From Robin's Wiki

GiffydollsReflection: OldNews

Early on the 28/11/03

currently up too late at night. I wanted this page so that I would be able to easily inform people about how my holiday in Thailand is going. Currently there are many half-formed plans, but all that me and boyf know for sure is that we've paid about $2000 for tickets and immunisations and we don't actually have any tickets yet... altho I did have a sore arm for a few days. Currently we are trying to get all the "before going away stuff" organised, including getting new Credit Cards. Ooooh the joy.

Later on the 28/11/03

well I went and had two more injections today. For Polio and Hep A. For this trip I have had 4 injections now, Typhoid apparently used to hurt a lot but no longer does. Tetanus on the other hand is the worst of all injections. I am also really tired from staying up too late last night making this Wiki. I am really pleased about it tho, and I had a nap and an icecream, so life is starting to look good. Except for the fact I have a bunch of sewing to do now.

Evening on the 29/11/03

today I dressed up with some friends to be in the Hutt Xmas Parade. This year's theme was Faeries. I made a pretty aqua "duster jacket". More importantly tho... For those who want to say goodbye to me and Erik before we go, I will be leaving Wgtn on the 7 December. We will try to be at the airport by 9.30am altho our flight isn't scheduled until 11.30am, this means that people can come and have brunch with us at the airport lounge and look at the Lord of the Rings display.

Evening on the 1/12/03

today I have spent most of the day in downtown Wellington waiting, and watching the redcarpet extravaganze of the "Return of the King" Premier. I was only a few meters away from Viggo and Orlando!! Not within touching distance, but I could probably have thrown something at them! Anyway, mission accomplished. Also, I did not get a sunburn! Yay for me! On the preparing for the Holiday side of things, I paid the insurance of my car today. I have to do the WOF before I go, I also need to buy more money for my phone, and get it global roaming. I also need some new pajamas and underwear. I'd like to think that I could buy some in Thailand, but am pretty sure that I will be a giant over there and unable to find any clothes. Except maybe socks... surely I'll be able to find socks!

Morning on the 4/12/03

Well the last two nights I have stayed up too late for Roleplaying. On the plus side, it has been a really fun game, and while we have finished this particular "season" of it, I really hope that we haven't finished the whole game. There are many issues to resolve like, will Betty dump Mac Tavish (sp?) for being a wet blanket, did Wade propose to Odella, is it really the end for the Chevalier's Evil brother? I have also been spending the last few days working, mostly cleaning library shelves, but some time has been spent on the desk (like now). Today I got up early to be at the VTA to get my car's WOF. I didn't get it. The front brakes need to be balanced. That is it tho, the car is fine apart from that, and my Dad can fix that for me by Saturday. Yay for Dad! Mum has also been helpful, buying gifts for the people I will be staying with overseas. I just have a problem believing that people might actually want "Placenta Face Cream". That just freaks me out! I also managed to meet up with a friend to go shopping for a wedding present and got my travel insurance. Today I will hopefully be picking up my new credit card. I would like to go to Carols by Candlelight tomorrow, but I should probably get some rest, and I also have a leg wax booked. Sometime I should pack... that should be tomorrow too. On Saturday I have a wedding to attend and I leave on Sunday morning. Oh! I also have to remember to return stuff I have borrowed from people. Well, that has been a long and boring update. WAKE UP!

Afternoon on 5/12/2004

Happy Thai King's Birthday! Nothing much has happened since yesterday, except I DID get my credit card, and I managed to buy some Thai Baht also. Yesterday there was a really good exchange rate, over 25Baht for $NZ1! Normally it is a bit over 24. Unfortunately the person in front of me in the queue was also buying baht so I didn't manage to get as many as I wanted, as they were almost sold out. In other exciting news, I got photos developed and I love my new camera. This was the first photos I had developed from it and they were from the Return of the King Premier. I got good clear photos of Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Billy Boyd, Dominic... whats his name, and I also got some blocked ones of others. No Orlando tho, or Elijah. We are pretty sure he wore the Ring while on the Red Carpet. Also, for peopl who might want to contact me while I am in Thailand, I'm going to make my cell global roaming, but I will be buying a new cell phone and sim card while I'm over there. If you try and call me on my normal cell phone number I will hang up on you and not answer. The cost is really prohibitive. I'll post my new phone number on this site, once I know what it is. Don't forget if you want to see me before I go, the best bet is to be at Wellington Airport from 9.30-11.30am on the 7 Dec.

