Singapore onto Brisbane

We only stayed one night in Singapore, picked up our luggage from Paul, and then woke up an hour later that we would've liked because i'd forgot to change the time on my alarm clock hehe we made it to our flight though, and are now using the internet at the library. its been a crazy month, we've seen so much, covered huge ground, met so many interesting people, its gonna be hard to settle down and get into a routine lifestyle, but we still have about 2 weeks til school starts so, off to the beach!

Pictures from Australia:
http://photobucket.com/albums/y42/roninoz/

Pictures from South-East Asia:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v235/radron/

Pictures from Marine Biology Field Trips (in Australia. Stradbroke Island and Heron Island) :
http://photobucket.com/albums/y98/marsstudent/

Craziest 'its such a small world' story ever!

this is so crazy it deserves its own section. unfortunately i will not be able to avoid foreshadowing but i'm sure you can appreciate our utter amazement.

so to start at the beginning, a few weeks ago in Chiang Mai we met these cool guys Rene and Urs from Zurich, Switzerland. ended up partying with them that night, had good times, and said our good byes. the next night we were walking in the city and i just happened to spot them going by in a tuk tuk so i yelled out to them, they stopped, and we ended up going for dinner together. we mentioned how we were heading to Pai, a small town near there, soon, and they said they were too, so we jokingly said well we'll see you there, and exchanged emails too.

So a few days later we're in Pai. after our 3 day trekking adventure we return to Pai and we hear Bebop bar is the place to be, so we head down there. Who do we happen to run into on the way but Rene and Urs! such a small world. so we partied with them once again until the wee hours of the morning. we arranged to meet for dinner the next day but they never showed so we thought whatever, and proceeded to go out to a bar again. and, once again, no surprise by now, we run into them again!! granted Pai is a pretty small place but this is still crazy! one of the topics of the night was how urs' girlfriend back home was thinking of coming to join them for some travelling. Urs couldn't decide if this was a good idea, rene was obviously not impressed by the idea, and after some discussion we came to the conclusion that no, she shouldn't come, urs and rene should stick together and travel.

our next destination was Laos, and Rene and Urs said they would eventually be going there as well, so we kept in touch by email but unfortunately never did meet up with them in laos because they were always a few days behind us.

so fast forward 1-2 weeks. we're in Bangkok Thailand. its our second day here and we decide to taxi it out to MBK, one of the huge shopping malls. we do alot of shopping. after a few hours joey and ian are ready to go but i stall our departure by 30 minutes to go get some electronic goods. So finally we're ready to leave, we go outside and wait in the line to get a taxi. theres an attractive female tourist in front of us so eventually i gather the balls to ask if she happens to be heading back to Kaosan road (the touristy area) and if so if she wants to share a cab with us. so we're in the cab, we're talking, her english isn't great as she's from Zurich and speaks German, but we're still communicating. she tells us she's meeting up with her boyfriend tomorrow who's on his way here from Laos. They hadn't been travelling together because she had work back home until now. so eventually in conversation i mention how we'd met 2 swiss guys up in Chiang Mai, Rene and Ur- and then she cuts in, 'Urs is my boy friend!' we're just like what?! all looking at each other with surprised smiles, wtf! oh my god! such a small world! and thats the story, we're going out for dinner with her tonight.

Bangkok, Thailand

And we're in Bangkok after a 14 hour smelly bus ride (being close to the bathroom, it sucked) basically all we've done here is shop! its ridiculous, also saw the grand palace, but mostly shopping! along Kaosan road, and MBK and pata shopping malls. met a cool guy dave on the bus to Bangkok who's on academic exchange from England to Bangkok university so that's pretty cool.

we went out with dave our first night there, first to Shamrock pub which had a live band, met Holly and Gemma from England, they were super cool, then lost dave, then went for late night falafels. our second and last night in bangkok we decided to pull an allnighter as our flight left at 7:40am to Singapore. so we start the night with a bucket at some nightclub along Kaosan road with Nerena (urs' gf). met some fellow canadians there. we then ended up in a tuk tuk going to some sketchy afterhours, got there, it was too sketchy and expensive (being illegal and all, but corruption is so bad its not a worry) so we got our tuk tuk driver to drive us back to kaosan where we ran into the canadians again from earlier that night as well as dave from the bus! it was about 3am now and things were dying down but just then a random drunken swedish guy andreas approaches us complaining he's lost his money and plane ticket and can't even remember where he's staying the night, haha. he was a cool guy so we hung out with him for awhile, then he joined us back to our room to finish packing before we said our goodbyes and got a taxi to the airport. Pictures

Ventiane, Laos

Ventiane is dirty and smelly. so we left and did a 2 day overnight white water rafting trip on a beautiful scenic route in between Vang Vieng and Ventiane. the area's only be open to tourists for i think a year, and since they're now building a dam on the river, in a year or 2 you won't be able to raft there so good we got that in. the trip was awesome! big group of 12 of us, 2 boats, 3 Lao guides and one ozzie guide that was essentially hired to train the others. we were the youngest of the group but the whole 2 days we played the silliest games, told jokes and riddles, it was like summer camp all over again, good times. Pictures

Vang Vieng, Laos

Vang Vieng is very touristy but a really awesome place. the highlight being innertubing down the river, being pulled in by a stick at various pit stops for drinks and food and ropeswinging or jumping off dodgy wooden diving boards, meeting tons of people at the stops or just floating along the river, it was just so much fun!
the next day we rented bikes and went to thamphoukam cave which was super cool because you could just go in and explore it at will and it was a huge cave and went really deep and um.. for about 10 minutes we got lost and completely lost all sense of direction. after 45 minutes in the cave we came out just in time for a torrential downpour of rain and hail. we biked back home racing the setting sun and had a nice long shower. highlight of the day though was crossing this makeshift bamboo/wodden bridge to discover it was apparently a toll bridge! there was some guy collecting a fee halfway down the bridge! haha so whatever, we payed, but then 10 minutes later we had to cross another small brdige and there was another guy there wanting money and we weren't going to pay because we'd already payed to cross the river and this was just going over a small patch of water. so, best part, we just avoided paying the toll and walked around the bridge! haha the water was super shallow Pictures