Hi there!
I am sorry for the little delay of this article. I put off writing it until the task became even more tedious.
So, as a follow-up to the last article, I arrived in Bangkok on the 15th of March early in the morning. The first thing I had to do was to exchange my Indonesian Roupies for Thai Bahts. I speak to potential travellers who arrived by chance on this blog, if you plan to come to Thailand from Bali, keep in mind that currency exchange shops buy that currency for nothing! Once this sorted, I took a taxi from Don Mueang Airport (DMK) to Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) where Lucile was supposed to land around noon. Grab and Uber are very convenient in Asia but you’d better hailing a taxi and ask for a metered fare. It will cost you more or less half the price.
Once arrived at BKK airport, I withdrew a large amount of money from an ATM to avoid paying withdrawal fees throughout my stay. In addition to your bank fees, you will pay 220 THB for each withdrawal, so you better think about it. I still had to wait for Lucile another 4 hours. As I was getting hungry, I started looking for a restaurant in the airport. To my surprise, there is a foodcourt at Suvarnabhumi Airport. Very nice to eat a bit and discover the Thai dishes. I really liked it and I even went back with Lucile after her arrival.
For our first night, I had booked a hostel, the Samsen360. It is a small simple hostel in the city center. In my opinion, a good place to spend a first night in Bangkok. For information, did you know that Bangkok has a population four times higher than Paris, that is to say 8 million people! We arrived at the hostel by taxi in the middle of the afternoon. We left our luggage and went for a walk in the city center. We discovered the first streetfood stalls and ate some of the famous Thai brochettes. A good way to eat economically. We didn’t last long that night. We were both exhausted from the trip by plane and a big day was waiting for us.
That morning, we had to skip breakfast because it was too early and the kitchen was still closed. While we were going to take a taxi to the bus station, we were approached by a Thai teacher. He started the discussion and explained that it was Buddha day today and that the bus station would probably be closed. On the other hand, that day, we could visit Bangkok by Tuk Tuk for only 20 THB regardless of the number of stops. So we took a Tuk Tuk and went to visit a temple. After a quick walk around the temple, we asked the driver waiting for us to take us to the tourist information center. We wanted to get some information on how we could go to Koh Chang Island. They could have arranged our trip, but the asking price for the bus + ferry package was too high for us. I decided to check for myself if the bus station was closed.
Contrary to what the teacher had told us, the bus station was open. We almost missed the bus to Laem Ngop by the way. At Laem Ngop, we had to take the ferry to Koh Chang Island. The ferry trip to the other shore took about 45 minutes. After disembarking, we took a songthaew, a kind of taxi, to the next hamlet. There we rented a scooter at a rental store for a good price. We spent 3 nights on the west coast in a wooden hut a few meters from the beach.
The island is much more crowded than I expected. If, as I read, it is one of the least touristy islands, I’d hate to see the others. After dropping our bags, we went to Klong Kloi Beach a beach 500m farther east. The beach was lined with many bars. The water was surprisingly warm! We swam and stayed until we were hungry enough to decide to leave. Finally, we savoured grilled brochettes in a small restaurant a little further.
The following day we went to Lonely Beach in the early morning. We then started a 9-km hike through the forest to end up on the beach. The dinner was held in a small restaurant next to the one we had been the day before. We ended the day at the beach to enjoy the sunset.
On Sunday morning, Lucile wanted to be massaged. So, after breakfast, we went to a massage place next door. The Thai massage is too hard for me, I couldn’t wait for the end. Lucile was even more disappointed than me. We had some after-effects the following days. At dawn, we went to Lonely beach for a drink on the esplanade.
We switched to the east coast on Monday. Journey’s End guesthouse, our new guest house, is almost at the end of the road that leads to Long Beach. There, we met Paul, a Russian. He came up to introduce himself when we arrived. We spent a lot of time with him trying to understand each other!
During these two days on the eastern part of the island, we went to Long Beach, which is only long at low tide. The water was really shallow and hot when we were there at high tide. Sadly, the beach is really dirty with rubbish all along the coast.
The next day, we went to see a temple and two waterfalls. Unfortunately, as it was the end of the dry season, there was almost no water coming out.
