Yunnan, Vietnam, and Thailand

What an incredible six weeks it's been.  For the record, I started this blog post after week two of our travels, but then was never able to get around to posting it (despite feeling like it was "finished"), repeatedly forcing myself to add on further recordings of our adventures because I want you guys to feel the satisfaction of being caught up with us. Well, now that has backfired on me, turning what started as a blog post into an epic tome. I apologize, and to help you get through it, I've added headings so that you can pick what you want to read or skip over. 

Tonnes of interesting flowers for sale
at the Flower and Bird Market in Kunming.

KUNMING
Our train from Shaoxing brought us safely and in good spirits to Kunming where we explored the famed bird and flower market, admiring the different, more multicultural vibes apparent in the various foods, clothing and trinkets for sale. Walking down a central shopping Boulevard downtown we were surprised to find a class of bling masseuse students in white coats standing next to chairs offering to massages to the passersby. It was nice to see the camaraderie and laughter among the students, but at the same time a reminder of how the disabled have very few opportunities here, compared to Canada. That's because, last time I checked, the blind are not even allowed to enrol in any post-secondary programs in China, except massage therapy. So, no matter how passionate they may be about a certain field, they'll never be able to obtain the certification to support themselves, unless they choose massage therapy. It's a tragic, almost Orwellian reality that exposes one of the darker sides to life as a Chinese citizen, in turn highlighting how, no matter your  gifts or preferences, your choices are so limited when it comes to choosing a path in life. The freedom we have as Canadians is something I'll never take for granted again, I think. 

Dali Gate

View of Cang Shan from the main highway going through Dali

Gate to a hotel in Dali

DALI
From Kunming we took a train to dali, where we spent a few days wandering, and met some

The permaculture project we helped out at in Dali.
Basically all we did was help put those beams up on the
second floor. Nice, huh?

interesting guys who were in the midst of living in and rebuilding an old traditional Bai-style courtyard house using permaculture design techniques. They were a really nice, easygoing bunch of guys from Australia, the UK, NZ and the US who had met in Dali and played music together at the local expat owned brewpub called the Bad Monkey. Then, seven months ago they found this house and decided to restore it. Only one of them has any professional experience with carpentry and building, but that's all they needed besides a bit of money, hard work, and some tools (which, like almost everything in China, they bought online for cheap). Naturally, when they invited us to come check it out, we accepted and ended up staying until late that night, first helping to install some beams, and then hanging out for the good company, delicious wood-fire BBQ and soul-warming folk/bluegrass tunes accompanied by banjo, guitar, and some spoons. We had a grand old time sitting around that campfire next to their giant pile of Reno rubble, cooking, eating, drinking and sharing stories of all kinds, and then to cap it all off we were even given a fun ride back to our hostel at the end of the night on their motorbike. That

The view from Cloud Pass, halfway up Cang Shan

whole day was definitely highlight of our time in Dali, seconded only by the great hike we did the next day up Cang Mountain - the one right behind our hostel. We took our time going up because, as I learned the hard way, the path was pretty slippery due to melting from a recent snowfall. So, we savoured every moment exploring the new ecological environment we found ourselves in, so different from that which we'd seen back in Zhejiang province, and examining the many tombs and gravestones of locals who had buried their loved ones there and occasionally brought food, flowers and incense to honour them. The scenery when we reached the Cloud Pass about halfway to the top (our summit for the day) was lovely as well because it housed an abandoned temple, a small restaurant, and a viewing deck that looked over Dali Old Town and the vast Erhai Lake beyond it. We sat there in quiet peace looking over the valley and listening to the steady ping of melting snow falling from the roof of the deck as we sipped on tea. Moments of remote, calm quietness like that have been rare for us this year - living and traveling always amongst millions of people - which made the experience almost sacred for me. Even as I sit here, relaxed and writing in the quiet area of our hostel, just the memory of it calms me. That's exactly what we came to Yunnan for, and I'm so happy we found it in Dali. Our hearts felt so at home there that both Cameron and I agreed that if we were to spend another year teaching in China, we'd want to spend it in Dali.

