Candyann

We landed in Chang Mai just in time for the Songkram Festival (Thai New Year). We were greeted with friendly smiling Thais around every street corner ready to assist with washing away your bad luck for the new year, this involves throwing water on you. Pick-up trucks loaded with people and a full barrel of water in the box also drove around to join in the fun. There were tuk-tuks with plastic barrels of water as well. This Thailand wide water fight went on for 3 days! You couldn't walk a block without getting a face full of water. The first major thing we booked in Thailand was a zip line tour called the Flight of the Gibbon. We flew across many zip lines, repelled from trees and crossed rope and wooden bridges. It was good ... read more

We have had a really hard time keeping up with this blog. It takes at least an hour to sit down and write an entry and to top it off the internet speeds are from the stone ages! Plus we have been super busy during our adventures in Thailand. Last time we wrote we were just starting our Padi course in Koh Lanta. Everything went great and we are all now Padi certified divers for open water. Because the diving season is Koh Lanta is now slower we ended up on the GO DIVE boat for all our trips even though we booked through S-Cool Dive. I was told it was the only dive boat with the days food being prepared right on the boat. The food was prepared in the smallest kitchen I have ever ... read more

It has been too many days since our last blog entry, but we have been so busy we forgot! Last time we wrote in here we were in Bangkok, now we have traveled through Patong, Phi Phi and Koh Lanta! The internet on Koh Lanta is really slow so hopefully we can post some pictures when we get back to mainland or Phuket. Our stop in Patong was a short stay, just a stepping stone to Phi Phi. Since I was last in Patong 2 years ago I noticed there has been a few changes, mostly fixes to what was still damaged by the Tsunami when I visited last time. Also last time I visited was during low season, what a difference! You can hardly move on the beaches during high season, we were more than ... read more

So, We found a taxi driver a couple days previous which seemed to be honest. We're not very sure as to where he took us then, but regardless we found that his prices were really quite cheap. We wanted to take a day trip outside bangkok to somewhere interesting, and Mr. Taxi Driver showed us pictures of Ayutthaya which looked interesting so we took him up on it. Laura got his card and on Sunday got the hotel receptionist to call him up and pick us up. The driver came early, and it took us about an hour to get to the 'Old Capital.' The driver, Mr. Somporn, is an eloquent man with an English vocabulary of about 10 words. 'Numba 1!' he exclaimed as we passed by the first temple. He further explained that there ... read more

We tried to put some pictures on here but in the process the memory card went corrupt and we lost 2 days worth of pictures on Laura's camera. Sorry, there will be no pictures till we get home, we don't want to risk the other card. The day before yesterday ended with eating at the night market and then we had a little browse around. Lumphini Park was across the road, so we sat by the water for a bit and watched the bats catch bugs on the water. Yesterday we went to the weekend market. Mark and Marcin stayed for a short time before venturing off. Marcin got his hair cut for 200 baht. Later we had a had dinner on the sidewalk of a restraunt while listening to a local play guitar and sing. ... read more

We arrived in Bangkok last night. This morning we to see the temple Wat Arun. The stairs were a little steep, but we all made it to the top. We saw a family of feral cats living on the temple. We have some really good pictures from above, hopefully we can put them on here for everyone to see next time. After we took a long tail boat ride around the canal for an hour. The ride really helped things cool off. Then we walked around for a bit, a local tried to scam us into a tuk tuk ride to see some temples and then a clothing factory after we made our not so fast get away we walked through this electronics district of stalls that would make any chop shop green with envy. They ... read more