Last night in Thailand

So, it totally sucks that we punked out on our blog for the whole last 2 weeks of our trip and we apologize for that to anyone who was keeping up with it. But the internet was very "dodgy" and expensive in the south islands in our defense. We did have a blast though during these last two weeks with Morgan and we're sad to say goodbye to Thailand. We spent our first week in the islands on Koh Phi Phi, which was pretty expensive but really fun all the same. We checked out the beach party scene and did some snorkeling excursions, including an overnight camping trip, where we slept under the stars, on Maya Beach. We also got to check out the place that Caleb recommended to us called "The Last Paradise", and that was incredible because it was our only bungalo ON the beach where we could hear the waves crashing all night long. We spent our last week in Koh Phangan with Chamisa, which was a beautiful island! Chamisa was a great host, as was Num. They took us around on a personal tour of the island by motorbike and Num showed us his favorite look-out spots and markets and restaurants. It was great. We also went to the halfmoon festival which was such a BLAST. We danced our asses off from midnight till dawn. The Thais sure know how to throw a party. We also spent a lot of time lounging on the beach, which is always nice. Then we came back to Bangkok for the last two days for shopping and visiting the Grand Palace. The Palace was amazing! So much intricate work on those Wats, it was incredible. Well, I guess that's the last two weeks in a nut-shell. Tomorrow we head back to reality I suppose. Thanks to everyone who left comments on our blog - honestly, it's the only reason we continuously kept trying in vain to put pictures on and continued to write our corny scenarios of our adventure. Catch you cats on the flip flop! Love, Sarah



Dude. as the other sara, i have to say this country had room for both of us. olues morgan. but she was like a bonus. like when you get to the bottom of the bag and there is one whole chip left, totally unbroken. ok, maybe a bit better than that even. depends how much you value your chips. anyways, it was freakin awesome. we finished it off last night with a thai lady-boy cabaret show that rocked our socks off (though we were the only ones in the audience cheering loudly and hooting. everyone else was old and not as amused i guess....odd...) now we are headed home and all we have to show for it is.....well, ok, we have a lot too show for it. including my new yet-to-be-named elephant, who resides on my right ankle. forever. im such a rebel. anyways, adios to the online journal, which basically fell a part in the end, but i hope all reading it were entertained at the least. see you suckas in cali yo!

Maya Beach (where they filmed "The Beach" for anyone who cares) - We camped there for the night with a small group. It was amazing!
Sunrise at Maya Beach
SNORKELING!!!!!
A beach on Phi Phi Don

the first beach we were all at!!

Kayaking in Laos vangvieng to vientiene....e.xcept we really drove most the way....

didnt mean to put this one but its the waterslide at a bar when we went tubing

tubing!

little boy getting ammo for his slingshot

we've made it to the beachy part!!! its like freakin paradise over here. its so bitchin i cant believe it. after a few nights going out in Phi Phi to the beach parties (which i had a lot of fun at and people compared to a much smaller party on koh phangan, wich fire dancing and music till late and all that jazz)we went camping on Maya beach where they filmed the island movie sarah mentioned. it was way too expensive but it was also worth it cause we have just been staying in hostels rather than like out in the fucking scenery, so we got to sleep under the stars on this amazing beach and the guys running it were really really funny and we stayed up late drinking buckets and laughing at nothing and everything. good times. the girls hiked up to watch the sunrise at the top of the hill, but you couldnt have pulled me out of that sleepingbag with a crowbar. i saw the sunrise just fine from the beach :D the little boats are way better than the big boats--like a morocycle vs a car--we took one around the south tip and stayed at Calebs reccommendation on Ao Poh. It was our fisrt bungalow on the beach and it was fucking awsome and they made us banana pancakes with nuttela at like 10:30. and we could hear the waves crashing. too bad the whole picture part of this is broken. whats up with that? S

