More island hopping in Koh Tao

We loved Koh Samui! It's the biggest island in the area, which means you can see and do a little of everything. We were way too lazy to do anything but lay on the beach, but at least we had options. Samui was just a nice place to chill out and enjoy the beach.

And coconut shakes

 I'm letting you all know, when you are ready to take your next beach vacation, just fly to Koh Samui. We will definitely be back in the future, so we'll come with you.
Come on! All the Russians are doing it.


Samui seems to be the general hangout and family place to go. Then the next island over is Koh Phangan, which is where they have the infamous Full Moon Parties. A monthly hippie backpacker rave that carries over to the rest of the month. So it's where all the 20-something Brits & Aussies go to party hard 24/7. Surely you're not surprised to hear that we skipped it. We moved on to the next island of Koh Tao, which is the best island for scuba diving.

The pier for the boat leaving Koh Samui

Koh Tao is much smaller, but very mountainous and beautiful.

We've seen some great sunsets at night, and the beach is really shallow so when the tide goes out you can wade out pretty far into the water

Brannan has taken advantage of the great diving here and gone on 6 different dives. I decided to forgo the stress (we're on a tropical island, man!) and skipped the diving. But he had a fantastic time and got to see a lot of great coral, and no sharks.

We booked an around-the-island snorkeling tour and had a blast! It took all day and stopped at 5 different spots to snorkel. Each stop got better and better. We saw some really beautiful coral reefs and fish. Here are some pictures as we cruised around the island.

Another snorkeling tour boat.  Their slogan across the tops of the posters said
"More than... convenience, safety, and funny"
What??

Bungalows along the water

Hi Brannan! Heading in from snorkeling

Our last stop was a small island off of Koh Tao that is 3 small islands connected by a sand bar. Beeeeeautiful! We got to stop there for 2 hours and snorkel or lie on the beach. The snorkeling area there is called the Japanese Gardens because the coral looks like huge flowers. It was the coolest place ever! We were sad we didn't have an underwater camera. We snorkeled for a good hour or more and got a little toasted on our backs, ha!

Arriving at the island, with the sandbar behind me

It was an awesome place. There were hundreds of people there diving and snorkeling.

The boat ride back to Koh Tao

The next day was overcast so we got haircuts! We were both pretty shaggy and Brannan had braved up his courage since Istanbul, so we decided it was time.

Looking fluffy, but not nearly as wooly as last time

The hair salon we found was being run by a Thai lady-boy. If you don't know what a lady-boy is, don't google it!... it's a man who looks like a woman, and we'll leave it at that. They are everywhere in Thailand, and it turns out they can cut hair pretty well. At one point during Brannan's haircut, she/he said "sorry, one minute" and ran out...

...hope she comes back! Bangs are so last season...

We assumed she needed sharper scissors to tackle those luscious locks. But she did come back after about 5 minutes and finished the job. While she was gone, Brannan inspected her cart to make sure there was no face floss, wax, or fiery qtips in there. None to be seen, whew!

Looking like a gentleman once again! And he wore his Istanbul shirt in honor

We'll be here enjoying Koh Tao for about another week or so, then it's off again to Bangkok, predictably.

Beach Bummery = Bad Bloggery

What a fun title, says I!  Since our arrival in Koh Samui we have been super busy doing absolutely nothing.  It turns out after our experiences in northern Thailand and the wilds of Laos, we were really burned out, so we came here for some vacation-from-vacationing.  Our month long Cambodia-northern Thailand-Laos leg left us feeling like these poor Swiss kids after elephant riding.

Pooped!  When you can fall that fast asleep in the back of a bouncing Thai songethaw, you are TIRED.

Koh Samui has been an excellent panacea for our weary selves.  We started off with an hour long minibus trip from the airport that took us to the remote west coast on the island.  The good news is that it had beautiful sunsets over the ocean, free kayak rentals at the hotel, and a decent beach.

View from the restaurant

Awwwww

I took that picture!  It's true!

 Our hotel was pretty good, including two pools that we loved, but was far too out of the way for us.  A nice beach on a remote part of a Thai island sounds nice and romantic, but the reality is that it's impossible to see anything on the island, no shops or restaurants except the expensive (and terrible) hotel food unless you walk for a long ways, and even then will be serenaded by roaming chickens while eating.  Oh, and the possibility exists that someone is going to randomly tie their water buffalo to a palm tree across the street and leave it to terrify white people who happen to be passing by.  Yes that happened.

