The Rationalist Manifesto

My brain is too jet-lagged, so this post will be very short notes about stuff we did today:

Gabe, Meg and myself went walking around Sydney’s inner west, they showed me the University of Sydney campus, the city center, especially the central station and how to get around the city’s bus and rail system and more items of note there.
Later, while Shelly slept on, I checked out apartments on the Internet,  found some options we’ll check out tomorrow.
In the late afternoon Shelly woke up feeling much better and we went to our hostel to freshen up before dinner.

We went to a weird but nice Macedonian place for dinner, where we each had non Macedonian dishes and we broke the big news (sumsum) to Gabe and Meg who were suprised. The look on Gabe’s face was priceless, I wish I took a photo.

Meg received (and liked very much) the gift from my Mom that we delivered, and went on to wear it straight away.

After dinner we stopped for a short while at Gabe and Meg’s and then left by train to our hostel. Now we’re sitting in the Internet cafe ;)

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Early this morning we landed in Sydney’s Kingford Smith International Airport to the welcoming arms of my brother Gabe and his lovely girlfriend Meg. They took us to their place to rest where Shelly showered and went straight to bed to rest off her illness while Meg & Gabe took me to get my bearings on the city as well as check-in to a hostel so we’ll have a place to stay while we look for an apartment. Sydney looks like a great city so far! Will update more later!

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Today was a ‘traveling back to Bangkok day’ and it started early and finished late and was quite tiring.

Shelly began feeling a bit off right from the morning but at first she shrugged it off, as the day progressed she felt worse and worse and the fact that we had encountered every possible annoyance on the way didn’t help very much.

The morning began with an hour wait for a two and a half hour boat ride from Phi Phi to Phuket, continued with a 45 minute taxi-van ride from Phuket Pier to the airport, an unfortunate five hour wait because of a delay in our flight and then an hour long flight to bangkok and to top it off an hour drive to the guest house and finally Shelly went to bed - with almost 38 degrees Celsius fever…
I nursed Shelly as best I could with some simple food and simpler beverages and now she’s resting while I take care of online check-in for our flight to Sydney tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow morning is going to be an extreme speed shopping day for me, while Shelly continues to rest, to hopefully beat this virus before the flight.

Wish us luck!

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Having felt much better this morning, we decided to make good use of this last day in Koh Phi Phi to take a taxi-boat (’bot-bot’) to Bamboo Island which is 45 minute boat ride north of Phi Phi dock. We took an underwater camera so when we develop it (in Sydney) we’ll post the photos for you to see some of the nice views.
The taxi-boat driver took us to a very beautiful and less visited reef for which he got a nice tip later. We saw plenty of fish types and it looks like it is spawning season as there were shoals and shoals of baby fish swimming all around us.

It’s amazing how fearless the fish there are, they have absolutely no fear of humans and they swim around us like they would around a non-threatening big-fish that deters predators from them ;-)

The fish in this reef were different from the ones in the reef closer to Bamboo Island’s beech, for example we didn’t see any fugu fish today, while we saw a couple when we took the snorkeling tour. In Israel we call this fish “Abu Nafha” but the ones here were much smaller, but looked more dangerous.

Anyway, a beautiful day so far. More updates to come!

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Today was a bit of a crummy day as I had a temperature (just below 38 Celsius) and it wasn’t pretty. Shelly took very good care of me and kept me hydrated while I rested in bed. Our theory is that I had a bit of a heat exhaustion. Now I’m feeling much better and walking around. Unfortunately that means no interesting photos today!

We’re considering going to Bamboo Island again tomorrow, but it depends on how I’ll feel. We’ll keep you posted!

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We went on the snorkeling tour and it was brilliant. Especially Bamboo Island which was lovely and had a great reef. Some photos included ;)

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Today we spent the day doing nothing in particular except walking around the beach, drinking coconuts and booking tomorrow’s snorkeling cruise. I’ve got some photos to satisfy all the curiosity ;)

If you use IE, hovering with the mouse over the photos will give you their short description, in Firefox you’ll have to right-click and select properties for some reason. I’ll figure out how Wordpress handles this later.

