Bridget, Ben, Chris and George


Birthday party of one of the workers in green valley

our little bungalow we stayed in for two weeks
Nils cracking his first coconut fresh from the tree

Laos i want to marry you....

Hello you, thanks for calling in again!

We made our way down to Vang Vieng, had some hard days of cycling but some very good experiences. Let's start at the beginning, Luang Prabang, the old residence city of the king when Laos was still a monarchy is very beautiful and has a very relaxing vibe to it and lots to see and do. We didn't plan to but we ended up meeting a very nice French couple which are traveling the world since 4 years and went kayaking together with them for two days. There were some massive rapids in between the flat bits and everybody capsized at least once, but it was great fun and the stay in a little village over night was very interesting. We slept together with all the locals in a big bedroom everybody together without walls in between, no shower except water out of buckets and the men wash first before the women allowed to wash...at night we had to drink the self made Lao Lao (which is a schnaps made from rice and tasted like old meet, about 50% alcohol) and teached them to play mau mau which they loved...

When we came back to our Guesthouse we had some pastis with our french friends and found out a japanese cyclist arrived. Takashi Sato his name, cycling around the word since 6 years (made far over 100000kms already), just cycled down from tibet through china, waited one more day so we can cycle together down to Vietiane (the new Capital city). The first day took us up into the mountains, over two hills, more than 80kms and 2200m uphill and the last 4 hours in pouring rain... the whole thing on a diet of noodle soup and cake. But we finally made it and the views on the next day which we spent over 1600m were so wonderful that we did not mind all the effort. After a 44km downhill we arrived in Kasi and the views again, never seen anything like that before! There on the market we saw our first dog to eat, they had a little market store with only dog meat, like small puppies fresh from the barbecue or bigger dogs with or without fur, yummy! In all the villages we came past we had to say sabaidee ten thousand times because the children would come running out on the street and want to do high five, waving while you are rolling past, really amazingly friendly! The last day we did a relaxing 60kms to Vang Vieng, where i am sitting now, sad because i cannot upload photos again, because they use satellite internet. Well, you will be rewarded with some very nice photos soon...

Anyway, except of some of Montezuma revenge we do have a great time here and it is just such an fascinating country, come and visit!

You will hear from us soon again, stay tuned for the photos!

the pumpkins

Climbing Ton Sai and Cycling from Chiang Mai

hello!

So... from Bangkok we went straight to Ton Sai, for a bit of relaxation and of course climbing! After a pretty long journey on bus and boat we were happy to get to a beach not only beautiful but surrounded by climbing heaven! thinking we would only stay for a week, we eventually ended up there for 2(would have been much longer if Nils got his way!). We did a lot of climbing, bouldering,deep water soloing and kayaking. maybe not the most relaxing beach holiday! think we will re visit this beautiful part of Thailand as there is definatley much more rock un climbed or found.

After, much discussion we decided not to stay down south, we could have easily blown our budget on more climbing, snorkling,diving ... but decided we wanted to get on our bikes before our visa's ran out, so back to bangkok it was. Thankfully the bikes were still neatly kept in the storage room as we left then, and we head off that day to the train station(which is not as easy as it sounds with the Bangkok madness of traffic). This then lead to a 15hr journey in 3rd class to Ciang Mai, however uncomfortable it was a great way to see the countryside around you and experience proper thai travel.

