Here it is, my final blog. 

I'll give you a quick rundown on what we've been up to on our final week abroad, then i shall try my best to conclude myself on this thing. 

So, we arrived in Koh Phangang, and immediately got hustled by a tuctuc driver who wanted 100baht from each of us to take us up the street to our hostel. Sadly, he had the price written on a laminated paper which is apparently the only way to stop a price from being negotiated. The hostel was just a bit too far to walk, and all the drivers shared these laminated papers, so pay 100baht we did.

We arrived at our hostel and were greeted by the owner, a Canadian for Oshawa. Josh and Tom (who I am now convinced is the funniest man alive) dubbed him "coconut head" because he was bald with a shiny round head. He was also a total douche who drank protein powder twice a day, was rude to all international people, and was more interested in preventing bad reviews online than taking pride in his work. Seriously, the amount of times he answered with "I'd rather just _______ for you and not have you write a bad review about it later because I didn't". I think he must have had some kind of traumatizing bad review that has forever scarred him. He was also extremely unhelpful. another one of his favorite answers was "ya there are plenty just look down the street" whenever we asked for any advice. Probably the rudest Canadian we've met on this journey which puts him at the bottom of a pretty big pool.

The hostel itself was pretty nice. The six of us (Jess, me, josh, Chris, Lindsay and Tom) all shared a room with comfy beds and a decent bathroom. The first night we were pretty zonked so we watched a movie and hit the sack. 

We woke up the next day, got owned again by selfish cabbies who made us pay another 100 baht to get to the beach, and sat on the sand in what ended up being the first day of bad weather out of several in a row. We still made the best of it. Chris and Lindsay had a case of frisbee fever and looked to throw the disc at any possible opportunity, so that passed some time. 

We also sauntered into town and bought some neon attire for the black moon party we were attending that night. Most of you probably know about full/half/black moon parties... It's basically a rave on a beach that you pay an insane amount of money to attend with lots of neon things everywhere and the same house song on repeat for 4 hours. 

Before the party we had a bit of a hostel wide pre drink and body paint session (check the FB pics). There we met an awesome Swedish couple that we fell in love with, some Irish and a group of unmemorable Brits, although one did wake up the next morning in a hammock alone and shoeless miles away from our hostel with no idea how he got there. 

The party itself was pretty awesome. Lots of dancing and drinking, basically what you'd expect from a rave. Definitely didn't beat out the night Matt walked through the fire though. Josh was the king of the party with all the pretty ladies after him and all the best moves (who is this guy, right??). 

We woke up the next morning definitely in no mood to do anything, and luckily the weather agreed win us because it was horrible. We started off the day watching an awful scottish film called trainspotting that none of the canadians could understand, and in what appeared almost to be an act of mercy, tom blacked out while ordering a drink and fell off of a high stool. I can make light of it now because hes fine, but he was out of it for a few minutes and it was actually scary. The swedish couple proved their saint status by nursing him back to health. Jess and I went on to watch the final 2 Harry potter movies and topped it off with employee of the month, which I'm embarrassed to admit. Eventful day. Needless to say, we did nothing fun that night but did attend a lovely restaurant run by a lovely owner. Tom, being the big spender that he is, ordered the ribs... He was also back on the Chang (Thai beer) so I think he was feeling better. 

The next morning we woke up eager to leave. Eager to leave the bad weather, eager to leave the blatant scamming of tourists, and most of all eager to get away from the crabby clutches of coconut head. We hopped on a ferry to our final destination: Koh Samui. Sadly, so did the weather. 

We dropped some mad cash (20$) on the first two nights and stayed at a great resort with an infinity pool and beautiful bathrooms... It's so funny how excited I have gotten over nice bathrooms in Thailand. We were 2 rooms of three, so josh slept on the cot in mommy and daddy's room and Tom slept on the cot with me and Jess. Our first day there was spent playing in our new pool and on our new beach. 

Sadly we once again picked kind of an unideal location with no good bars around, so we had a group bonding night and partied in our connecting rooms. 

The next day was songkran, aka Thai new year, the biggest holiday of the year. To celebrate this, each town/city/island hosts a water fight that lasts between 1-3 days. In Samui, the water fight was island wide and mercifully only lasted 24 hours. We took a cab into town to check it out, oblivious to what we were about to experience. Literally everyone, from small children to old ladies, are fair game. People chase each other with buckets of water and just slam each other with them. We got our hands on some McDonald's cups and water guns and started our assault. Chris and Jess were the most merciless, but we were all pretty evil. The scariest thing was watching people slam people on scooters in the face with water, but I quickly joined in the madness and somehow didn't see anyone crash. We literally spent 5 hours in the midst of the water right, with only one break to get some 50 baht cocktails, eventually having to rest at dinner. After spending some time in the street parties, we returned to our home and scrubbed ourselves for what seemed like hours... You would too if you had seen the water we were fighting with. 