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We left Bangkok this morning by air (1700 Baht each way ~210 NIS) to arrive in Phuket, where we took a boat to Phi Phi Doh island, whose neighbouring Island “Koh Phi Phi Leh” which we intend to visit is the one where the movie “The Beach” was filmed.

The islands look just like in the movies: tropical heavens, except they have been invaded by tourists and now are crawling with the likes of us. There’s a boardwalk here which feels exactly like the one in Dahab, except with less nagging by the shopkeepers.

As we arrived late noon, most guest houses were booked and it seemed like it was about to rain. As Shelly is the one with the particular taste regarding accomodations, I stayed with the luggage at a small restaurant and Shelly went out to hunt a room for us.

Shelly did very well in her search and despite the full-booking managed to find a nice airconditioned room with a soft(er) bed for us. The price is a bit steep as things go here - 1200 Baht (150 NIS) per night but you get what you pay for and there’s a nice shower with hot water, a small safe (which provides very limited safety, but better than none) and very nice decor and a terrace to check out the view.

After a shower we went walking around and settled on a home cooking restaurant where for 70 NIS we had a two course seafood meal with beverages. It was simple but very tasty food. I think we’re getting a lot of cooking ideas from this trip ;)

There’s a very nice day out offered here for very little money, it includes a snorkeling tour of neighbouring reefs, vist to the monkey bay and to Mana Bay which is where the main part of “The Beach” was filmed. Its all very tongue-in-cheek touristy but I’m sure it’ll be fun.

We took lots of photos and we’ll put them up where we get to a place where the Internet won’t be so expensive (2 Baht per minute).

More to come!

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Tomorrow morning we’re flying out to Phuket, and from there we will take a shuttle to Koh Phi Phi. This morning was spent making the arrangements and going for some shopping.

We went to Pantip Plaza which is a huge mall with nothing but computers and electronics, where after some price comparing we got a pair of 2GB minSD 80x cards for 1820 Baht (~$48) each.

Afterwards to even up the score we went to a five-floor clothing center with 1350 (!) clothes stores in it, where Shelly found some nice outfits.

I took photos of both centers, but the USB on this PC is busted, so I’ll upload them later. Going out to find something to eat, will update later.

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After a very difficult and emotional farewell at the airport, we boarded flight LY081 from Tel Aviv to Bangkok. After a long night for Shelly and a sleepy one for me (as usual on flights) we landed in Suvarnabhumi Airport around 2pm local time. The baggage claim and passport control process were very easy and much more welcoming than in Israel.

We took a metered taxi to Khaosan road, which is the center for backpackers in Bangkok, on the way there Bangkok managed to surprise me, as I expected a 3rd world city and instead encountered one which at least in the modern parts is much more organized and well managed than Tel Aviv. The roads are bigger and more modern, cars on them are new and only the public buses reveal to the observer that this is not a western city. Even the traffic lights have countdown displays that let you know how long before the next light change.
After settling in at the D&D Inn guest-house as recommended by Yossi, Shelly went to rest her weary body for an hour and I started to tour around the Khaosan area. The first thing that amused me is that it was similar the boardwalks in Sinai except modern and hyper-accelerated to super-speed. Everything is for sale, and you’ll have to bargain if you want the respect of the locals. I tried some 20 Baht (~2 NIS) Patai noodles and they were nice.

When Shelly woke up we went touring again and had a great Coconut Shake. It was quite good — the tropical fruit here are delicious. Other things we did today — dinner at a seafood restaurant near the Sea Food Market which was really good, a ’sex show’ at the Phat Pong area which was more a freak show with boobs and a ride on a giant ferris wheel that looms over Bangkok.

On the way back we had a bad experience with a taxi driver which had no idea where he was, where he needed to go to, spoke no English and drove us around Bangkok for three quarters of an hour for no good reason before we finally gave up and had him stop. Luckily (!) it was a five minute walk from our guest house.

The bottom line is that we’re exhausted but we had a lot of fun on the first half-day of travel. More to come…

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