Back in the USA!

Ok so really, we arrived 5 days ago but have taken a mandatory rest stop, until now. We left Hong Kong at 10pm in the evening for a 12 hour flight across the pacific and landing in San Francisco, CA at 7:30pm. This was quite a shock to the system as about 4 hours into the flight it was suddenly daylight outside only my body was saying it was 2 am. Even weirder was when a couple of hours before we landed they were serving us a meal consisting of beef or fish and my body was saying it was time for breakfast. Thank God for the crossant I purchased at starbucks in the HK airport. Yes, starbucks has infiltrated China!

The flight went by way to fast, even Joey agrees with me on this one! I really wished it would have been longer. I didn't even get in a full movie. Of course I was reading an awesome book by Jody Picoult. We flew home with Singapore airlines and were excited to see how it was, supposedly they are one of the finest to fly. They had free internet access (we didn't have our puter though), all the seats had a little footrest and we got little packets with socks and a toothbrush. We each also got a pillow and blanket (pretty common with any airline on overseas flights though). Each headrest had it's own TV and we had over 80 on demand movies to select from. If you fell asleep or wanted to eat dinner you had your own little remote to pause the movie or rewind. How nice! We recived a menu of food that we would be served throughout the flight. Fancy for coach. All in all a very comfortable flight with fun little ammenities. Oh yeah, you could also play nintindo (or maybe it was playstation) on your own little TV. The remotes had build in game remotes. They thought of everything.

Upon arriving in San Francisco I couldn't hardly wait to see mom and our babies! I was officially missing them and ready for the comforts of home. We had one more hurdle, CUSTOMS, before we were free and clear. I was nervous but trying not to look nervous as we sat around the conveyer belt waiting for our bags. It seemed to take forever! We had purchased 2 new suitcases to bring all of our loot home in and we really didn't want them to get lost or damaged as there was some pretty cool stuff in them. Also, in my backpack, I was 'smuggling' in over 100 bootleg DVD's and CD's that Joey had purchased in Thailand. We had been givin some advice for me to carry the DVD's as Asain people coming back to the states alwasy get stopped as they have an affinity for 'fakes', the newest electronics (sometimes stolen goods), and other stuff that the US generally frowns on bringing in. So, finally we see our bags. It was perfect timing as there was a flux of incoming flights all of a sudden and customs was a bit more busy then when we arrived. We were suprised to observe that they were pulling well over half of the people coming through to be searched. As we approached the man in the desk I tried so hard to have my game face on. He took our declarations and then looked at all the new luggage. We were thankfull for the few scuffs that had accumulated so as not to look quite so new. I suppose it doesn't help much though when right on top is two big backpacks. Such a dead giveaway that we left quite a bit lighter than we were returning! Anyway, the man asks us if we had somebody waiting for us outside and we both said in unison my mom and our kids. He took a quick breath while looking back down at our bags and then told us to go on through. YOOHOO... home free.
We tried so hard not to look back, or sprint to the door. It was hard!

As soon as we made it out into the airport I spotted Connor. He melted into shy boy right away and would have nothing to do with us the first 10 minutes but after that he was all about daddy. We marvelled in how much the kids changed in just a few weeks. Bella has become quite the walker and so into interaction. Connor has more words and personality than ever.

We walked in the door about 9:30 and our first task was getting food! My first meal was pasta with pesto and french bread. No suprise there for those of you who have shared a meal with me in the past 6 months! Joey had a huge bowl of coco pebbles. He likes cereal about as much as I do pesto. We stayed up until close to midnight and then finally headed to bed, hoping to ward off some of the impending jetlag.

5 am... my eyes open... I'm wide awake!
To be continued...

Koh Samui

(Travel) We flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and paid extra to take an earlier flight to Koh Samui. We originally thought to take an extra long layover (6 hours) in Bangkok to allow us to take all of our newly purchased goods from Chiang Mai to our hostel (again not the movie, but close), and store them at Suk 11 for the remainder of the trip. But, we thought that getting to Koh Samui and on to Koh Phangnan sooner would be advantageous. Really we just wanted to get to the Marriott on Samui earlier :)

Quick uneventful summary of our few hours on Koh Somui: Scary neighborhoods, crazy drivers, lost tourists, poor dirty areas, super fancy restaurants, fantastic resorts…pretty much par for course for Thailand.