We left Kho Chang on Wednesday taking the ferry to Laem Ngop in the morning. Later, we hopped on a bus to Bangkok. After a 5-hour trip, we had to take the subway from one bus station to another. We had difficulties getting our tickets and finding the right bus among all the buses in the station. The Mo Chit bus station is a huge mess. It is really recommended to arrive well in advance! We finally hit the road to Chiang Mai around 9 pm. It was easier for me than Lucile who could not sleep at all during the trip.
We arrived in Chiang Mai on Thursday morning. We were starving after such a long trip. We settled down at the nearest restaurant. I was the only one brave enough to swallow a Thai meal in the morning. Lucile ended up buying snacks at the supermarket around the corner. We rented a scooter and went to our hostel. It’s really convenient to have a scooter to move around the city. In Asia, you can rent one for about 4/5 € per day, so it would be a shame to deprive yourself.
We spent the rest of the day by the hotel pool. At the end of the day, I had to meet Marion at the airport. I decided to leave the hostel earlier and go to the top of the mountain on which Bhubing Palace overlooks Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, I could not see anything from up there. There was a thick layer of smoke over the city. I learned later that during March, the visibility drops drastically because of man-made fire (forest and agricultural fires). This time of year is actually the best time to burn things. So one piece of advice, don’t plan to visit northern Thailand in March…
The next day, the girls went for a massage at the ex-prisoners’ massage center. As its name indicates, it is a massage center run by former prisoners in vocational rehabilitation. For my part, I didn’t do much except going in search of a decent coffee. I strongly recommend the Australian iced coffee at Ponganes Coffee Roaster by the way 😉 By the end of the day, we went out for a very good meal at Love cooking, a worthwhile restaurant to discover!
On Saturday, we decided to take a trip to Huay Tung Tao Lake (100 THB of entrance fees). It was not really the good time. Again, we could not experience the supposedly stunning view from the lake because of the smoke. There are lovely grass huts all along but we couldn’t take our place on one of them because the place was crowded. Later, we went to Wat Pha Lat Hike, an ancient path that the monks used to take to go to the temple. It is a pleasant and peaceful walk that takes 30 minutes.
Later in the evening, we met Alizée and a friend of her (the same Alizée we had spent time with in Bali) in a small restaurant around Wat Phra Singh Woramahawihan, another Buddhist temple in the old Chiang Mai. We enjoyed a delicious Thai pad.
The next day we went to a flea market. There, the girls spent nearly 3 hours searching for treasure among all the old typical stuff. We then went to the Chiang Mai Grand Canyon, a tourist trap. It is actually a body of water located in an old quarry. The place was recently bought by I don’t know who and you have to pay 100 THB to be able to enter and swim. Honestly, I would not recommend going there if you run out of time and especially if you are staying at a hotel with a swimming pool.
In the late afternoon, we returned to the old city of Chiang Mai and roamed the Sunday night market during a couple of hours. I’m not a big fan of markets, especially when there’s a crowd, but still, it’s a good place to buy souvenirs. Later in the evening, we met Alizee and her friend to attend a ladyboy show at the Ram bar. There, you will pay your drink a little bit more than anywhere else, but the show is really captivating and conscientious. In my opinion, a must do in Chiang Mai.
On Monday, Marion started her 2-week massage course while we spent most of the day in an elephant reserve. The tour company was Elephant Jungle Sanctuary. It took us an hour and a half to get there in Songthaew and I can assure you that the trip was horrible. If you are easily sick, prefer another company. There you can see and feed the elephants. I like watching animals, but half an hour would have been enough. It was unfortunate to see all these people surrounding the elephants for hours to take selfies. Poor animals, I was sorry for them. The regular tourist is so dumb.
The next day, Lucile and I hit the road to Chiang Dao, 70 km farther north. There, I wanted to climb the Doi Chiang Dao, an 8-hour hike through the jungle. We booked a room in a lovely guesthouse, Ashi Guesthouse. I highly recommend it. It’s clean, the place has a big garden and they serve a typical breakfast, different every day. Again, there was smoke everywhere over the town, and even though we were at the foot of the mountains, we could not see them clearly. Unfortunately for me, I got sick, and I could not do much during those few days. On top of that, the only day I forced myself out of bed for this hike, the park warden told me that hiking between March and September was forbidden. So the only things we could do were to take a swim in the nearby hot springs and to drive around.