Almost Midnight on 6/12/2003

just got back an hour ago from a friends wedding. It was pretty awesome, although I am sad I missed the greek dancing. They were going to break plates and everything! Am freaking out over tomorrow. My mother had asked me to take some books to Thailand for a friend of hers, and I was fine with that, until I tried to pick up the whole bag of books. They weigh about 15kg, and my weight limit is 20kg!! Already over half my luggage is gifts for other people, and my mother keeps giving me this depressing advice like, "don't let go of your bag, people will just cut the straps and steal it", or "don't eat too much in Bangkok, it's very hot and.." then I walked out of the room, I just didn't want to hear her say that I was already big enough or something worse. She has also handed a bunch of christmas cards to me, with instructions to post them when I get there, except for certain ones which I must hand deliver to the people I will be staying with (understandable) and also not including other indistinguishable ones which I must give to my aunt to deal with. She is also going to make me a list of which presents I am to give to which people. Bah! I'm tired and worried and it's almost enough to make me cash in my tickets and just go camping in the Rimutaka's or something. It would be much cheaper and much less worrying. Anyway, I should go work more on my packing. Next update should be in Thailand, assuming I don't take to the hills.

Morning on 11/12/2003

I haven't taken photos yet. Erik took a bunch at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha yesterday. He wants to see more Wat (Temples). He likes them alot! Ake (My 21 year old uncle!) was really great showing us around the Wat and explaining the murals of the story of Rama, with the Monkey King. The whole complex is really beautiful, but there were sooo many tourists. Including us I guess, however at the temple Thai people do not have to pay! Erik thinks it's pretty fair as it is their national treasure. I didn't mind as I didn't have to pay ;) Ake's english is probable about at good as my Thai so we had a bit of fun with that, everytime Erik had a question I had to try and ask Ake and then try and translate the answer back to Erik. Lots of talking, my Thai is certainly getting a workout. We bought some overpriced postcards while we were there, so if you want one sent to you, you'll have to email me your address.

We also went to the national museum yesterday, apparently an easy 5 minute walk from the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The only problem is the heat, which makes walking at any speed pretty horrific. The Museum has some beautiful things, but we didn't get to see much of it as we arrived at 3.00 and it closed at 4.00. The first building was one with the history of thailand with pictures and maps and buttons to push. It also had air conditioning. Unfortunately the rest of the museum is not so well maintained. We went to see the display of Buddha images and there were some pretty awesome ones, but there was a couple of fans at the entrance to each room and that was about, it was lit with neon lights and some of them had blown, also the buildings themselves looked like they had seen better days. Here there was once again a different price for Ake and I and Erik, B20 compared to B40.

That was our first real touristy sort of outing, we have been to a few shopping malls, which are huge and the stuff is cheap, but it is often the same stuff again and again and all the clothes are way too small for me. I think an NZ size10 would be about the biggest size you can get here! Unfair! I did manage to buy shoes without any problems although trying to find sandals big enough for Erik was a HUGE mission. I also have a thai simcard so if you want to text me you can at +6667874503. I got a new cell phone also, not a hugely flash one, but now I can play Snake II! On Monday I managed to meet up with Tanya and she took us to the first mall, a "Central". Pa Pan had leant us her driver so we travelled in style. I also was in contact with my cousin Oak via cellphone, so after we said goodbye to Tanya, we went and picked Pi Oak up from her school, she teaches english at a Primary school. She came back to Pa Pan's house with us (that's where we are staying) and then we caught a tuk-tuk to the "sky train" which we caught to our second mall experience "Maboonkrong". We went back via the sky-train and a taxi. Erik and I have since caught the skytrain heaps of times by ourselves! The next day we managed to make our way to Pi Oak's school and spent time with two of her classes. As far as I can tell, Thai students will clap at practically anything, but most especially, Erik trying to speak Thai. After school we went to Pi Oak's appartment and then to another Mall, "Bankapi". There is a smaller mall nextdoor to the main one and it has an outdoor (read incredible hot) section. Here my cousin Pi Ning has a small computer shop. I also met his wife and son and here is where I met up with Ake and arranged the touristy business of yesterday and also met another of my cousins, Nan. We had dinner at an MK restaurant in the main Mall and then Nan's friend drove us home. That was the day before yesterday.

We haven't got so many plans for today, we'll try to go to another "Central" mall and then later on in the day will be meeting up with a friend, Mai. Tomorrow I will be visiting a school looking to maybe get a job there in the future. I'm not too sure what Erik has planned for then. On Saturday night we will be taking the overnight bus to go to Chiang Mai. I'll try and update again before then, depending on whether my website works or not!

