Trip home to Oz.

January 18th, 2008 by hill
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hill

Hello one and all and welcome to the rebirth of The Blog! Its been a while since the last post but I’m going to try and keep you more or less up to date with things in Barcelona, and hope that in return you might post a comment or question from time to time, just so we know you are reading the posts! Photo links are posted at the end of this post!

We got back to Barcelona the day before yesterday after a long trip from Thailand. More on that in a bit….the trip to Sydney was a whirlwind, to say the least, and frankly, despite us enjoying every nano second of the trip, the decision to break up the return journey with 9 days in Thailand was the best decision we made last year!

It was great to see everyone that we saw and sorry to those who we missed. The little things like coffee at Zivellis in Lance Cove, fresh milk, drinkable tap water and easy conversation with old friends and close family were definitely the highlights.

We enjoyed a few nights in Lane Cove before spending the leadup to Xmas eve in Croydon. Having not lived at ‘my place’ for nearly 6 years, it felt strange but comfy to be back in my old room and my old bed.

One of the tasks I had to complete in Croydon was sorting through all my belongings- Mum and Dad are looking at selling the family house in 2008 so it may have been my last time there forever :(

I never actually got to complete the sorting by packing up what I wanted to keep (sorry mum and dad) but it was enjoyable to flick through old school diaries, letters sent from school friends in class and old books I enjoyed as a kid. Meeeemories…..!!!

Christmas eve was celebrated in Croydon with the traditional Twigg family dinner. Very European thing, but very handy in dividing up family time. Dinner was all the traditional favorites- roast pork, lamb, bacon, bloodsausage, spuds and some Estonian salads, plus a few with an Aussie twist. I was the proud creator of a mango and sweet chilli salsa which was a hit.

Adrian impressed us all by dressing up for the occasion, looking very swanky indeed, and despite the early start (6:30pm), it was well after midnight when the event wrapped up and Alex and I drove up to Avoca on the Central Coast to celebrate Xmas with the holts.

Xmas at Avoca was very relaxing. We enjoyed baked trout, courtesy of Neil, and some lovely fresh salads and fruit. (Does it seem strange to you that the details of what we ate are included in my breakdown of events?!!)

Despite having looked forward to having a surf at Avoca for 18 months, we were disappointed that there was none. Quite literally, it was flat as a tac. But we did enjoy a few good swims (Bar a nasty incident with a couple of blue bottles) and Alex proved he still has what it takes when he and Neil had to swim out into a rip to rescue three kids who were hitching a ride on the NZ Express!

Whilst up the coast we enjoyed a visit from mum and dad on Boxing day, and one from Adrian and Jess a couple of days later. Sale shopping, a few G &Ts and company of Mitch and Anna (old coast friends) made the few days we had there fly by very pleasantly.

The last week in Sydney was crazy and crammed full of more visits, lunches and events, culminating in a very relaxed BBQ at the Holts on the Saturday before we flew out (thanks guys for making this possible!)

THe next morning we flew on to Bangkok quite early, arriving in the big smoke mid afternoon. We went strait to Hua Lompong, the main train station as the plan was to travel south to Krabi provence ASAP and catch a boat out to Koh Phi Phi, where we spent 10 days in Island Paradise at the end of our trip to Nepal and Cambodia in 2003.

We arrived to find all the train sleepers fully booked for the next two nights. So we opted for the “VIP Bus” option and put ourselves through a not-very-comfortable 12 hour bus ride (this is after a 6am start, 8 hour flight and 5 hours between Bangkok airport and the station).

We arrived in the town of Surat Thani at 4am where we waited around for 2 hours for our connecting bus to Krabi. 3 hours later we were dropped off in Krabi town and told we had a 5 hour wait for the bus that would take us to the ferry.

We walked into Krabi town, enjoyed some Pad Thai and a look around some interesting shops and markets in the village and sent off a couple of emails. Finally 5 am rolled round and we were taken to the wharf to find that the ferry was already full and wed have to wait “10 minutes” for another one that would come and take us to Phi Phi. 45 minutes later the ferry shows up and we have 1.5 hours ride to Phi Phi Island.

On arrival, we jumped into the nearest longtail boat and went to the other side of the island to Rantee Beach, arriving with about 20 minutes of daylight before it was dark. We were delighted to discover that the same guest house we stayed in- Rantee Hut- was still there and yes they had a room.