Back in Chiang Mai, we spent another evening at the Ram Bar and went to see a Muay Thai fight at Thaphae Boxing Stadium. I was a bit hesitant before going to this fight, but it’s worth the entry of 500 THB. It would have been a shame to miss out on that.
On Wednesday April 4th, it was time for Lucile and me to take a flight back to Bangkok. The inward bus ride was enough for Lucile, so we decided to travel by plane 🙂 In Bangkok, we stayed in a backpacker hostel in the city center where Sebastien, a friend of Lucile, was staying. We spent the next two days together visiting Bangkok. Among the places we went to, there is Pantip Pratunam which is a huge electronics shopping center. We are both into IT and stuff with Sébastien so we spent hours in there. There is pretty much everything you need; smartphone, sound systems, computers, video games and many other things.
The next day we went to Wachirabenchatat Park and spent most of the afternoon lying down on the grass. In the late afternoon, we walked around JJ Green, a night market nearby. If you are a bit tired of eating the same street food, you will find other choices in this market. I even saw sushis for 10 THB 😉 Around 9 pm, we had to come back to the hostel to get our bags and then go to the airport. Lucile had her flight back to France at 2 o’clock in the morning. After she had got on board, I decided to stay at the airport. I took a nap on a bench inside waiting for the morning.
Early in the morning, I headed for the guest house I had booked for the night. I was willing to try to use public transport, so I took several buses to go downtown. I ended up even farther north of Bangkok. It took me about 5 hours to get to my accommodation!
At the end of the day, I went to the other airport to meet Marion who came back from Chiang Mai. We stayed two more days in Bangkok. Our flight to Myanmar was on April 10th. Myanmar is right next to Thailand. From Bangkok, it takes 1h30 to get to Yangon, our destination city. We are now in Myanmar and I finish writing this article in a taxi, but that’s another story…
See you for the next article.
As usual, you will find the link to the album below.
I arrived at my hostel 30min later. It was located in Denpasar, 10kms away from the airport. During the taxi trip, I couldn’t help myself noticing that the rules on the road are obviously not the same over here! Marion and Alizée, a friend of her, were waiting for me at the hostel. Marion had booked a room for both of us in a decent place.
We had booked a guesthouse which surprisingly appeared to be a really nice place considering the price we paid. We had a welcome cocktail, meals were brought to our room and the staff was flawless.
The next day, we went to the famous rice terraces in Tegallalang and tasted some coffees in a nearby coffee farm. It was such an amazing feeling to rediscover the taste of a real coffee. By real coffee, I mean black without cream or sugar. Among many flavored teas and coffees, I tried the famous Luwak coffee, a coffee prepared with digested coffee beans. The Asian palm cive is used to eating the coffee beans. The digestive process alters the composition of the coffee cherries giving the coffee a peculiar taste. It seems to be the most expensive coffee.
Later on that same day, we left Lovina for a small town at the foot of the Mount Batur, an old volcano. The hostel there, the Blacklava, was located in the middle of nowhere. I must admit that I was really surprised to find the hostel there. We met a friendly French couple who were traveling across Asia for about 6 months. We exchanged some tips of our past travels and learned from their experience of Myanmar. They told us Myanmar was so far their favorite Asian country. I can’t wait to see that!
You might know that I was on vacation from December 20th to January 8th. I left Tolga during these two weeks. I drove down to Sydney with Marion. With hindsight, I congratulate ourselves for having achieved such a feat in such a short time, it is really far 🙂 We made a few stops along the road. First, we visited the Townsville Aquarium, the largest living coral reef aquarium. After that, we continued our southward descent and stopped at Airlie Beach for 5 days. We had booked a cruise around the Whitsundays on Monday, December 25th. As we arrived two days earlier, in the meantime we walked around Airlie Beach and spent Christmas on Coral Beach, a nearby beach. The beach in question was at the end of a short walk. We had bought some supplies for the occasion of course. Nothing comparable to what you can find in France of course but still a good little picnic. We ate on this beach completely isolated, alone, facing the sea… magical!
