Happy New Year!

 Day 107 – Written by Aus en route to Bangkok on December 31, 2010

Greetings everybody, we hope you all enjoyed a great Christmas and holiday.  We had a fantastic time for our Christmas in Koh Chang.  Time has continued to fly by, and we are now en route to Bangkok to spend New Year’s Eve with Craig before saying goodbye to him tomorrow morning.  We were all very sad to have to leave Koh Chang and the rest of our friends there, but with Craig on his way home on an early flight tomorrow we had no choice but to leave if we wanted to spend his last night in Thailand with him.  So we now have our sights set on a Bangkok New Year celebration.  It is possible that it could be more mellow than the ones we are used to with friends back home, as we kind of overdid it last night with our farewell to Koh Chang partying.  

Before I go on detailing our time in Koh Chang and our Christmas celebrations I would like to say Happy New Year to all our friends and family back home.  Again, we will miss our usual New Year’s party with the gang back home, and miss being near family for the end of the holidays.   But we certainly have nothing to complain about and are lucky to have our good friend Craig here to help us ring in the new year.   As New Years is somewhat of a time for reflecting, we found ourselves going through the process of summing up a few of the year's travel fun facts.  We found it ineresting to know that in 2010:

- we have been on approximately 76 flights between the two of us in 2010, averaging about 3 hours each in duration, meaning over 100 hours in the air each.  We estimate the the total kilometers travelled in the air for each of us individually at about 70000 km or more. 

- we have travelled to 12 countries and heard 12 different languages.
- we have had all sorts of great adventures and could not pick a single or even shortlist of favourites, each place has felt like the forerunner for favourite while we’ve been there, and we have special memories of all our travel destinations. 
So there you go, lots of travel for us obviously this year, and 2011 is looking like it too will include similar totals.  We find ourselves feeling very lucky, and also very grateful to all who helped us make this all happen by contributing to our trip of a lifetime with their wedding gifts.  If you are one of those people, thank you!  We have had some amazing experiences, in many cases, thanks to great and generous gifts.


Now I will proceed with the regular blogging.  When we last posted it was Christmas Eve and we were gearing up for our Christmas party.  Well it did not disappoint.   Koh Chang Christmas was a real blowout.  Too hard really to try and capture all  the details, so I will just say that we partied until very late and had a fantastic time with all of our friends during the Lonely Beach Nature Bar Christmas party.  It was a massive party right on the beach complete with fireworks, fire dancing, and even people jumping through fire hoops (not us of course, as we value our lives).  Here are a couple shots of our night Christmas Eve:
Tim & Terry enjoying Christmas Eve dinner at Nature Bar…

Gearing up for a big night!

Fire show…….

The fire show was not entirely limited to professionals, and all who were brave (read stupid) enough to try their drunk luck at jumping themselves through a ring of fire were welcome to give it a go.   It almost looks like Craig is thinking about it in this photo…….

Someone who actually did it successfully…..

At midnight there was a big celebration to officially celebrate Christmas, and they had more pyrotechnics up their sleeves with a big sign wishing Merry Christmas…..

The Knotty Travellers celebrating Christmas in Thailand…….

After the big party, we got only a couple hours of sleep before Kim was up and jumping on the beds alerting us all to the fact that it was now finally Christmas day.  We all had a bit of a slow start that morning and tried as best as possible to keep the party going from the night before.  At breakfast I’m not sure whose idea it was but we ended up all starting our days with tequila shots… and so the Christmas day party had begin!
We topped off the day with a homemade Christmas dinner cooked by our friends at the Nature Bar.  After dinner we headed out to Kai Bae for a some final cocktails before collapsing into our beds at about 9PM.  It had been two solid days of Christmas celebrations, so we were exhausted.  Here are a few photos of our Christmas…

Kim alerting Craig to the fact that it was now Christmas morning……



Tequila shots after breakfast… a healthy way to start Christmas day on Lonely Beach!

Dressed as proud Canadians with me even earning the name ‘Captain Canada’, we are feeling good on our way to the daily ritual ‘Sunset beer’ at Nature….

Christmas Dinner….