On our last day we moved across the island to chaweng to stay in the party district for our last night. We spent the morning on our old beach and said goodbyes to the beautiful place, then went shopping. We had our last group dinner, my last pad Thai :(, then we hit the changs while Tom got pumped up by reading my copy of 1984. I thought he may pull a Bangkok Tom and pass out be he did make it out with us and we had a big night. En route to finding a bar, a local literally threw a small monkey onto my head and it peed all over my shoulder. lovely start to the night. We then, pee and all, arrived at a pub where we struggled to keep Chris awake and watched some creepy old men hit on young Thai girls who were asking for it, then hit a dance floor down the street hard. The rest of the night was great fun and it was the perfect way to spend our last night all together. 

We woke up the next day and began the unfathomably long journey home... First we got on a 17hour ferry/bus combo to get us back to Bangkok, then we had to kill 15 hours at koahsan road waiting for our 9pm flight, then we has to fly to India, then we had to fly to London, then we had to kill 12 hours on our stopover at heathrow, and finally we boarded our final flight back to Toronto. Thank god we only live half an hour from the airport.

And there it is for you. This is where my trip ends. It sounds cliche, but it honestly feels like yesterday that josh and I were sitting in the maple leafs' lounge at Pearson while Mikey was claiming he spotted Samuel Jackson in line at a restaurant, all of us preparing for New Zealand. 

To cap it all off, here are my final lists... 

Things I missed most while traveling...

My shower, my wardrobe, my friends and family, not having to use a shampoo that quadrupled as body wash, shaving cream and conditioner, food, exercising in canada, my blow dryer, frisbee, bleeding out money...

Things I'll miss the most now that I'm back... 

Always being surrounded by amazing friends, always having something to do, the weather, hostel life, beaches, lagoons, the horrible early mornings somehow..., seeing new things every day, the partying.... sigh aurora. 

Bests and worsts...

Best places- Koh Tao, Byron Bay, Cairns, Queenstown, Nelson, poo pub, Fraser

Worst places- Bangkok. I hate you bangkok. 

Best days- Songkran in Koh Samui, Mount doom, Queenstown days with the crew, Fraser Island

Worst days- day 1 in fraser, first day in bangkok, the last 80 hours travelling home to our great country

Best hostel- Royal resort in Koh Tao

I'll keep it at that, because you've already heard most of the bests and worsts. Thailand was amazing, but it just couldn't compete with the first two mind blowing countries. Coming home is bittersweet. I'm happy to be back and I have so much to look forward to in the coming months, but I am gutted to know my time with my amazing friends has come to an end. One last time, I'd like to thank Lizzie, Wild, Rishi, Karan, Annie, Laura, Jess, Slinger, Ryley, Carl, Mikey, Joshy, Amy, Shauna, Marie, Wong, Lindsay, Matt, Tom, and everyone else that we met up with along the way. It wouldn't have been the same without any of you...

And that's all she wrote, my friends. Once again, thanks for taking the time to read this. I have loved writing this blog, and I hope at least a few of you have found it a worthwhile read. This is goodbye, but who knows, maybe I can start this thing up again sooner rather than later. 

XOXOXOXOXOXO

4 canadians, 3 brits and a ladyboy

WOOO ASIA
new country, new friends, new crazy atmosphere.

It all started in the singapore airport... I got off the plane, immediately realized I'd left my phone in the seat pocket, and when I tried to get back on I wasn't allowed. They proceeded to "search" for my phone which shockingly they couldn't find. This is the same airline that had no tvs for either of our 7 hour flights, charged money for a glass of water, charged 160$ to check your bag (pleasant surprise), and basically ignored you all flight long if you weren't thai. Never fly jetstar asia. never. I'm fairly confident my phone was sold on ebay to help cover staff wages.

