Merry Christmas!

PHOTO ALBUM - Ko Tao & Ko Pha-Ngan

We have taught ourselves this past week to do nothing.  And it has been great! 

After refresing our dive skills on Ko Tao, we took a ferry to the nearby Island of Ko Pha-Ngan, well known for the scandalous Full Moon party.  Every full moon a festival is held that attracts those in for a full night of partying, drinking, drugs, pool parties, bikini contests, etc.  Before you get too excited for an interesting blog story on that subject, we have to let you know that we are too old for that (except for maybe the bikini contests) and stayed far away.  The rest of Ko Pha-Ngan is very laid back and right up our alley.

For the past week and a half leading up to Christmas we have done not much more than laid on the beach, relaxed, read numerous books, and drank our fair share of fruit shakes and cheap Thai beer.

Bottle Beach on the northern side of Ko Pha-Ngan can only be accessed by Long Tail boat and is an ideal "cast-away" experience with inexpensive bungalows, white sand, and a good laid-back vibe.

Longtail Boat Ride to Bottle Beach

Bottle Beach

Since there was not great internet available on Bottle Beach - and we definitely wanted to spend time communicating with family over the holiday - we treated ourselves to a resort on Hat Nai Wok on the western side of the island for two nights over Christmas.  Turns out Becks Resort had two of the top-ten sunsets and the best pizza we've ever had.

Our Christmas Bungalow

Hat Nai Wok

Christmas Sunset

Well refreshed and enough beach time (for now) so we're leaving on an overnight ferry/bus to Bangkok tonight and then up to Northern Thailand for some temples, culture, trekking, and possibly a homestay.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

 Our Current State of Being:

Early ReTHAIerment

After 24 hours of flying, we arrived in Bangkok on Wednesday, December 7, 2010 That night and the next couple days were spent relaxing, trying to get over jet lag, and getting bus/boat tickets to the islands in the Gulf of Thailand, where we planned to start our 11 month adventure.

Our transportation to Ko Tao – a backpacker/dive island in the Gulf of Thailand – was an air-conditioned overnight bus to Chumphon and then a morning ferry to the island.  Having not taken ground transportation in Thailand before, we were actually quite impressed with the bus.  It was a nice relaxing ride and we were actually able to get some sleep until the four of us on the bus who were going to Ko Tao were ushered off of the bus at 3am on a quiet and dusty stop on the side of the road.  The bus drivers – who of course spoke little English – told us to ‘wait here’ and then drove off leaving us standing there wondering what was next.  While we waited, one guy we were with noticed that his zippers on his backpack were in a different position than he left them and further confirmed that its contents had been sorted through.  Sure enough, our bags had been searched as well – even though they were locked with pad locks.  Turns out that all of us had one of those new ‘TSA-approved’ pad locks on our bags.  The idea is that you can lock your bag, then check it at the airport, and the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) can open it to search it if desired, but you are safe-guarded from theives.  Apparently, TSA locks are no match for Thailand’s bus drivers and bag-handlers.  Nice job to whoever invented such a brilliant product – a lock that can be opened by anyone!  Given nothing was taken, and they did a very neat job repacking whatever they took out (Elise’s bag was re-packed better than she could do herself!), we just chalked this up to lesson learned and will no longer be using TSA-approved locks.  Eventually a truck driver arrived, loaded us in the back and transported us to the ferry.  We started the day at 4:30am having a large Chang beer while waiting for the 7am ferry.  

One of the reasons we decided to do this trip is because it never feels like a 2 – 3 week vacation is enough time to get out of the tourist areas and really experience and start to understand a new culture. With 1 – 2 months in each country we plan to visit, it seems like we should be able to make it to some of those out of the way places that aren’t just set up for tourism. We might be a little uncomfortable at the time, ‘roughing it’ so to speak, but those are the times you probably remember the most when you look back on it. However, we decided it might be better to ease into that lifestyle, so our time in Thailand is starting on a couple islands in the Gulf of Thailand, Ko Tao and Ko Phangan .  We’ve been on Ko Tao for about a week now, which is the place you go for beaches, sunsets, and most of all, inexpensive scuba diving. It is designed for tourists – beachside restaurants and bars serving any western cuisine you can imagine and Happy Hour drink specials (a tradition I’m pretty sure the Thais don’t observe on their own), bungalows with A/C and pools, and dive shop upon dive shop ready to certify anyone and everyone for a very inexpensive price. Needless to say, we haven’t exactly been roughing it this week. We’ve been chilling on the beach during the day, having dinner and drinks by the beach at sunset, and relaxing on the balcony of our cliffside bungalow with some books before going to sleep. We also decided to get in some diving before we left the island, and just finished the last of four dives a couple hours ago.  Ko Tao diving isn’t quite as impressive as our dive trip at the Similan islands in 2006 (Adaman Sea side of Thailand), but there were still plenty of colorful coral and fish to see in nice warm water, there were some beautiful dive sites.  Tomorrow we’re off to Ko Phangan, where we’re planning to stay through Christmas.  The tropical climate doesn’t make it feel all that Christmas-like, but there are random Christmas trees that have made appearances in a few guesthouses and restaurants to remind us that ‘tis the season. If we don’t get another blog post up before we leave Ko Phangan, we hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Ko Tao

All is well in Thailand.   Sunny beaches, clear water, warm temps...  We realize there are some out there you patiently waiting the first blog entry.  Here is a picture to hold you over:

View from our Bungalow





A Year In Asia...

On December 6, 2010, Elise and Brian fly out to Thailand to start our year in Asia. We are very fortunate to have this opportunity and all we know for sure is that we will have the vacation of a lifetime.  We hope that you enjoy following our experiences on this blog.

The itinerary (subject to change at blog-writers' discretion):

December 2010 - Southern Thailand
January 2011 - Northern Thailand
February - Cambodia
March - Vietnam
April - Vietnam
May - Laos
June - Indonesia
July - China/Tibet
August - India
September - Nepal
October - Nepal
November - Thailand

Since we’re still not yet out of the work mindset, here are some key performance indicators for our trip:

·         # times Elise and Brian get significantly ripped off - 0

·         # times Elise and Brian get ripped off just a little bit - 44 (4 times per month)

·         # times Elise is allowed to be in tears - 10 (0.909 times per month)

·         # times Elise and Brian get in "a disagreement" - 7 (0.636 times per month)

 Stay tuned for periodic updates...