Hard to believe a month has passed already!
From Ao Nang we travelled to Khao Lak to catch a boat to the Similan islands, one of the top diving/snorkeling destinations worldwide. We spent 4 nights here enjoying some more of the beach lifestyle. The water was perfectly clear, 30m visibility under the surface. If you go, beware that the food is dire and the 'Chomview' suites are the best. We spent two nights in a tent and two nights in a fan room. In the fan room a little mouse startled me by sneaking up onto the bed and brushing against my arm. Christy thought "Oh god, Evan is jumping off the bed that fast, it must be bad!" "What is it? A big spider??" she screamed.
Yesterday we caught a bus north to arrive in Ranong. More on that later.
Today we visited the Andaman Club, in nearby Myanmar, in order to update our visas and give us an extra couple weeks in Thailand. A swanky 5 star resort, this was much better than some of the horror story visa runs we've heard of people enduring.
Now that we have another couple weeks, we're taking a 'super-VIP' bus to Bangkok tonight, leaving at 8pm. For the first time, I have some time to fill in the blog with some words, to match some of the photos!
After we arrive in Bangkok tomorrow we plan on heading north to Chaing Mai and seeing some of the cultural highlights of the kingdom. We came to Thailand without any plans or expectations, except perhaps to really enjoy one place and spend a couple weeks there. What we found instead, was the enjoyment of discovering a new place every 4-5 days. Here is a quick run down of the places we visited.

Ko Lanta: beaches that stretch for kilometres, plentiful restaurants right on the beach with staff that literally run to filfull your order. Really, the highlight here was wandering down the beach to find a different place to eat. The island has some unique diving/snorkeling options, as well as some different sights inland to see. We did none of them. Instead, we found this to be a peaceful retreat that lacked anything to do but read a book and go swimming.  Maybe go for another fruit shake, yes definitely, never enough fruit shakes! The island lacks dramatic scenery, this is what lead us to:

Ko Phi Phi: We visited at the height of the busy season, amid hordes of people, many of them young and looking to party. We stayed far away from the crowds, on quiet and secluded Rantee Beach. The snorkeling was excellent in front of our room; we swam with, what seemed like, hundreds of fish here. This island was the scene of our first serious misadventure. Our beach was a hike of about 40+ minutes from the town. We decided to walk into town one day and have lunch. After walking all over wide-eyed, checking out all the stalls, finally choosing a place to eat, once our food arrived we looked at each other
"Hey, is the sun going down?" "Yep, CRAP!"
We slammed the food and walked *fast*. We followed the trail in dim light, which crosses the spine of the island and descends, quite steeply, over rocks and big jungle-style roots, to our beach. When we got to the steepest section it was pitch black. I told Chris, "Uh, just close your eyes for a minute to improve your night vision" while she crept closer to hitting the panic button - "I'm pregnant in the jungle! At night! And I cant see anything!". This is when I remembered the MP3 player in the backpack. Sure enough, it provided just enough light for us to descend the trail. We decided it was time to visit a different island:

Ko Yao: This is it. An almost perfect place. A place we could return to and spend a month. At high tide, the beaches are great for swimming and completely deserted! This is where we began to tire of Thai food. Cue misadventure #2. We decided to have a pizza the night before we left for a 4 night kayak trip. Thai food is delicious, but super strong- like other asian foods, meant to be eaten with a group and consumed with small portions of each flavor. Ordering a plate full of curry to yourself gets old. The pizza provided some pretty grim stomach cramps, paddling a kayak was difficult. Otherwise, visit Ko Yao if you get a chance, but avoid the pizza. Cheap, yet good quality accomodation. Most importantly, the scenery offshore is much better than Phi Phi or Ko Lanta. We gave ourselves a pinch and took a boat to:

Ao Nang and Railay: After spending the majority of our trip staying in quiet areas, the mild hustle and bustle of Ao Nang was a welcome sight. It would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful place, the scenery here is as good as it gets. How could it be better? Not overdeveloped in the slightest, this place put Phi Phi to shame in my opinion. Ao Nang has some huge beaches, they stretch far into the horizon. Railay was mindbogglingly beautiful. Beyond superlatives, even comprehension, this place is sick!  We didnt really want to leave, but we knew the visa run was quickly becoming imminent, so we headed to Khao Lak to hit the Similans before going to Ranong for the visa run. OK, well, actually... misadventure #3 was about to sneak past you there, but time to fess up. If you're in Khao Lak, trying to get out, and you will, because it really is not a very nice place, beware of the bus ride out of Ranong. We asked maybe a dozen people "what time does the bus come" and got a dozen different answers (there are no tour vans heading every direction and destination here, unlike other places visited). Maybe you've had this experience before? We tried to wave the bus down, this is what the locals do, it should work for us too! Bus after bus drove past us. Hmmm... what do we do? Keep waiting, in the pouring rain. No problem, eventually a bus stopped for a us. A milk run. It stopped every 10 minutes to load or unload. We actually enjoyed this day, we were in no rush, enjoying every step of our journey.

And now you're caught up with us!

 The scooter ride to the Tiger Cave Temple was very beautiful, a winding road through tropical rock towers.

A staircase to a few mounuments on top of a mountain, the Tiger Cave Temple is worth visiting. 1272 steps to the top of the temple, 600m above sea level. Some of the steps were nearly vertical!

 We found the mother spider!

 Railay is the most beautiful place in Thailand. Enough said.

                             

 The high tide trip to Tonasi beach from Railay has a few nice steps.

 A month of this feels good!

 The mouth watering turquoise water of the Similan islands. This is the type of place where you leave thinking, we didnt take enough pictures!!! The snorkeling was amazing here, dozens of species, hundreds of fish.

We have to run and catch a bus now, I'll give a full update of our Thailand travels hopefully very soon!

Yesterday we arrived in Ao Nang, a mainland resort area that is a nice balance of beaches, shops and mountainous scenery. Nice long beaches, surprisingly not busy!
We enjoyed Ko Yao, it's a laid back island full of friendly people. Our kayak trip was fun, we fed lots of mosquitos and soaked up some nice scenery on our own private beach.
Tomorrow we're going to check out a temple nearby that sounds interesting.
http://www.rgourley.com/thailand/tigercave.htm

After that, we'll be heading to Ko Jum, which is another peaceful island a little out of the mainstream.

Ko Yao

I was going to update the blog with some photos, but i think that will have to wait. The electricity is a bit strange on this island, I dont want to plug the camera into this computer. I'm getting electric shocks when i plug the adapter cord into the usb slot. Strong, live electricity - right out of the computer? OK....

Anyway, we traveled from ko lanta to ko phi phi, spent 5 nights there, including 3 in one room that was unbelieveable; an elevated cabin with sliding doors onto a balcony overtop the ocean. Somehow in our price range, yet very much above the bamboo hut standard. PP serves an important role in thailand tourism, keeping the drunken hordes contained in one spot. We stayed on a quiet beach with some of PP's best snorkling right in front of our room.

We're now on ko yao noi, where the pace is much more laid back and the scenery is the finest we've seen. Limestone rock towers all around. Not many tourists here. The island is small with a ring road that is ideal for riding on a scooter to different beaches and restaurants.

This is one of the very few places in thailand to rent expedition quality kayaks, so in a few days we're going to head out on a 4-5 night camping trip around the stunning limestone islands.

We're doing great, currently enjoying the sunshine on the island of ko lanta.
Beautiful place, not very developed, and not very busy. I think the beach is about 2km
long? Great swimming, accommodation is a simple bamboo hut just off the beach, $20 per
day.
We spent 2 days in bangkok, enjoying the chaos, very delicious food, christy enjoys the browsing cheap shopping (unfortunately for her, I'm less interested). Enormous city, lots to see and do. We visited the national museum, it was
almost too much to see in one day. It's surprisingly easy to get around here, I expected
more headaches with travel connections, but the tourist path is well beaten. Still, we're
doing things on the cheap, so some adventure is yet to be found. It looks like some of
the major resorts around here will pick up people from the airport, making for a stress
free holiday. Lots of people with young kids on this island as well.
From here we will catch a ferry to ko phi phi in a couple days. We're going to spend the majority of this month in the south of the
country, island hopping. We're glad we came to ko lanta first, this island is very
peaceful.
Christy just received an email from macewan, she passed her acupuncture tests!