Meandering Through the South of Thailand

We've been in the South of Thailand now for over a week, having gone to a town called Ranong so Asrune could cross the border into Burma to extend her Visa.  We decided to check out a local island call Ko Phayam on a whim, and stumbled onto a barely tourist-ed paradise..  small beachside bungalows for $7 a person, dirt roads to motorbike around on, and clear blue water everywhere.  We ended up spending 5 days there, highlights included..  swimming in the bay during a lashing thunderstorm, having beers on top of a pirate ship bar made entirely out of driftwood on the beach, waking up and sprinting into the ocean before breakfast, and sprinting into the ocean just about any other time as well.. particularly after a couple drinks.. haha

While there we met some local teachers who have given us directions to a bunch of other small islands off the beaten track.  Today we're heading to Ko Yao Noi, an island on the edge of a national park with lots of kayaking trips available, apparently.

We've got to apply for Korean teacher Visas in about a week in the main town of Phuket in the South, so we're hoping to squeeze in some rock climbing on the beaches of Railay after this island, and then spend one last week in the South seeking out the other hideaways our friends suggested.

So we biked an hour and half further out into the country side from Khun Yuam to see the Mea Serin waterfall (left). It is one of the tallest falls in Thailand and as you can see quite beauiful. I was surprised to find that we were the only visitors for the day- after so many cram packed tourist sites it was a nice change. The Thai park police to excel at exploiting us farangs though. Even as the only people in the whole park, the lone ranger managed to ticket us the outragous 200 bhat a person (its 20 bhat if you are not white), though his wife made him give us 200 back, so it was "half price." There was nice view point, but we were disappointed to discover no obvious way to get down to the base of the falls. This led to 2 hours of trail blazing and motor biking down rocky dirt roads which led to some really remote cool Karen villages with very confused villagers, but not falls. We eventually gave up and headed home. 

BUT THEN...on the way back, we stopped to take a break at this little roadside shelter. There was a trail with a thai sign and a small picture of a waterfall and about 15 mins down the trail there was this AWESOME waterfall with at least four tiers of falls and jets of water and caves- it was incredible!!! I wish I had a picture of the whole thing, but here are some pictures of us playing in the first tier before we left the camera behind and climbed up. 

Steve is inside that stream if you look closely

As you climb further up it only get cooler, and better yet- no park fee to get there. haha. A really happy discovery and great end to the day!

First post!

So the idea here was to start a joint travel blog so that both Steve and I would be able to remind one another to post....as this is the first one and it is 3 weeks into our trek, you can see how well that worked out :) But here is the jist of the last 3 weeks:

I arrived in Bangkok, we met up with Toom from couchsurfing (couchsurfing.org), we visited the Baiyoke tower, then bused to Maisot. 

We were in Maisot for one week. Steve taught class, we ate a ton of delicious Burmese food, the other "farangs" (westerners/steve's friends) all came over for a massive pizza party (very exciting since cheese is so hard to come by) which we made on a bunch of Naan special ordered from the Burmese breakfast place we would go to get chickpea and red curry on nan with sweet condensed milk tea for a traditional Burmese breakfast, visited a local waterfall that you can climb right up and crawl into the cave hidden behind the falls, there were also these local kids playing on a tree in the resovir below the falls that had piled about 15 of them unto one of branches to drag it down to the water. We biked to the Burmese boarder. I was amazed at how close and obvious the illegal crossing was- only a few meters away from the official crossing really, all you need is money. 

The highlight of Maisot though were Steve's two going away parties. The first was put on my his students. They cooked us a feast of Burmese foods and coconut rice, and their usually shy nature vanished as the played guitar (even some green day, and the country song "when you say nothing at all" which is really popular here for some reason), sang and even did some dancing with their other teacher Ben, from France, who was teaching swing dance. 

Then Steve's own party where we made stencils, and spray painted this awesome concrete building on the boarder, set off fire lanterns, bid farewell to friends, had three legged races, drank to much, played lots of games, found abandoned buildings, visited the night market and stayed up til 3am. Epic.

We then hitch hiked to Chiang Mai, got tattoos from Pooh the Poi Spinning tattoo guy, motor biked north to the village of Chiang Dao and visited the massive cave system there, learned to make Thai curry and curry paste as well as papaya salad and fish cakes and met up with some friends who were also traveling north. I got to see a bingturong at the zoo! Thats my favorite animal for those of you who dont know, and we fed a baby elephant. 

I got sick on our last day in Chinag Mai and couldn't eat for 3 days. We took a bus on the 643+ curve mountain road to Pai, but miraculously I was not the one that threw up, the girl sitting next to Steve was.

 In Pai, a hippie farang town, it was really smoky out when we arrived. All the forest fires and no rain had made it impossible to see the mountains the surround the town. There are a lot of yoga, detox, raki, spa, herbal, belly dance etc... sort of shops all around pai and plenty of foreign foods to be had which was great since my stomach was not feeling up to much spicy thai noodle :) We stayed in a bamboo bungalow by the river and it cleared up a bunch over the three days we were there. There is a great waterfall with a deep swimming hole, we saw a guy riding an elephant down the road, played cards and got our token wheatgrass shots :) 

We took another bus to Mea Hong Son, a smaller village in the mountains and spent a day at the "Fish Cave" where hundreds of large fish swarm into this cave for no known reason. It was especially great to get out into the mountains for some fresh air.

Which brings us to today. We bused t Khun Yuam, and even smaller village, to hit up some of the more remote national park sites. I'll try to be better about posting, but this should hold you over!

 Waterfall in Maisot








The curry I made