"Good afternoon, folks!" Not our actual buffalo, but like they say, a buffalo's a buffalo.

Fortunately we'd only booked that hotel for three days so after those few days we jumped to a hotel on the east coast, and the experience has been much better.  We are in the nicest hotel room we've seen in Thailand, complete with bathtub and shower curtain (that's a big deal!  Really!), balcony, and a lovely pool with a view of the beach.

View from our balcony.  You can see the ocean, promise!

We loooooooove this pool!

It has been the perfect beach retreat, and is quickly making it's way up the list of places we want to come back to.  The stresses and worries of travel have fallen from our psyches like so many coconuts from their trees. Not a good comparison, so if you want I'm sure you can come up with some better beach-based metaphor, I never claimed this post would win the Nobel prize for awesome writing.  Or is it the Pulitzer?  Whatever.  I'm waaaaaaayyy tooooooo relaxed to worry about such things.  You would be too as this is the most relaxed place on the planet! 

Brannan loves life!

Looking down the bay - seriously folks, come to Thailand already!

View from our lunch spot, "The Black Pearl"

We have fallen into a fantastically relaxing routine that we may just follow until the end of time:

9:00-ish: Wake up

10:00: Swim in the beautiful green water

11:00: Happily sun ourselves like so many warm lizards  (bad metaphor #2 - meh, whatevs)

11:30: Swim in the cool pool with beautiful view of the ocean

12:30: Happily sun ourselves by the pool like lazy hippies.  There's a good one!  Waaaait a second, that's not a metaphor...

Sometime later: roam the beach in search of delicious beach/Thai food, usually always with fruity drinks.

3:00-ish: Head back to the coolness of our hotel room to rest our weary, burned skins (and blog!)

Evening: Wander the streets in search of more delightful food, such as

Grilled Shrimps!  And no I am not pretending that they are my prawny puppets in a maritime melodrama of my own creation, that would be crazy, people.  "Evening, Beasley." says shrimp #1, with a hint of chill in his voice..."You watch how you talk to our good master, sir" interjects shrimp #2..."It's OK, Godfried, he has some things on his tiny shrimp brain and I would like to hear them" replies Good King Brannan...to be continued? 

Later Evening: hit up the 7-11 for prepackaged ice cream cones, head back to the room to rest up and do it again tomorrow!

Random side note: for some reason we are literally surrounded by Russians!  We have no idea why, we've never run across a single Russian anywhere else here in SE Asia, but this island is totally lousy with Russians, they are everywhere so much that there are restaurants in Russian, hotels in Russian, a total mystery. 

Sadly for blogging purposes, such a life of pleasure and ease leaves us without exciting/humorous anecdotes or adventures, just a lot of R&R which isn't that exciting to write or read about, as you know since (for some reason) you have read this post up until now.  Nonetheless we love it here and will be here for another few days or years.  We have hypothetical plans to leave this island to go to Koh Tao, which is the diving epicenter of Thailand and has some of the best diving in the world, so more fun is ahead!

Anyways, thanks for following our so-called adventures, it's nice to have an audience, as my nascent prawn-drama (Prama?) can attest!

Laos: An Asian France

The lovely streets of Luang Prabang

The word we kept using was "quaint".  When our slow boat landed in Luang Prabang, we were greeted with French-inspired buildings and a slow pace on the streets. You could find French bakeries and restaurants on the streets and the tuk-tuk drivers barely harassed us - what a nice change!  Laos was once under French rule, and so much of the city had a very European/Asian feel to it. We absolutely loved it there! And it was always fun to see random passengers from our boat trip walking around, like seeing people you know from your home town.

Here are some scenes from around the city:

This was our guesthouse. So quaint, right?

The best thing to do was go down the main street when the night market came out. Just a long street of tents where women sold their handicrafts. Everything from t-shirts to hand carved wooden objects, to jewelry to linens, and everything in between.

The main point of attraction is the temple that sits in the middle of the city, on top of a high hill. The Buddha that sits in the temple is considered the most sacred one in Laos, and the view from the top is the highest viewpoint in the city. Because it had been a few months since we last climbed a good dome, we were up for the long flight of stairs up the hill.

