St. Petersburg by bus 13.-16.10.2011

St. Petersburg

Something new, something old..

The State Hermitage Museum

Main entrance in Hermitage

Nevski Prospekt

Arabian Nights?

F. Dostojevski

After dreaming about a trip to St Petersburg for the past 2 years, we finally were able to travel to this beautiful city in mid October 2011. We did not bring our computer with us so therefore this "update" is written a month later and it is just a summary of the highlights.

Although there is a good train connection between Helsinki and St. Petersburg, we traveled to St. Petersburg by bus because we found a good deal for a four-days-trip through Citydeal. The bus took quite a long time to get there because we made quite a few stops along the way:  i.e. our bus driver and the tour guide wanted to make a stop to buy some vodka like just a few minutes after crossing the border.  Next time I think we will take the train instead. But it was nice to see the scenery along the way so we didn't mind sitting on the bus for like 8hrs each way.

Hotel Moskva

Scary escalator to the metro 

We stayed in the Hotel Moskva which is along the main street of Nevski Prospekt. The hotel was maybe a little too big to our taste but it had a great location especially because the metro station of Alexandra Nevskogo was in the same building. The metro was  an easy way of moving about in the city and the best thing was that the names of the stations were written also in western alphabets (which made it 100x easier to navigate in the city). The escalator to the metro tunnel was amazingly long and steap so in case you are a little bit afraid of heights and you do not feel comfortable in cramped spaces, you might want to close your eyes when going up and down the escalator.

St. Nicholas Church

The bus deal included a visit in the Peter Paul's Cathedral and in St. Nicholas Church as well as a sightseeing tour by bus. The bus tour was actually quite a nice way of getting to know the city because it was surprisingly cold outside. If you are not afraid of the cold, October is actually a really good time to visit St. Petersburg because it is not so busy with tourists anymore. In the summer you might have to queue to the State Hermitage Museum for hours, but we just walked right in and got some great pictures from the front yard as it was relatively empty of people. The Hermitage is definitely a must-see when you are in St. Petersburg!

Dimitry & Aygul

We met with our "local friends" who we met through CouchSurfing on Friday evening. Aygul and Dimitry are a couple who live in St. Petersburg and they said they have hosted quite a few couch surfers in the past and no wonder, they both were absolutely lovely and very much fun to hang out with. Aygul took us first to see the Loft Project Etagi (very cool!) and when Dimitry go off work we went to throw down a few beers in some pubs. On Saturday we visited Erarta Museum of modern art   and in the evening we went to see the band of Aygul and Dimitry's friends play in a bar in the ourskirts of the city. We had  a blast and thanks to A&D we got a much more authentic experience of St. Petersburg.

Loft Project Etagi

Turning a new page every day

Loft Project ETAGI

Erarta - Museum of Modern Art

Street Art

All in all our trip cost around 1000€ for 2 persons (inc. the bus trip, visas, 3nights in a hotel, wine&dine,  entrance fees to museums). Depending on your accomodation and how much shopping/museums/concerts/ballet/circus you want to do you can save/spend a lot more money than we did.

We definitely recommend St. Petersburg to everyone! In fact I would say it is a must-see if you are traveling in this part of the world. The only minus side is the visa stuff and the passport control at the border but I think it all went surprisingly smoothly as we had prepared ourselves for something a lot worse. St. Petersburg is a huge but a beautiful city with a lot of history and tons and tons of things to see and do. Do yourself a favour and do not try to fit everything in just one weekend. Make sure you have enough time just to walk around the city and enjoy the atmosphere and all the beautiful sights.

Looking back

Entrance to the beach.

Ao Thong Nai Pan Yai

Sun tan after 6 weeks.

Swimming

Koh Phangan.

Hello our dear friends! I am so sorry you have needed to wait for this last blog update! Nothing too spectacular happened during our last days at Koh Phangan so there was nothing too much to report in the blog. And as soon as we arrived home we have been busy with normal everyday life again. But now it is time to do some reminicing.