That’s about it. Ok, for a “little”, itty bitty bit of detail. The Airport is freaky, but cool. You land on a single airstrip airport that seems too narrow and too short to land a HUGE 747, and off load onto the tarmac onto the most colorful looking tram-like busses that you’d find at Disneyworld. These little buggers take you a ¼ mile, parallel to the landing strip, to the main “terminal”… a hut with a few computers and conveyor belts. We get out with jumbo jets landing and taking off 200 yards away. The only thing separating us from the runway is a plant, a small one. The baggage is unloaded directly infront of us onto the conveyor. Very simple.

We are supposed to have a driver waiting for us from the hotel, but no show. We called the hotel and asked, and still he didn’t come. So, we took a taxi…sort of. They really should just change the little sign on top of their car to read: “Really expensive bumpy unfriendly ride”. They’ve really mastered the art of Racism here in Thailand. Division of services directly relating to race. If you’re not Thai, you pay a minimum of 4x the normal price. For taxis and smaller gift-like items, expect 20x-200x. A 5 mile, 10 minute ride from the airport to the hotel cost 400 baht !!!!!! Of course no one here uses the meter thingy that kind of defines “taxi”, but they just tell you how much it is. Thing is, they know, that we know that they will pull the racism card so that means that instead of them normally raising 20x the price, they raise 40x knowing that we will counter with 20x and they will “submit” to 30x. A metered taxi ride would probably (guessing here cuz we’ve never really seen a metered taxi) be about 40 - 50 baht. What really burns my goat the most is that the other locals all let this happen, and will coax us into these situations. Eerggghh.

Anyway, the Renaissance Hotel, one night, using Marriott points from my travels, is still probably the largest single chunk of change we’ve spent. Uber nice place tho. The room just about made me faint. Private pool on our porch, massive 20 foot ceilings, huge TV with dvd player, etc etc etc. we had our own little bungalow to ourselves. Wicked Cool.

The rest of the island was terrible. But, we did only see the areas directly around our hotel and the airport and the road between them. There was trash EVERYWHERE. Dirt literally covered everything, all plants are brown for the first 1nch or so, then when you’ve scratched deep enough you get to green leaf.

We got a recommendation from an Aussie guest of the Hotel’s and went to “Prego” Italian rest. He said that there was an Aussie Italian chef with them when they went, and that chef friend of theirs said it was the “best Italian” food he’d had. WOW we thought. An Italian chef saying that!? Must be GREAT! *poof* enter reality, the food was…so so at best. Honestly, I’ve had better at Olive Garden. Pricey too, for Thialand standards.

Beyond that, not much here at Koh Samui. On to Koh Toa, which we already posted... strange I know, but too much to do, so little time.

Koh Phangan adventures

We are still here and heading to Bangkok tonight. Will definately blog more there. Our hotel was too remote and too expensive to have any internet access while we were there! Sorry for the delay put please keep reading. We'll be back with updates before the day is over.

Update...

Check back down on the Jungle Village Entry... we have updates, sorry they aren't in order. They should be from now on. More to come soon. We are off to Koh Phangan but are putting money on the fact that we will be back in Koh Tao before the week is over!

Shark!

It's official, we are Advanced Open Water Divers, and not without a few adventures along the way. Today we had three dives planned: 1. Our muli-level dive, 2. Our naturalist dive (big word for fish identification) and 3. Our night dive.

