Koh Phangnan

hey :) sorry for the delay in posting a new message. We arrived in Koh Phangnan a few days ago (it's funny how when you travel, you lose all sense of time...). We took a ferry over from Koh Samui. The water was really rocky, and I had a nasty hangover, so I wasn't feeling too ready to party on the ride there. We got off the ferry, feeling a little lost, and all these Thai taxi drivers were yelling us to figure out where we wanted to go (Lonely Planet had suggested a few options but we weren't in the mood to try to sort them out. All we knew was that we need something that was away from the crazy party scene (Koh Phangnan is the site of the famous full moon party, which is held on Tuesday the 14th). We used one of the flyers that was given to us on the ferry and ended up finding a little piece of paradise for about $5 each for a private bungalow with a fan. The place was just what we needed - we had our own private beach, the gardens and restaurant were beautiful, and it was just far enough out of town to get some rest. The reason for the delay in posting was because the place was too remote, we had no access to internet. One thing about this island is the crazy roads - for example, the ones near our place had some really crazy turns and hills. Sometimes with two of us on the motorbike we couldn't quite make it up the hill so we had to use our feet like fred flintstone. It was quite comical! We partied that night on the beach. One bar had a fire party. One thing that is really big on the islands is fire shows, where Thai men light a rod on fire and do crazy things with them. In addition to the fire shows, someone had lit a skipping rope on fire and people could jump in the skipping rope. No, we didn't do it, although Jason really wanted to. I had to remind him that the damn thing was ON FIRE, and that we saw most people getting hit somehow by the skipping rope. Thailand is an incredible country that is divided into two things: incredible beauty and the freedom to do pretty much anything you want. Want to see some guy put his head in a crocodile's mouth? no problem. Want to ride an elephant? Sure. Anything goes!

The second day, we took the motorbike out to see a waterfall. The roads going to the waterfall were the worst we had ever seen. The storm from the day before didn't help. The hills were really steep, the roads were covered in sand and gravel (very slippery!) and there were trenches in the road so we couldn't get enough speed to make it up the hills sometimes. At one point we wiped up and had some sweet cuts on our legs. We decided to head back shortly after dumping the bike. Some of you noticed my scraped up leg; that was from trying to learn how to drive a motorbike on a dirt path in Koh Samui. The fall from the bike the second time definitely destroyed my career in being a leg model... For some reason everything is happening to the left leg. It looks worst than it really is.

Last night we went to our first muay thai fight. It was right near the beach so really close to the party, but it was awesome to get away from the tourists and really get a sense of one aspect that is so important to Thai culture. Muay thai has a more spiritual feel than other martial arts. For example, when the boxers come in the ring, they spend a few minutes praying for good luck in various parts of the ring. It's a much more spiritual feel than wrestlers from the WWE who walk into the ring with their wrestling bunnies who do it purely for entertainment purposes.

We took a high speed catamaran to the coast (about 4 hours long), and an 8 hour bus ride to Bangkok, where we are now. We are leaving for Phnom Penh in Cambodia tomorrow to spend some time with Angkor Wat. I am sad to leave Thailand, but we need to keep moving! The world won't wait for us!

I will post pictures separately. Blogger and I are not really getting along right now!

M :)