Not actually taken Christmas day, but Craig decided to make use of the Santa suit before we all left on our last day.  People still seemed to like it despite being a week late….

On boxing day we were set to start a scuba open water diver certification course, but due to prolonged exhaustion we decided to delay.  That turned out to be a good idea as we all needed some extra time to recuperate after all the excitement.   Our boxing day was spent taking it easy and grabbing some sun by the pool.  We also watched Christmas Vacation because it is a Christmas tradition, and it’s hilarious!  Due to our delay on boxing day, we had to wait an extra day for our instructor to become available again, so we spent the 27th exploring a bit of the island.  We had hoped to go on an elephant tour, but due to it being high season we were unable to get a booking.  Instead we explored Bang Bao, the fishing village at the bottom of Koh Chang island.  The fishing here is quite good, and most catch is sent off the island for export.  We managed to find a place that was serving fresh catch and Craig and I ordered a massive platter of fresh BBQ’d seafood, it was fantastic.  Some photos of our day exploring…

Filling up our bikes with Cola bottle gasoline on the way to Bang Bao….

Bang Bao pier

Our awesome seafood platter…

Another little beach community south of Bang Bao that we explored called appropriately, Tropical Beach….

And a few more scenes from Koh Chang not necessarily tied to any particularly interesting stories….
Kim and Craig enjoying a swim…

Kim and Tim while we watch yet another beautiful sunset….

Kim and I at yes, another sunset….

Tez and Rachel, great friends, having a laugh at the nature bar

Our daily scenery and setting on Lonely Beach while we would watch sunsets…

After our day exploring, we headed home and began our course of study for the scuba course.  Our instructor Steve was quite the drill sergeant and he had us spend about 3 hours doing knowledge review and quizzes.  We got an early night and got set for our diving the next day.  Luckily, this time there were no reasons to further delay our diving, and we were bound once again for the pier at Bang Bao to meet our boat.  We got quite lucky in doing this course, as we had essentially 2 instructors (due to Tim being a divemaster student, he was able to assist in our instruction) for a group of 4 people, so it was very personalised attention.  We had a great day and start to our 3-day certification course.  Unfortunately Craig decided that diving is probably not for him, and he opted not to join in on days 2 and 3.  He instead chose to make the most of his last few days in the sun and he spent the days on the beach and pool at the hotel.  We continued our diving and I am now proud to say that Kim and I are certified open water divers, meaning we can dive anywhere in the world and can go to a depth of 18 metres!  We have been told that diving in Egypt is not to be missed, so perhaps we will use our new skills there if/when we get there.  Here are a few photos of our days in the scuba course….

Chilling out on the sundeck upstairs waiting for the dive site….

Feeling very streamlined in our wetsuits……

A panorama of the scene aboard the boat…

One day when we came off the boat we had a great sunset in the distance as we came off, it was nice, like every day in Koh Chang….

Tim with Scuba Steve, our instructor for our Open Water course….

Kim and I and Andreas finishing our written exam….

Once we finally were certified, of course we had to celebrate, and the timing happened to coincide with our last night in Koh Chang, so we ended up having quite another big party, which was really not planned.  We had planned to save our energies for today, but it did not turn out that way and we were out until near dawn. We met a nice couple from Sweden during the course and they joined us for the evening.  We had been hoping to take in a Muay Thai boxing fight as there had been a large poster up all week advertising a match, but when the time finally arrived we learned that it was a bit of a ploy and we were actually in a ladyboy bar where the slogan was “Tuck It!, Have a Bucket!”, and of course the fights did not happen.  We didn't let that spoil our evening through, and we had a great night enjoying our last night with great friends on Koh CHang.  Here are a few photos….

Craig modelling the vodka red bull bucket, a Koh Chang favourite….

Kim at the Scubar enjoying some Banana Chocolate roti pancake from across the street, the best street food on Koh Chang…

At the Om bar with our Swedish scuba friends, Andreas and Ann….

And that is it….you are now up to date.  We wish you all the best for a great New Year’s Eve and a safe and happy 2011. 

Until next time,
The Knotty Travellers