I got back home yesterday morning at about 11:30am after a bit of traffic on the motorway on my way back up from Heathrow Airport. The flight was really good - I managed to sleep all the way from Bangkok to Amsterdam meaning that I wasn’t tired at all. I had just had an earlier-than-normal morning, waking up at about 4:30am UK time.

I dropped straight in to a normal sleep pattern last night - went to bed around 12:30am and woke this morning around 8am.

Yesterday, I uploaded some of the many pictures that I took while I was out in Taiwan and Thailand.

If you read my last post, you will have already seen the pictures from the top of the Taipei 101. I’ve also uploaded pictures from the Yang Ming mountains.

On the friday morning, me and my girlfriend set off for a weekend break in Phuket - the largest island just off the Thailand mainland. It was an area badly affected by the Tsunami last Christmas, so I was really looking forward to seeing the place. On the way, we stopped in Hong Kong, which gave me a good chance to snap some pictures of the city when we left on our way to Phuket International Airport.

I was literally speechless when we got to Phuket - I’ve never seen anywhere quite so beautiful. We sat and watched the sun set on the balcony while eating sandwiches and salad - the latter is something I’ve never really eaten much of before this holiday. I’ve grown to like salad quite a lot now though, strangely.

The following day we slept in in the morning and then went to one of the swimming pools located on our resort in the aftenoon. We had the joy of listening to water splashing down the cliffs in a tropical waterfall that fed the swimming pool - quite relaxing. If it couldn’t get anymore relaxing - our resort also had a Spa, located right next to this particular swimming pool. We popped along and booked a Thai massage for the following morning.

After the massage in the morning, which was a pretty amazing experience having never had a massage before in my life, we went on a safari trip. The trip included elephant riding, rice farming, watching a monkey collect coconuts, a baby elephant show, kayaking down a river, and many other things. There is a full picture log here - it’s easier for you to just marvel at the pictures than to tell the whole story. I’d be going on for hours if I did the latter.

That evening we headed down to one of the most famous restaurants in Thailand - Savoey’s Seafood Restaurant. It’s an open air establishment with a band playing. The beauty of the place is that you pick your fish, while it is swimming around, before they cook it. The meal was absolutely goregeous, we had a large lobster and some tiger prawns in a Thai curry sauce for our main courses.

On the whole, the weather wasn’t great while we were out in Phuket due to a tropical storm that was brewing in the Phillipines and Indonesia. Having said that, the weather could not hide the beauty of the place - this place is thoroughly recommended for a holiday. It’s just like visiting paradise, only better than I could have ever imagined. There are more pictures here, and there are many more on top of that too - I just haven’t got around to uploading the rest of them yet.

We got back home early Wednesday morning, about 12:30am. It was my girlfriend’s birthday on the Wednesday, so I sat and sung Happy Birthday to her while we were lying in bed. Being a bloke, I had no idea what I should get her for her birthday, and I typically left it til the last possible minute. I went out shopping on the Wednesday, and spent several hours looking around before finally settling on a suitable birthday present.

We went to meet my girlfriend’s parents for dinner later that evening. Her mother had cooked for us - the food was really nice. It was an interesting experience because I speak very little mandarin (using very little in the loosest possible way) and her parents speak no English whatsoever.

After that, we went to a restaurant called ‘The Bed’. We didn’t go there for more food, just for some drinks, and to listen to the music they play there - some quite good music, if a little different from my normal tastes. Finally, we ended up in a night club for an hour, just to burn away any remaining energy that we had - by the time we got home it was about 3am and Kai was at work the following morning.

Thursday evening, we headed out to see the largest night market in Taipei - it was reasonably quiet though, because of the typhoon that was coming and scheduled to hit on the Friday/Saturday. I was leaving friday, so I was kinda worried that I’d get held up by the typhoon. We had heavy rain on the thursday night, and I didn’t sleep well at all. I’ve never been in a rain storm with rain quite like that before - it was howling it down.

On friday, I spent most of the day packing things up and sorting things out ready for my flight in the evening. We didn’t do much all day and had time to catch up on some much-needed sleep after lunch. The weather was surprisingly good though - the sun was still shining but it was just a bit windy with some strong gusts every so often.

The flight home was good as I mentioned, apart from the final hop from Amsterdam to London - there was a baby sitting about 2 rows behind me balling its eyes out for the entire trip. Just what you need at 5am in the morning.

On the whole, the trip was absolutely fantastic. I’ve had a very memorable time, and I’m looking forward to going and doing it all over again in the future. For now, I’ve got to get myself back accustomed to the boring english food and cold weather that we have here. I’ve already got a cold coming on from the cold weather and the climate is very dry, too. That means my throat and lips are drying up like no tomorrow - I just can’t drink enough water at the moment.

Anyway, that’s a reasonably good summary of my trip - I can’t wait for the next one.

take care.