Photos are IN!!!

Okay folks. I just posted 4 albums for India/Thailand in Facebook. Just look me (Kristen) up on Facebook and you'll see all 605 photos. Yes...that's a lot, but I DID narrow them down from 2,500 so be grateful for that. If you don't have a Facebook account, find someone who does! Enjoy!

And thanks to all who were faithful blog readers!

Much love, Clay & Kristen

Last Hurrah!

Our last official post: coming to you from Korea.

We last left you in Ao Nang, where one of the highlights was getting an hour long Thai massage for 150 Baht ($4.50). There are tons of massage stalls set up along the beach, and we had gotten a recommendation to go see "Tik-Tik" in stall 11 and that she would give us the locals rate instead of the tourist rate (We affectionately started call her "Tic-Tac"). Out of shear luck we ran into her straight away and she offered us the locals rate, plus a free manicure for me. For Clay she trimmed his toenails. Haha! The Thai massage is a phenomenal full body massage, including some stretches and joint/knuckle popping. Then afterwards they give you a complimentary pineapple and a mat and towel and tell you to go lay on their section of beach. It's very posh. We finished off the day by eating seafood by the beach at sunset!
From there we took a bus and a ferry to the island of Ko Phangan. We arrived the day before the legendary Full Moon Party, so the ferry was brimming with throngs of tourists and party pilgrims. We decided to escape the crowds and head to the opposite side of the island, the north beaches, to a Chalok Lam. It's a little fishing town that doesn't have any resorts. We found our perfect bungalow: good price, clean, a few feet from the water's edge, and a porch with a hammock. It was right down the road from a restaurant that advertised a "Greek Buffet" that only happens once a week. After looking at, and talking to the cooks...we were convinced that they knew what they were doing. So we checked it out and both agreed that it was the best Greek food we had ever eaten in our lives, hands down.
Our next step was to rent a motorbike, which is by far the most cost effective and fun way to move around the island. We rode the 40 minutes to Hat Rin the following night for the Big Event: Full Moon Party, December 2011!! There was much hype going into the party, and we were not disappointed. Everyone had swirls of body paint and neon clothing on. There was jump-roping with the rope on fire (we tried it...doesn't hurt) and many locals expertly spinning fire poi and fire batons, all the while with deafening thumping music and tons of people milling about. It was definitely a fun experience, and we were definitely glad to be able to retreat back to our secluded beach bungalow for the rest of the week.
The rest of our time was spent exploring the island via motorbike, hiking a few jungle trails, building sand castles, reading in our hammock, and eating really good coconut curry with fish. The motorbike turned out to be a hilarious endeavor because 1) it was a girly bubble-gum pink Fino scooter, and 2) it wasn't powerful enough to make it up big hills with two people. So one of us would frequently have to jump off and walk up the hill while the other waited at the top with the bike. So much for looking hard-core.
The high-speed ferry back towards Bangkok was interesting in that the waves are big and the ferry goes against them, making for the choppiest boat ride of everyone's lives. The boat attendants just hand out puke bags the whole time and make jokes like, "The bag is free if you use it, but if you don't then you have to pay 100 Baht!" We heard from one attendant that a few days prior, the waves were so bad that 60% of the people on the boat were vomiting. Disgusting, right? I don't even know why I told you...I just thought it was crazy.
All in all, it was an idyllic end to our island getaway...although we are excited to get back and see friends and family!

You would all be jealous of our tans!

Wow...Thailand is worlds away from India. This is truly a vacation, and we are glad to have visited India first and Thailand second. First we headed to Krabi, which is mostly a launching point for catching a boat to one of the islands. But I will say that Krabi has a fantastic street market where you can get a vast array of really yummy food for cheap. The day we discovered it, we ended up eating one massive progressive meal that lasted all day. It was great to eat constantly, which sounds horribly gluttonous...but in our defense we were also walking all day, and everything was in small portions. Let me just give you a run-down of the day's smorgasport:
banana. coffee. yogurt. chocolate BonBon. ice cream. fish kabob. corn-on-the-cob. chicken kabob. fried bananas. pad thai. chicken kabob again. veggies and rice. iced tea. spring roll. shrimp kabob. egg pancake. more chocolate BonBons. And then after all that we got invited to a birthday party where there was tons of free food just sitting around waiting to be eaten. Dang...

So then we got a long-tail boat to TonSai Bay, which is the mecca of climbing in Thailand. It's a bay that feels like an island, because it's cut off from the mainland, and consists of one dirt road loop, a bunch of bungalows, and bamboo restaurants. It's a 4-for-1 deal, because you can hike 30 minutes through the jungle to 3 other beaches that are also cut off from the mainland. They all have their own feel: Railay West has the expensive resorts and sky high prices. Railay East is similar but for a slightly cheaper budget. Pra-Nang is a small beach that has food boats that you can just swim up to and order food. It's the ultimate in vacation laziness...sunbathe, swim, eat, repeat. And all without having to move more than a few meters away. TonSai is the opposite extreme in that it has dirt cheap prices and is full of backpackers and climbers, so naturally it was calling our name. It is very small, so within 4 days we had met nearly everyone and all of a sudden we were scheduling our time with dinner and climbing dates. BAM! Just like that we have a social life again. It was refreshing.
It was hard to not have our climbing gear with us, but we forked over the money to rent gear for a few days. The climbing is really aesthetic, with massive limestone cliffs jutting out of the sea and the shoreline. You get to climb up really great rock, maybe hang off of a stalactite on the way up, and see really epic views from the top. Some of the climbing areas you have to walk to at low tide, or you can get stuck there when the water comes back in. We also did a day of deep water soloing, which is where you take a boat to one of the limestone pillars out in the sea and climb stuff that overhangs the water. You don't use a rope, but just jump in once you get high enough for it to be too scary...which doesn't take too long.
Our bungalow was simple, and we slept with a mosquito net, and fought off mosquitoes every morning and night with our incense mosquito coils. We also had a major ant problem. Everyone has heard of a bear hang for your food when you're camping, right? Well, we had to make an ant hang...which sounds so pathetic, but it was absolutely genius, so we could keep some food in our hut. There was no electricity from 8am-6pm, but it would come on every night. Our reception area also had a ping-pong table, so that was amazing. We played our nightly matches and Clay only won once.
While there, they had the biggest rain any of the locals had ever seen. Even during monsoon season. We were lucky enough to be on Railay East, having dinner with some Austrians, and got stuck there. It took us an hour of trudging through the jungle and scrambling over rocks to get back, and we were totally water-logged by the time we returned!
My dream of learning how to spin Poi has been resurrected, as everyone here knows how to spin fire poi. We saw a fire show done while on a slackline, and were totally impressed. I will post the video when I get back.
Yesterday we arrived to Ao Nang, which is another launch pad for other cooler places...although we are loving it here too. We leave tomorrow for an island that has world famous "Full-Moon" parties of 30,000 people. We shall see how that goes! Internet triples in price on the islands and beaches, so the next time you hear from us...we will either be in Bangkok on our way home, or home. Wow...how the time has flown! Thanks to everyone for your comments and emails and skype calls. It has meant a lot to us!