More Thailand Pictures for Your Viewing Pleasure! Enjoy!

Cruisin.........

Thailand - Chinese New Year Vacation

On our motorbike tour, we followed signs to a waterfall. Well............this is the waterfall. Maybe it's bigger in the rain season. Still a nice drive (except for the tree jumping snakes) and hike though.

The Giant Shell. Weird.

Al on a private beach in paradise. We rented a motorcycle and explored the island. We found this beach, complete with a swing, no people, a giant shell and a massive sandbar.

Koh Phangan sunset

Our very private Koh Phangan beach.

Our hotel/cabana resort in Koh Phangan

This hill was huge, and steep. Al had to get off then Jay and I had to run his bike to the top. We figured if we went down the other side, there was no getting back up, as it was a dirt, pot hole covered road. The hill won this battle, but we won the war!

We met this guy Dan who is from the same city as us. He plans to open a bar in Taichung - excellent!

This very drunk, and entertaining Aussie guy came to chat with us on the beach. He started teaching us Aussie drinking songs, where Jay proceeded to have a very poor Canadian performance. I guess this is Aussie style.

A sober, and very important conversation..........obviously!

Nothin but sweet scenery

Hangin out in a beach side bar, sippin on Colada's!

The sunset we watched

Here's the three of us sitting down on the beach to enjoy a Koh Tao sunset.

This is the hut we stayed in for under $10/day. It wasn't much but was all we needed. We were about 10 steps from the beach and it came with a handy hammock, which I obviously took advantage of.

Shortly after arriving in Koh Tao, I found Jay sititng alone, in a dark corner, contemplating life while eating his new favorite fruit - pappaya. He had spent the last week on Koh Phagnan so was used beach life and was happily sporting the bearded look which we all know he has come to love. With his well maintained 6 pack, I was unjustified in calling him what I have for so many years. However, for a few days, I secretly drank to, and toasted my old friend "Tubby".!

The sun was rising as we started our ferry ride from the mainland, over to Koh Tao.

Killing time before getting on the night train.

This is the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok that is soooo huge that you can't see it all in one full day. It has everything you can imagine for a price that is unimaginable as well. We shopped for about 4 hours and that's all we could take. It was super packed and much hotter than what we're used to.

Thailand Part Two

Well, we've made it to Chinese New Year - a time of giving/receiving money, cleaning the house from top to bottom and staying home with the family , for the Chinese, but for us, it's a week off school. Everyone gets a paid week off at our school so everyone takes trips all over S.E. Asia. We chose to go back to Thailand but this time, visited the beautiful islands of Koh Tao and Koh Phangan. We visited Bangkok for one day upon arriving and we went back to a huge day market where you can find the deals of the century on anything you want. Then, we took a sleeper train, which are by the way, nothing like what you see in the movies, down to Chumporn where we were awoken at 4 am to catch our bus over the ferry.

The ferry took us on a 3 hour boat ride to Koh Tao where we saw our first 'flying fish'. Now, if anyone has seen these things before, you'll appreciate my amazement with them. I was under the impression that a flying fish would kind of jump out of the water, be in the air for a few seconds, and then go back to the water. Well let me tell you, they blew my mind. I saw about 4 of them, and each one was in the air, skimming the water for well over 10 seconds. The longest one, was in the air for almost 20. They kind of soar just above the water, and then once in a while, hit their "wings" on the water for more propulsion. They turn and everything. Blew my mind. A Scottish guy and I were absolutely howling at them and were amazed that we didn't know about these things. They made for an eventful ferry ride.

We arrived in sunny, beautiful, turqoise watered Koh Tao around 10 am. We found a very inexpensive (about $10/nght) beach hut fairly quickly, and were set for our next few days in Koh Tao. We met up with Jay on the first day and spent the next few days together having a blast. Did some swimming, drinking, motor bike riding and sunset watching. The sunsets were absolutely beautiful and we snapped lots of pics. Jay left on the Thursday, and Al and I headed down to another island called Koh Phangan.

We had a nicer place in Koh Phangan already booked and were happy to be at such a nice, quiet place. They had their own restuarant, private pool and a nice beach shared by only 4 or 5 other hotels. We enjoyed our first few days but then both got sick from something. We're still not sure what. Al was sick first, then I and in total, were out of commission for about 4 days. Made things rough but we figured there are worse places to be sick than on a beautiful, tropical island on the beach.

We went back to Koh Tao for one more day once we felt better and then headed back to Bangkok for our flight home. We got home Monday around 9 pm and were back to work on Tuesday.

A good trip all around and it was great to see our old buddy Jay! The highlights are posted above. Enjoy!