Welcome to Thailand

We left Kota Bharu yesterday and took a taxi to the border. We filled our papers and crossed the bridge to go thru Thailand customs. Then a nice local muslim gave us a ride to the train station with his three wheels home made motor bike. 

At the entrance of the train station some army guys with guns were filtering the crowd and were patroling in the station... I was wondering why...

We had to wait for the second train trip leaving at 2.30pm so I went for a walk in the not so clean border town, Sungai Kolok. I bought some ramboutan (45 cents USD/kg) and logan (1.5 USD/kg). By buying a plastic bag, I ended up giving a pronunciation-reading lesson to the owner daughters whom are going to participate to a speech contest very soon. I spent an hour with them... I learn a little bit more about the town, that they have terrorism, murder, drug traffic and bomb attack, which got me a little worry for a second but I had a good time and I forgot about it very fast. They offer me thai candies for my help and some water. 

30 minutes before getting in the Express train, we found out that the southern line we were on had been bombed several time and was shoot.... pretty crazy and a bit scary, sometimes it's good to not know too much about were you are going !!! 

Some friendly military with guns boarded with us and I understand why they were all around... to protect us from the terrorists. I heard that the people that are bombing the trains are separatists muslim, they want to have their own country and not belong to Thailand anymore. I saw muslim womans in black with their face covered for the first time in Kota Bharu and Sungai Kolok, it's pretty impressive. 

We were in the 2nd class sleeper cabin and they were very comfortable, with a lot of muslim, ouf !!! We thought they were going to put all the tourist together to make it a better target.... Once we past the south part of Thailand, more and more food seller were boarding and inviting us to buy their product. 

We arrived after all safe and in one piece in Bangkok. We took the cab and had a difficult time with the driver as he wanted to charge us 7USD instead without turning his meter on. He got upset when we told him to turn on the meter but we ended up paying the real price... 2 USD. 

Seems like people working with tourist in Bangkok are not happy with what they are doing and they aren't very pleasant, never smile or say a nice word, they are all about your money and if you don't buy right away or ask too many questions they start to speak in Thai, complain and have their bad face... 

Tonight we have a room in Pahtit, a "safe" area in Bangkok, for 22 USD. Fried rice or noodle cost around 1 USD. It's right by the most touristy part of the town, Kao San Road. It's full of tourist, tailors, silver seller and wedding dress shoppes.

We met some friends from USA, Myrna, and Chile, Ximena in the street and we are going to Cambodia to visit the Angor Wat temple.

A bientot,

Take care

POema

In Malaysia

Hi everybody,

I haven't been a very good blogger since Indonesia and I apologize for not writing anything since then. I will try to summarize our Indonesian trip later... 

We left Singapore today and rode the train for 16 hours to reach Malaysia border town to Thailand, Noah's first train ride !!! 

We went thru Singapore and crossed the bridge to Malaysia. We paid in total 29 USD for today's trip.

We slept a lot during the train ride, comfortable seats and air conditioning. The "Jungle train ride" was good, nothing spectacular though. The jungle (from the train) is not that impressive and sadly they are replacing the original forest by palm trees and rubber trees plantations.

The population is mostly muslim here and it feels weird to see that it kind of make the women (mostly) look the same, from Indonesia all the way to Malaysia, leaving them without any cultural specificity. The same thing is happening to the nature, by turning the orignal and full of life jungle into a monotone palm tree plantation... 

We are in Kota Bharu for the night. On the way to the hotel we saw our world tour companion, Mac Donald... 

Take care

Poema

 

Bali

Notre periple a Bali-Lombok et Java

Bisou

Poema

Bye Bye Australia

Hi everybody,

We are flying out tomorrow to Indonesia. We sold our car at the last minute to some very nice Tongans. We are really happy about it because it goes to polynesians and I really liked them. Their will be 4 of them sleeping in the car when they go to work out of Perth to pick fruits. We spent the afternoon with Bunny, we are so much the same, open hearts and happy, it gave me more energy for the rest of the trip.

We arrived in Perth 4 days ago and we stayed with Meike, my german friend I met in Sydney at the beginning of our trip, at her uncle's and aunty's house, Fritz and Suzanne. They are very nice people and being able to have somewhere to stay after selling our house car is really helpful. What makes it even nicer is the beautiful garden they have, full of flowers, hibiscus, monette, palm trees, roses, plumeria... 

We got time to see more of Perth too, while waiting for some potential buyer. We visited 3 museums which was really interesting. 

Perth is our favorite Australian city, not too busy, with a lot of parks and roses gardens, water in the middle and not too cold. We saw a lot of aboriginal with white Australians which warmed my heart as I can see a better future for Australia.

English and Australians people call the country's strongest beer "the wife beater"... Their favorite and national food is meat pie.... Oh, they also eat french fries with white vinegar... I have to try that some day.

Poema

Western Australia

Yallingup, 17^th of April 2009

It’s been a while since I haven’t wrote anything about our trip around the world.  We are in Yallingup, Western Australia since 2 weeks. We stayed in Perth the first night we got in WA to get our India visa.

Perth is built around the water. It is a very nice artsy city where buildings are growing faster than weeds, sculptures are left on the beach,  bus stops are colorfull, a ferris wheel takes tourist in the air and Le Cirque du Soleil spread its magic in the middle of the town… We followed the train line to go South and find the waves. Land is for sale everywhere and gated communities are growing all along the highway.

Religious campsites welcome us as we enter the Cape to Cape area. We started our wave search from Cape Naturaliste, then drove all the way down to Margaret River. Trees spread theirs branch to give cars shade, grapes are waiting to be picked under their veils, the sun comes up and slowly pours her golden light over the earth, the car shakes as we drive on the dirt road, rabbits run away to hide. Down the cliff the waves are breaking, red rocks emerge from the sand and cut the beach line, my feet are numb walking in cold sand. 20 minutes walk get us to Noah's favorite spot, a nice right and left peak wave. 

Noah bumped into a friend of ours, Daniel. He is Brazilian and have been living around the Pacific for the past 10 years. He's spending some time here in Western Australia surfing and enjoying the place. We hang out with him everyday. His house mates are Australians, Lyndall and Adele, they became our friends from the first night. Lyndall works at a winery and we get free wine every night, which Adele and I enjoy !

I met Claudia thru Daniel, she is a Brazilian-Austrian yoga teacher living in Australia for few years now. We became very good friends and she teaches me yoga everyday of the week. I'm learning about raw food with her and discovering a new culinary world. 

We are coming to the end of our Australian trip and selling our car. I feel sad about selling our Australian house and leaving my new friends but at the same time I'm very excited that we are going to be in a new country very soon.

Poema