Shane Travels

I made it to Koh Pha Nagn on Thursday April 24, 2008. Unfortunately It was raining and it’s been raining steady and hard since then. It seems to have finally cleared up today. I decided to get a room in Hat Rin for the last couple of days… since there are more distractions available during rainy weather. Today, I’m packing up and heading to either Hat Yuan or a couple of the beaches at the north of the island.

It’s low season, so i’m trying to do my best to find cabs and boat rides with others to defer the cost; however this may not always be possible, which is the reason I’m considering the northern beaches over Hat Yuan. The northern beaches can be reached by Taxi and then by foot.

I met a couple of nice people from Belgium and the Netherlands, Nikol (sp?) and Maidlieve (sp?) respectively, who I had a wonderful conversation with during the rainy afternoon yesterday. They are on a two week vacation, so I think they were a little more upset by the weather than I was.

I also managed to polish off a couple of books in the last couple of days: “The Emperor’s Children”, which I thought was good, but not great and I’m almost through with “No Country for Old Men”, which is just as I expected it to be. It’s amazing how closely the movie sticks to the novel, but perhaps it’s not that surprising considering the sparsness of McCarthy’s writing. It’s a much more enjoyable read than “The Road”.

I’m going to pick up a couple more books today before I head to the northern beaches. I’ll try to post some pictures when I get back from the northern beaches. I”m not sure what internet access will be available up North, but if you see new posts, then it worked out… otherwise the next posts will be when i get back.

shane

Having been in Bangkok for a few days now, I think I’m ready to move on. The tourist area here in Bangkok is extremely tourist friendly, but reminds me of a perpetual spring break. Except that instead of going to the beach during the day you visit various temples and sights around Bangkok.

I visited the Grand Palace on my first day here and the Wat Pho yesterday with Lise. It’s really a lot to absorb in both cases. Of the two sites I found Wat Pho more appealing as it seemed less formal to me and there were fewer tourists to contend with. It seemed more like a working temple, especially with the children’s school on the grounds (the basketball and soccor nets give it away).

IMHO the reclining Buddha, at Wat Pho, is by far the most interesting thing to visit at either site. I need to do some reading to find out what came first the statue or the temple building. Can anyone shed light on that for me

Lise and I spent last night on a bit of a pub crawl, people watching along Koh San and the various side streets. I’m paying for one or two extra beers this morning, but nothing that a couple of bottles of water and lime shake won’t cure

I’m going to spend today booking my flight to Ko Samui and getting my gear back in order. I’ll also try and pick up a SIM card today, something that I haven’t bothered with yet.

I’ve been writing in my personal journal over breakfasts… I haven’t kept a journal like that in a long time, but so far I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s usually a great coversation starter as well

ok… time for breakfast

shane

Hi Guys,

First and foremost I want to say thankyou to a couple of people who really helped me in the last few minutes get my shit together.

Nirav - For the travel connection (I got what I think is a great deal for the flight to Bangkok and the return from Beijing)
Tom and Sarah - For getting me drunk (ok tipsy) the night prior to my departure
Topher and Peter - For buying / borrowing a lot of my key stuff… Leila I promise not to offer Topher any more stuff
Ryan - For helping sell my car
Joe and Lois - (My parents) For being supportive of my trip in general, for taking on the task of completing the sale of my house and just generally looking after the remnants of my life in Milton. Special thanks to Mom… for being Mom

Ok… so let’s get started.

The flight from Toronto to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific was excellent. I didn’t get much sleep, but did watch several movies. This airline has a great entertainment on demand system, so that you really can’t get bored. Check out the “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”… I caught this on the flight and this is definitely the best film I’ve seen in years.

The flight was great, but the landing was a bit scary. There was bad weather in Hong Kong and a lot of turbulence during the descent and landing. In fact the weather was so bad that my connected flight to Bangkok was delayed for a couple of hours until it was safe to take off.

I arrived in Bangkok around 2 hours late and made my way through customs and baggage claim, then headed out to find the public bus… but gave up and found a touristy bus going direct to Koh San Rd. This was probably a good idea as I ended up meeting a couple of fellow travellers on the Bus and we ended up sharing a room last night. My fellow travellers are Lise from Belgium and Alex from Romania. Alex is headed back to the UK (where he works) tomorrow, but I suspect that Lise and I will stay at our current guest house for at least another night.

The guest house where we are staying “New Siam GH 3″ has nice rooms… some of the other places we checked out were not nice at all… so I’m glad we ended up with a room with good beds / bedding and AC

After finding a place to stay last night we headed out for beers (for me) and fruit smoothies for them. Of course at that point I hadn’t slept properly in over 24 Hours…but amazingly I was hitting my stride… most likely because it was around 11:00AM in toronto. It’s definitely going to take me some time to get my internal clock adjusted.

As Leila indicated to me in an email, you are quickly covered in a film of sweat in Bangkok. I suspect I’ll be taking a few showers a day until I being to acclimatize to the heat. I’m writing this at around 6:30-7:00 AM local time and already I’m coated.

anyway… glad to be here and looking forward to not having a plan

shane

ok… so lot’s of prep has now been completed and I’m basically ready to go. I’m pretty nervous, but excited at the same time. I’m about to turn over my computer to a friend… so this post will be short and poorly written

here goes nothing

shane

Hi Guys,

What do you think of the following? Does that work?

Anyone want to buy a house?

shane

I spoke to Visa and my bank today regarding how to avoid fees when making withdrawals and or purchases in foreign countries. It turns out that where I’m going, for ATM withdrawals or for Visa cash advances, they charge a 5 dollar fee for each transaction… and they also take a percentage on the currency conversion….

In addition, paying with visa seems to be better than debit as they take an extra dollar for each transaction when you pay with debit.

I’m curious what others have done to reduce the impact of fees while traveling. If you have any ideas let me know.

shane