My Life in Words

This is another long one, but I think it's interesting. DAY 61: my last day in Thailand. Craig left first thing this morning, so I am alone from now on. Today was a lazy day as I had to change hotels and meet my tour group in the afternoon. I went to the mall for lunch, before going to the new hotel; my joining point for my 18 day tour though Cambodia and Vietnam. The hotel was ok, but really the $10 per night hostel I stayed at with Craig was much nicer and newer. Anyway, I met my group for the next 18 days. There are 12 of us; 10 going all the way to Northern Vietnam and 2 leaving us after HCMC. We may be getting a few new people in HCMC- we are definitely getting a new guide. My group is a very strange mix. Other than myself, there are 3 other girls traveling alone; another Canadian, an Aussie and a Scot. The four of us get along, so that's nice. My roommate is the Scot and she has a similar sarcastic sense of humour as I do, so that's good. Otherwise there are t...

This is a long one....lots to say!!! DAY 54: this was our last day down south, but it was pouring rain when we got up, so we couldn't have one final beach day. So instead we went and checked out neighboring Ao Nang for the day. Despite the fact that it's only a 15 minute boat ride away, it's completely different than Railay. Ao Nang had roads and cars and stores and a variety of restaurants. Very different compared to carless Railay. I wish we had spent a night or two there, as it would have been a nice change. Anyway, it was raining so we went for a massage. Craig was massaged by a man and was super uncomfortable. LOL. By the time the massage was over, the rain had stopped and we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and such. We once again had a quiet night in Railay. DAY 55: this day was a travel day to Chiang Mai. We flew out of Krabi airport and had a stop over in Bangkok. All went smoothly and we arrived in Chiang Mai around 5pm. The day was filled with ...

The last week has been a lot of beaching, so I don't think I have much of any interest to say.....but I'll give it a go. DAY 46: our first full day in Lanta. Unlike Phi Phi, there are roads and cars on the island and everything is more spread out, so we rented scooters for two days. They were sooooo cheap ($7 a day?) and were actually decent bikes (125 cc) It was funny when we rented them; we asked for two and the guy looked at me shocked "you're going to ride one....haha....show me you can ride." Sexist jerk. He ended up making Craig do a little circle in the parking lot too, so that made me a little less angry. We then were told how to use the horn, and that pretty much summed up our thai licensing experience. The roads in lanta were great for scooting. Other than the main street (which was not that busy) the roads were pretty deserted. The most challenging parts were remembering to stay on the left side of the road and not getting distracted by the beaut...

DAY 38: as Sanur was kind of a sleepy place we decided to go into Kuta for the day. Kuta was about 15-30 minutes away by taxi, depending on the traffic. At first we had considered staying there, instead of Sanur, but I am glad that we didn't; because for the most part, I hated it. It's really a dirty, touristy, crowded, horrible place. The beach was ok (decent surf) but it was so crowded. You couldn't really swim because there were so many people with surf boards everywhere. We spent part of the day walking around the city. One decent thing was there was some decent boutique shopping. I bought a few little things. Otherwise the stores were awful. All the owners would stand outside and say "come look at my store" or "best price. Cheaper!" What is cheaper? Cheaper than what? What are you talking about? Some of the stores had the worst stickers and t-shirts for sale. You could buy stickers with just about any offensive, offside, gross expression o...