Thailand

We've reached it...the final destination of our trip, the beach! We have put away the Lonely Planet, the maps and all the planning to lay on a beach chair and worry only about evening out our tan! Yep, it's a simple life with very simple pleasures.

We are at Thong Nai Pan Beach on Koh Phagan Island. It is a gorgeous little oasis from the busy world of Thailand. In fact we are hear during "Low" season so it especially quiet with only maybe a dozen people on the beach each day! In fact, most days there are more dogs on the beach that people. One dog got so friendly with Ted that he tried to mark Ted as his by leaving a scent of him on Ted's towel!

Ted and I spend time reading, turning over and planning when to start spiking our drinks with Rum (cocktails at the bar are too expensive for us! - we still can't quite get used to "Western" prices!). We are also starting to reminisce about our best adventures, meals and modes of transport! (We've begun to run out of things to talk about!)

The big excitment was going diving yesterday but, alas, today we are resting and recovering from "doing" something yesterday! (I can hear your groans all the way from Canada).

So not much more to report on than we are counting down the days til we can see all of you!

We took a one day beginner Thai cooking class and we are definitely ready to go PRO! Even though we had helpers measuring, preparing and cleaning up all of our stuff we feel confident that we have the tools (we did buy one of their knives) to become famous too! Our chef was none other than Sampon...the Famous Thai Chef! We had a blast that day cooking Panang Curry, Northern curries, Fish with chilis and basil and of course sweet sticky rice! We got to eat everything we made and two days later Ted and I are still alive!!

One of the best parts of the Cooking class was that it was taught in Air conditioning. Now, I have never been a fan of air conditioning in Saskatoon but I have quickly grown to love, seek and crave it in South East Asia. It is tooooo hot here! There is no reprieve! We even started to plan the last leg of our trip based around weather forecasts! If you don't have air con or a beach it really limits what you feel like doing all day! Thankfully in Chiang Mai we found an awesome pool (i wish i had goggles) not too far away. We are enjoying hanging out in this lovely little city. Biking all over the place to have mango soothies and picnics. We even found a shop with real cheese - making our sandwiches awesome!

We are heading north in a few days to see Gibbon monkeys! Ted and I will get to live in a tree house and move around by zip cord! After that we are counting down the trip as we will make it home by the end of May.

After settling back in Bangkok and finding a fabulous new guest house (Roof View Place). I got sick again with Traveller's Diahhrea. We decided to hang out in Bangkok until Wed. morning (March 12). We took the train to Kanchanaburi and found a great little guest house on the Kwai River. Smells and food was still causing my stomach to revolt so we played it easy the first day....heading down to the Bridge over River Kwai and having a light supper.

The next day we decided that the best way to beat the heat is to ride bikes and find museums that were cool. We were both really interested in the Burma-Thai Bridge that the POWs built during WWII so we headed to that museum first. The museum was impressive and we really began to understand how atrocious the situation was. The POWs were building a railway with an impossible schedule, in impossible terrain with horrible conditions. In fact, the workers in the most dire circumstances were the Burmese, Malay and Thai workers who were promised contracts and improved working conditions. The cemetary adjacent to the museum was very well kept and many POWs from Britain, Australia and the Netherlands were buried there.

We took our pedal bikes (they don't move very fast but they are sure better than walking) across the river into the country side to visit the Chong Kai Cemetary. We had our PB and banana sandwiches (we finally found wholewheat bread!) and picnic along the river. We were finally entertained by a group of Asian tourists as they cruised by on a Karaoke Barge! We took that as a cue to get going.

We finished the day at the JEATH War Museum. An interesting collection that Monks put together. The museum covered everything from prehistoric Thailand to Miss. Thailand costumes! We felt like that was full day!

The next day we spent on a tour. We are somewhat opposed to tours but decided that it may be the best way to see several things out of town in a short period of time. The other travellers were Kiwis living in Australia and were great to hang out with. We stopped at Erawan Lake National Park. We had until 11:30 to see the falls and swim. The hike to the falls involved 7 different levels ending at 2200m high. We kept hiking as the park wasn't very busy and we thought we could find a pool that was empty (our philosophy is to get away from Tourists - even though we recognize we may actually be one of them!). We ended up swimming at a few levels. The pools are filled with fish and they are definitely hungry as little and big fish (piranha - as Ted, the fisherman, believes them to be) started biting at our bodies. Some of the fish were at least 12 inches long! We decided there were just love bites and tried to igore them. We knew we were tough and couldn't be scared off by fish.

We felt the pressure to get going so we descended and half way home we were thrilled to see monkeys on the path! We took a few pictures and the whole family came out to play on the handrail. We knew that the monkeys were proned to steal things but we didn't have any food so we made an attempt to get past them. Ted was first. He looked the monkeys in the eye, and all of the sudden he had one on his arm and two nipping at his ankles! I freaked out (as did the Kiwis behind us) and ran up as two monkeys were biting at my ankles! We narrowly escaped them and survived intact! It was a close call but once again defended ourselves against these vicious beasts!

We spent the night hanging out with the Kiwi couple, Jamie and Hannah.

We were really excited to head out the next day as we rented a motor bike and packed another picnic and headed back to Erawan Lake. We really wanted to hang out without time restraints. Ted has become a very proficient driver! We had a blast that day...no monkey encounters but the fish still thought we were yummy. We had an awesome picnic and decided to visit an Elephant Refuge Park on the way home. We did meet some Elephants but disappeared before the big Bus Tour arrived.

We really enjoyed our trip out to Kanchanaburi! We also found out that our Burma Visas arrived in Bangkok so we headed home the next day (Sunday March 16th) to pick them up and enjoy St. Patty's day in Bangkok at the carnival (Khao San Road)!

Hey all!

Jen here...i've been under the weather since Monday. I've had some type of flu so needless to say, the smells in the markets and alleys has made me a bit quesy! Ted is now starting to feel the same way so we have been taking it easy. I hope you have enjoyed some of our pictures from our Mae Sot trip. It was a real highlight of our trip. It was hard to leave to come back to Bangkok as it is a large and challenging city to be in. Last night we went for another Thai massage while it poured outside. On Wed. we were told that our Vietnam Visa would be ready this am but when we checked in with the travel agent he told us noon. so without anything to do this am we took a taxi down to the MBK. A gigantic 7 storey mall. We wandered around the Tesco and got some "high fiber" stuff and then headed back to the mall to shop. Neither of us were really in the "mood" so it was a short trip. We headed back home to hang out by the pool at our guesthouse and stay in the shade today! Looking forward to Hanoi and meeting up with our Cycling group on the 17th! Not much more to report here!

We found an air conditioned internet place that has photo programs that allow us to shrink them down to fit the site. Jen is feeling much better today and we are getting plans together to leave Thailand. We thought before we get caught up with stories, we would at least put some photos for ease of reading.

Talk to you again soon.