Anyways, just to add insult to injury, this was my birthday. Maybe the worst one ever. When we finally got to Bangkok, Josh told me to wait while he changed. I waited for 35 minutes (no exaggeration, I was sitting under the clock and watching it) wondering where he was. I ended up just leaving, convinced he was abducted or lost. The only place I knew by name was Khoa san road, so I went there.... If you know anything about Khoa san, you'll know it's one of the worst possible places to go when you're scared or confused (both of which I was... mostly scared of Josh's wrath when he found me). There's about one million people on a 20 meter stretch of road, and 1/10 are screaming at you to buy a suit or eat the scorpion they just fried up. The next 2 hours were spent frantically trying to get a hold of josh on the internet, hard without a phone, but even harder when he tried to arrange to meet me at an abandoned restaurant called Mr Yim's. Eventually we did thankfully find each other and booked the first place we ran into. After that we walked around Khoa san for a bit, and even though it's a short road you can walk up and down it for hours because its always changing. We got dinner and  beer for 3$, which was lovely, but Josh also lost 500baht in a bit of a suit scam, which he can tell you about...

The currency here is the baht. 100 baht is about 4$, so we could usually get a room for about 300 baht. Why they choose to work with such a crazy currency I don't know, but it definitely makes you feel rich when you take thousands of baht out of the ATM.

Onwards with our first day... We planned to meet up with our friend from home, MC. We planned to pre with her and then hit skybar. The problem with Thai taxis is that they rarely understand where you're trying to go unless you have the directions written for you in Thai (something we had yet to learn) so the cab driver took us way out of the way and dropped us off.  This was only after he begged us to come to his friend's suit shop. After speaking to the lady at 7/11, we realized we were still 20 minutes away, so we trudged back, found another cab and went home to bed. Once again, this was our 23rd birthday. 

Thankfully things started looking up the next day. Bright and early we met our first friend, Tom. Tom is an animated and hilarious guy from northern England, which basically means his sense of humor is crude and he loves to drink. Tom had gotten to khoa san at 3am the previous morning after getting scammed 2500 baht for his cab from the airport (i paid 350) and he, like us, was extremely rattled by the place. The 3 of us moved to another less crazy place in Bangkok. By that I mean there was still millions of people around you at all times but they weren't shouting at you and pulling at you non stop. On route we ran into his 3 foot woman who kept touching Josh and Tom and licking their sweat off her fingers and then cackling. terrifying woman. The hostel was called smile society and the owner was an absolute gem. There we met up with three of our German friends from Germany: Doris, Ana and Judith. It definitely felt soothing to meet up with people who understood the culture shock of coming from Australia to Bangkok. We also met 4 Brits.. Matt, Matt 2 (aka "the ash man"), Myles and Luke. We walked around a bit and then hit sky bar that night, which is basically a really nice bar on the outdoor patio on the 65th floor. Amazing views but as you can imagine it was insanely overpriced. After one drink we left to find a new place, where it became a game to avoid the cockroaches running all over your feet. 

Myles was a bit obsessed with the concept of lady boys, which are basically really convincing transvestites (look it up), so he dragged us out to find them... We found a place called thigh bar ...... Where inside a few girls were dancing (unconfirmed lady boys) and we had some cheap drinks. I also had my first experience with a squat toilet, which is basically a hole in the ground that you do your business on. In Asia you definitely appreciate western toilets, and when you find one it feels like you hit the lottery as they mostly don't have toilet paper as are usually squatters. You also aren't allowed to flush toilet paper, you have to throw it out... Sooo when you go number two they have a hose in the bathroom that you're supposed to use to clean up. The toilet in this place was literally a hole in the ground with a red plastic seat situated in the strip club's storage room and instead of a door there was a curtain. Not delightful, but at least now I know(hope) I've faced the worst. 

The next day the Germans, Tom, josh and I headed by boat to the grand palace. When we got there we found out it was 300baht to get in, so the boys and I went to an air conditioned cafe to wait for the Germans to see it. After some confusion involving china town on the way home, we treated ourselves to McDonald's and went back to smile society. For dinner all of us including the Brits went out for dinner and had a horrible experience being hated on by the Thai servers. All of the boys and I then started to pre (the Germans bailed) and we all ended up just talking at the table. The Brits dared Matt to break off from their group and come with us, claiming he'd never have the balls to do it. I didn't think he would do it either, but the next morning he announced he was going to come south with us and meet up with them in a day or two. Of course they ended up going north and screwing him for 5 nights, but he's happily on his way to meet them now.

Anyways, after we checked out of smile society we finally met up with Chris and Lindsay (friends from home for those of you who don't know) and that made me and josh incredibly happy. The 4 of us plus Tom and Matt headed to the bus stop, where we waited for 8 hours for our bus... The highlights there included horrible manicures and being forced to stop playing president by security because they insisted we were gambling. 

