Hey everyone!
Happy New Year, Merry Christmas…all of that! I hope you had a brilliant time over the last month and enjoyed the festive season, whatever it meant for you…
I’ve had an absolutely brilliant month, and 2014 has started with a bang…
On December 24th, my partner, Dave and myself celebrated Christmas with my parents, our traditional family sea food dinner (none of us are big into roasts and ‘traditional Christmas food’). It was absolutely delicious, and great to spend some quality time with my parents, cause normally when I catch up with them, I’m running around like a headless chicken at a horse trials, or asking them for money to pay for a vet bill – ha ha - at least that’s how it seems sometimes with horses!
That evening, we headed to the airport, and Dave and I boarded a 12:40am flight from Melbourne on Christmas Day to Thailand! Our first stop was Chiang Mai, which is a city in the north of Thailand, it has the feel of a ‘small town’ compared with the craziness of Bangkok for anyone who’s been there, but its actually the second largest city in Thailand!
Chiang Mai is renowned for being a more ‘cultural destination’ - fewer tourists, slower paced and cheaper. We spent five nights there, and thoroughly enjoyed winding down for the beginning of our holiday. Hour long massages were 250 Thai Baht, which is about $8-$10AUD, cocktails were two for 170 Thai Bhat (about $5…or $2.50AUD per cocktail) and they were lethal! The city comes alive at night with markets and street vendors, and the traffic is scary.
During our stay in Chiang Mai, we did a number of awesome activities…
Making traditional Thai cuisine in Chiang Mai - YUM!
We visited a ‘Tiger Camp’ where the breeding programme here helps to support the continued growth of the Tiger population in Thailand…these guys get lots of bad press, but we were impressed with how well the animals were looked after, they were bright, playful and very alert, healthy looking animals!
We harnessed up to go Zip Lining over Chiang Mai’s rainforest…Including Chiang Mai’s longest zip line, which was 400m long - that’s over 50 seconds of flying through the air!
Then it was onto a day with the elephants - we spent the morning learning how to control the elephants while riding them, then spent the afternoon foraging for food for them in the jungle, bathing them in a river and trekking through the jungle on their backs. Our driver took us a long way out from Chiang Mai to this location, so that we got to experience the elephants the way most tourists don’t - there were no seats on the elephants backs, no one controlling them for us, it was a beautiful experience with these amazing animals!
We were ready for our next adventure, after all of these amazing experiences, and next up we headed south to the beautiful island of Koh Samui. We were there for three nights, one of which was New Years Eve, where we were excited to be headed to the infamous Full Moon Party on nearby island, Koh Phangnan!
The beautiful resort where we stayed in Koh Samui - The Bandara
New Years Eve and our awesome adventures feel like a dream now, just a fleeting memory of a night that exceeded all of our expectations and was full of adventure and unexpected surprise! I cannot begin to describe the electricity that comes with 40,000 people partying together on the beach front. I also can't describe the unparalleled camaraderie we found with people from all around the globe throughout the night and in particular the next morning, as we all bonded over the celebration of the universal beginning of a new calendar year, we hadn't experienced anything like it before. Just like Adam, and the insatiable Eve, we travelled to the Garden of Eden and tasted the forbidden fruit, and I wouldn't change a thing! Perfect way to bring in what will be an outstanding year!
Ready to party on New Years Eve!
We found a little nook in the beach and watched the sun rise…
The stunning location where we spent the first day of 2014...
Last up, we travelled further south to Phuket for 7 nights in the tourist capital of Thailand. On our way down there, I collected a lovely stomach bug, which we thought was just travel sickness, but two days later when Dave came down with the same symptoms we realised that it was probably a bit more than that! So both of us getting sick ensured that we were relatively subdued and forced to relax while in Phuket. We still managed to have an awesome time as fortunately our bug wasn't too bad. Phuket is full of more street vendors than you can poke a stick at, lots of bargains and a pretty crazy night life!
Sunset over Patong Beach, near our hotel in Phuket...
We saw two pretty fantastic stage shows while we were in Phuket, the first, called ‘Simon Cabaret’ is a ladyboy show, where the performers put on an epic show covering a heap of ‘showgirl’ classics like songs from Chicago, Beyonce and a crowd favourite “Barbie Girl”! It was hilarious, and we were amazed - so many of the ladyboys looked like very gorgeous girls!!! We would never have guessed they were men! We loved that the ladyboys were so widely accepted in the Thai communities - some gyms even have ‘Male’, ‘Female’ and ‘LadyBoy’ change rooms!! The second show we saw was Phuket’s FantaSea, starring many talented performers and over 30 elephants. They really showcased the Thai culture, and it was brilliant!
While in Phuket, we also did a day trip to a small group of nearby islands ‘Phi Phi Islands’ which were absolutely beautiful, a real highlight of our trip!
I loved the Phi Phi Islands!
Our holiday gradually drew to a close, full of unforgettable experiences, the day before we left Phuket, we treated ourselves to a ‘4 Hand Massage’ - a 90 minute massage where two therapists massage you in synchronisation…I have to say, it was the BEST massage I’d ever had and I will definitely look forward to having another one at some stage soon! By the end of the trip, I was starting to get itchy to come home and ride my horses, and Dave was getting itchy to come home and work on his car - he drives 4wd cars competitively. So we agreed, the seventeen nights we spent away was absolutely perfect!
We returned to Melbourne and found out we had a delightful heat wave to look forwards to…but were both very excited to get back to work! My horses returned to work happily and very ready to knuckle down, leaving me even more excited about the coming season! Tuesday through Friday, the four days where we had heat in the mid 40’s in Melbourne, I was on my first horse at 6am, and was getting four worked before 9 each morning, before it started to heat up. The only problem with this, was that my body clock, which still hadn’t quite caught up from being in Thailand, thought that 6am was in fact 2am…so it took some convincing when my alarm went off in the mooring to roll out of bed!
Fortunately the animals coped well with the heat, and I spent the afternoons sitting in front of a fan and thanking my lucky stars that I spent two summers in South Australia when I was working for Megan Jones, because I never used to cope with that extreme heat until moving over there!
Made some ice cubes for my pooch and bird - Aslan and Reuben, in muffin trays!
They were a big hit on the 40+ degree days we had.
So I have 4 very exciting horses on my team this season:
Archie, my rising 8 year old Irish Sport Horse gelding who will be going up to 2** in his first few events this year
Muz, my 7 year old Thoroughbred gelding, who is gradually returning to work after an injury
Fanny, a 5 year old Warmblood/Thoroughbred filly owned by my best friend David Boyle, who was broken in last year and will start her eventing career in the coming months when she is ready and lastly
Nemo, a Thoroughbred gelding owned by my groom, Catherine Kerr. He did 1* with his previous owner, and unfortunately Cat has to have hip surgery in March and is currently unable to ride, so I’m taking Nemo on for the first half of the year while Cat recovers after her surgery. Nemo will do the 1* at Melbourne 3DE in June.
Here is Fanny having her second ride in the big open arena,
she has been a very good girl and I’m super excited to have the ride on her…
In one last exciting piece of news, I’ve made the decision that my old eventing mare, Poppy, is going to go in foal to Wendy McAuliffe’s very talented 2** eventing stallion, Grande Farnese, so that will be happening in the next couple of weeks, and I’m very excited to see the resulting Fur Baby in about 11 months time!
I also celebrated one year of having lived at Ashley Park in Yarrambat on the 19th of this month. It’s been an exciting year, and I have no doubt that with 2014, we’re going to improve on everything that happened! :-)
I’ll look forward to updating you on everything that’s happened, including the start of the competition season next month!
Best Riding,
Nicole