So off we went to the ocean today ready for some action. Our first dive site is one that sharks have been spotted at for the past couple of days so we are excited, and so is the rest of the island because the boats are full and there is a buzz in the air! It's definately an experience to be around a bunch of dive junkies when there is news of something cool in the water (like a shark). Our instructor let us know that he wanted us suited up and first off the boat. Again, everybody else had the same idea. The good thing was there were only two of us and Jonas (instructor) so we were able to move down the line quite quickly to our 29ish meter mark as to maximize bottom time on our search for this wonderous creature. We began without a hitch, down the line and started out left around the rock formation. Along we were going when all of a sudden things started to get really weird for me. ... and then even weirder. I started to feel really messed up and as quickly as it was happening I knew I was in trouble. I was what divers call "narc'd". I had narcosis which basically means that there is too much nitrogen in your blood and you have a similar feeling to being drunk. It happens for people usually at deeper depths and we were near 100 ft. I reached for Joey and started tugging violently at his arm. He turned around, telling me later on the boat that he expected me to be giving him the "out of air'' sign. But no, at this point I couldn't remember my name let alone what sign to give. I gave him the good ol fashion loopy finger to the head sign. He grabbed hold of me and headed off to Jonas to let him know. So, up a few meters we went and the problem started to correct itself slowly. Joey kept hold of my hand for quite a bit and that seemed to be the only thing that calmed me down. Although I got better physically, mentally I was pretty wigged out the rest of the dive only diminishing the next part... a shark. Joey and Jonas actually got a good look, fast as it may have been and with the visibility not so great it was hard for me to make out until there was just a fin left. Shortly after that I gave another sign that I just wasn't right and we ended the dive. A quick "shake it off" and a little over an hour surface interval time and we were ready to make our second dive.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I was pretty nervous getting into the water after my last experience but we actually took a second dive master with us this time and off we went into the water. The dive plan was to go to about 24 meters and stay there for 15 minutes hoping to spot a shark again. I was concerned for the boys as we all knew that the sharks were deeper down between 25-30 meters. The rule is your first dive is the deepest and I had cut that one short for us. So down the line we went and started to circle the rock. We made it all the way around the rock disappointment setting in as our time was coming to an end at that depth when all of a sudden not 2-3 meters (5-10ft) in front of us is a white tip reef shark. He was maybe 2-2.5 meters long (5-7 feet) and just came up ever so slowly. He was curious and hung about for about 5 seconds before making a sharp turn and bam, off he went as fast as he had come. It was official, we saw a shark. Talk about amazing, truly breathtaking. We were reminded people dive for years without seeing a shark in the wild and we were able to spot one on our 4th dive during our course.

The dive wasn't without a few other fish such as a huge grouper, baracuda (small) and the other usual tropicals. Not to downplay but we had SHARK on the mind.

*Enter Joey*

After the joyous shark dive, the electrified bunch of divers returned to shore, however, G, me and Jonas stayed behind to continue forth for our Night Dive certification! We made friends with Chris, a German "dive master in training" on our last dive and he offered to bring us dinner :) He brought us authentic Thai Curries and stir-fries. Yum yum.

Anyway, the more interesting part now... The night dive. Quite possibly my best dive ever! We witnessed "Giant Barracuda", Blue Spotted sting rays, a Huge grouper and a Massive Trigger fish. Now, keep in mind ... IT'S DARK!!! all we have is a straight beam of light from our dive torch. we can really only focus on what the light is on, and that's it. It's a funny (=scary) feeling to move your light around, and not 5 feet from you is a 6 foot barracuda staring at you, square in the eyes. He's attracted to your light, and they are used to the dark water, so they can come right up to you without you noticing. Took my breath away more than once. I had one circle around me a couple times coming within 5 feet. I just knew he was going to take a little piece of me with him this night. But he didn't. Jsut circled a couple times and watched me make the water yellow around me as I pissed myself. This happened several times in teh span of the forty minute dive. When we surfaced, I was asking myself, "was that really 40 minutes so quickly?!" it was freakin' amazing. Even our instructor thought that was an amazing dive, so often we got to see teh rare species of the area. Very cool!

Anyway, peace out. We'll update again later. (as well as finally add some stuff about our trek that we were mysteriously missing for three days :) )

We're feeling great now, and off to celebrate our certification and are signed up for 7 more dives over the next 2 days, including another night dive ... Hell Yeah!

Hasta!

Our Koh Tao Adventures

Hello from Koh Tao!
I'm sure by now many of you have been wondering what happened to those silly Yeps! That is if you are even still checking our adventures. Sorry for such delay, our schedule has not really permitted much time for anything at all, including sleep until last night, but we are finally catching up. So, the easiest thing to do is start current and work our way back in future posts to our Jungle trek and time in Chiang Mai.

