A new year and old friends
We were looking forward to our time in Melbourne ever since we started our trip. To spend Christmas with the Boothby family was actually one of the very little fixed-points we had planned. Steve and Markus met about 15 years back in Switzerland, when Steve did an exchange year at school and their friendship lasted over all these years. Steve and his family live in the suburbs of Melbourne, and he organized a house to stay at as well as a car to use for the duration of our visit. What a luxury! We felt very welcome and were happy to meet...
read moreThe mother of all roads
The Great Ocean Road – I reckon most people have heard of this place, although I believe few actually know the details. Given the fact that we both loves motorcycles, and our host was more than happy to find an excuse to hire a massive bike, we gave it a go. Our rental period was exactly 24 hours, which we split into two parts. On Saturday, we picked up our bikes at 4 PM at a place called The Moto God in Torquay. Judith got a Harley Davidson Sportster 883 so loud it scared the sh** out of us when she started it, I myself got to ride a...
read moreThree nights in Bangkok
Bangkok – a city of many tales. To be honest, we didn’t really see that many, since we only had 3 days there, in between Pai and our already booked flight down to Melbourne. We soon figured that Bangkok is way too big to even remotely see in 3 days. With just over 8 million people living there, Bangkok packs the entire population of Switzerland into an area roughly the size of the Swiss canton of Lucerne. Getting around was fairly straight forward though. With over 50’000 taxis registered, getting one is usually a matter of seconds, and...
read more762 curves up north
It seemed that the further north we went, the better we liked what we found. We really enjoyed Chiang Mai, which made us want to go even further. Popular choices were Chiang Rai and Pai, and the latter won due to a recommendation from one of my best friends. He said it was his favorite place in all of Thailand, which was enough of a reason for us to go. And what a go it was: Although it’s only 84 kilometers north of Chiang Mai on the map, the street actually stretches for 128 kilometers, and includes a staggering 762 curves! Even being used...
read moreInto the wild
After having explored a few places in the south of Thailand, we were keen to get to know the northern part of the country. A lot of friends told us about the beauty of Chiang Mai, the biggest city in the north, home to around 150’000 people (and over 1 Mio tourists a year). Upon exiting the plane, we took a deep breath of the fresh air. What a good feeling after the heat and humidity in the south! During the day, the temperature in Chiang Mai goes up to 30°C and by night drops to 15°C: Seems like a perfect climate to us. Chiang Mai offers a...
read moreKoh Phangan stands for…
“Since we are in Thailand anyways, let’s go to the famous Fullmoon Party in Koh Phangan.” That’s what I said to my husband and booked a flight from Phuket to Koh Samui. I found out that domestic flights in Thailand are not as cheap as I expected. The party took place on December 6th, the “Samichlaus Tag” in Switzerland. In a somewhat bumpy 20-minute ride, a speedboat took us and 40 other party-goers to Koh Phangan. We were equipped with our camaras and some quite negative prejudice from what we’d read...
read more12 random facts about Myanmar
Well – we’ve left the country, so it’s time to look back. Here are 12 pretty random facts that stuck with us. 1. Supposedly, you have to bring prestine US dollar bills into the country if you wanna change. A dent and they won’t take it. Funny – among their local bills are pretty much the worst we’ve ever seen. 2. Myanmar wants to give you power: Their plugs pretty much fit everyting. Seriously, I’ve tried every possible option on my world plug. All worked! 3. Apparently, there are no...
read moreBeachtime
While Myanmar is not particularly famous for its beaches, it does nevertheless feature a pretty extensive coast line towards the west. Well, we’re a bit mare-phile anyways, and we figured it would be a perfect goodbye for this place to spend some time at the beach. The most popular beach is Ngapali, quite a bit up north. It’s where all the large resorts are, and according to images, it’s stunningly beautiful. Prices looked a bit out of our range, though, and so we opted for another selection: We’d read an article in a...
read moreCity of Pagodas
4’000 would already be a lot. And 400’000 would definitely be enough, one might think. But, according to the locals, there are about 4’500’000 Pagodas in Bagan. We did not count or see all of them, but yet we are convinced that this number could be true. We headed to Bagan with a boat from Mandalay. It took us about 10 hours and provided us with a mild sunburn, back pain and restless legs. The landscape that drifted by was rather monotonous: Sand, trees, grass, a few wooden houses and, of course, Pagodas. Short: We were glad when we finally...
read moreA bit closer to Paradise
After a few days on Yangon, we discovered that continuing to binge on the spectacular street food would permanently damage our waistlines, so we decided to head north. Initially, our plan had been to travel north to Mandalay, and then continue east to the Tachilek border crossing, where we wanted to enter Thailand. Sealed off for decades, this border crossing has just become possibly for tourists recently, and it seemed to fit our travel plans. After talking to the Myanmar Tourist and Travel center, short MTT, which is run by the government...
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