TIGER LEAPING GORGE

Halfway Hostel

Inside the dining area of the hostel

But, after three nights in Dali we had to move on in order to make it to the focal point of our trip to Yunnan: Tiger Leaping Gorge.   I don't even know how to best describe how marvellous this hike was beyond the basic details, and the strange feeling of being so small, yet so accomplished at the same time. The incredible journey took us two days, starting from Lijiang, where we caught an early morning bus from our hostel to a mountain village at the mouth of the gorge called Qiaotou, where we got passes and then dropped off our heavy backpacks for overnight storage. At about 11am, we began the great trek. It took us 6 hours, but we  had a continually amazing view that only got better the closer we got to the middle, which we just beat the sun to reach and find our accommodation for that evening, chez Halfway Lodge, which was the most stunning hostel we've ever stayed at. We really felt like winners the entire time we spent there, because for one, the views from anywhere in the hostel were absolutely gorgeous. Secondly, the food they made was delicious, and wonderfully different from the standard Chinese we've gotten used to (and a bit tired of). My favourite was their version of Apple Pie, which was shaped more like a Stromboli or Calzone and fried golden. When you bit into it, the apple was very finely diced, and still a little bit crispy and tasted so light and fresh. It was like biting into an apple–flavoured pillow; so good I could have eaten 5.   And thirdly, the dining hall, including the windows, was covered with sharpie graffiti and memorabilia from other individuals and groups who had passed through the place on their journey through the gorge. Having shared our feeling of great accomplishment in the experience, they left little marks of themselves behind - in varying ways from signatures to jerseys and medals -  to  commemorate the occasion, and it all added to the joyous feeling of having made it to this gorgeous lodge on the side of one of the most magnificent geological formations in the world. Then, after a good shower and night's rest, we carried on the next morning to make it down to the bottom, where the mighty Yangtze roared over massive boulders, shoving its incredible force up against the two mountains it intersects - Haba on our side, and the treacherous Jade Dragon on the other. From there, we made the challenging climb back up to Tina's guesthouse, where we were able to catch a bus back to Qiaotou where we collected our bags, then headed back to Lijiang before making our return to Kunming the next day.

Lovely Lijiang

GET OUT OF CHINA ALREADY
We spent a wonderful three days in Kunming, chilling on the sunny rooftop patio of our

January is the beginning of
patio season in Kunming!

hostel and making friends as we waited for our Vietnam visas to be processed, and it was a great thing we did because the most difficult 36 hours of our travels so far was waiting for us. Because our Vietnam visas were so expensive, we wanted to keep transport costs as cheap as possible, so instead of flying to Hanoi, we took a bus and then a train. Sounds simple, right? And, considering how popular an option his is with backpackers, we figured "how hard can it be?" Well, I think the Chinese and Vietnamese governments see this as a challenge, and seize any and every opportunity to force you to spend more money in order to avoid the experience we signed ourselves up for. It started with the bus ride to the border. We took a Sleeper one, meaning that it's designed for long trips and affords passengers beds instead of seats. Around thirty beds in one bus, three rows of skinny bunk beds. Sounds nice, but in reality, it stinks. Literally. Because the driver insists you take your shoes off before entering the bus,  so everyone's foot smells are unleashed, choking the air with their uniquely heinous odours. Adding to the gag-effect of the journey are the blankets they allocate, supposedly for comfort, but which smell like they haven't been washed for days because they too are emanating an odour similar to that of a child with a bed-wetting problem. This meant I was actually relieved when the bus pulled over twice that night for Chinese military officials to board our bus and collect our passports for inspection, because the open door meant fresh air was finally making it into my lungs. Eventually, our bus reached its final stop at about 2:00am, and though we suspected we were near the border town of Hekou, we couldn't see any evidence of it because the bus had dropped us on the side of a highway surrounded by trees and with no signs pointing us to either the town centre or the border. There were  many taxi drivers waiting around to give us a very expensive taxi ride, but of course we had our budget in mind and opted to brave walking.  After about 200 meters in the dark alongside two french girls on the same journey and just as unsure about the area as we were, a taxi pulled over and the driver came over jabbering and insisting we accept a ride because it was too dangerous for us on the road (said one of the French girls, cause we had no idea what he was saying), so in the end we conceded and took the ride. Fifteen minutes later, we were dropped off at a hotel, where the driver went and woke the night attendant to get the four of us rooms, but again, budget travellers that we are, we politely declined his offer even as the French girls accepted, and so after obtaining very vague directions to the border crossing, we wandered off down the deserted streets in search of a McDonalds or other 24 hour establishment that would shelter us for the next 6 hours until the border crossing opened at 8am.  We didn't find anything open except restaurants waiting for their last drunken customers to leave. There were some Palm trees in raised beds near the main street that seemed inviting though, so we plopped our packs down and took turns being each other's arm chair while sitting up against one of them. We stared at the stars for a long time, finished off a bottle of rum that we suspected wouldn't make it over he border with us, and talked of all the delicious food we were going to enjoy in Hanoi. At about 4:00am we had a visitor. It was a young man pulling a garbage kart filled with recyclable  materials like cardboard and styrofoam (side story: they recycle styrofoam here - not the case in Edmonton, because the transport of our recycling is paid for by the city, and they sell it by the kg to recycling companies, who don't pay enough to cover the gas and labour of getting it there.  In China though, there's many low income individuals who will collect it and strap it, in gigantic bundles, onto their bicycles and then bike it over considerable distances to the factory  to receive their small payment.) I figured he was homeless because I spied him fishing some discarded food out of the garbage as we were getting out of our taxi earlier. He seemed friendly but quite perplexed at seeing us there, cuddled up under that Palm, so we tried explaining in Chinese that we had been teaching in Shaoxing and were now traveling to Vietnam, but then he tried asking us more questions in very fast Chinese, using a dialect we weren't familiar with so the conversation sort of hit a wall. To signal the time for his departure though, he did a funny thing. Instead of a goodbye nod or a wave, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something small that we couldn't see, then put it to his ear to listen. He talked as if he were on the phone, yet there was no phone... Cameron and I exchanged knowing glances.  Soon, he made motions that he'd been called away, so we said goodbye to the friendly schizophrenic man, and watched him trudge away with his trash kart into the darkness. After that we got up and worked out a little bit on the ubiquitous old people old people's exercise equipment nearby, chatted some more about dreams, mental illness and home, and then Cameron fell asleep for like half an hour and eventually it was 6:00am - time for breakfast! We had some tasty noodles from a roadside  shop run by some friendly folk who let us charge our phones while Cameron fell asleep again in his plastic lawn chair. I watched the clock as the city began to wake with the approaching dawn, and when 7:45 rolled around, we set off to find the border crossing.

