Paradise

We are officially in paradise! We spent both yesterday and today, on a beautiful island in Southern Thailand. We took a 9 hour overnight bus from Bangkok and arrived in Surat Thani early Tuesday morning. But, let me tell you, unlike our overnight Africa bus rides, we were travelling in style! Not only were we given pillows and blankets, we were served tea and snacks along the way, and got to listen to some great asian karaoke music! I guess that's what you get when you travel "VIP" or "WE" IP as they say it here!

Anyway, after arriving in Surat Thani, we made arrangements to take a ferry to the island where we are now staying. We had our first "rip off" of the trip; a few wrong turns took us to a travel agent who charged us almost double for the ferry tickets. But, we still found ourselves on the ferry and experienced some of the most beautiful scenery we've seen. Unfortunately we can't show you pictures today as the computer we're using won't let us post them. Hopefully we'll get some up here soon!

While on the ferry we made arrangements to stay in a guest house, and on arrival were somewhat disappointed with our accomodation. We've stayed in worse accomodation, but this was definitely the worst in the area, as there is a lot of choice! All of the accomodation here are stilted bungalows right on the beach. We stayed the night at our not so nice bungalow and have moved to an amazing bungalow with views of the ocean for only $11/night. (Just wait for the pictures and we'll have you drooling). We spent the day yesterday meeting some great people. We've been spending some time with a British couple (from Birmingham, Rach) and it's been great. They've been travelling for 13 months and are just gearing up for going back home. Other than that, we've obviously spent some time enjoying the beach, the ocean, and the sunburns we've gotten (but they aren't too bad).

Today we rented a scooter/motor bike and travelled around the island. It was tons of fun! The island is fairly small and it only took us about 30 mins to get from the top of the island to the bottom. It's absolutely beautiful here!

So, just to answer a few of your questions:

Yes, the food is VERY spicy here. Brian LOVES it! He orders it as hot as he can and he's always wanting to try something new! Me, on the other hand, well, I have my favourites and I definitely can't handle the spice. My stomach wasn't feeling so hot the other night, so I'm trying to avoid spice if I can. There really are lots of options though!

Yes, we do love Gucci and Rolex, but we're waiting to make our purchases before we come home. It might be Gnocchi and Ronex for the Rowaans though!

Matt, we did have some great pretzels on the plane...they were actually pretzel nuggets. It was quite the twist!

The weather here continues to be HOT! We were spoiled with airconditioning our first few nights here and now we're learning to live without it. It's actually been raining here for a few minutes every day and we're surprisily thankful for the clouds because it relieves some of the heat.

We plan to stay here until Saturday and then head out to meet Nit and Preecha again. Stay tuned for pictures!