Koh Phi Phi

We're in Koh Phi Phi now. Cool beach town. Phuket sucked (as we suspected it would and were warned it would, but then we got an email from a guy we had met in Chiang Mai and he told us that there was one really cool beach on Phuket that he'd been chillin' at for two weeks so we figured we'd check it out. But we really didn't like it. It was full of old Scandinavian couples and the whole city looked like Disneyland). So we hopped on the first boat over here at 7 AM and had scheduled a snorkeling/kayaking trip all day on the island where they filmed "the Beach" (with Leonardo DiCaprio) but there was a mix up and they told us to get off the ferry once we got to Koh Phi Phi and then when we realized that we were supposed to not have gotten off the ferry, the ferry had already left for the day's snorkeling. We were a little bummed, but we decided to just wait until the boat returned at 2 and ask if we could go tomorrow instead. So, since we were a little disappointed and burnt out, we decided to treat ourselves and got this really really awesome beautiful bungalow outside of town (most expensive place we've stayed since we got to Thailand - but still only 17 bucks per person). It's beautiful though with a private balcony overlooking the view and a pool and a big TV in the room and air con and a cool hotel bar outside and all that jazz. Not very "real Thailand" but this isn't really a "real Thailand" sort of place, so we might as well roll with it and have a good time rather than bitching about the lack of Thai authenticity of the place. Sara and I felt like we got quite a bit of "real Thailand" feelings in the north and then "real Laos" in the places we were in in Laos, so that was cool. It's sometimes fun to just do the beach thing even if it's touristy. However, tomorrow night I think that we're gonna try to seek out a place that Kaleb recommended that he said was "away from it all" and he said the guy who owned it was really cool. So now we just met the boat when it came in and worked it out so we get to snorkel all day tomorrow (which is fine cause we didn't know what we were gonna do tomorrow anyways). So I think we're just gonna go to a beach bar and hang out for a bit and maybe do a little shopping. Much love, Sarah

Morgan has arrived!!

Morgan got in last night at 6 PM! yay! Man, she was traveling for 27 hours - that's impressive by any standard, right? We're so happy to have all three of us here in Thailand! We went out for a really good celebratory dinner and then Sara went home to try to continue sleeping off her sickness and Morgan and I stayed up drinking beer and catching up. We eventually made our way to the beach at around midnight and took a midnight dip in the ocean with the phosphorescents. It was awesome. Now we're off to another beach that's been recommended to us in Phuket before we take off for Krabi and Koh Phi Phi. I hope the next beach has a bit more going on in town than this place, but hopefully the beach itself will be just as amazing!

Phuket

We're now in Phuket (which means that we've officially started the Thai Islands portion of our trip - YAY! Definitely ready for some beach action!) Morgan arrives today, which is very exciting! We are staying in Phuket just because of the one day delay between the time Sara and I got to the south and the day Morgan arrives, but we actually happen to have found a guesthouse that's 5 minutes from the airport and a 10 minute walk to a GORGEOUS beach! Yesterday Sara was starting to feel a bit under the weather, so she took a nap in our room after we got settled and I journeyed down to the beach to check it out. I didn't know what to expect because we had heard that Phuket is sort of a dump and not to waste time here. Well I dont know what the rest of Phuket is like, but this beach is amazing!!! White sand streatching in all directions and crystal clear turquoise water and it was practically deserted! I took a swim and then drank a Pina Colada under a big blue umbrella and felt like I was in some sort of commercial for vacations in Thailand. hehe. And it will be far better of course when Sara and Morgan are there. On our last day in Vang Vieng we decided to kayak from Vang Vieng to Vientien instead of taking a four hour bus. It was so beautiful! Sara and I shared a double kayak and we were the only ones to capsize during the one big rapid. It was good fun though and the guides were very good at helping us get all our stuff and gather ourselves onto shore. Then we spent the night in Vientien, which is the capitol of Laos, but not a very beautiful city. It was the day of Obama's inauguration (night our time) and so we were both so excited we went out for a fancy dinner and were cheersing each other giddily with each sip of our beer. There was a huge firework display that night over the capitol fountains and, after asking around and finding that nobody knew why there were fireworks, we are convinced it was in honor of Obama (perhaps a little self-centered American of us, but in this case, I think we might be right). Although the inauguration didn't actually start until after midnight our time and we had to leave for our flight to Phuket at 5 AM, I couldn't sleep and so stayed up watching the speech on our teeny tiny hotel TV until after 1 AM. It was great! We are so happy! OK, well that's all for now. Sara's trying to put some pictures up so hopefully that works. Love, Sarah

The view from our balcony in Vang Vieng
Sara riding her bicycle on a bridge
Sunset
The awesome night market in Luaugh Prabang
Posing in front of a tree that we liked in Luaugh Prabang