Vang Vieng

After a long day, we arrived in Vang Vieng to a beautiful sunset and a cold bottle of Beer Lao but not to the bungalow we wished to find. We spent perhaps an hour crossing and recrossing the Nam Song river to find a bungalow by the river but to no avail. BUT we have found a $3 a night guesthouse - with a bathroom (hot water included) and will move on tomorrow.

We had a wonderful christmas, but perhaps the weirdest one ever. We woke early to have our free breakfast in the hotel, and then returned to bed (a little hungover from xmas eve drinkies) until about 1pm. Hard to move when cable tv has such excellent movies non-stop!

We had booked into the novotel for xmas lunch and arrived at 2pm, only to be told that, at 2.30, they were closing! EAT EAT EAT! Turkey, roast pork, chicken, even steak and duck a la orange for our xmas feast! And yule logs and lots of handmade choccies for dessert. AND we even forked out for a bottle of their cheapest fizzy stuff so that it'd be a bit more special. Was great fun.

But, here's the interesting bit, we decided we hadn't had enough fun so at about 10pm, we found that our hotel had a karoake bar so we of course booked ourselves a private karoake room and sung until they chucked us out at midnight. Weird huh? HA HA HA! We have some great video of us singing all the great tunes... November Rain by GNR, Burning Love by Elvis, and of course The Power of Love by Huey Lewis! Was so much fun!

But here we are now in Vang Vieng by the river Nam Song, in a beautiful location and we're looking forward to getting on an inner tube and floating down the river for a few hours tomorrow.

To those of you who we didn't contact for christmas, hope you had an awesome time and got lots of great presents.

Lots of love from us both.
Kxxx

Wedding news

Well. It's us (Tom the lazy non-blogger as well). We have exciting news. As you all know, we're engaged. And being engaged means at some stage, you get married. We'd always thought it would be 2009, however, the UK government are insisting that we get hitched within 6 months of us landing in England, so that I can become a citizen as Tom's wife.

So. June/July 2008 in England somewhere we will tie the knot, followed by an Aussie wedding soon thereafter (soon as possible depending on our financial situation - weddings are not cheap!)

However, everyone is invited to both weddings and if anyone in Oz wants to come over, start saving!

Bit of a bombshell, we know, but we really hope you can all make it to one or both. Lucky us - we get to have 2 weddings!

Hope everyone has a lovely Christmas. Love to you all.

PS - I'll be wearing more clothes than this.... Tom probably wont!

PHOTOS (finally!)

I've finally got myself together to post some photos... here's some labels for them:

1. A long tail boat in our beach in Hat Khom on the north end of Koh Pha Ngan
2. Tom, Christian (awesome new friend from Germany), Neal & Sian (Londonites), Ryan and Lisa (amazing Canadian couple) - lots of fun times with the crew and Chang beer
3. Coral in the water just outside our hut
4. Tom with python in Bangkok snake farm.... he is still sh!tthing himself
5. Best photo ever of fireworks over our beach
6. Fishies

Hope all our loved ones are gearing up for a safe, merry and boozy christmas. We are missing you all very much...

Love and hugs and mulled wine for you all

Kxxx

Ko Pha Ngan

Hi All

We are currently in Koh Pha Ngan - a small island on the east coast of thailand and, whilst it's amazing, the weather has not been so great for us here. But that has not dampened our spirits!

We've been here since Tuesday and have really not done much at all. We're both nursing small hangovers today after we drank buckets (yes, the stories are true!) of whisky and coke and then passed out at 2 this morning with some lovely English people (Sian and Neal) and Canadian people (Lisa and Ryan). Bloody hell. But we've pulled up well and have hired a scooter to explore this amazing island. We've had a great day and this scooter is way better than the one we had on Ko CHang.