Morning on 12/12/03

For those who commented we did manage to find Erik sandals, on the first day of shopping at MBK (the second mall we visited). Yesterday we went on our first trip to a Mall ALONE, ie with no thai people around to help us! We managed to buy some stuff from the supermarket there, altho supermarkets here sell a lot of stuff (with incredibly bright colours) they sell no plasters, so we went and got some of those. I found a post office, but had forgotten to take my mail to post! ARGH! We wandered around for a while and then caught the bus home. Later that day we managed to meet up with Mai adn had dinner at a Japanese Restaurant. It was pretty cool and we sat in a little booth where you had to take your shoes off and could sit either cross-legged on the seat or bring one or both feet down to ground. Afterwards we did some shopping and got Erik two pairs of boxers (difficult in Thailand, where Jockeys are the pants of choice) we also got me some pajamas and a wrap around skirt. It's pretty but now I think about it, wrap around skirts aren't much good in wellington due to massive wind. I would love to buy sooo much of the clothes here, but can't. I may have to buy many shoes instead! Also T-shirts, there are heaps of cool T-shirts here, Paul Frank is quite big. Monkey T-shirt anyone?

Morning on 14/12/03

Well, we have made our way to Chiang Mai. We are currently staying with my cousin Pi Nit Noi and her family. The bus ride was pretty uneventful with the normal midnight stop to have Khao Tom. Which we didn't have, I wasn't hungry and Erik wasn't really awake enough. I did manage to use a squat loo though. A huge feat in my books! I was a little down yesterday as I do not think I will be able to do all the things I want to do here, I suspect I will either be unable to visit Krabi or be unable to visit Phi Mai. I'm probably going to rule out Khon Kaen entirely. The original plan was to arrive in Bangkok and then head south to Krabi and then up north to visit the other places. But, my Aunt has been quite ill so I've had some pressure from family to go up north and see her. This would still probably be alright, but Nancy, my past lecturer is only going to by in Phi Mai from the 1-4 of January and then the 9 Jan til the end of February, so because of time taken for travelling etc (Phi Mai is quite out of the way) we should really visit it between 1-4. Which means if I want to visit Krabi I should go before then if I want to spend any time there, BUT due to a two day public holiday coupled with a weekend it is going to be nigh on impossible to get bus tickets! Anyway, I'm still going to try and do all of these things. Fingers crossed. I better go let Erik write his emails now. Tonight we will be visiting my Uncle Doon's shop at the Night Bazaar. Should be pretty cool, not to mention probably giving me another opportunity to practise my squat loo skills ;)

Morning 24/12/2003

Almost Christmas. Been having a bit of a hard time getting to an ok internet connection, and when I do it seems the website is down. Nevermind. Chiang Mai was great. We left there on the 18th and arrived in Nan later on the same day. While in Chiang Mai we stayed with my Cousin Nit Noi and her husband Akira and their daughter Yuki. They live in a Lahu village just outside of Chiang Mai City proper. The Lahu are one of the ethnic groups in Thailand and have their own language, thus the little Thai that I do have was pretty useless in communicating with the neighbours. That didn't stop two cute little kids knocking on the door to come and play with us. They especially liked Erik, calling out "calafu" the Lahu word for Caucasian, whenever they saw him, or whenever they wanted him to come and play with them. Pi Nit Noi's Mother is Lahu, and has a stall at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar selling 'traditional clothes' which she makes at home, Pi Nit Noi also has a stall there selling hand made baskets. Erik and I bought a few things at the Night Bazaar and a few more things on the sunday that we arrived at the street market. They had closed down 2 main streets and they were full of people's stalls selling food and other stuff. While walking along these streets we went in and looked at three temples!