After that 8 hour wait we were finally getting out of Bangkok. I'm still not sure how I felt about it, but I'm leaning towards saying i strongly disliked it. Too much hustle and bustle, too much mayhem. Don't get me wrong though, very cool atmosphere to be involved in. 

We then faced a 7 hour bus ride which was thankfully air conditioned, followed by a 3 hour ferry which was so awful that I was seriously considering kamikazeeing into the ocean. Thankfully at 11am we arrived at the absolutely beautiful island of Koh Tao and checked into an amazing bungalow at royal resort. Our first way was an easy one at the beach, which was a top 3 beach of this trip. The only problem was that the water was actually too hot. Matt ended up getting fried, and the rest of us got a bit of heat stroke. 

We planned for a big night that night, but Matt was feeling ill and Tom had managed to turn a nap into a sleep for the 3rd night in a row (dreadful habit) so the four of us headed out. Chris had quite a big big night but that is his story to tell. The bar we went to was called castle and they played awesome music. On the walk home Chris taunted every wild dog we passed and I thought he would get us killed but we made it back. The next day was pretty similar in that we hit another beach. We also spent a big portion of the day booking our scuba trip for the next day. The only other activity of the day was eating. 

The next day we all (except josh) got up early to scuba dive. Our instructor was a babe from Switzerland so that was nice. He took us to two sites, Japanese gardens and twin rocks, both for 50 minutes. We saw about a million types of coral and some huge fish called emperors, but he scariest one was the trigger fish. It was my first scuba so initially I was panicking but it ended up being awesome and I wish it could've been for longer. 

That night we had our big big night. We had a fun Predrink then headed down the beach, led by a stray dog we picked up at the hostel. He came all the way with us 3 km down to a place called lotus bar where things got a bit crazy for Matt and Tom.. Matt managed to walk directly through a fire show to puke in the ocean and then back several times... The four of us plus Jess (great friend from NZ that we met up with and are now traveling with) danced and laughed all night about the other two, then walker the long way home at 4am, sadly without our dog friend. 

The next day was equally as exciting. We rented scooters and immediately Jess had a minor crash into the wall that cost her 100$. I climbed on the back of one, too scared to drive, only to crash 5 minutes into the trip on the first turn. Thankfully both me and the driver (identity kept secret to protect the ego) were unscathed, just a little rattled. Mom, do not worry! The crash count remained at 2 for the rest of the day. We drove or scooters to a place called shark island. Sadly I had a mild case of food poisoning so I mostly slept and moped, but everyone else had a great day and most of them saw sharks while they were snorkeling. Bad day to be ill. When we got back to the hostel I think we were all pretty relieved to be ok. We had a group dinner then josh, Jess, Tom and Matt went back to lotus bar. Matt actually stayed up to watch the Manchester game at 2am, what a trooper. 

Today we got back on the scooters, not quite rattled enough to avoid them. We hit some other beach and hung out in the water all day. I also managed to spot a Toronto ultimate disc and stuck up a convo with a weirdo Canadian who now plays in tssc... 

We said out goodbyes to Matt, dealt with the problems with the bikes and now the 6 of us are on a Ferry to koh phangan, which is basically the party island in this area. 

That's all for now..... Thanks for sticking it through this post amigos! Home in one week xoxoxo

CAIRNS CAIRNS CAIRNS I LOVED YOU

NJSDFKGHG I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M NOT IN AUSTRALIA ANYMORE. I literally cannot explain how much that sucks! I miss it so much already, thankfully bangkok is so confusing and overwhelming that I haven't really had the time to think about it. 

I will just do an Australia wrap up blog here though, best not to go cross blog, that would get confusing and painful I think. 

So, last we left off (i feel like that is ALWAYS how I start... I wish I could come up with something more innovative and catchy), we were just en route to Cairns, and what a wonderful and glorious place Cairns is. When we were told that it was the biggest backpacker party in Australia, they weren't lying. If anything they were underselling. 

We got there on Wednesday night after a 12 hour bus, totally zonked obviously. Met our first roommate Elinor, a swede who looked more like a jungle queen. She was awesome and super fun, but we didn't get to say goodbye! Bye Elinor!!! Anyway, she introduced us to her British friend Jack and some of her other Swedish friends Hannah and Anna. The first night we past out early, which kind of sucked since we were staying in the world's best hostel, Gilligans. Gilligans is basically a backpackers resort. They have something like 500 beds, which is absolutely insane, 3 floors, 3 kitchens, a massive pool and the city's best bar attached right to it. Every night the entire hostel gathered on the first floor for drinking games and then headed to the bar. 