Chiang Mai is a really lovely city, easy to get around by bike, lots of temples and markets to visit, very arty and lots of culture, very different to the south. We visited the zoo and saw many animals that we learnt will be in the wild in laos, so we are on the look out now for approaching tigers, pumas, elephants,bears,snakes and crocodiles!! Still a city is a city...lots of traffic and people and we quickly got on the bikes and started to cycle up(up,up,up...) to the countryside. Wow this just got better and better, we cycled through remote farming villages, hill tribes,lush jungle, steep rice fields on the hills and for a week we were the only white people we saw. The heat of the day time is amazing and venturing up nearly 2000meters in the increasingly hot weather was to say the least challenging! but the people egged us on chearing and waving as we passed, sweating like pigs on a barbie and trying to conserve water, we made it! i could not describe how lush and beautiful the scenery is , its just breath taking, and views like i have never seen before. we came very close to the burmese border, and finally hit the mekong where we looked over and could see laos only a few meters away across the river which flows all the way from Tibet. Something we both found amazing and hard to comprehend. Once we reached the boarder town we travelled down this river for 2 days, to Luang Probang(laos). Again this journey is pretty slow and hard on the bum, but well worth it. And here we are, in laos, chilling in the world heritage city for a bit and then back on the bikes to head south. We hope you like the pictures( these will be added soon when we find an internet cafe that lets you upload). Life is good,and we are getting increasingly brown and getting into the asian life style. Love to you all the Pumpkins! x x x

Bangkok

Hello everybody, this time from Asia!

The pumpkins on a new continent!

Very exciting for us, especially for Nils, because he has not been here before! We had about 10 hours flight instead of 7 hours because of the strong headwind, couple of times we had to put our seatbelts on because of the turbulences in the 747-300 from Jetstar, "Touristbomber" is the right word because it is crammed and you don't have much space.
Arriving in the brand new Airport with the second highest capacity of planes landing and starting in the world didn't seem to be the same country than outside. One step in front of the door and you get blasted away from the humidity and temperature, about 32C, that means sweating a LOT!!!
Fortunately it was much easier than we thought to get the bikes to the city and we travelled by local bus to Khao San Road, the only place we new, crowed by westerners and lots of cheap accomodation. Very easy to find a room, double with fan for about 380 baat, 11 Au$, not even 4 pounds. Quite hot and with no daylight but after our adventures day we didn't care too much, anyway better than a tent and no cockroaches in sight!
We were really lucky that we made it finally to bangkok because when we arrived at the airport in brisbane, luckily quite early, wanting to check in, they told us that there was no ticket booked and we wouldn't be able to fly. After a while we were advised that to travel to bangkok you need a valid ticket going out of thailand, to a valid destination, meaning england or germany in our case. That hit us hard because neither of us had money to pay a flight that we didn't really need, bargains were not available at the airport and all that under time pressure because our flight was waiting. After a lengthy conversation with a very nice and patient Quantas lady we knew what to do: we had to buy a fully refundable flight to london or frankfurt and than call them once in bangkok to get the refund. Fully refundable means not cheap, over 8000 Au$!!!! So we stood there, thinking, if we couldn't get 8000$ from somewhere we would loose our flights and the money we payd to bangkok, get stuck in australia so george would overstay her visa which means possibly a fine, excellent! After trying all the cards we had, we could just cover one flight. So we had to phone Nils father and get him to pay over the phone for the other flight and convince him that he gets the money refunded...the time was getting very close to check in time but we finally made it after all this unexpected trouble.

Back to bangkok, very busy city, all the locals quite used to foreigner, called farang here, just stalls and stalls and stalls, everything you can dream of and pay for it you can buy here very cheap. So we spend most of the first day, while recovering from the long flight, eating and exploring around the city. The next days we had exciting things to do like the first tuk tuk drive(got ripped off straight away, we found out later), looking at temples, trying all kinds of food, wandering around the Chinatown, very crazy place! One highlight was the floating market where we were the only farang around and sat together with locals eating freshly cooked food (radfish and battered chilli tofu with veges)yummy! Every moment here is adventure for us because it all works a bit different, like haggling for everything you buy (george still pays full price because to friendly to haggle, ha ha!)and we try to learn a couple of phrases in thai language. Quite difficult because one word can have five meanings depends on the tone in which you say it in!

We are now waiting for a bus that takes us to a 12 hour or more bus drive down south to Krabi. (Costs about 10Au$) We are looking forward to see the rural areas and locals that are maybe not as used to farang and the coast, climbing...