Once back on the mainland, we had about a day to reach Harvey Bay, 900 km further south. We had booked a 4X4 to spend 3 days on Fraser Island. On this island, the only way to get around by car is by driving on the beach. It was very nice to be able to pitch the tent on the beach and sleep in front of the sea. I am still disappointed by the crowd on the island at this time of year. The beach was a real highway! Also, like most places in Australia, the attractions on the island are made up for tourists. It’s actually just another nice island on the east coast, nothing else. What made my stay a positive and pleasant experience is without a doubt my co-driver 😉
As you might know if you are following that blog, I’m in Tolga and It’s been 8 weeks since I started at Superior Steel Homes which is a construction company. Basically I’m doing a bit of everything from roofing to concrete by the way of building scaffolds up, digging holes, building timber decks… I’m working with four Australians. Not that easy to follow when they are talking but I getting up to speed slowly. The job is pretty hard though and the atmosphere, well… not my thing.
Beside that I’m staying in a Backpacker hostel which is actually a working hostel. They are providing me the job. The accomodation is not too bad. I’m living in a 4 dorms bedroom. It’s a bit better than a regular Backpacker hostel. We have an ensuite bathroom and some kitchen stuff in the room. I of course met new friends who are staying with me here (mainly germans and italians).
As you know, I stayed a week in Brisbane. Basically, I spent my week walking everyday all around the city center. I spotted some small breweries here and there so I convinced myself to try some of them during the week. I met a new friend Andryan in one of the breweries and the same night I stumbled across two of the Finnish girls I met on my last roadtrip. We ended up having some drinks in a bar and later at two Australian chatting over another drink. Looking back on my week, it was pretty enjoyable, Brisbane is quite laid back for a big city (2 millions people) and it has to be said that the lagoon and his surroundings are pretty amazing.
The good news is that I found a job on Friday and I’m starting on Monday. It’s a construction job in a farm about 80kms from Cairns. I’ll move tomorrow in Tolga a nearby town and gonna stay some time in another backpacker. And the bad news is… well… there isn’t any actually. Isn’t life wonderful? 🙂
So, following up on my previous article, I jumped in Henry’s minibus on Monday the 4th in the morning with 4 Finnish girls. Henry had posted an ad on a Finnish group. As you can imagine the Finnish was particularly present in conversations 🙂
It was such a relaxing trip and that was perfect for me. Actually I couldn’t walk and do that much. On the second day I accidentally cut my left heel and got 7 stitches. I had to do with crutches for almost 2 weeks and believe me that sucks. It was nice to have the girls, they were adorable, cooking and taking care of me 🙂
We went a bit southern to the Golden bay and spent almost 1 week getting around. Our main preoccupation was to find a place to stay by the time it got dark.
The other option was to take a flight and so we flew from Darwin to Cairns on Saturday morning. Cairns is about the same size as Darwin. The temperature is a bit cooler at this time but is still around 30C°. Like in Darwin, there is a waterfront to let everyone enjoying the water. We quickly found out why the city was full of colours by night. The Cairns festival had begun 1 day before our arrival and there were lots of activities in the city center. One of the nice things to see is the huge bat colony living in the big trees by the library. It’s impressive to watch them taking off at dawn.
After 6 days staying in the city, on Friday we went to Cape tribulation, a famous place close to Cairns. Actually Marko rent a car for about 2 weeks and invited me to join him. We took two fellow travelers with us, Noa an Israeli girl and Max a German. We spent 3 days there. After about 3 weeks in a row in cities, it was quite nice to hit the road again.
During these 3 days around Cape tribulation, we did some nice walks. We went for a stroll through the Daintree rainforest the first day. It is called rainforest because of the high amount of rainfall the place gets per year. After a night in a camping on the way, Saturday morning, we hiked the Mont Sorrow (the second real hike I’ve seen so far in Australia) and on the way back we saw a 
As you may already know, we make our farewell to Broome on Saturday. First we went towards Cape Leveque, at the end of One arm point road. There we stopped at a small beach beside the road and we saw a lot of lemon sharks in the shallow water, at the water’s edge. We could have touched them. They were fighting for some turtle leftovers. After this unexpected spectacle, we went a bit farther, at the end of the road, to Ardyaloon Hatchery where we could observe some nice local fishes along with some explications given by one employee.
The following day we started by a good breakfast (sliced bread with chinese cabbage, bacon, an egg, cheese… the whole shebang 🙂 ) and we headed to Tunnel Creek. There we crossed a dark cave barefoot in the water with flashlights and we saw two freshies (crocodiles living in rivers). Then, we drove further north to another place called Windjana Gorge National Park. We walked along the river and we could observe lots of freshies enjoying a nap on the shore.