We spent the last couple of days of our trip just chilling at Thong Nai Pan Noi and enjoying the sun. Although the trip had been great, we were also looking forward to coming home to our friends and family. And the fact is that we had travelled enough and we had seen/done all those things we wanted to so it was about the time to go back home to Finland.

Our trip back home has been probably one of the smoothest ones ever. Flights were on time and we were very lucky to get a ride to Jyväskylä from Joni's aunty! The amount of snow we encountered when we arrived, oh my!

Our trip to Thailand went really well. We did not lose anything and I broke only one Nokia's mobile phone charger. And we both stayed quite healthy, no food poisonings or anything although we were not over carefull about what we had to eat.

Thailand is a wonderful country. The people are extremely friendly, travelling inside Thailand is relatively simple and safe, food is great, scenery is amazing and there is a lot of different kinds of activities you can attend if you are interested in doing something else than just sunbathing. Thailand is surprisinly organized in terms of public services and public transportation, but they do not stress over a train being late for more than 8 hours.

Our original budget was supposed to be 1500€ per person for the whole trip (including flights) but we were not able to meet this plan of ours. We ended up spending 2000€ per person which means a daily budget of roughly 28€/a day. This includes accomodation, meals, traveling inside Thailand, entrance fees, shopping, souveniers and party. Pretty well I would say.

Would we like to travel to Thailand again? We were actually planning on it already when we were still in Thailand... :)

ps. Thank you so much for sharing our experience with us! Our blog was downloaded approximately 1797 times during the six weeks we were in Thailand. 98 downloads a day was the record.

Koh Lanta & Koh Phangan

Night market in Krabi Town.

We still have not tasted these!

Kantiang Bay, Koh Lanta.

A rush hour.

This little local fellow wanted to strike the pose.

Makings of little crabs.

The house band of the Why Not bar.

Our bungalow at the Kantiang Bay View.

I cannot translate this one into English.

On our way to the Thong Nai Pan Noi beach.

A local traffic guy there in the front.

These are just babies compared to the ones a few hours later.

Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi.

It is good brain excercise to try to remember the name of this beach!

This is our village at the moment.

The IT-guy finds a wifi everywhere!

Where would you go?

After making a few rapid decisions and changing our minds in the last minute, we are now sitting on the beach on the north-east side of the Island of Koh Phangan. The last time we updated the blog was almost a week ago so lets go back a little bit so I can explain the chain of events that has led us here on the Thong Nai Pan Noi beach.

We left Bangkok last Sunday when we took the night bus to Krabi. It took us almost 11 hours to get there but luckily the bus was comfortable enough so we got some sleep on the way (and there was only one local and loud movie on the way). We had booked two nights from KU Krabi Guesthouse which is in Krabi town, but we soon realized that one night would be enough. There is not that much to see in Krabi town and it is more like a pit stop before going to the beautiful islands on the Andaman coast.

We booked a trip to the island of Koh Lanta already for the next morning and the more we read about Koh Lanta the more it started to seem like the best location for our last week in Thailand; isolated white sand beaches, relaxed atmosphere, good food, sun... The reality was pretty much what we had been expecting but to our surprise quite a few of the local people were, and I can not believe I am saying this, rude! Some of them were so rude that it would have been considered rude in Finland too! For example, the lady at our hotel's reception did not greet us even once and if we asked her a question she might just disappear without letting us know whether she had heard or understood the question or not. Weird. During the last five weeks the Thai people have been so incredibly friendly and not even the language barriers have been a reason not to try to communicate, to offer help, to give advice and to show hospitality.

I have to admit, however, that we did have a great time during the day we arrived in Koh Lanta. The sun was shining and the Kantiang bay beach was incredibly beautiful! We stayed out quite late in our resort's bar which was called the Why Not Bar. There was a cool local cover band and they played songs from the Doors, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana etc.