LETS STAY AWAKE SO THAT WE DONT MISS A MINUTE OF OUR LAST 36 STINKY HOURS IN CHINA
 It wasn't hard to find cause it was located at a big bridge one block away from the noodle spot. We waited at the gate with a handful of other people as we watched the two sides prepare for opening. The Chinese side was much easier to see and entertaining because they played their national anthem loud and proud, and incorporated some very zealous soldiers who marched in a rectangular path and shouted some stuff in unison before raising their red flag of communism. Then we saw the Vietnamese raise their own red flag of communism too, but with less fanfare. The best part came next as a flood of  Vietnamese farm workers in their conical hats sprinted from Vietnam into China as fast as their short legs would carry them. Mostly women, many were pushing carts or carrying big bundles of produce, which I assume they were racing to sell at the morning market in Hekou. Cameron and I cheered them on. Some of them smiled and giggled but many wore their game face, focused on getting inside to the border office first to get their stamp and then trot off to go set up at the market. When the mad dash ended we waited for our gate to open, but it didn't. Then we saw a few plainclothes people come from the Chinese immigration building and start leisurely walking over to Vietnam, giving us the hint that we weren't in the right place. We took a little walk and found an escalator with a sign pointing up to the departures floor and found our exit path. There was no line until we got to the immigration desk, where the nice border official took some time to admire our curious, colourful passports and practice his English with us. In the end he gave us a big smile as he handed back our passports and said "Welcome back to China....again!" Thanks, China :) Next, we went down an escalator that dropped us near the bridge where we took one last look at China, said 'Tzi jian!', and then leaped over the borderline at the middle of the bridge into Vietnam.
 

Hello, Kitty!

'NAM!
After passing through Vietnamese customs, we set about securing the essentials: coffee and  wifi. Luckily, these things are often available together, and Vietnam did not disappoint in this first occasion of servicing our needs. In fact, it exceeded our expectations because the coffee was phenomenally strong, giving our poor sleep-deprived brains a much needed jolt of energy, and the wifi was entirely free of censorship. Hallelujah! Just in time too, because the Chinese government recently upped their game and have succeeded in blocking several popular VPN providers. Instantly, life seemed so much brighter, and we made our way to the train station with light and excited hearts. We were so deliriously happy that we didn't even bat an eye when we were told that there were no more soft seats of beds left available on he 10-hour train we needed to catch to Hanoi at 10:00am, we just blithely said ok and headed straight for the tracks with our hard seat tickets in hand. We also didn't bother to put on our smart, serious tourist hats when it was communicated to us as we were boarding the train that we could indeed secure ourselves some beds for this trip, if we only forked over a quick 600,000 dong (the equivalent of $34cnd) to one of the obliging car attendants. After handing over the money, I meagrely tried to get them to write something on our tickets to prove that we'd paid extra to switch seats but was politely refused and then ignored, so I shrugged and flopped down onto the hard bench covered in a bamboo mat they called my "bed" and proceeded to fall asleep as quickly as possible, lest we got booted from our berth at the first stop. We ended up spending the full 10 hours in that same berth, thankfully, and arrived in Hanoi mildly rested at around8:00pm. We were also lucky enough to as for advice outside the train station from a very friendly and pregnant Vietnamese lady who spoke perfect English and told us where to go to find a cheap hostel nearby the centre of the Old quarter, and exactly how much we should pay a taxi to take us there. She even wrote it all down for us so that we wouldn't get tricked by a taxi driver feigning to have misheard our original offer after bringing us halfway to our destination.  What a sweetheart. 