The temple is that golden spire sitting on top of the mountain

Up we go, past the women selling incense and flowers for the shrine

Tough decision to make

The views at the top did not disappoint! We had a 360 degree view of the city and the Mekong river stretched out below the tall mountains.

An up-close look at the golden spire

Those mountains! There were at least 2 more misty rows of them behind these that you can't see in the picture

We were in Luang Prabang for 5 days, but it felt like 2 weeks! The place was so laid back and lazy that time just crept by. We were there over New Years as well. They had quite a celebration prepared with a huge stage and tables set up in the center of town. Around 9pm we heard music start to blare, and then the power went out. We went and looked down the street and it looked like the whole city was dark! But there were people still singing and drinking and getting rowdy. We decided to head back inside until midnight so we weren't out in the madness and darkness. The power came back on an hour later and unfortunately I fell asleep until I heard fireworks going off at midnight (haha - typical!). Happy New Year!

From Luang Prabang, we had initially intended on going over to northern Vietnam to visit Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. It didn't seem very far away, but soon discovered that we could take a bus there... a 22 hour bus, which means at least 24-26 hours in reality. Nooooooo thanks! The only other option was to fly there, and it was more expensive to do that, than to fly through another city in Laos then on to Bangkok. So Vietnam got the shaft. But we have heard good things about it and would like to visit there on a future trip.

So off we went to the capital city of Vientiane, Laos. The shortest flight of our lives - we took off, were airborne for 5 minutes, and the pilot came on to tell the flight attendants to prepare for landing. Pretty nice!

Another city with French inspired buildings

... and Asian electricians.  The power lines over here never cease to amaze!

Since this was only a stopover city on our way to Bangkok, we were here for only 24 hours. But we did get to see some fun things. One of them was the imitation of the Champs D'Elysees and Arc De Triomphe

 I guess if you tilt your head and squint just right...

 We were leaving Laos in the afternoon, so we were trying to spend all of our Laotian cash. We had the equivalent to about $2.50 left, and were able to climb to the top of the Arch and see a museum. In Europe we would have spend closer to $100 to see the same things!

The Royal Palace at the opposite end of the street

The arch

The informational plaque at the entrance to the arch was pretty funny, basically pointing out that it was incomplete and ugly. We thought it was pretty neat though, and got some good views of the city.

Ceiling of the arch

There were souvenir shops on every floor as you climbed up, selling very dusty trinkets

After the arch we went to a museum that was in the king's old personal temple next to the royal palace. Our guidebook said that if we saw one thing in the city, it should be this museum. So off we went, thinking we would get to see some super old art and culture.

Wrong! Just one room full of glass cases of dusty pots and buddha figures. Oh well, the temple and gardens were nice.

Carved tree trunks sitting in the corner. Not really sure...

We also took a walk by the Mekong river and saw this enormous fellow

A former king was our best guess... commanding troops? Telling the Siamese to stay out?

Behind you!... LOOK OUT!

We thoroughly enjoyed our short stay in Vientiane. Another laid-back city with some serious charm.

Next, we were headed back to Bangkok on our way to the islands. That city cannot be avoided! Of course we had some soft pretzels and saw a movie, but we also visited another site. This time it was a temple that houses the largest solid-gold Buddha ever made.

Brannan at the wat. And what a wat!

Found a friend on the side of the temple

The Buddha was up on the top floor, and they had turned the first 3 floors into a museum. One of the floors was about the Chinese immigrants and we discovered that we were pretty near to Chinatown. The other floor talked about how the golden Buddha was made and brought to the temple. It was actually covered in plaster, they think it was to hide it from looters. Nobody knew it was solid gold until they tried to hoist it up into the temple and a rope broke and dropped the Buddha. A piece of plaster fell off and revealed the gold underneath.

It turned out to be a pretty neat thing to see and learn about.

Since we found out we were near Chinatown, we figured we would check it out. Apparently the real craziness starts in the evening because all the night food stalls come out, but it still pretty much assaulted our senses

The most common gift for New Years is money, so everyone goes and spends their money on gold. We certainly saw evidence of that! Every gold store on the street was packed full of people.

I'll take it! Now how to get the thing home...

We were happy to get to see some fun things during this trip to Bangkok (our 4th I believe?). But we are even MORE happy to be back at the beach! We've since flown to the island of Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.

Even the airport looks island-y

More diving and swimming and beaching to come!