The next morning it rained. I do not know if it was more because of the weather or because of the rudeness we came across with, but during our dinner we decided to go to the nearest travel agency and book a trip to Koh Phangan. That is the place we had wanted to travel to in the first place, but had not done so because of the bad weather conditions. We had a good feeling about Koh Phangan so it did not matter too much what the weather would be like over there and besides, we have had sunshine the past five weeks already.

We arrived in Koh Phangan yesterday evening around 7 pm. It was raining but the warm greetings from the taxi drivers convinced us that we had made the right decision about coming here. The taxi drivers were not too keen on taking us to the north-east coast because apparently the road was in a pretty bad shape. It would have cost us a fortune to get here, so we decided to stay in the city of Thong Sala for the night. Bua Kao Inn was a guesthouse recommended by Lonely Planet and it was everything it was said to be: a good room and decent price. We slept like babies last night! We took the taxi to Thong Nai Pan Noi beach this morning and we really need to thank the taxi drivers who would not take us here last night! Parts of the road were indeed in a really bad shape and it is a miracle we stayed on the road the whole way here.

We are now staying in Baan Panbury Village where we have a lovely and a clean little garden bungalow with the ocean just 50 meters away. It is raining now but hopefully the weather will change tomorrow. Although the rain does not even matter too much, it is so good to be here finally.

Happy new year!

Perinteinen jokilaiva. - A traditional thai style river boat.

Our funny guide.

Fishing.

Mantree...

... and ladytree.

Scorpion Tailed River Boat Village.

The water level of the river Ping after the tsunami in 2004!

Who has the heart to ask for a ride from this gentleman?

The Grand Palace, Bangkok.

Quite a few hours of handicrafts I suppose.

Is this real?

New Year's party.

This is only the beginning.

Exchanging gifts in a holy light.

The party people.

Happy New Year everybody! Before telling you about our new year's festives I will shortly conclude our trip to Chiang Mai.

We went for a little river boat cruise on our last day in Chiang Mai. The boats were traditional thai style and the back of the boat reminded of a scorpion's tail, and hence the name Scorpion Tailed Boats. Our guide was a known historian (according to his own words) and he was a funny old man. He ended all of his historical facts to a joke to which he himself laughed at the most. He had a pretty strong accent so it was a little bit difficult to understand him but what we did understand is that it used to take 5 months to travel from Bangkok to Chiang Mai by these boats. We made a stop at the Scorpion Tailed River Boat Villade where we were served a traditional thai dessert: sweet sticky rice with mango. Our guide could not wait to be able to show us the man-tree and the woman-tree...he was laughing so hard that he almost had tears in his eyes.

We took the bus to Bangkok on Thursday. We are now staying at Khao San Road and although it is absolutely packed with tourists it is a must-see if you are in Bangkok. We got a room from Khao San Palace which is right in the heart of this area. Luckily the bars in Thailand close around 1am... :)

The new year's party yesterday was great. We met a lot of new people and everybody was really nice to us. It was also great to see a thai-home and be a part of a typical thai party. There was a lot of delicious home made food: squid, scallops, fish, bbq pork and chicken, some vietnamise stuff, crab, king prawns and fruit. The food was served pretty much until the end of the evening. The drinking culture, however, was something new to us. Whereas in Finland people bring their own beer, thai people bring whiskey or other liquers to a party (and they mix it with coke or mineral water). One of the girls explained that this is because thai culture is about sharing. I had never thought of it from this perspective and the more I think about it the more I like it. How come we have never thought about this in Finland?

The party ended quite soon after the countdown for the new year. We took the taxi to Khao San and it was quite a circus that was waiting for us here! There were probably thousands of people on the street, drinking, dancing and singing and the whole area was like a gigantic bar. At some point we needed to get through a group of people who were dancing Macarena in the middle of the street, how random is that! What a night all in all!

Tomorrow we will take the bus to Krabi. Hopefully the sun is waiting for us over there, fingers crossed!