We woke up the next morning, hit the lagoon, and ate, and went back to the bar. This became a cycle for us. Wake up, lagoon, eat, drink, repeat. Cairns is actually also home to many rainforests, waterfalls, and of course the Great Barrier Reef. We pulled a super loser move by seeing none of that... Not that we didn't want to, but we waited too long to book and because it was Easter none of the tours had space for us. Anyways that night out was pretty fun, but because of Easter Friday they closed the bar at midnight and didn't open til midnight the next night. I could fill you in on what happened between those 24 hours but all you really need to know is that we repeated the cycle. The next night we had a massive pre on our balcony with our new British friends Jake and Ash (two smoking hot babes), Jack, the Swedes and a Canadian named Dan. Dan was a sketchy character, referring to himself as a white rapper "like Eminem". He nagged and nagged Josh because he lost his debit card, so he kept having to e-mail transfer Josh money who would then take it out for him. It became a bit of a running joke to all of us behind his back. We headed to the bar around 1, danced our faces off til 5 and came back to find a lizard on the ceiling. Everyone in the room was extremely paranoid and tried to rationalize why the lizard wouldn't end up in their beds... As far as we know he ended up in no ones, but also as far as we know it was never possible for him to leave the room. creepy. 

Once again, we woke up and repeated the cycle. I actually managed to work out every day in Cairns which I'm really proud of. I had to move to a new room by myself on the last night where I met 3 of the funniest British people I've ever met, and definitely the funniest and HOTTEST swede. Best room I've had the whole trip... Should have ditched the boys ages ago. They had a sick room full of some Canadians we met in Rainbow as well, so worked out for all of us. By then we had realized that a girl from home, Lisa, was also staying in our hostel. Such a small world. Anyway, we pre'd with Lisa plus the rest of the gang, also met up with a group of like 7 Americans (oops should have mentioned them earlier, they were really cool), and played basically every drinking game known to man, followed by one more massive last night out. The best part about Gilligans were that pitchers were 3.50, an absolutely mind blowingly cheap price for Australia. Once again we strolled home super late. I woke up 4 of my roommates sharing beds with each other and the Swede taking pictures of me drooling on my pillow, as I said, a lovely bunch. Terribly, gut wrenchingly sadly, 

this marked out last day in Australia. Ironically, Mike, Josh and I spent the majority of the day watching King of Queen's, the episode with his parents' living will. I know you all know the one. We hit the lagoon to say goodbye to Max and Minh who we caught up with the night before, caught a bit more sun, and boarded a plane to perth with Jack.... but that story is for another time. 

I'll cap this off with some bests and worsts... 

Best stops: Byron, Fraser, Brisbane and Cairns

Worst stops: Rainbow, surfer's
Best/Coolest new friends: Ash, Jake, Derek, Minh, Max, Henreike, Charlotte, Lisa, Seren, Sam, Amy, Shauna

Best bar: Gilligans and Cheeky Monkeys

Best beach: Byron

Worst beach: Airlie (jelly fish city, or as minh calls them... jellies)

Best lagoon: Brisbane

Best day: every day on fraser (except the first)

Worst day: the first day on fraser, and every day we had to be on a bus for 12 hours
Best hosts: Amy and Shauna (& will I guess....)

Best meal: Amy and Shauna's dinner

Best nights out: every night in Gilligans, Cheeky Monkeys, St Pattys

Worst night out: Airlie night number 2.... horrible.

Most jokes stop: Nimbin

Best hostel: Gilligan's, Base Sydney, Nomads Byron

Worst hostel: Fraser's at Rainbow... that's really the only bad one 

Best Wheels: Ash and Jake

Best dancer: Derek and Minh

Best tan: any of our swedish friends 

Best restaurant: Gilligan's 

Best kitchen: Gilligan's

Worst kitchen: any base pretty much... 

Best accent: Ash

Best drinking game: ANIMAL

New Zealand was amazing, and I thought we could never beat it. Now I'm not so sure. I usually think calling something a tie is a cop out, but I cannot pick which 5 weeks were more amazing. Australia, I will definitely be back for you, next time with more money and SPF 15. Once again, massive thanks to everyone who made my time there absolutely amazing. Here's hoping Thailand can compete! 

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

ps no more pics cause my phone is on a trip somewhere across the world.