The place we are staying is incredible - we are right on the water over some rocks from which we launch ourselves for the most amazing snorkelling ever - we've seen sting rays, clown fish, massive schools of grey and yellow fish, a huge puffer fish and countless more. The water is so clear and warm and it's literally 10m from our house where we are swinmming amongst coral and tropical fish. Lush! We have pics (as we have an underwater camera) so we'll upload some soon.

Anyway all, hope you're all getting excited for xmas - we'll be in Vientiane in Laos for chrissy - splurging on a more expensive hotel and going to the Novotel for traditional lunch (if I can ever book the damn thing!) It will just be Tom and I but I figure we'll have a lovely time together!

Love to you all.

Kxxxxx

I'm a lazy, no blogging, long haired traveler...

Hi guys!

It's me the silent non-blogger from the Tom and Karen team here!
A few people have recently said "when the hell are you going to do a post yourself, you lazy bastard", so here it is...

Right, so we're now in Bangkok and have just returned from a week of beaching it up on Ko Chang. For those of you who haven't been there GO RIGHT NOW! That is one amazing place. Ko Chang is a small island south-east of Bangkok by about 5.5 hours and lies in the gulf of Thailand. It has water that is a lovely light blue and really clear, with white sand etc. you know freakin' beautiful... There's a picture Karen took out of our window on here that shows how close we were to the beach!

We're going to be in Bangkok till Monday (to collect Karen's visa- very exciting), then heading south to Ko Pan ngan for more beaches and beer. Then after a couple of weeks of that we're heading north through Thailand to Vientiane, Loas (where we'll spend Christmas). From there the current plan is to go north to Luang Prabang, then east towards Vietnam and then south ending up in Ho Chi Minh city (formerly Saigon) and from there we'll fly back to the UK in Feb'.

Phew! All that guff now written, I can tell you that we're a little bit homesick (no damn white Christmas in Asia, at least not where we are), but still loving it! Thailand is absolutely amazing and we're really looking forward to seeing more of it! After India it seems like a country of much money and is a real culture shock, but great!

So there you go, finally a second blog from this half of the wondaring pair. Hope you are all very good and I'll try not to let another 47 years alapse before my next blog. Loads of love,

Tom.

P.s. My hair is now really long (hasn't been cut since before we left Oz!).

Koh Chang

Hey all

We're still in Koh Chang soaking up the sun and working hard on our tans. It's a hard life. But we have done some adventuring around - we hired a scooter and explored the south of the island, and we also hired a kayak for two hours yesterday and paddled out 2km to a small island which we explored like Robinson Crusoe.

Today, we are going to read a book, intermittently disturbed by swims in the turquoise waters and a possible sleep this afternoon.

Bliss!

But, we have a problem. Because we will be on the road for christmas, we are still unsure of where to stay. We want somewhere a bit more fancy (than a hut on the beach with no bathroom!) but it looks like most hotels are booked. Eeek! Any ideas fellow travellers?

Anyway, love to you all.

Kxx

Ko Chang

Well, here we are in the lovely island paradise of Ko Chang. And it's amazing.

We spent two days in Bangkok before realising that we needed to get away to the islands, so we hopped on a bus (buses here are incredibly efficient and confortable) over to the Trat province, where we stayed last night before getting up this morning and heading here, to Ko Chang.

It's bloody LUSH!

We caught a big ol' ferry across and have arrived today to a beautiful clear sky, white sand beaches and a lovely lunch of Tom Yum soup and Pad Thai noodles. In a couple of hours, we plan to have beers on a platform in the coconut palms, overlooking the sun setting over the ocean in front of us. And we plan to enjoy it.

Thailand has been getting better and better. Whilst it's a bit more expensive than India, it's still very cheap (we stayed in a cool place last night for $4 a night!) And there is one small blip on my happiness... I bunged my back this morning lugging my backpack onto my back. I'm going to throw some stuff out. I will do this! So poor old Tom has been carrying mine and his all morning.... he's a lovely chap!

Anyway, things here are good. I really like Thailand and if you haven't been, I recommend coming for a visit.

Take it easy folks.

Kxx