So here I sit in Koh Tao taking a moment between class time for our advanced diver course and our afternoon dives to update. It's been amazing so far. When we arrived via the ferry yesterday we were a bit delayed and unable to join our class, so in a stroke of luck our dive shop decided to give us our own private instructor with no additional fee's! Yeah... so after an expidited briefing and introduction to the course we were off to catch the afternoon dive boat and begin our first dive of the day - the deep dive. Now funny thing here, Everything in this country (and most countries other than the USA for that matter) is in the metric system. So it's been a bit of a challenge for me (Joeys done quite well) to figure conversions. Imagine your dive master throwing out all the dive plans and instruction in Meters. Not alot of time to convert without missing something important so I've done a bit of winging it and today I'm beginning to really get it. Anyway, back to the dive. A fourty minute boat ride out on quite a large dive boat with some other courses going and "fun divers" as well. Looking around I couldn't imagine how a dive could be fun and remotely private with so many people but to my suprise I really didn't encounter anybody underwater. I think I saw one other group in the distance. This may be because of the depth or that it was just a large dive site but it worked out great just the same.

So, at last we arrived at the dive site. A quick suit up and rush to get into the water and it was time for our deep dive of approx 30 Meters/ 100 feet. I was a bit nervous jumping off the boat as I've never done a boat dive before now. In Monterey, most dives are from the shore - it's a luxury but also a hinderance as I felt a bit foolish having to ask for instruction about how to enter the water when most entry level divers already have that mastered from a boat. No problems though and it was time to descend.
**Joey's continuation from here **

So, from my perspective it all started out funny-like. I "giant Stride" into the water and my mask jumps off my face, and my snokel goes for a swim without me...straight to the bottom of the ocean. Even with our SCUBA gear we can't go down after it, teh decent is too fast and the area it fell to is not in the plan.
Southwest Pinnacle:
We follow our instructor (Jonas Holm - Sweden) down into the depths of the unknown. Guinevere really thought she was going to freak when she hit 100 ft deep, but found it no different from diving at 45 ft. We saw many a creature during the dive. To list only a few: Giant Sea Cucumbers, Trigger fish, Barracuda, Parrot fish, and Sea Urchins. We saw a couple really beautiful Angels, black with neon blue stripes.

The Coral here is amazing. HUGE boulders covered with corals of all kinds. Guinevere's favorite were the little very colorful pine tree looking things that implode when you wave your hand by them. They completely disappear into the coral.

At some point during the dive, G reverts to ASL to communicate with me. However, I am concentrating on SCUBA Diving and the hand signals associated with it and can't think of what she's trying to tell me. Eventually, a light goes on in my head and I recognized the signals. She has "pain in her leg". I looked but didn't really see anything, just a small red spot. When we got back to the boat, I find that it looks like a Jelly Fish or Sea Anemone had gotten ahold of her. Lots of little circle spots (look like suction cups got her) with lots of read swelling and blotching. The dive master finds some vinegar to help quell the burning sensation.

To the second dive site: AOW Leuk, Navigation skills tests. This was a short mostly uneventful dive. We were completely confused as to what we were supposed to do with the line the instructor had placed. We're supposed to stay together and kick along the string to count the cycles and time the distance. We eventually fingured it out. G almost immediately upon getting to the bottom, severed her left leg off. Ok, a bit of exaggeration, but really it sliced open really good, at least it looked as so under water. The blood was pouring out, but didn't look like Human blood. My wife had morphed into a Klingon (during the day for once!, usually it's after a few drinks or early when you wake her up from sleeping). anyway, the blood looked green, dark nasty infected gang-greeny green. But she kept giving the signal that she was ok, and it didn't hurt too much. So we continued our dive. All the while, I was showing concern for her, but secretly hoping that it would bring a few sharks near so we could use G as bait and I could see a shark!

But...no shark. That's for today!!!! More later. Same Bat-channel, same Bat-time. Sayonara.

We're back from the jungle!

And off to Koh Samui, Koh Tao, and Koh Phangan... so let's backtrack and do a little recap. Last post I had just mustered up the courage to rent a motorbike with Joey and go exploring. This on the heels of a very confusing journey through old Chiang Mai looking for a restaurant that had come recommended by a fellow backpacker.

