WE'RE BACK!

It's been a while since our last update and we have been busy little bees since then, it’s hard to know  where to begin!!

After numerous sleepless nights, a million emails and a lot of wonderful donations we held our trivia night on Friday 6th of May at the Dandenong Club with the fantastic Sharon Hawley as host the evening turned out to be a great success where we raised just under $4000!! This could not have been done without the support and patience of many of our friends and family so a HUGE THANK YOU goes out to each and every person that contributed to the success of this evening.

Moving on, the following week we were both were lucky enough to escape the winter blues by flying to Phuket for a good friends wedding but only after promising one another that we would attempt to squeeze in some training sessions so as not to lose our training stamina for the big bike ride at the end of the year! Therefore we must apologise for the lack of posts as we have both been travelling for the last 2 months but here is a quick run down of what we got up to.

Stopping for a snack of coconut ice

cream for energy to peruse the many

 laneways of Chiang Mai's night market. 

After a week of basking in the sun and enjoying the company of our friends for the wedding, Andy and I headed off to Chiang Mai which is wonderfully beautiful city in the north of Thailand. Here we finally fulfilled our promise and hired ourselves some vintage bikes and cycled the city taking in the beautiful sights and smells of this city that we both fell so in love with. Of course for those of you who know us, we love food so most of cycling involved finding the next best restaurant, food stall or ice cream stand which we would happily endeavour to try something new on the menu. During our time here we also got to experience the amazing Sunday market (over 2  miles long, impossible to see the entire market in one night, although we tried!) and a very interesting and intriguing form of mediation.    



Stopping for a quick dip in

 Houykeaw Waterfall to cool

off after a hard days trekking




Mmm... chicken noodle soup
served in banana leaves (and
bamboo cups hand made
 by our guide!)

 From here we took a 3 hour bus to Chiang Rai – yes I know, I can hear you all saying but shouldn’t they have ridden there for practice?? This is true however, Andy and I are not the best at packing light so unfortunately this was not an option. For some crazy reason (we thought it would be fun!) whilst here we decided to do a 2 day jungle trek, which involved hiking for up to 6 hours per day in cobra and spider infested jungle and then sleeping in a bamboo hut in a rural hill tribe village! Minus the fear of the cobras, the sweltering heat and  the enormous hills we had to climb, we survived and it has turned out to be one of the greatest things we have done. Spending time with our jovial guide and the people of the tribe made it well worth it. Our food was made in a bamboo  stalk over an open fire, we were served tea in bamboo cups which were carved for us whilst the tea was being made and we sat around and sung kumbya my lord (seriously!!!) with the villagers. It was quite the experience...however, in the words of Andy  “it was great but never again”, I am fairly sure she was thinking of killing me for the mere suggestion of the trek at different times over the 2 days! Oh and don’t worry we did some cycling whilst in Chiang Rai just to keep the memento up!    

I think it was at this point that we
started thinking...  Oh dear, just
 what have we got ourselves into??



The 70 year old woman who put our
 trekking skills to shame - she made it
 up the hill faster than we did!

 

Our friendly neighbours
on the boat from
Thailand to Laos.




From sweltering jungle trekking, we relaxed with a 2 day cruise down the Mekong from Thailand to Laos. We arrived in the amazing city of Luang Prabang – there a few words to describe this place but like Chiang Mai, we both fell in love with this place and wished we had far more time here. Despite the heat we continued on with our training sessions and hired bikes to explore the cities beautiful temples and views of the Mekong... We quickly learnt there is no better way to experience a place then peddling on a bike, this particular part of our trip got us very excited for the bike ride at the end of the year. 

Riding provided an effective way
to see Luang Prabangs numerous temples.  

 

Next stop was Vang Vieng, upon our arrival we heard of a local organic mulberry farm so again got on some bikes and cycled for what seemed like forever only to find the cutest little farm which served the most delicious mulberry pancakes! (So like us to use food as motivation for a ride!) The following day we had a break from our bikes and  instead experienced tubing down the river, stopping for drinks along the way - to get to the bar we were thrown rope to get to them!... this was surely something that OH&S regulations would never allow here in Australia but both of us had a blast...



 After three weeks of cycling as much as possible and lapping up every wonderful sight, smell, taste and sound of Thailand and Laos had to offer, Andy and I said our goodbyes and parted ways. Andy was to head Vietnam for a 3 week holiday and I was going to Cambodia for a month to volunteer at a HIV orphanage and also meet with some of the different Somaly Mam projects. This was a scary and extremely exciting chapter of my trip. Stay tuned for more details....

Feeding a nutritious snack to one of the many elephants at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. All elephants here have been rescued from the brutality of street walking or brought here as a result of injury. For more information, or to visit or donate, see http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/