our street
Yesterday we only managed to explore it enough to find ourselves dinner from a market around the corner before passing out for a good 12 hours! Today we took a walk out of town and ended up at a nice restaurant with a view of Phuket town,

view from 'phuket view restuarant'

the cokes that blew our budget
and finally managed to see the sea, and blew our budget on 2 delicious cokes, so its toast and jam tonight! Tomorrow we hope to move to Kata beach and swim swim swim.

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 18, 2009 from Phuket, Thailand
from the travel blog: wherearesteveandlisa's Travel Blog
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And no 'sanuk' in Surat Thani!

Surat Thani, Thailand

We've finally found a space and time to update our blog! We are in Bangkok, in the infamous khao san road backpacker paradise, and it is monsooning outside, so we're taking refuge in here... To fill you in on the last 10 days...wow!
We headed back to Phuket town by local bus (which looks like the 'dala dala' in Tanzania) and walked to the bus station to buy tickets to Surat Thani, where we would catch a boat to the island of Ko Phag Nan. And for the next 48 hours we got to experience what it is to be a tourist in Thailand, and be at the mercies of people who know a whole lot more than you, especially about making money... We wanted the cheaper ordinary bus, but got told there were none, so we bought the aircon bus ticket, only to see a few minutes later that we had been lied to! When we arrived in Surat Thani at 6pm we were called off the bus, with the only other two 'farangs' (white people) and lead to a 'tourist information office' which we later realised was just one of many tour middle man companies trying to sell you tickets to the island. We had planned to catch the 11pm ferry that night (again to save money) but were told the ferry was not going that night due to bad weather (it was raining so we were not sure whether this was a lie too), and that we must stay the night in a hotel the tourist lady could recommend and buy a combined bus/ boat ticket on the express boat the next day. After our previous experience we were reluctant, and decided to investigate a little further. We ended up finding the same hotel the lady had recommended, at almost half the price! But when we opened our bags we realised that Steven had had his only pair of long pants, as well as his flip flops stolen out his bag! We think it must have happened while our bags were in the luggage hold of the bus :( So we were pretty bummed about that.


permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 30, 2009 from Surat Thani, Thailand
from the travel blog: wherearesteveandlisa's Travel Blog
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Our Ko Phangan spot o' paradise

Ko Phangan, Thailand

Anyhow the next day we had to buy the expensive tourist boat ticket as no one would tell us how to get to the local pier so we could catch the ferry, and finally got to our destination, quite grumpy really!

Express Boat to Ko Phangan

Needless to say our 'happy-to-be-travell-o-meter' was only sitting at about a 2 out of 5... It very soon shot up to a 4 though once we found our little wooden bungalow and beach... We spent 2 nights here at Haad Gruad resort, and snorkelled at Ao Mae Hat beach, (really lovely coral and fish actually!)


Haad Gruad resort


Ao Mae Hat


Pool at Haad Gruad resort

The next day we started our best experience so far for both of us; we caught a longtail boat to Bottle Beach which is a small, quiet beach on the north of Ko Phag Nan, and only accessible by boat and found a beachfront bungalow 41 steps from the sea! First thing we did (besides diving into the turquoise sea) was buy a hammock and string it up right on our front patio. The next 3 days went something like this: Wake up, swim, lie in hammock reading, swim, hammock, swim hammock..........such bliss! We had finally found our spot o' paradise and it was rather hard to leave...


Longtail boat trip to Bottle Beach


View from our bungalow


Beachfront bungalow


41 steps to the sea!


Longtail boat



Dinner on the beach



permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 30, 2009 from Ko Phangan, Thailand
from the travel blog: wherearesteveandlisa's Travel Blog
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back to surat thani

Surat Thani, Thailand

boat back to Surat thani

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 30, 2009 from Surat Thani, Thailand
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Bangkok, Thailand



permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 31, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand
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Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand


Bangkok Dinner

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on March 31, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand
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Cambodia

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We arrived yesterday.

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on April 2, 2009 from Siem Reap, Cambodia
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Cambodia

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We arrived yesterday.

permalink written by  wherearesteveandlisa on April 2, 2009 from Siem Reap, Cambodia
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