Beach - Burma - Jungle

Oh wow. Since I last wrote we have done so many great things. We said goodbye to our new friends and left Koh Tao on a night ferry (so far this trip: night train, bus and boat. The only thing left is night flight, which I'll do when I leave Bali) which was surprisingly comfortable and rodent-free. We booked a little package deal for our visa run, so we were picked up from the ferry and taken directly to the Thai-Myanmar border. We were stamped out of Thailand, took a boat across the waterway, stamped in and out of Myanmar and sent back into Thailand with a new 15 day visa. We were only in the country for all of about 15 minutes, so I can't say to much about it besides that I was offered every kind of cigarette/alcohol/drug you could possibly want. A few people on our boat returned to Thailand with the cheapest cartons of cigarettes on earth. (Note: like any border town almost anywhere it was a little sketchy, but I have heard really great things about the rest of the country. There were several Burmese people who worked where we stayed in Pha Ngan and they were the some of the kindest, happiest people I've met on my trip).

From the Thai border town we made our way to Khao Sok, a national rain forest on the mainland between the islands we're visiting. We made in there in late afternoon, which meant we went from an island, to another country, and to a rain forest all in less than 24 hours.

We spent two nights in Khao Sok staying in a bungalow for $5/night. We wanted to do some tours around the park but the prices seemed too high even by US standards. So instead we spent a day exploring some of the easier trails by ourselves. We trekked to some "waterfalls" that were so small I don't think they could be considered as such even in the height of the rainy season. But we did see birds, lizards, frogs, snakes, monkeys and scary spiders and bugs. We even saw a giant wasp like thing wrestling with and killing a very big and hairy spider. It was like something off Discovery Channel. And in the late afternoon we got stuck in the forest in a torrential down pour which was actually a lot of fun until leaches started climbing up our legs...

So after that it was time to make out way to our next island destination, the beautiful paradise that is Koh Phi Phi. You may have heard of it for two reasons: it was it hit hard by the 2004 tsunami and the movie "The Beach" was filmed here. It's probably the most beautiful island but also most touristy island we've visited yet and we've done some amazing things here. But all of that is for another posting.......