Rachel (backpacker) had highly recommended "Nice Kitchen" as wonderful western breakfast. So, without any better ideas we had to try it. We were so inclined to try to walk to find this place that we pulled out three different maps and had a map that Rachel had drawn for us. We wandered the bowels of old Chiang Mai for an hour looking like completely befuddled tourists. With camera around my neck and the Lonely Planet in hand, we trailblazed forth. No less than 10 Tuk Tuk drivers and 5 "friendly strangers" tried to peddle their location finding services to us. It becomes very tiresome, eventually you learn that even before they speak you smile, shake your head, and say "not today, no thank you" without making eye contact. Finally completely frustrated and more determined than ever, we enlisted the help of a "Gringo" looking man from USA who spends his summers working in Thailand. He reassured us that we'd learn the lay of the land and gave us much needed directions. He even commented that the maps and the streets are impossible to follow by intellect, and that you had to use intuition. The names of the streets change every couple of blocks and are labeled poorly. Anyway, we follow his lead and finally get there, only to find that he had left us for a shortcut that he new and arrived a good 5 mins before us :)

The restaurant was well worth the wait. The food ws great and cheap. The organic food was SOOOO organic that the eggs G had ordered came with their own Flies cooked right in. OK, it was just one, but still!!!!

In a moment of enlightenment (starvation), she was brave, surgically removing infected area and continuing mastication.

The morning has started off on a low spot, but with the good warm food in our bellies ("buzzing" as it may) we turned it all around. G found the gusto to get on her rented bike and off we were to explore like Lewis and Clarke. We quickly decided on our destination of Doi Suthep. This fabulous mountain temple 20 KM NW of Chiang Mai was yet another incredible journey.

My freshly rented motor bike was EMPTY of fuel. So, thusly began the search for the elusive gas station. Three times we stopped to asked for gas, three times we got directions, three times we got lost! I feared for my life as I just knew that I was going to putter to an impotent stop in the middle of nowhere as my last wisps of fuel vapors ran dry. As luck would have (G's, not mine!) we found a fuel station! Even better luck (again G's, not mine) it was on the very same road that we needed to take to the temple.

Funny thing, to rent the bike: 150 baht, to fill the damn tank: 200 baht. Go figure!

We venture forth. With the rain coming down in spots, we pulled over at a market for ponchoes. We find some nice, cheap, incredibly useful ponchoes. 20 Baht, and thinner than Saran wrap! Putting these over our already wet heads put so many holes in it, that we had a good laugh. We looked like little Pokemon's on motor bikes in bright pink and bright blue plastic coats. Too funny. We'll have pictures soon.

On a side note, as we put on our ponchoes, I (Guinevere) had my contact pop out of my eye. Yes, this could have been a bad thing but again my luck, after careful searching and moments before giving up, I found it stuck to my shoelace. Yeah... so off we went up the hill on our little adventure. The motorbikes were a blast. I'm so glad that Joey had the idea to rent one. There was little traffic on the road and we were able to cruise around on the road and just enjoy the scenery. Half way up on the left there was a big sign for the waterfalls and we ventured that direction before heading to the temple. A short drive, and even shorter hike later we found ourselves at the base of a waterfall, secluded, and alone! WOOHOO, no not really but we did decide to take a spontaneous swim.

** Enter Joey's comments **

The waterfall, as all waterfalls, are so very cool. I couldn't resist climbing up the rocks to get right into the waterfall itself. We got some great photos that we'll share later. G made the joke that with the pictures of me in waterfalls in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and now Thailand, we could make a full photoalbum of me in waterfalls. That's a neat thing!

So, we continued up the road to the Mountain Temple, Doi Suthep. We met up with several rain blurps along the way, but we were able to keep our camera dry. Can't say that for ourselves tho, as mentioned before the ponchoes were now full of holes. Holes aren't much good for waterproofing.

We pull into to a really large shopping area with all sorts of good food and more ponchoes ;)

We worked our selves up to the temple and paid our "donataion" to the temple to ride the inclining elevator to the top of the mountain. Now we say "to the top of the mountain", but in reality it's only 300+ steps up from where we are. But we were lazy by this point and took the elevator. (but we took the stairs on the way down :)

This temple was quite large and VERY busy. Monks and visitors everywhere. Large iron bells in long rows for the spiritual to toll. Ringing the bells was not so artfull for most. I noticed right away that these bells had been here a while, and the leather that had bound the hammer within the bell had warn mostly away. The leather helps to produce the soft and direct clean tone of the bell. BUT, most of the foreigners would just grab the hammer and swing it hard against the bell. Iron on iron in a large bell makes a terrible racket! Very sharp, loud, ear piercing twang! and they would just giggle. It quite annoyed me. But if the bells tones are meant to keep the evil spirits away, it kept them very far away. And I really feel for the good spirits as they are probably deaf by now.

