burma & sydney pictures

beautiful burma

i know its been ages since the last post...

first of all a couple of things i forgot to mention last time..

first of all i had a motorbike accident in koh phangan, which was really stupid cause the roads over there are crazy and hilly and it was all fine until... i was trying to park the motorbike.
now spare me the "women and parking" talk.. the motorbike slipped, so did I and suddenly the stupid motorbike wanted to be really close and cuddly and I was lying underneath it.
that all happened two days before the fullmoon party which made it even better bc being patched up at the fullmoon party with 5000 people around you...not the greatest idea.

apropos fulloonparty...they stole my flip flops. 9am and they were just gone after we came out from a little swin in the gulf of thailand.
BUT my hero nora stole me new ones so i didnt have to go barefooted... unfortunately it was size 45 so not the best fit.. i bought new ones the next day and the 45 flip flops have a new owner by now...but thats a different story...

so after koh phangan we were traveling to koh tao and went scuba diving and did our diving license...it was great... so now we are official divers .whoop whoop.

but like it always is when you are having a good time...
I got sick... fatally sick. after 5 paracetamols i still had a fever and it was horrible...

luckily we had a doctor from vienna in our hostel and Im still pretty sure he saved my life.he told me what medicine i have to take and was looking after me while I was miserable...
First of all he said it might be decompression sickness, then he said it might be malaria and then dengue... great.

Our flight to Burma was supposed to be in 2 days, we still didnt have no visa and lina was all crying in bed.
so nora was being an amazing mommy and talked for hours to the burma embassy and they told her the embassy is opening at 9am but we should be there at 530 cause there gonna be so many people.

lesson learned.
never trust the embassy.

530. we are at the embassy. empty. no one there. until 9 am. great.

anyways..we got the visa and went back to the hostel...not without spending 6 hours in bangkoks traffic (yes! 6 hours! yes!)...

after arriving back to the hostel, me totally drugged to the eyeballs with aspirin and all different kinds of antibiotics, the vienna docotr takes a look at me again ("bist du deppart, i hoab noch nie solch a mandeln g'sehn!) and tells me if Im really unlucky my eardrums might burst at the flight to burma...

make a long story short...i got doped up with pain killers and we flew. eardrums didnt burst. yay.
was a great decision that we took the flight, cause burma was so worth it...

when we arrived in burma we were asked if we need a taxi and as soon as we got into the taxi we realized that there is no taxi sign on the cars like on all the other taxis. awesome. After being a little panicked about being kidnapped on our first day, our taxidriver Mutu seemed to be a really nice guy and took us to our hostel.

at the first night in yangon we went to an amazing nepalese vegetarian restaurant (thx javier again!) where some locals were celebrating ones birthday, playing the guitar and singing songs like "hotel california" and "take it easy"... seemed like we were dealing with big "eagles" fans...
we had a great evening!

the lonely planet recommended we should call the german embassy to let them know we are in burma...so we called them... "german embassy hello?" "hi, we were told we need to let our embassy know that we are here?" "hmm... the office is closed. maybe u try again on monday." "uhm...ok.thank you"...

so after having a really great time in burma where we went to inle lake, bagan (ever shared your bathroom with a whole family of cockroaches?) and back to yangon we arrived in bangkok yesterday night...

tomorrow we are heading to sydney and i promise to post some pictures next time...
have a great day everyone!!

contradictory cambodia and terrific thailand

it has been a while, so a lot has happened since then..

saigon was crazy...we spend a really good time with Javier with long nights full of laughter and beer. and whiskey.and crabs.and more beer.

the city never sleeps, when we arrived there at 430am, the streets were crowded, the restaurants full and parties everywhere...

traffic in saigon...horrifying.you could also call it motorbike madness.it was an endless procession of passing two-wheelers. its like moving through a swarm of honeybees.

After Saigon we left to phu quoc which was beautiful...2 days of just hanging out on the island and doing nothing.great.
We started our journey to cambodia in a totally crowded bus and after almost missing the bus, we got the shit seats. After paying 20 bucks without getting a receipt or busticket ("dont worry, its ok") we sat in the back of the bus with the engine right next to our face, the smell of pure petrol in our nose and started our journey to cambodia.

Arrived in phnom phen, rented a motorbike and went to S 21 and the killing fields...we did it in two days though because its exhausting to see all of it in one day and i dont mean physically exhausting.

we took the next bus to siem reap to see angkor wat. it was really impressive even though i dont understand what people are doing there the whole day... we started at 430am to see the sun rise over angkot wat and where done by around 11am...
our tuk tuk driver asked us if we want to wait there to see the sunset ("uhmm..in 9hours.so maybe no.")

instead we went to a children hospital called "kantha bopha", where they treat the children for free...we decided to donate blood. Both of us havent done it before and some might say why would you start with that in cambodia where the hospitals have a different status then ours... but i guess if you are not starting here, then where?!

next stop was thailand...pouring rain and we with our backpackers walking between the boarder posts of cambodia and thailand...
but forget the rain, at one of the boarder controlls they stopped the bus and the boarder guard was the most beautiful guy on the whole trip. we were in love. straight away. and agreed that it was a waste of beauty to put this boarder guard in the middle of nowhere.

we spent a great night in bangkok and found the probably cheapest accomodation (maybe the cheapest one, but did you ever try to sleep next to a karaoke bar?Dont try!)

Monsoon hit us again and we took the next bus to koh phangan...
luck was on our side (as if) and we sat next to 4 irish guys with 30 bottle of beer (not kidding!) who were getting totally wasted on the bus.
so no sleep, listening to stupid drunk guy talk (its all about boobs and beer) we arrived in koh phangan.

we are in a great little bungalow right in front of the gulf of thailand and its just great...
yesterday was fullmoon party and if you are here anyways you have to join it i guess.
anyways...
its been a long night with an unbelievable sunrise and a great morning...but no sleep for the last 30 hours so now i really gotta go to finally get some rest!

vibrant vietnam

delightsome dalat

after spending some great days in Hanoi we went on a boat trip in Ha Long Bay, first of all it seems like a stupid "screw-the-nature-and-lets-get-wasted"trip... but it turned out to be a pretty amazing trip in the end.
we went kayaking until dusk which was kinda scary cause at the end it was pitch-black and we couldnt which one was our boat... some other people found themselves at a different boat.

but we made it and after another day in Hanoi we took the bus to Hoi An where we spent 3 more days...
Hoi An was really nice with all those little shops who taught us again how much fun it is to waste all of your money in clothes you dont need...
we took it easy there and after 3 days, 2 massages, a manicure and an account in deep debits later we took the next bus to Dalat...

bus ride took us another 20 hours not mentioning the motorbike we crashed and the other bus we scratched...

Dalat is kind of freezing compared to the last 2 months of heat... it lays in the mountains where the french tried to escape from the heat back in the days...

yesterday we rented motorbikes and we were wearing scarves, longsleeves and are wishing for a wintercoat..

the trip yesterday was great... we went to the elephant waterfalls, the valley of love (even the vietnamese think its kitschy...) and saved the lifes of 4 turtles.

tonight we are heading to Ho Chi Minh City where we will stay a couple of days and then take our flight to Phu Quoc...



dalat is great!
thanks javier. you rock.