hi from the sailing trip. No internet on board so no posts. in phi phi today and I hit an internet cafe. no pictures. sigh I'm using their computer. the pictures are great. you cant imagine the rock formations and sights. last night we were in railey (? on spellig) beach. all but 2 meals have been on our ship a 50 foot catamaran. we have a small but good cabin with a private bath. The food is great but the sights and relaxing. The boat also has kayaks on board and Shelly has kayaked every day. I've gone a bunch too. we miss everyone and hope all is well. no tellng if I can get to another internet cafe, but wanted to let you know we are enjoying ourselves. 3 more nights on the ship, ... read more

Today was an early breakfast for both Shelly and I. Shelly headed off to scuba dive (no camera so no pictures for he). I went to cook. The cooking school was great. it was open air and had a beautiful view of the ocean. We learned to cook several dishes and I also talked with one of the chefs and got receipes for a couple of shelly and my favorite dishes. Now my goal will be to see if I can find all the ingredients. At the school, they cooked the dish in a class room setting with mirrors above the cooking area so you could really see what was happening. They explained everything they were doing. After that, you went to your cooking station and duplicated the dish. It was fun and a learning experience. ... read more

We arrived in Pai after leaving the quick mountain biking from the day. We showered, then went into town for a massage, drinks and dinner. We also did a bit of shoping. Pai is small but has an active downtown. We had to walk into town but got a tuk tuk to get us back to the hotel. The next morning we were met at the hotel to start our rafting. We rafted the Pai river for 2 days. Unfortunately the water level was very low so there wasn't a lot of big rapids. we still had a good time, especially Shelly. The food was interesting - we tried some new fruits and lunch was a rice dish wrapped in a bananna leave. After about 5.5 hours of rafting we arrived at camp. ok, Thai people ... read more

yesterday we truly started our multi-sport portion of the trip. The driver met us at 8:30. We left one of our suitcases (each) at the hotel as we will be coming back to Chiang Mai and staying at the same place next week. The van took us about 30 minutes out of Chiang Mai and then we got on our bikes. It's a mountain bike. We drove thru the country side stopping in little villages, along the road and at a buffalo/rice farm. The scenery was grand. I'm amazed at the nicer houses I saw. I was expecting the rural areas to be much poorer - ie I thought I would be reminded of Vietnam and what we used to see on tv. we did see a little of that but not that much. Today's biking ... read more

We made it into bangkok and checked in at our hotel. This hotel is grand. I can't believe we got it for the price and it was so close to where New Year's eve was going to be celebrated. We had time to rest before our night "Illuminated Bangkok" tour. Our guide picked us up and we drove via taxis and tuk tuks to see the night lights of Bangkok. We ate a local dinner at out door stall restaurants and tried many of the local fruits. We were nervous about the food but our guide said that it was safe so we tried it. Dinner for 3 with 3 beers - about $9. Stuff can be cheap. We saw the palace and night, the flower market, other markets and scenery then returned to the hotel ... read more