The story so far:

Hi every one. I thought I might start a blog about our travels so that anyone who is interested can keep up with what we are doing and so that I have something to do while we are stuck in net cafes downloading copious amounts of photos from the internet for re-touching. I am also keeping a writen journal of events, but I that will end up consisting of more personal developmental moments as we go along. although I may repeat some items from it here.

Here it goes:

The adventure started right at our first boarding gate. While we had arrived at the airport within plenty of time, Our bags had been checked and our boarding passes issued, We hung on to our family goodbyes to the very last minute. No sooner had we stepped through customs that the loud speaker announced that it was the last call for our flight, so we had to get a bit of a jog on. We had a small wait in line to get on the plane, and as we were cleared from the boarding gate I heard the checker man say "thats it, the flight is closed" I couldn't believe it!

What can I say about the flight? It was long. Really long. Well... 12 hours long. I know some of you have done longer, but this is by far the longest flight we have braved before. Melissa got walked in on while vacating herself because she didn't close the door properly, and then a couple of hours later spilt coffie all over her lap while navigating her headphones cable. Fun times.

When we got to Singapore to transfer to our connecting flight I thought i would take the chance to sample one of their world famous spotlessly clean toilets for a quick number 2. However when I entered the only available cubical I was a little surprised to find one of those world famous squating type toilets. I tried out the pose for fit, but didn't fancy my luck getting out with clean shorts and an able back, so I held on. Melissa brought some highly contraversial psudoephidrene medication from the airport pharmacy, and asked if the label on the packet was in New Zealand dollars. In her defense - Singapore airport does look alot like New Zealand, except that it is run by Singaporians.

Arriving at our final desination our nerves were near thier end. We were increadably tired (I had only managed to get 2 hours sleep the previous night due to pre travel nerves), and generally just anxious about what we had in store for us. Getting our visas was a breeze. Except that Melissa had filled out her arrivals form incorrectly and so had to go and get a new one and join the back of the queue, while I was made to wait on the other side of the desks. When I asked if I could go back through and help her the official replied " AHHH allies! one person is one person, not two person." - He obviously doesn't know us very well.

I had been warned about the onslaught of ride offers that would be wiating for us outside the departures gate, But I still wasn't ready for it when it hit. One guy pounced on us and tried to convince us to go with him. We managed to haggle him down to 650B but when he tried to get us to pay for a ticket (read piece of paper) before actually seeing the taxi, we walked. The next reputable looking taxi we found wanted 1000B and told us that there were not many of the usual taxis working on account of it being dubious. Melissa pointed out that there was a sign outside the taxi stand confirming what he was saying, so we took his offer of 900B and got in. Durring the journey the driver told us his story of how his wife was skinny when he married her, but now, since she was a cook, she had got fat. Then he started to pop the clutch and bunny hop the car on take of and as he was driving, appologising and complaining about how he had no money to fix the car. he suggested that maybe it was the sparkplugs, and I replied that maybe it was the way he pressed the clutch in. About then I started getting dubious about where he could be taking us. How would I know if he was taking us to our hotel, or the local organ farm? Anyway we got there in the end and our receptionist was a lovely lady. We tried out out jet lagged Thai hello's and thank yous and settled into our room.

It looked like something straight out of "the beach" and when a cockroach scurried out from under the desk, I insisted that we put up the mosquito net for the night.

6 hours of nervious, jetlaged, bug dream waking sleep later the sun was up and we were to excited to succum to our bodys pleas for rest. We headed to the beach for breakfast and then took a walk along the beach front. This was more like it. The beach was beautiful and there were plenty of stalls for us to look at. Somewhere along the way I realised that jetlag is really trippy. I kept getting these waves of light headedness which I can only describe as similar to the feeling you get when you throw yourself forward to repent at an evangalist church service and the priest is standing infront of you ranting and raving and filling you with the power of Jesus.
I think the swim in the luke warm bath of an ocean and the beach side massage has fixed it though. The whole day was quite surreal.

Things are quite expensive here, except for the 7 elevin where we managed to pick up Thai red bull for the equivilant of 50c each. We will most probably be moving on before to long.
For now - night has just fallen and I think we are going to see what the local bars have to offer.