We’re back! Jeff’s sister Karen and her husband Teancum came to visit us in Thailand and we had a lot of fun traveling around together. So here’s the story of our travel adventures during the last 3 weeks:
The first week we actually spent up here in the North. We went up to the Elephant Camp which is very fun because you can watch elephants paint and play soccer and throw darts. After the show you get to feed them piles of banana and sugar cane. They also had a cute baby elephant. It was only 2 months old and kept slipping on bananas, falling over and doing all other kinds of cute silly things that baby elephants do. 
Then we flew south into Krabi… where it was even warmer and more humid… but I think it pays off…it’s so much greener there. The actual act of traveling in Thailand can be annoying at times. 
The second we got of the plane or the bus we were swarmed by taxi drivers trying to take you 
somewhere. Often, this is your only way to get to your destination as buses are rare in some areas. Taxi drivers know this and try to get you to pay as much as they possibly can. Then they usually try to drop you off at a hotel where they can get a commission… so yeah… that part was difficult. However, the second we got settled into our hotel we rented motorbikes which equals instant freedom. :)
There was a lot of fun stuff to do near Krabi town. They have a national park there that is a big rainforest with a beautiful waterfall. It was truly magical… hahaha… no really it was 
amazing. All of us were in the middle of the forest, Jeff and I went swimming under this gorgeous waterfall and then suddenly it started raining like crazy. It was the coolest feeling and it made the rainforest so beautiful.
The entire Krabi area is actually a pretty amazing place. Gigantic limestone formations and cliffs 
are scattered all over. One of them had a temple and a huge golden Buddha built on top of it with a very VERY steep staircase (about 1200 steps) leading to it. The view from the top was just unbelievable. 
From there we went to the Railay peninsula and our favorite climbing beach Hat Tonsai. What a fun place!! The only way to get there is via long-tail boat and it looks like you’re being dropped off on a deserted jungle island! It’s wild!
This tim
e it actually really was deserted. It’s the low 
season and there were only about 10 or so other people there. It was great, prices were low (we paid about $8 per night) and no wait for the climbing! Climbing in Tonsai is SOOO much fun. Stalactites and all sorts of fun holds make it a very special place.
We actually had an interesting experience here. One morning, Jeff and I decided to go sea kayaking. There are a lot of limestone islands and caves so it was beautiful. We were just exploring a really pretty cliff when suddenly, we saw some dark clouds in the distance and so we turned around to head back. Two minutes later the waves started to go crazy and strong winds started to pick up. And then all of the sudden the wind blew so strong that it tipped over our kayak and we and all of our stuff were thrown into the water. I hurried and grabbed our wet bag but Jeff's shirt and sunglasses diappeared into the stormy water. Once we turned the kayak back over, we were able to pull it into a small cave. At that point it also had started raining very hard... SCARY!!! Jeff was able to stay calm which helped me a great deal because I was really freaked out; and panic was definitely not helpful in that situation. We were able to wait for about an hour for the storm to calm down until we could make our way back to shore.
From Tonsai we did an all day island tour. We did some fun snorkeling and got to see some beautiful white sand beaches.
After 5 days on Railay we went up the coast to a city called Pang-Nga. The town itself was not very nice and basically consisted of one busy main road but the surroundings had so much to offer.
We found another rainforest park that I thought was even more impressive and dense than the one in Krabi. It had multiple waterfalls, crazy vines and enormous trees. 
Pang-Nga is located on the coast of a huge bay that is lined with mangrove forest and also is the home to a major tourist attraction: James Bond island!! If you watched “James Bond: The Man with the Golden Gun” you will recognize the big limestone formation in the middle of a small bay.
Our bay trip ended in a small Muslim fishing village (Ko Panyee) that is entirely built on stilts 
over the water. Houses, paved walk ways, a mosque and even a school with a soccer field were part of this town. We actually spent the night there and it was so fun because you could see the water through the cracks in our bungalow floor. The craziest thing though was little kids riding bicycles around town on walkways 6 feet wide with 15 foot drops into water on both sides. SCARY! :) Anyway, staying there was a neat experience and in the morning Jeff was able to take some awesome pictures of the beautiful 
sunrise.
As our trip came to a close we went down to Phuket and visited the surfer’s beach Hat Kata and spent the night there. After that it was time to go. We said our goodbyes to Karen and Teancum in the Bangkok airport and headed back to our home in Chiang Mai.
So now it’s back to real life, errrr…I mean… hahahaah.
Oh yeah, Karen and I also had our birthdays this month. We had some pretty funky cakes. Karen's was a big pile of Mango and Sticky Rice (a traditional yummylicious Thai dessert) and mine consisted of two small cakes and a bunch of strawberry ice cream...oh yeah!! :)
We’ve been doing a few day trips lately. We went to a nearby town called Chiang Dao which was beautiful. It was very small, just a couple of roads in a valley surrounded by beautiful jungley mountains. Hmm…spell checker says that ‘jungley’ is not a word… The largest mountain in the area is called Doi Chiang Dao, and is the highest limestone mountain in Thailand at 2195 meters above sea level. Unfortunately, it had been raining for a few days before, and the clouds still hadn’t cleared up, so we couldn’t get a really good view of it. We found out later that that storm was the tail end of the storm that hit Myanmar so hard. Chiang Dao was beautiful and we had a good time there. The town is also popular among spelunkers because of a huge cave system in the mountain, which goes on for somewhere between 10-14 kilometers. About the first ½ km was lit by overhead lights and open to the general public. It was very interesting to walk around in, especially because they had many Buddha statues and carvings the entire way.
Another little trip we went on was to Doi Suthep, the highest mountain surrounding Chiang Mai. There’s a beautiful temple on the top of the peak, but you have to walk up 306 steps after driving up a winding road to the top of the mountain. The view of the city from the top is amazing. 
We rented a scooter one day and visited some of the waterfalls in the area. On the way to one of the waterfalls we drove through a hilltribe village where all the people in town kept offering us opium as we drove past. 
