Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

It has been a while huh?? That is the benefit of staying in places that don’t have internet ( although its putting a hurting on todds fantasy football). Really we are have also been distracted!

The dive trip was amazing. We lived aboard a boat for four days and sailed around the Andaman sea diving at all different islands. We did 4 dives a day…. and yes we also night dived. There were only 12 people (paying people) on the boat so it was a nice small group. We saw tons of cool stuff including a trigger fish that attacked todd (he’s ok). Seriously, these fish can take bites out of people!!! the deepest we dove was 30 meters. VERY COOL.

From Khao lak, we got the suggestion to stop at an island called koh phayam.This is where we have been hiding out the last few days. Koh phayam is a very sleepy little fishing island. We stayed in a bungalow on the beach surrounded by cashew trees. It was very natural and peaceful. It did not have the feel of all of the other places we have been, it was still relatively untouched. Koh Samui of th ’70’s (as advertised). The island does not even have a real road. Everyone just rides motorbikes on sandy paths. We of course rented one too!!. The tides go way out there, so at sunset you can ride your motorbike down the beach… paradise!!!

But unfortunately the thai emabassy was calling us!! Our 30 day visa was about to run out so we had to cross a border to get restamped (really a pointless visa law.. it doesn’t make much sense). The closest border to us is Burma…. so we went to Burma!! We were expecting a real difficult scenario. We were hoping for a really sucky story that would be a great read on the blog, but really it was quite simple…. We rented a longtail boat and sailed across!! It did feel a little strange to be splashing across the sea in a wooden boat powered by, what looks like, a lawnmower! The catch here was the actual immagration offices (wait till we attach pics). They were huts on stilts in the middle of the water that you pull the boat up till AND in burma you have to give a crisp $5 usd bill to get stamped in. Not thai baht, not euros… $$$$. Tell us thats not sketchy!!! We got into burma, walked around, got offered a lot of drugs and alcohol and left. Then we stopped at the thai floating hut, and got our brand new 30 day visa!!! Cross Burma off the list of places we never thought we would go to… but ended up!! That was yesterday….

Today is Todd big 3-0-!!!! We are in a city called Ranong. After waking up feeling old, todd ate a snickers bar for breakfast, rented a motorbike, and headed to the hot springs. It was a real surpirse to have these hot springs right outside the city, and after India we never have our hopes to high, they ended up to be beautiful. We got massages (with lionel richie, Kool and the Gang and Dion Warwick in the background) and picniced on pad thai next to a lake. And no birthday would be complete when traveling without finishing it off on a 10 hour night bus to bangkok tonight!!!!

As we move further and further away from the paradise of southern thailand i’m sure our blog entries will be more frequent and more entertaining!!

Wish you all a wonderful thanksgiving… eat some turkey for US!!!

Sorry we cant post pics from this computer..we will soon.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 4:22 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.