In 2003 we payed 150 baht (about 4 dollars AUD) for a basic bungalow, This time we paid 1000 for the “fancy” Bungalow which included a fan, outdoor shower and private toilet. The first two nights, however the generator was broken so we had to move around by candlelight, which we didn’t mind at all.

We were quite curious as to how the island had changed since the Boxing Day Tsunami, one year after we were there. Turns out the water did rise on Rantee, but as the beach faced perpendicular the the main part of the island it was largely protected and only rose as high as the floor of the wooden restaurant and they escaped any major damage. No one was injured on that side of the island either.

None the less, the old Ranteeman Family (as they liked to be known) had all left the island since 2001, being afraid of the ocean. The new crew were very nice and made us feel welcome.

The bad news was that the owner of the land had recently sold Rantee Beach to developers and in a few days time, people were arriving to clear the land and all the lovely thatch Bungalows to make way for a fancy resort with swimming pool and spa.

Apart from being shocked and saddened by yet another example of exploiting a pristine natural “rustic” environment, we were stunned to think that if we had planned our trip just a few days later than when we arrived, we would have missed out on staying on Rantee one last time.

We spent day one eating yummy thai food and snorkeling straight off the beach. Alex made good use of the little restaurant library’s array of trashy sci-fi novels while I read Eric Claptons recently released autobiography (Thanks Natalia!). This book comes very highly recommended as a honest and interesting insight into the extraordinary events of his life and the music industry at the time. He really is an icon, and now I want to find footage of all his old school concerts to see him in action, having read about his private turmoil at that point in time.

On the second day we hiked up the vertical track leading to the lookout to take some pics and visit the main town on the island Ton Sai. Having read reports that the idea was to not over develop the island in the wake of the tsunami we were surprised to find so many ongoing constructions, albeit looking much better than it did in 2003.

We had lunch and talked to a couple of SCUBA diving shops to try and organize some diving in the following days before catching a longtail back to Rantee.

The next two days we dived in local spots that are reached with a speedboat, the furthest being about an hour and a half ride away into the middle of the ocean. Highlights of the diving were firstly, just getting back into the water and feeling that unbelievable sensation of weightlessness.

Other highlights were coming face to face with a giant manta ray (about 5 meters in diameter), a leopard shark, lionfish, moray eels and giant sea turtle. We also completed our first wreak dive- the Kind Cruiser was deliberately sunk in the 80s when it sprung a leak. No one died in the sinking but it was still pretty spooky to be swimming through dark tunnels. The old toilets which remain intact with lids are a bit of a novelty to open up and see whats hiding inside.

I was pleased to discover that my rate of air consumption was by the second day, exactly on par with the dive master, meaning in theory, I can control my breathing and buoyancy well enough to double my dive times, buddy permitting. Alex was still a bit of an air guzzeler but showed great improvement by the second day.

AFter two days of diving we had one more full day at leisure on Rantee beach before the long journey back to Bangkok. This time we had booked ahead a first class sleeper carriage on the train from Surat Thani which was much more comfortable and allowed us to get some sleep on the overnight ride back to Bangers.

When we did arrive in Bangkok we had the day until our flight at 12:10pm midnight so we checked our luggage into the left luggage area of the station and caught a tuktuk into town to check out the shopping area of Khao San Rd. We wandered around and bought a few things, ate lunch and spent a couple of hours sitting on the street watching life pass by while Alex got his dreadlocks fixed by two Thai guys.

I wont bore you with the times and distances of the return journey but safe to say we were glad to be back in Barcelona. Im already back at work which has been depressing and comforting at the same time. It did actually feel as though we had arrived ‘home’ and everything around us feels familiar and comfortable.

I expect we’ll taking the coming weekend easy and try to get back into local time a bit more (were currently going to bed at 9pm, exhausted!

Here are some photos on my facebook account of Australia and Thailand incase you’re interested (and NO, you DON”T need a facebook account to view them, although I highly recommend you join. Its a great way to keep in touch with people).

xx
Hillary and Alex.

PHOTOS OF AUSTRALIA (three separate albums)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27210&l=6bab6&id=788110959

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27216&l=16970&id=788110959

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25836&l=97b13&id=788110959

PHOTOS OF THAILAND:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27117&l=21f3a&id=788110959

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