The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

We have been travelling quite a bit lately. Made it back to Kuraburi only to head to Bangkok the next day. After a grueling all night bus ride (with several men snoring the entire time) we arrived in Bangkok at 3:30 am. We all headed to a friend's house to catch a few hours of sleep, shower, eat breakfast and get back on the bus for two more hours to Pattaya.

We finally arrived and met up with Kim on the beach in Pattaya. We went to a huge mall and did a bit of shopping and then went out for a night of margaritas and the best Mexican food in Thailand! Was much better than anything else I have had here. The enchiladas were even tasty! I ordered so much, I couldn't finish it all! I was so excited.

We stayed for a few nights in a nice quiet place with ac, cable tv, and hot shower. We are getting spoiled lately. Pattaya was an okay place, pretty touristy and not near as beautiful as other parts of Thailand. Still stays busy with its proximity to Bangkok. Jarod and I bought the materials for our wildlife costumes for the Koh Ra Halloween Party on November1! I am going to be a jellyfish and Jarod will be a white-bellied sea eagle (using his own white belly showing through a cut-out Tshirt!)

After a few days of waiting for Kim's truck to get out of the shop, we headed back to Bangkok to go to the huge Chatachuk Market for a little Christmas shopping. The market was acres of shops and stalls with everything you could imagine. Clothing, shoes, furniture, silks, decorator items, dishes, food stalls, pets etc... We ended up roaming around for 7 hours and didn't come close to seeing it all! We found some great gifts though... It's going to be a Thai Christmas!

Jarod and I took the subway and headed to a backpacker area of Bangkok called Khao San Road. It was a little wild there, but inexpensive. We spent one night and then boarded another bus for Hua Hin further south. This is a more up-scale tourist destination with nice beach and restaurants. We spent one night and had a tasty seafood dinner by the pier. We got up in the morning and headed to Khao Takiab (Chopsticks Mountain or Monkey Mountain). Here there is a massive golden buddha on the rocks facing the sea and a nice temple complex. The highlight was seeing the hundreds of crab eating or long-tailed macaque monkeys that call the temple home! We were fighting over the camera to take pictures of these adorable creatures! They can be hard to spot in wilder places like mangrove, but here they were just lying around on the buddha statues and temple steps doing their thing. It made Jarod's week I think!

We did a bit more shopping at the Hua Hin mall. It seems we are spending more time at big malls here than we ever did at home. Have most of our shopping done though. We had a bit of a communication problem at the bus. We thought the bus was leaving at 4:30 for Kuraburi and it was actually leaving at 10:30 at night. We sat at the station for 2 hours before we figured this out. Just one of those things, so we try to take it all in stride. Our Thai is improving a bit. We are able to say enough to provoke grins from Thai people at least! :)

The bus took all night, arriving in Kuraburi at 6:00 am. We enjoy the buses as they are comfortable and air conditioned. They are also pretty inexpensive, but it can be a long ride without getting off to stretch. They do have bathrooms and the night buses stop and feed you a basic Thai dinner (kaow yen).

After these last few weeks of being tourists, we are both missing work a bit (if you can believe that). We can't wait to get out to Koh Ra and get to work. Missing routine and the feeling of accomplishment. I'm sure we will be more than busy soon enough though.



A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu

Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness. ~Ray Bradbury

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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