Thailand, aka Tropical Paradise

Thailand, you devilish temptress!  We arrived in Thailand to massive rainfall that wouldn't stop for days.  It was a bit disheartening, to say the least.  Staying in a locale surrounded by such natural beauty but experiencing torrential downpours on a constant basis is tough.  However, the rain stopped (at least for us....Thailand had floods in 61 of 72 provinces when we left and was facing essentially a national disaster).

I'm going to try to let my pictures do more of the talking for the Thailand leg of the journey than my writing.  It's a pretty difficult task for someone like myself that happens to be afflicted with a severe case of diarrhea of the keyboard/fingers.  But I'll give it a go and see what happens....

So, in a nutshell, here's what we did:  Arrived in Bangkok.  Flew to Phuket (pronounced Foo-Ket, not the other way...get your mind out of the gutter).  Stayed in Phuket for around one week.  Took a boat to Phi-Phi island (prounounced like Pee-Pee, not the other way...mind can go right back in the gutter for now).  Stayed in Pee-Pee, err, Phi-Phi for a couple days.  Took another boat to Ko Lanta.  Stayed in Ko Lanta for about four days.  Then back to Phuket for a night, back to Bangkok for a night, and flew on to Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia.

Phuket:  We stayed in a wickedly badass bungalow at a place called Bangtao Beach Chalets.  So, even though it was raining cats and dogs and elephants and sperm whales...wait, what?...we had a nice room to bide our time in and get some reading and relaxin' done.  Like I said, eventually it stopped raining and we did some stuff.  We checked out our mucho-super-mega-kickass beach (Bangtao Beach) which was a 2km  long stretch of amazing white sand and mellow waves.  We also rented a beater Suzuki Jeep, grabbed up some random Chinese folks who happened to be around when we rented the Jeep, and took a drive down to crazy ol' Patong.  Patong is where you can find ladyboys, ladies of the night, massage ladies, maybe ladybugs, probably a malady or two, and all sorts of debauchery (if you were so inclined, of course).  We, being good and responsible tourists, just grabbed some food with the Chinese folk and spent some time at the beach there.  The beach there is crowded but really fun.  Parasailing, jet skiing, and all sorts of other activities predominate the coast line in Patong.  Really, we just chilled at various beaches and relaxed the entire time in Phuket.  It was real nice like.  By way of proving my point, witness:    

So top to bottom, here's what you're seeing:  
Bitchin' dinner at Lotus restaurant on beach
Sunset on Bangtao beach
Our own little beach in Bangtao
BABY ELEPHANT CHILLING ON THE BEACH!  Crazy, eh?  Take that, India beach cows!
Our hotel pool at Bangtao Beach Chalet
Leann at the hotel entrance

After that we motored on, via boat, to Phi-Phi Island.  Now, people freakin' love this place.  In fact, this place was more recommended than anywhere else in Thailand by the folks we talked to before we left.  Uh, I think either things might have changed in the last few years or unbeknownst to me my friends are actually drunken fratboys.  Phi-Phi is a maze of vendors, bars, and clubs all packed into a tiny, dirty little area.  It's the kind of place where you only have to wait outside your hotel room for five minutes to hear the magical mating call of the sorority girl ("Oh my god, I'm sooooo wasted!").  That said, the island, without the people jammed in, is amazingly beautiful.  We took a boating and snorkeling trip out to a couple different islands, including Phi-Phi Leh, where they filmed the movie The Beach with Sir Leo DiCaprio, esq.  This definitely was the highlight of our pee-peeing.  As evidence, I present to you:

           

From left to right and top to bottom:
Mystery Cove
Serious lovin' in Maya Bay (where The Beach was filmed)
Entrance to Maya Bay by way of old rope bridge-like thing
Pretending I'm a scuba diver
Sea urchin
Slayer for mayor
Chillin' in the cove
Angel fish


After Phi-Phi, we went to Ko Lanta.  I'd made reservations with a small place that had a few bungalows on the beach.  I mentioned to them that it would be Leann's birthday when we arrived.  To my surprise, they had a bunch of little cakes ready for us and "Happy Birth Day Leann" spelled out on them!  How cool and kind is that?  The people in Thailand are so incredibly friendly and generous.  Ko Lanta was kind of our tour place, despite having yet another paradise-like beach front about 12 seconds from our front door.  We did a couple tours in a pretty amusing way.  The owner of our beach cabins, Annie, speaks some English but not a ton.  I speak zero Thai, outside of "hello" (Sawadee Kop!) and "thank you" (Kapun Kop!).  So when she asked me where I wanted to go the next day, I replied "well, maybe we'd like to see some islands."  She then proceeded to go ahead and book a full day tour for us.  The problem was, well, we had no idea what islands we were going to, what we'd do on these aforementioned islands, if there were actually multiple islands or just one, what we'd need to take along, or even when we'd get back.  So the driver came and picked us up at 9 the next morning and we were off.  I thought it might be good to ask him some of the questions about our trip, so here's how that discussion went:

Us:  "Excuse me, but where are we going?"
Driver:  "To the pier."
Us:  "Uhh, ok.  What are we doing?"
Driver:  "No worries.  You come back today."
Us:  "...."

Leann even asked a fellow sitting next to her on the boat where we were headed to.  His reply?  "German."  Uh, yeah.  She asked me to speak to him in German, so I asked if he had any idea which island we were headed to.  His response?  "Keine Ahnung (no idea)."  And off we went.
Screw it, we're in paradise, right?  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, before your mind gets the better of you, let me alleviate your fears by letting you know that not only did nothing go wrong, it actually turned out to be a really outstanding trip.  We stopped at the base of some cliffs.  As I looked around to see where we could actually enter on to this island we'd reached, the boat captain busted out a bunch of snorkeling equipment.  All righty then.  Apparently we were on a snorkeling trip!  It was sweet.  Awesome coral and food to feed the fish, resulting in a feeding frenzy of epic proportions.  It was so thick with fish that if you stuck your hand out, they'd nibble away on your fingers.  Fun, fun.  We snorkeled in another spot or two (sorry, no underwater camera this time) and spent a couple hours eating lunch on a super outstanding beach on some unknown island off the coast of Thailand.

We also took a combo tour that had us riding an elephant and checking out a waterfall.  Our elephant, Bao, is the biggest pachyderm in all of Thailand.  He's a huge feller, checking in at over 11,000 lbs. (I think....translating broken English as well as kilograms to pounds can be rough).  The trek to the waterfall took us by some fossilized snail shells in a limestone cave with bats.  Good stuff.  Seriously.  No, really.  I can prove it:

     

I lost a bunch of the Ko Lanta pictures!!!!  Hopefully it's only temporary, but I'm getting a "cannot use this card" message with the memory card that has a bunch of the awesome pics.  Cross yer fingers.

So that's about it for Thailand.  We're leaving Bali tonight on a brutal flight that takes off at 11 pm and lands in Darwin, Australia at 3 in the morning.  Ouch.  We then wait for several hours and head to Cairs, Australia, arriving at 8:20 am.  Great Barrier Reef, here we come!