Jen and Ted in the SEA

We did it again, even after 14$ US on beer last night (it actually translates into a lot) we managed to get more photos to the blog. They are a bit late but offer some cool views of the resort at Koh Nangyuan. We had a short pub crawl late last night on the way home from the night bazaar. Lots of neat, and not so neat things to buy there. Sadly, none of the items we liked, would fit in our backpacks really well for the next few months.

I won't be as "wordy" as my husband was yesterday! We are back to our cheap internet place and finished mapping out our trip to Burma (very important as the Goverment requires that info for our visas). We are excited to spend 28 days in Burma - seeing Rangoon and many places around Inle Lake).

We are really enjoying the laid back vibe of this city. We have a nice little place that serves amazing yogurt and fruit each morning. We also found a great cheap restaurant to get our northern Thai food (Khao sawy) - a dish similar to that in Burma. That being said we decided on pizza (over the expensive falafels!) last night...this is truely a cosmopolitan city as we had great pizza!

There are a tonne of "whities" here...many appear to be expats. We still aren't that social- i guess we really are newlyweds! We are both engrossed in our books and so the desire to explore has been a bit hampered! However, we are planning on a big walk later to see the Night Market and check out a few other sights.

We are looking forward to meeting with the Global Neighbours Volunteers! The trip with them will be really fun! Ted will get to build stuff and i will be the team leader for "Arts and Crafts" (I hear many of you snickering!).

With that I will sign off from here!

Well, it's official the honeymoon in paradise with the girl of my dreams is over. We have come away from our island escape, tired, hot, sunburnt, overspent and spend most of our time not speaking to each other. Ah, who am I kidding, it was AMAZING!!! I highly recommend Koh Nangyuan for a holiday. If you are interested in treating yourself to a beautiful, quiet (away from the multitude of 18-22 year old all night beach partiers), delicious, and overall great place. The website is www.nangyuanisland.com

Our first few days down south were spent at Koh Tao. A beautiful, and somewhat busy dive resort mecca. It has long stretches of sandy beaches and bars, restaurants and hotels of all ranges. We stayed in Sairee Beach on the West side of the island and it gets great shelter from the wind and waves. The downside (for normally landlocked prairie folk like us) is that the heat can be quite stifling with the humidity and shade is the only respite. Koh Nangyuan is only about a 10-15 min slow boat towards the northern tip of Koh Tao. It is 3 islands connected by broken coral (much more comfortable and cleaner than sand) sandbars. It gets lots of sun, shade on various parts of the island, and almost always has at least a light breeze to keep things cool. The other advantage is that there are three bays you can snorkel in at the resort and there is always at least one that is teeming with fish feeding on the dying coral that washes into the various bays. They also have an on-site scuba dive shop and if you dive, they give you a discount on the room. The divemasters are top notch and take you in small groups (most of the time, it was just Jen and I with the divemaster) to the great dives sites around Koh Tao, only about 5 mins from Koh Nangyuan.

The snorkelling just off the beach was amzaing, thousands of fish come up to thinking that you will feed them and some even bite your back fat (in my case anyway) if they are hungry enough. We also saw, a small octupus, that disguised himself like a rock so I called him a rocktapus, 2 squids, a blus spotted ray, several triggerfish, and lots of colorful corals, anemones, clown fish, and so on and so on. In addition, we recommend stepping up to the higher rooms at the place.

We splurged and got a room that had a 171 steps to get up to it, a beautiful balcony overlooking the resort and beaches. It was great to get away from the sun, crowds (at times when day trippers come snorkelling and swarm the beach), and drink a an overpriced mini-bar (again who am i kidding, 3$) beer on the deck while the sun goes down before dinner. They have free DVD's to borrow to watch in the evenings as the island has a licenced restaurant but no bar. It is also good so you don't carried away before diving the next day. The movies were really funny as they were all common titles, but most had the english soundtrack removed as they were dubbed over and subtitled. We enjoyed reading our favorite films nonehtheless. The food was excellent with lots of fresh seafood, fruit and tofu. We did not eat many lunches at the restaurant as we went to 7-11 (I know it seems lame but even the 7-11 has a great selection of food here) and bought some excellent yogurt, granola and fresh fruit to smuggle into our mini-bar.

The time there was great and it is common to have only a token canadian couple staying at the resort while the rest are form SE Asia, Europe and Australia. More smoking than we are used to but Canadian rules are hard to let go of someitmes.

I have probably gone on long enough and I hope to fill in more (read shorter) entries in the future.

Can't beat that huh! We are definitely recovering from jetlag...we thought we were doing really well until we had a short nap yesterday and woke up 13 hours later (minus a few wake ups!)...i guess our bodies really needed it! We officially became tourists today as we visited the temples and saw the longest Buddha in Thailand. We had a fabulous thai massage for only 6 dollars! life is great here and Ted found that his body bends in many new ways! We are heading out of Bangkok (where we found a great little hotel) to Ko Tao tomorrow...let the beach living begin!!