We started off in Sydney. Sydney was a really peaceful, friendly, and outrageously expensive city; visiting from Hong Kong was a huge adjustment. You were lucky [...]]]> Happy 2010! Alan and I spent this past Christmas and New Year down under. A great vacation, but the trip highlight was definitely the time we spent offshore and underwater.

We started off in Sydney. Sydney was a really peaceful, friendly, and outrageously expensive city; visiting from Hong Kong was a huge adjustment. You were lucky if you saw one person walk past you on the street every 10 minutes. Being a port city, it shared a lot of similarities with Halifax, so with the exception of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, it was charming but nothing new. We spent the first couple days sightseeing before heading off the Cairns.

Cairns was a small, super tourist friendly town. As food goes, anything you wanted you could find there, and the seafood was excellent. The main downtown area was focused around the esplanade—a huge outdoor pool located right on the waterfront. Due to the venomous jellies in the water during the summer months, people can’t swim in the ocean, and this is the alternative. While in Cairns, we took a great daytrip to Mossman’s Gorge, the Daintree Rainforest, and most importantly, Cape Tribulation, where reef meets rainforest. We had a crazy Kiwi for a guide who took us on a quick rainforest hike and made me lick a green ant’s ass. It tasted like lemons, in case you were wondering and you can get a day’s worth of vitamin C by eating them. We spent a couple days in Cairns before starting our dive trip.

Our dive trip started on Christmas Day. Over 4.5 days, we visited Cod Hole, the Coral Sea and Osprey reef, and then went back up to the ribbon reefs. We had the opportunity to see a potato cod feed, a shark feed, and then numerous other fish during out fun dives. We didn’t take any photos, but some of our fellow divers were very generous with theirs!

When we returned to Cairns, there was enough time for a quick trip to Kuranda (a small village in the rainforest) before we flew off too Sydney for New Years. We arrived in Sydney at 8pm, and surprisingly arrived downtown in time to see the 9pm fireworks. Luckily, many families left after that, so we easily moved up to a better vantage point where we could see the Darling Harbour and Circular Quay (Sydney Harbour Bridge, Opera House) fireworks. It was an amazing display that lasted over 20 minutes. After that, the party began. Bars had people spilling out into the streets dancing and hammered. Definitely a great place to celebrate New Years! Because it is absolutely impossible to get a hostel (or any accommodation) in Sydney on NYE, we spent the night walking the streets watching the crazy drunken antics. Then we took and early bus to Bondi Beach to spend New Years Day.

After that, it was on to Melbourne. The only reason we went there was to catch out flight back to Hong Kong, and frankly, it was rather boring, so half a day was enough!

We also visited quite a few zoos throughout Australia, with Toronga being the best by far. You can see all the photos from trip HERE. Alan also created a compilation video of our trip below which runs just over 8 minutes so it’s an easy watch and it includes some great footage from the New Year’s Eve fireworks (be sure to click HD on). Our next trip will be Vietnam/Cambodia in February!

Australia 2009 – 2010 from Alan Tek on Vimeo.

Hi Everyone,

A few weeks ago, Alan and I headed to Thailand for two weeks. This was a long awaited trip for me and it definitely didn’t disappoint! We flew into Bangkok on the Queen’s birthday, which proved to be a bit of a pain for us. Roads [...]]]>

Hi Everyone,

A few weeks ago, Alan and I headed to Thailand for two weeks. This was a long awaited trip for me and it definitely didn’t disappoint! We flew into Bangkok on the Queen’s birthday, which proved to be a bit of a pain for us. Roads were closed for celebration, so we were dropped off about an hour’s walk from Khaosan Road. Luckily, we found a great place to stay even at 1 in the morning.

On our first day, we did some sightseeing at the Grand Palace and Wat Pho (the place with the giant bronze Buddha). The next day, we booked a day trip to go and see the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Tiger Temple, and the River Kuai Bridge. A full day all for the bargain price of $17.00! Just to put Bangkok prices in perspective, a one hour massage is $5.50, a half hour manicure is $3.00, and a large serving of Pad Thai runs about $1-1.50, so traveling is cheaper than you can imagine. The following day, we met Alan’s two aunts and cousin for a meal at Siam Paragon before moving on to the indoor aquarium. It was enormous and had a huge variety of big fish including rays and sharks that you could observe at very close range, so it was really impressive.

That night, we took the overnight bus and ferry to Koh Tao, in southeastern Thailand. We stayed on Sairee Beach for six days, and did our advanced scuba diving course with our friend Emil. The course was great, and we had the opportunity to do a couple deep, 30-meter dives as well as a night dive. Probably the most dangerous part of all of these dives were the crazily choppy boat rides out to and back from the dive sites! Even the most sea-worthy of us were feeling it. But the dives were certainly worth it.

From Koh Tao, we took an overnight ferry to Koh Phi Phi via Krabi. The ferry was a laugh as it consisted of two levels covered in rice mats with numbers, and you just found your rice mat and tried to sleep without rolling onto the stranger beside you because of the wavy waters. Unfortunately, we chose to go to Koh Phi Phi during the monsoon season, so there was a lot of intermittent rain. Right away, we booked an overnight camping trip to Maya Bay on Phi Phi Leh for that night, and luckily the rain was minimal. The camping package included two meals and a bucket of liquor if you chose, and a guide who chain-smoked and took us on a midnight adventure to see these huge land crabs that hung out around tree stumps. It was interesting to say the least. But Maya Bay is breathtaking, as you will see from the pictures (it was also featured in the movie ‘The Beach’). Due to all the rain in the southwest, we decided to get out of there immediately, so we left the day after camping. We ferried to Phuket and spent one night at Patong Beach, which had some of the most obvious prostitution we had ever seen in Thailand. Sex tourism is very in-your-face in Phuket compared to all of the other places we visited in Thailand, and is better suited for middle-aged folk. You couldn’t walk down the main street without being approached to watch ‘Ping Pong show’ numerous times. Our hotel (The Yorkshire), was very suave though, and was a nice break from the mosquito-ridden beach bungalows we were used to!

The next day, we flew back into Bangkok to end off the trip. We booked a day trip to Ayudhaya, the former capital of Thailand. We visited about four ancient temples/monuments, the majority of which were in ruins due to their age and Myanmar’s constant attacks. Our guide’s English ability was less than perfect, and he recited the descriptions at lightening speed so I’m still not sure of the details about all the places we visited. Regardless, they were all beautiful and it was a good day. We spent the remaining two days ambling around Bangkok before we headed back to Taiwan. 

You can see all the Thailand photos HERE.  Also, Alan will be following up soon with a new addition to our travel videos. We’re very excited to announce that we’re moving to Hong Kong near the end of September! We both got jobs at the same school and loved the city when we visited last year.  We’ll follow up with a final Taiwan goodbye and a new start in Hong Kong.

Update: Instead of me writing a post, please just watch my 3 travel dairies below; which are pretty much the same as my photos minus some extras.  The [...]]]> Hey folks, I just uploaded our Malaysia/Borneo photos in the Photo Gallery here. I’ll be updating this post with an actual detailed post later… sorry I’ve been lazy.

Update: Instead of me writing a post, please just watch my 3 travel dairies below; which are pretty much the same as my photos minus some extras.  The only exception is that we took our open-water diving course in Semporna (near world-famous Sipidan island), and we enjoyed every minute of it.