crack! plunk, plunk, plop!

thats the sound my camera made when i dropped it on a waterfall hike.
i dropped it while standing on a boulder... crack! it hit the boulder,
then plunk plunk, it skitted down the boulder, and finally plop! as it
dropped into the fast moving stream under my feet.

besides that, ko pha ngan has been awesome. met up with marian and
kevin morton and crashed for one night their sweet bungalow with a
porch overlooking the hat salad beach. yesterday we did the waterfall
hike from the bottom of a stream, climbing higher and higher through
larger and larger pools of water finally to find pretty big waterfall
and swimming hole to hang out in. ask morton for the pictures. my
camera is dead.

obama stickers

From thailand!

we met this nice couple on a long tail boat from ko ngai ("ko hi") to the mainland. they we thais on a weekend trip, very nice, and asked us a few questions. they conversed in thai for a bit, then asked if they could give us a ride to trang (40 km away), the town where we needed to catch a bus to krabi. so we gave them an obama bumper sticker. they didn't seem to have any reaction when we tried to explain who obama was and why his presidency is so special, but they seemed to like the sticker.

also, if you haven't heard of this, check it out: hungry for obama. our friend louis had a great and simple idea for a grassroots fundraiser and he raised over $50K for obama.

ralfting

From thailand!

cow socks

khao sok is awesome. we went to the gigantic lake shown in the google
maps previously. spent the day boating around the limestone cliffs,
jumping into the lake from floating docks, hiking through some serious
mud and jungle, and finally exploring a cave with a small river
flowing through it... it was awesome.

pics to come, but to get a sense of it, check out tall dirty
backpacker's account of his trip:
http://www.geocities.com/tall_dirty_backpacker/khao_sok.html
actually, you can just read thompson's site to find out what we'll be doing in the future. it has far more descriptive MS Paint drawings than i can muster:
http://www.geocities.com/tall_dirty_backpacker/

krabi

met up with ksenya in krabi yesterday and we've been eating delicious cheap street food constantly. there's some sort of festival in town so the night market has turned into your average american county fair, complete with a big performance stage, rows food and craft stalls, and tons of school kids. we've been eating at this festival, so i guess we've been eating the equivalent of corn dogs, funnel cakes, and kettle corn for every meal the past 2 days. its been good (and rainy).

From thailand!

From thailand!

From thailand!

today we took a ride to a temple outside of town and climbed the 1200+ steps up the limestone mountain to the gigantic golden buddha up at the top. it must have been 20 ft tall... we've been seeing it from krabi as a giant gold thing at the top of the mountain in the distance, but didn't realize that it was a buddha we were looking at till we got up there today.

headed to khao sok tomorrow, a national park with waterfalls, a lake, tons of hiking, and the possibility of canoeing or tubing. if anyone's been there before and has some suggestions, shoot me an email.

here's where we're going:

View Larger Map


View Larger Map

ko ngai

we took a day long snorkeling trip from ko lanta and ended up loving the beach at one of the stops. we came back to that beach - the island of ko ngai - and spent 3 nights. it was pretty foul weather, but incredible nonetheless.

we kicked around with andy - a londoner on holiday - for most of the days. he was great... always up for a beer. and the beach bar was stellar. we also found a premier resort on the beach and snuck up to the swimming pool for a dip.

waterfall hike

took a short hike up to a waterfall on ko lanta. we hiked up through a stream for half an hour, found a sweet cave and some giant leaves, and found some evidence of elephants. check the picasa page (link on the right) for more pics.

ko lanta

ko lanta is a beautiful island that we spent a few days on.

sparse accomodations for sure, but good enough for a few days.