So stay tuned you will hear from us soon....

the pumpkins

assembling the bikes in our room
Khao San Road, shaped for tourists
good bye Australia, flying out of Brisbane
our bikes in boxes getting loaded in the plane
temple on the Chao Phraya River

The Grand palace in the distance
outdoor restaurant...great food and very spicy
tuk tuks in action in the always crowded streets


nursery in the suburbs
the floating market
eating on floating pontons
monks depend on daily offerings from locals because there are not aloud to have any posessions


no rules on the streets, cars and motorbikes squeezing through every little gap
public school
lots of markets supply the food for the 9 million people living in bangkok

Pet cows, Great beaches and off we go...

Welcome to the last edition of our blog written in beautiful Australia!

We are just spending our last hours in brisbane before we leave to Bangkok tomorrow early in the morning, and it is very exciting! After long back and forth we decided to take the bikes and the climbing equipment over, which means there is no space for anything else on the plane...George had to go through a huge amount of pain and had to let go of most of her clothes to reach the limit of 20+7 kg which has to include the bike and some climbing stuff...very painful!
The last leg of the trip has taken us up along the coast along very beautiful beaches, national parks and much warmer, nicer weather! All of which was much welcomed! We tried to stick to the coast and even manage to ride on the beach for about 100kms altogether and avoided a couple of kilometers on the highway instead! It was a whole new experience to us, especially when we had no choice and had to ride 30kms through an RAAF shooting range. The locals said they only shoot at night and not directly on the beach...we rode pretty fast and didn't stop...until we had to push over a dune and came to the other side, thankfully without any unnatural holes in our bodies. The adventure for this part was that on a unavoidable Highway stretch north of Macksville, just after Nils tried to break the local all you can eat pancake record hold by an Norwegian with 38. The manager heard Nils accent and got slightly worried but he only managed to eat twelve. (He must have been a big big Norwegian-pancake-trained-piggy). So well fueled Nils maybe had to much energy and snapped his chain, just on the highway. So there we stood and no bikeshop around but hope came soon after pushing the bike to the next junction we met Wooooozz at the only place open...gardenshop. He offered us to take us back to Macksville where the next bikeshop was. It, of course, was closed on monday but nevermind that gave us the opportunity to stay a night in the beautiful place of Tracy&Woooza, which ended up beeing two nights and definetly a highlight to our cycling trip. We went fishing, met our first pet cow and just had a really nice and relaxing time altogether, thank you guys!!!! You made us feel very welcome!

So, once the bike was fixed we caught a train to catch up the time schedule and cycled on to byron bay, where we enjoyed some nice hours in the sun to bongo music and dolphins surfing the waves on the beach. The last days to surfers paradise were quiet easy going flat and sunny so cycling in shorts and getting a tan was unavoidable.

This beautiful cycling time finished in surfers paradise, which is far to busy to be a paradise, and we both will never forget the time and people we met, strongly recommended!

At the moment we are sitting in Bangkok just of Khao San Road, just assembled our bikes together in our room and what a culture difference! Nils just had his first tuk tuk ride and is so hot that we can't imagine cycling yet...but every day feels better and we are just happy beeing able to experience the new culture and the cheap food and drinks...

You will hear from us soon with new adventures, this time highly likely from the vertical world because we are heading south to Krabi! yeahhhhh!

Fishing Wooz and Nils
The Roof for two nights
Nambuca head

us with tracy and wooz
the first Dingo we saw
Moocha the pet cow, knows his name and likes to go for a walk with his leash

Sally didn't fit in our panniers
Nils rescueing the boat
surfer paradise...the end of our trip...huhuuhhh, cry

this bat was just hanging around our tent at night
cycling byron bay is great fun
surfers paradise at sunset

our first surgarcane chewing

the smallest post office in the world





there were only a couple of cars, some of them quite new, burried in our way