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Published: September 12th 2005
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Baby Monkey
We saw a bunch of monkeys hanging around outside this cave temple which had a giant reclining Buddha. Not sure if I should capitalize the 'B' in Buddha... Did I mention that there were monkeys? Hello everyone. We're finally having a chance to post from Thailand. Our two main excuses for not having done so sooner: 1) difficult to find internet and 2) too lazy. Hey, it's our vacataion.
So, I will fill you in on the last week or so. We flew from Auckland, NZ to Bangkok, spent 2 nights there, then flew to Phuket and spent 3 nights there. After that, 2 nights in Khao Sok National Park (bit north of Phuket), and now we are on an island, Koh Pha Ngan which is on the Gulf of Thailand. You should have a look at the Google Earth simulcast to know where these places are. In short, we are in the south of Thailand on the east side of the penisula. Water and Cambodia are to our east, and the mainland of Thailand is to our west.
It has been hot and muggy, but really not any worse than you might expect. Bugs haven't been too too bad eiether. Some points have been quite unbearable temperature-wise, for instance the ferry ride today. 'Cruising' along sitting just a few feet above the water which is probably between 87 and 88 degrees, it's just
Canoeing Thru Limestone Cliffs
This part of the James Bond trip. Our guides paddled us around and thru these gigantic limestone rocks. No to dramaticize, but in some places we had to literally lay down as we passed only inches from the rock above. supra humid. Throw in fumes from the ferry and well, there you go.
But, enough about that. I'll give you some highlights: Bangkok was more mellow and safe and uncrowded than expected. Traffic is terrible there though and it's hard to move major distances. We stayed in the backpacker (that's us, sort of) ghetto near Kao Sahn Road, apparently some sort of mecca. Room was cheap, clean, what more can you ask. We saw the big temple in town (most important Budhist temple in Thailand). 70% of Thais are buddhist and there are shrines everywhere: road side, in homes, street corners, in caves, etc. We also saw thai boxing -- does anyone remember to movie 'Say Anything where John Cusack's character was into kick boxing, " the wave of the future "?. Anyway, in Bangkok it was totally cool, though more expensive than renting the 'Say Anything' DVD. There were probably 5-6,000 spectactors and the action was pretty violent at times. There's no stopping the fight because some just happens to have blood running down their face and its been smeared all over each boxer's face and chest. Afterwards we ate chow at this night market, and trolled the
Grand Palace Temple Complex
Bangkok. Lots of Asian tour groups here... but then, we _are_ in Asia. shopping stalls. Sherry was overwhelmed with choices, so we got off without spending too much cash...
Oh yes, in Bangkok we also arranged our travel to China (yay!). We'll be spending 3 weeks there and have cut our European portion from 4 weeks down to 3. We also booked a plane ticket to Phuket...
... which is in the South on the West side (Andaman Sea). The entire area is totally built up, there are a lot more people in general than I was expecting. We did end up in a pretty lux hotel off a good beach (Hat Kata, that means Kata Beach) and for a good price. This was pretty much by luck. Also by luck we had an opportunity to do some surfing (yay!) because the SW Monsoon occuring now hits Phuket. Monsoon sounds like rain and wind and generally bad, eh? Well, that's not necessarily the case. We've only seen rain twice now and it has been very brief and hasn't ruined anything. Surf is also a bonus! Oh yes, cut rate prices abound due to the monsoon and continuing fallout from the tsunami last year.
So, speaking of the tsumani, we did
Elephant Massage
There's no illusion here. This elephant was stomping on Sherry's butt while playing the harmonica of all things. Afterwards he gave her a kiss on her leg with his trunk...BTW, you should've seen the American guy that after this got his _front_ massaged. I'm not kidding, his face was super red, half from embarrassment and half certainly from the pain of having his genitals heavily petted by this pachoderm. see a lot of construction going on, day and night. We assume that this has something to do w/ the tsunami (they were hit very hard), but the area is also booming so that could be part of it.
Khao Sok NP is north of Phuket about 4 hours and we spent 2 nights there staying in a treehouse! Crap, I also forgot to mention our "James Bond Discovery Tour" that we took near Phuket. Great tour, weird theme. I've already informed Tom B.directly about this as one of his work computers is actually _named_ 'Scaramanga' who is the bad guy from the Man with the Golden Gun... but the centerpiece of the tour marketing was 'James Bond Rock', used in the film. A lot of the film was filmed in Thailand and specifically the area north of Phuket. So, not to ramble on, but JBI is this nail shaped limestone outcrop that's pretty unique and pretty, but hardly worth a _sign_ in a _national park_ describing it... The 'karst' landscape around here is very pretty. Thank you very much to Alan Taylor who inculcated me on the nature of this type of landscape. Did you know that STate College, PA is also of this type?
... Anyway, the JB Discovery tour itself was cool and included a canoe trip around limestone outcrops and thru caves to hidden lagoons, lunch at a floating muslim fishing village built on stilts, and a trip to the elephant farm where Sherry let an elephant step on her butt.
...So, back to Khao Sok. Basically we stayed in a treehouse at a place run by a German named Klaus. We walked unguided, partially in the rain, thru a rainforest where there are known to be elephants, tigers, king cobras (!), etc... and really we didn't see much of anything. On the guided night safari that I took, we saw a grasshopper, 2 frogs, and a 'wild' chicken. Pretty lame.
So now we're at Ko-Pha-Ngan. No I don't know how to pronounce it correctly. I think Ko means Island. and I know that Ph is pronounced just like P in Put, so maybe you can sort it out from there. We splurged for Air Con 2nite. We may move on tomorrow though, the vibe isn't that great at our particular place and its actually pricey considering we're in Thailand and the beach is more of a shallow lagoon.
Hope all is well back home. Oh yes, I'm sure that you're curious about the sex tourism industry that they have here. We didn't see any of that in Bangkok, but in Phuket we saw lots of girly bars where single men could 'meet' women. There were also some oddly paired couples on our tour. The last night in Phuket Sherry and I took a walk around Patong, the main beach in Phuket and it was just like Beale Street in Memphis or Bourbon St. in New Orleans, except with tons of semi subtle and not-so subtle prostituion going on.
Not many Amer. tourists here. Mostly in Phuket the peeps come down from Scandanavia of all places. Also, lots of people from Kuwait and the UAE.
Time to say goodebye. We've both been following the New Orleans tragedy and aftermath and hope that things continue on their way to improvement.
Oh, forgot to mention that I got 1 leech (counts as wildlife) on me during our rainforest hike. The guidebook claims that the waters are clean of this, but we both just waded thru a stream for 2 seconds and I had a bleeder. Yes, to Sherry's family, we are safe. The most frightening thing for Sherry over the past few days: concern over spiders/scorpians under our bed in the treehouse. For me, concerned about falling out of the treehouse itself while showering or using the bathroom.
Take care,
-Cory and Sherry
PS - also forgot to mention that the island tat we're on is famous for hosting 'Full Moon Parties', giant rave parties on the full moon. Fortunately we have 6 more days until the full moon and we're on the other side of the island from all that nonsense. Still, we did see some 'ravers' on the ferry ride over.
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bout time we heard from you. butt massage looked like fun. cory pic are you having fun??? at least you have clothes for this weather. luvin and missin you guys.