For my 30th I was given the best surprise present ever by Alexandra, a ride day on a Suzuki GSXR-600 at the Moto GP Circuit at Phillip Island!

The weather was a bit scary, as it began to rain heavily 5 minutes before my first ride and it was unbelievably slippery out on the track, but it dried up over the course of the day and I actually ended up being able to catch and overtake a couple of people by the end!

There wasn’t any timing allowed, but we think I was about a minute off Nicky Hayden’s circuit record of 1:30.059, not too bad I suppose.

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It’s been nearly two months since the last blog post so here’s a quick breakdown of what we got up to in Australia.

We arrived in Sydney in time for Morgan and Brad’s wedding at the beginning of December. We were so happy to be able to be there for it, a beautiful wedding and a fantastic day! It was great to catch up with the bride and groom and other school friends I haven’t seen for a long time.

While we were in Sydney we had a little Sherlock Holmes reunion with Bruce Nelson and Sarah Smith… very weird to be meeting up in Sydney, but it was a fun night of schnitzels and steins at the Löwenbräu (our second visit, thanks Janna, for the first!)

The rest of the time in Sydney was filled with going to the beach, shopping, eating and catching up with friends. Thanks to all who made time to see us!

Next, my parents, Anthony and I drove inland to take a little tour of the town I grew up in, Armidale. While we were in the area we stopped at the famous Thunderbolt’s Rock in Uralla and the biggest tomato greenhouse I’ve ever seen in Guyra. We spent a day on the land thanks to our friends the Wrights who took us around their properties at Black Mountain and Inverness.

We headed north for Christmas and new year at the beach in Queensland… fortunately the weather was with us and we had plenty of sunshine. Didn’t really get up to much, just plenty of eating, drinking, reading, swimming and sleeping. Perfect holiday!

From Cairns we flew down to Melbourne… see Ant’s next post for details of what happened there!

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After the surprisingly pleasant 7 hour bus ride to Bangkok we hauled our lives onto our backs once more and began the hunt for a decent guest house. After deciding to go to Khao San Road a.k.a. Backpacker Central we quickly realised that we didn’t need to put much effort into finding a place to stay, the places to stay would come and find us (usually while shouting and waving at the same time!) Fortunately we ended up with a really comfortable place – a relief after some of the shitholes we had a look at – dropped our bags and ventured out into the insanity of Bangkok.

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We had a 5 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Sukhotai on Thursday morning, thankfully less painful than the one a few days earlier.

On arrival in Sukhotai we checked in to our guest house and set out to explore…

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The three hour bus journey from Chaing Rai to Chiang Mai was pretty horrendous, lots of windy roads and an unpleasant smell coming from the air con… but worth it!

We arrived at about lunchtime on Monday and headed into town to find somewhere to stay. After trying a couple of places we ended up at a lovely little place in the old town called Siri Guest House. Spent the rest of the day orientating ourselves and eating… had falafels for dinner at a fantastic place called Jerusalem Cafe.

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We’re now into our second day in Chiang Mai so I thought I’d write a little update about our last stop, Chaing Rai, the capital city of Thailand’s northernmost province of the same name, and our first stop away from the relaxing beach life we’ve been getting used to over the past couple of weeks. Well, it had to come to an end at some point, although Alexandra probably would’ve extended it for about another 50 weeks if she could.

So, Chiang Rai…

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Sitting in Krabi airport with three hours until our flight to Bangkok, so this could be a long post!

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This is why I put all of that effort into getting a motorcycle license.

Note the basket on the front for collecting the roadkill that just can’t get out of the way fast enough, and the ultra wide and grippy tyres. What a stunning machine.

After a couple of flights and a night in Phuket, we fought the jet lag to get ourselves up early and jumped on a tuk tuk to catch the first ferry from Phuket to Ko Phi Phi.
Ko Phi Phi is famous for being the primary location for The Beach and as we approached the island it was easy to tell why. (Obviously a little comp work to remove some of the bars, resorts and long-tail boats would be necessary though!)
Waving away the people trying to sell us boat rides there, we stubbornly headed east to find Viking Resort on our own. After getting lost in the jungle and passing a few other hotels and resorts, we finally found the gourgeous Viking Cove and its tiny secluded beach which is now barely 20 seconds walk from the front of our hut.

Let the holiday begin!

Finally the day has come when we leave these increasingly chilly shores to look for some slightly prettier and warmer ones. I’ve heard that the whole country is planning to give us a big send off by launching lots of fireworks this evening. (Or are they just happy to see us go? Either way, I’ll have to try and get a window seat.)
Thanks to everyone who came to the various goodbye drinks days/nights. It was great to see you all. Hopefully this blog will be a better record of our travels than Facebook will be. We’ll be on Skype every so often with the username ants2d. Check the Skype icon in the sidebar on the right of this page to see if we’re online. Otherwise check back here to see what we’ve been up to and if you feel compelled to tell us how much you hate us for leaving for so long while you’re sitting at your desk, do feel free to post a comment or two. It’d be good to hear from you, even if it is just a bunch of expletives.

Bye everyone, take care and we’ll see you all in a year!