We participated in an offering to the spirits and Buddha here, we purchased "lotus" flowers (tulip looking flowers), candles and incense. Quite the experience. I felt as tho I was tresspassing, as Buddhism is not my faith. but still it was neat.

Pictures here will help to solidify the vastness and wonderful views from atop that mountain.

The trip down from the mountain on our motorbikes was ... well, SLOW. It was rainy and wet, and some traffic, but being unfamiliar with the roads, the bikes, nor the traffic, we kept it quite slow. I don't think I used the throttle at all, just coasted with my brakes on.

Finally we approach the city moat that we're familiar with for the old city of Chiang Mai. We enter into the circling traffic around the city (it's a really big square with only a few entrances/exits.) We circle a couple of times looking for an appropriate entrance, as we aren't fully sure of where Julie Guest House is within the city. So we continue to circle looking for anything familiar, a sign, a street name, a building, anything. Nothing. So we take a chance. We take a turn into the city, and follow the very narrow cobblestone streets through intertwining unmarked roads ... basically an above ground catacomb, a labrynth, that eventually spits us right back out onto the circling square that we originated. We figure we obviously took a wrong turn in there, so lets try another entrance. We weave and deek, and dodge crazy traffic, only to once again be spat out like a bug in your eggs...oh wait wrong story previously stated. Right back again on the square that surrounds the city. Again, and again, and again...we can't help but laugh. I start giving G the "tour" of the square..."and over here we have the funny looking building we just saw 4 min ago, and over here we see the gas station attendants laughing at us, again, because we just drove past them moments ago, and over here Big Ben and Parliament (reference from National Lampoons European Vacation). And look kids, Big Ben, Parliament. And look Big Ben, Parliament, isn't that nice...oh look..." Round and round and round, or really square and square and square we go. 20+ mins going around and finally we get lucky with and work our ways back to Julie's. Hooray, our heros arrive safely to the basecamp!

Finally some real shopping: Sunday market. This was a bit of a bore for me. (Joey) It was focused mostly on food (which I like, but once i'm full, i don't like food anymore ); jewelry - handmade stuff, no gems, all for girls; clothes - again, this is the local market, so the clothes for mostly female clothes and made for really small Thai people. They don't much fit large semi-white folk; and some arty stuff - mostly wood carvings and prints and painting on wood carvings. Lots of pics of the King, and of the same Thai statue face that Thailand is famous for. We did find a really beautiful painting of gold fleck paint and deep reds that we bought. Quite expensive for Thai standards, but the artist was there, and she was such a shy lady. You could tell she was very proud of her work, but she was unsure of herself. I'm sure a society like this oppresses female artists of this kind and we were quite proud to be able to help her sell her work. We're pretty sure that we were her only customer that whole day, because when we finally said yes after negotiating price, a whole gaggle of people came from across the street and congratulated her on the sale! They all had very proud and somewhat surprised looks on their faces. We felt good too. You'll all just have to come visit us in our new house and see these pieces :)

**side note, during the sunday market there are all sorts of food vendors. Most of it is authentic thai that actually looks quite yummy but a few times we would be walking along and swear that we just hit the twilight zone. There would be an entire stall full of your standard array of "scary yucky bugs" (and some not so standard bugs too)! Beetle the size of your hand and spiders so yucky. Maggots, worms, and crickets too. All deep fried and apparently quite the delicacy for the thai people. There were a few locals surrounding the stall trying each peice for a taste test before buying large bags for market snacks. You could hear the groans of delight as they popped the little critters in. Too much for us to stomach, we moved on leaving that thai experience for the more adventuresome folk. NOT FOR US!!!

G bought some hair chops, (sticks for keeping her hair wrapped up) some hair bands, (decorative bandana like things) and some pants. not much else...

And on to the jungle!

...But for another post. It will be out of order, but it will be good. Full of adventure: Elephants, bamboo rafts, beautiful scenery only seen in movies (...and all other Thai people, and other backpackers, and pretty much every one else), spiders the size of your hand that really like sleeping next to you, and lots of sore muscles. Three days hiking through the rainforests of Thailand.