Australia Travel Diary 2000 Part 1

Australia, Backpacking Trips, Travel

The story so far…

It is now Sunday 8 October and we are still happy together after our first month of our new lifestyle (we must both have gypsy blood in us somewhere!). Our first stop was Bangkok in Thailand, where we had pre-booked a hotel for 2 nights to get rid of any jet lag which as it turned out neither of us had.

We spent both evenings with an ex-work colleague of Dave’s (Jon Miller) who lives in central Thailand and who showed us the sights (seedy and not so seedy) of Bangkok. During the days we strolled around this crazy, jam-packed, smelly city – 2 days is certainly enough.

With our travelling budget in place we took our second class overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai to spend a few days in the north of Thailand. We stayed at a hostel that organised trekking tours and did a 2 night/3 day trek in a group with 10 others (mixture of Welsh, Aussies, Japanese & Yanks).

The moment we started to walk the heavens opened and we were soaked through by the rain on the outside and from sweating on the inside. When we eventually arrived at the village (farmyard) that we were staying at for the night we looked like we had played a long 80 minutes at Landsdowne Road.

None of the group slept too well as the storm carried on into the night and we were all woken in the morning by a huge sow that escaped from her sty! The trek also included a 1 hour ride on elephants and a bamboo rafting trip – very eventful as one of the Japanese girls could not swim and her punter could not punt and managed to crash and over turn the raft. Everybody did make it back on to dry land eventually. Our guides did all the cooking for us and the food was wonderful (as it was everywhere in Thailand, even the crunchy grasshoppers were tasty).

We arrived back in Chiang Mai on Shaz’s birthday and it was great to have a hot shower and clean clothes. The entire trekking group came out with us to celebrate and we had a great meal and even a few bacardis to wash it down with. This was our first official treat night (treat nights are birthdays, anniversaries, etc.)and we spent the huge sum of GBP20 (this is an Aussie keyboard with no pound sign). Our normal Thai meal cost us around GBP2-3 total – that was a huge noodle soup for Dave and pad thai noodles for Shaz (the best and cheapest meal was on the street in Damoen Saduak).

After a couple more days sightseeing in Chiang Mai (great night markets there) we headed back to Bangkok for ½ hour, just enough time to transfer to a bus to Kanchanaburi (Bridge on the River Kwai) where we stayed in a hostel that Dave, Sue & Ilan stayed in 11 years ago! Spent a couple of very relaxing days in that area before heading to the famous floating markets in Damoen Saduak the long way around as we got the wrong bus part of the way. Anyway from there we managed to get the right bus back to Bangkok and a taxi on to the airport. How one ever manages to arrive in one safe piece in Thailand is amazing, the drivers are crazy and everyone believes they have the right of way – it was all fairly hairy, including the day we rented a motorbike in Chiang Mai!

We were now really excited to get to Sydney as we had managed to catch a bit of the Olympics opening ceremony on Thai tele. We arrived there on Monday 18 Sep in the glorious sunshine and Sydney looked stunning. There were still quite a few tickets available, but it meant getting up at 5.30am to queue for a couple of hours. We managed to get tickets for beach volleyball (fantastic), hockey twice (we saw both GB teams play, the woman poorly and the men with a lot more guts), rowing semi-finals (very difficult to see anything, but we did see the famous coxless fours), basketball semis, volleyball and also the football semis. We watched other events on the TV or on big screens around the city centre where the atmosphere was always buzzing, especially if the Aussies were competing. Unfortunately the TV coverage here only covered the Aussie athletes so we did not see much if any of the Brits competing. We also were lucky enough to be given tickets for two morning sessions of the athletics by good friends of Dave’s parents – it was brilliant to be in the Olympic stadium with so much going on.

We cannot explain to you what exactly it was like to be at the Olympic Games, but for us it was a once in a lifetime experience. For Dave it was brilliant to be wallowing in sport for 2 weeks and for Shaz it was wonderful to see so many of the world’s nationalities together in such a celebration. For both of us it way exceeded our expectations. When the Olympic rings went out in the closing fireworks it was quite emotional, and we realised how lucky we were to be a part of it.

During the Olympics we managed to meet up with the others we knew who where out for the games – Ted and Lindy Adams, John and Linda Matlin, Sue and Jeffrey Green – everybody was having a ball.

We also met up with an old school friend of Shaz – Adrian Mulligan and his wife Ann, and filled him in on the local Omagh news.

Since the games ended we have been shopping for a vehicle and relaxing at Wally’s place in Clovelly and sunning ourselves a little on Sydney’s beaches. Last night we had our first Aussie bbq – well our hosts where a Strabane girl and her Scottish husband if that counts! We had a great evening with Tina and Alan Bennett and their 3 kids out in Wilberforce, north west of Sydney – Tina is a relative of Denise and can chat (and drink) just as much!

Oh and we have had another treat night on Avril’s birthday (5th Oct) – okay it wasn’t one of our birthdays or our anniversary, but we didn’t say it had to be just ours! We had the most fantastic meal at the famous seafood restaurant – Doyle’s at Watsons Bay where we watched the sunset and ate like lords. Life is good…