While in Chiang Mai we also met up with some old friends of Mum and Dad,Andrew and Lek, people who had known me since I was seven. Like everyone they commented on how much bigger I was. Andrew is English and Lek is Thai, and like all Thai people, said I had gotten quite fat. Nice. Anyway, they took us to the Maesa Elephant Camp, where we got to see a show, with the elephants dancing, playing harmonica's, playing soccer! and then doing some painting. We could only see what one elephant had on their easel, he was just doing this abstract sort of slashy painting, pretty much what you'd expect from an elephant, we could see that the elephant opposite us was doing lots of little dots and the elephant to the left of us was being very careful, just painting a few strokes, and then stepping back and handing back his brush before accepting a new brush and drawing another stroke. When they had finished they turned them around so we could see that they had done, the little dotty elephant and done a beautiful abstract with dots (Erik and I liked it alot) and the careful careful elephant had drawn a bunch of flowers!! with leaves and stalks and everything! We were totally amazed. We then rode on an elephant, which I found a bit scary! But it was pretty cool, our elephant was a 25yearold bull tusker called Poo Noi, meaning "little man" and was very greedy. He knew that we had banana's and would keep stopping until we fed him one. After that we went and looked at the elephant nursery, we saw a friendly 10 month old who you had to peel bananas before you gave them to him and then we wandered over and saw this tiney 18dayold baby! Sooo cute! He was quite afraid and didn't want to come out from his Mama's legs. She was very greedy and friendly and while Andrew was taking a picture of her baby, she reached behind him and took a whole bunch of bananas!!

Later that day we also went and saw the recently installed Pandas at the Chiang Mai zoo. Pandas are soo cute! They were just lounging there eating their bamboo, they looked and behaved quite alot like people in panda suits rather than jsut a couple of animals. Anyway I would totally recommend seeing pandas if you ever get the opportunity. We then went up to this fabulous Temple up in the hills called Doi Suthep. There is a legend about why it was built up there. To do with this white elephant being charged with finding the appropriate place for relics of Buddha to be housed. They have a big model of a white elephant up there as well.

The next day Erik and I just headed into the market and bought a few things, after that we went to visit the school that Andrew and Lek's daughter Lara attends. They were having a special Art Day and they also had a play and then a choir (the King's Barbers) were visiting from England and they had a performance. The play was pretty weird, not what we thought it was going to be at all!

Anyway! running out of internet time, will try and update on Nan before we leave

Evening on the 4 January 2004

Well, we arrived back in Bangkok from Krabi, early yesterday morning and I have been sick with a “cold” since. There have been problems with Kallisti so I haven’t been able to update for a while, I will try now to catch up with my week in Nan.

We arrived in Nan after traveling through the day from Chiang Mai. That was a pretty cool bus ride with nice scenery. I saw heaps of temples on the way. Erik mostly slept. We were met in Nan by my uncle Loong Wai, my cousin Anne and two little boys who are also distant cousins, Smarty and Mickey. We then headed to Pua and my “ancestral home”. Currently residing at what I still call “Da Nek’s House” is Loong Wai and Ba Mai, Na Aa, Anne and Pi Mangmoom. Smartie and Mickey are also often there while not actually living there. Ba Mai is recovering from some back surgery so can’t get around much, this was quite annoying for her as she was keen on showing us around. We managed to stay quite busy, we’d arrived on a Thursday and the next day another uncle, Na Ning, we heading up to the mountains with the local police (?) for some work, anyway he said we should come up too and stay over night with him. It was pretty crazy! They were up there doing some relief work, handing out cold weather clothes (it does get cold up there) and that night there was a movie (horrifically dubbed Jet Li in “The One”) and then Karaoke!!! I slept in the pickup as I was tired and wanted to sleep, but all the villages seemed ready to party all night, Erik slept in a hut. The next day they set up a temporary Barbershop and gave all the boys crew cuts. They also had a doctor and some nurses as well as a dentist come in so that everyone could have check ups. Then they handed out heaps of live fish. I think there is some kind of project going on where they are trying to establish ponds and fish so they have that as a permanent food source. Anyway it was certainly an experience.

The next day we headed south with Na Aa (auntie) and Ba Paap (auntie) to Wiang Sa (still in Nan province) and met up with my Aunt Na Oui and Uncle Na Somchai. I feel quite close to their family as they have a daughter not much younger than me, Dear, and she came and lived with my family in NZ for over a year and went to WGC with me. I had also stayed with them quite a lot when I was younger. It was kinda strange seeing pictures of WGC uniforms on the wall in Thailand. I would have quite liked to stay a night with them, but we hadn’t thought to bring any stuff for it and I quite enjoyed staying in Pua anyway. We did manage to see another Temple in Nan and it was fun seeing my auntie’s interact with one another. Ba Paap is the oldest of my mother’s siblings and Na Aa is about 20 years younger than her but you can totally see that they are sisters! We didn’t do too much traveling out of Pua after that. I tried to go up to Ban Pa Klang to see the silverworking (curse you Lonely Planet!) but all the shops were closed when we went there as it was the Mon (sp?) New Year. So we got to go to a fair being held in the school field with all these people dressed up in fabulous costumes with hundreds of silver ‘coins’ sewn on so that there was this amazing ringing noise everywhere. We went back down to Pua and I went to a silver factory not too far out from there and got to see the people doing the work making bracelets and chains. Soo much work is done by hand!

Christmas was pretty nice, Na Aa left presents outside my and Erik's Doors and I managed to sneakily buy Erik something also. Got phonecalls from out parents so good to see that people were ok without us ;). We also visited Na Aa's school that day and had a pretty fun time with the kids. They all love Erik because of how he is so obviously foriegn! After school the english department had a chirstmas party and we hung around a bit for that. We had a pretty awesome time in Pua seeing Relatives (Yai Giew, a great Aunt, gave us the necessary white wrist blessing bands) and hanging out. One of the biggest highlights for me has to be that on the afternoon that we left we went to Pua school and saw this show of Chinese Acrobats. It was amazing! I hope my pictures turn out ok! Also one night we had this fabulous meal of barbecued pork. The tray for barbecueing also had a rim where a soup was cooked and you added your own vegetables and stuff to it. I’m not describing it well, but I will hopefully be bring the necessary equipment back to NZ with me and show people! Part of the reason it was so fabulous was that we ate it outside with all the family together. Great!

Morning on 6/1/2004

Well, currently still in Bangkok and planning on heading north to Chiaphum tomorrow. Still feeling a bit crook so not going out much, just means I have more time to update my website I guess!

Well, we left Nan on the evening of the 26th after sweltering in the middle of a field watching the Chinese acrobats, (it was sooo worth it!) and we then hopped on an overnight bus to Bangkok. We got there, crashed (overnight buses aren’t that comfy!) and went out for dinner that night with Pa Paan, Pi Prin and some friends of the family. We had seafood and it was fabulous. In Thailand they have some Huge shrimps! The next morning we managed to get up in time to get Erik to church. It was catholic Cathedral, Assumption Cathedral, and it was beautiful. It had been built around 1910, by (I think) Portuguese missionaries. Pretty flash. Anyway, we then hurried to meet up with my cousin Oak who had managed to get us tickets to Krabi, we just had to pick them up. After that was done, we had a brief look at the weekend Market, Jatujak. It was Huge, Crowded and Hot. Hopefully we’ll go there properly before we leave so that I can buy some small stuff. We went back home, had a rest and some dinner and then back to the bus station for another overnight bus to Krabi.

Krabi was hot, incredibly hot, but on the second day we had some relief, we went to Ao Nang beach for a swim. Lovely beach but very crowded with skinny, overly tanned tourists. Erik and I were probably the whitest people there. Anyway that cooled us down a bit and was pretty fun. The next day New Year’s Eve, we booked ourselves on a day trip to the Phi Phi islands. By we I mean, my ‘aunt’ Pi Eua, her ‘friend’ Pi Ot and Erik and me! It was pretty fun, we got to go snorkeling twice and saw heaps of beautiful fish and coral. The cruise itself was pretty average, although the islands were very lovely. That evening we went to a New Years Fair which was happening in Krabi town. We played games and watched some of the stage shows before finally heading home and watching the countdown on TV. It felt a bit weird thinking that for everyone in NZ it was already 6am and the New Year was well begun. We got up around 6am the next morning and headed into town (soo early) my cousin Pi Ohm who we were staying with works for the town council, or something, anyway they had organized for the Monks to come into town and give a blessing and then they walked down the streets and you gave them donations while thinking of your hopes for the New Year. There were Thousands of people lined up in three streets all ready and waiting to do this! After this we headed home to get organized for our next trip, more snorkeling and islands but this time just Pi Eua, Pi Ot, Pi Ohm, Erik and me on a longtailed boat (also the boat…operator? Obviously). It was GREAT! We went to visit Chicken Island and Poda Island and also some other beach, I forget the name. We could choose our timing, how long we wanted to stay in a place and when we wanted to leave. I like snorkeling a lot although I wish I had an underwater camera so that I could have taken photos of all the colourful fish. The next day I planned to go swimming, but we were all tired and I felt the beginning of my cold coming on. That evening we hopped on the overnight bust back to Bangkok and here we are!

Tonight I am going to meet up with my cousin Pi Thaew and buy my bus ticket to Chiaphum. Chiaphum is in the North East of Thailand and it is close to where I was born. We are only going to spend a few nights in the North East before coming back and doing any last minute shopping and visiting before coming home to NZ! We are starting to look forward to coming home ;)