We heard the church bells calling from our hotel room, and listened!
We took in a Sunday mass here, en francais, at the gorgeous
Cathedral St. Joseph in the Old Quarter of Hanoi

COMFORT AND INDULGENCE IN HANOI
It was like a hot shower after a week of camping in the bush.  After two weeks of traveling from hostel to hostel in China, we treated ourselves to a private hotel room for $12 a night, complete with a balcony, almost soft bed and a western toilet. We weren't bothered that there wasn't any hot water left by the time we woke up in the morning because it was 22C outside and we were going to spend the whole day wandering outside, moving from street food stand to delicious street food stand. We basically spent four days eating and pampering ourselves with massages there. One morning I wandered around a bit and got a coffee scrub pedicure for myself while Cameron went and indulged in some playstation4 time at a gaming cafe around the corner from our hotel. Another day we took in a show at the famous Hoang Long water puppet theatre. That was cool, although the last number was cut short due to a power outage, which is supposedly common there, though we only experienced it the one time. My favourite day though was definitely the day we did our food tour. We happened to sign up with a recent start up company so the three and a half hour

Hanoi Food Tour = Best Idea Ever. Snails and roasted pigeon on the right,
Vietnamese pizza, stew, and pork filled rice pancake thingy on the left.

tour only cost us $25 each covering all 10 dishes we consumed and a water, tea and beer alongside. Furthermore, we were the only two people who signed up for that evening so it was just us and our two guides, a lovely couple named Ngat and Simon. They took us to a bunch of really great hole-in-the-wall places as well as random street vendors, and ordered dishes we never even knew existed before they were presented to us. The classic spring rolls, pho, and banh mi were not on the menu that evening as they were very deliberate about their intention of expanding our view on Vietnamese cuisine. I'm so glad they did it this way, it was just what I was hoping for. My favourite was either a hearty red wine based, cinnamon and cilantro-spiced beef stew with a fresh baguette or the plump and juicy steamed snails served in shell alongside a delectable garlic, lemongrass & chili fish sauce for dipping (both dishes with heavy influence from the French who colonized Vietnam in the 1800s) But there

What a cutie!

was nothing they showed us that I didn't like, including roasted pigeon and this strange Vietnamese version of pizza. It had a really thin crispy base, like a dried crepe, and was topped with chili sauce, cilantro, sliced hot dog and sweetened dried fish (which we tried in China but I was never into), and you cut the pie up yourself using scissors at the table (as always, a plastic tray atop a plastic stool, surrounded by a number of the same miniature plastic stools for squatting on. Tasty times.



OVERSTOKED
For the next stop on our Vietnamese adventure, we opted to scoop ourselves a couple of

There is such thing as too much of a good thing

cheap plane tickets, to cut our journey down from 19 hours on a crowded train, to two hours on a half-empty plane for pretty much the same price. We felt like winners when we landed in Nha Trang, one of Vietnam's best known and beautiful beach towns. There wasn't a cloud in the sunny 26C sky and our accommodation, hesitantly booked online for $19 a night (we splurged and paid an extra $2 for a window) turned out to be much nicer than expected. I was high on life that afternoon.. Soo high that I forgot to apply sunscreen to my lower back and legs, to a disastrously predictable effect. But even after showering and making the horrific discovery of my sun trauma later that day, my euphoria remained unbroken, and amidst a flurry of Russian, American and Vietnamese restaurants, we came upon one of my most favoured cuisines: Indian. I was way too excited. I ate and ate. I couldn't help myself - the chicken vindaloo was on point. The Kashmiri fish curry - so creamy. The naan -  so buttery fresh. The rice was named Pillow for God's sake. How could I let such good food go to waste? Well, eventually my high wore off, and as I lay down while Cameron slathered Aloe Vera across my charred back, I could suddenly feel the throbbing pain of that battery of southeast Asian sun on my pale Canadian skin. But now my stomach was angry too and about to explode under the weight of my own body + food weighing down on it like a whoopee cushion. Something had to give or I wasn't going to sleep that night, so I tapped and went to the bathroom to spew and relieve the pressure. Not my finest moment, but I blame it all squarely on Nha Trang. Too many good things in one place, people.

'WELL,YOU GET THE FRIENDLY AWARD'
I spent the next few days recovering, exercising moderation as best I could, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely, doing lots of wandering around town and the beach, as well as

Wandering through a local market in Nha Trang.
STAYING IN THE SHADE.

sampling the delicious local cuisine and making some new friends. One night we were at a nice restaurant called Lanterns when we noticed a girl arrive and ask for a table for one. The waitress seated her at the only table available at the moment: a big, empty table for four. Cameron and I have been eating together every evening for a year now, spending about 23 hours of every day together, and she looked about our age and obviously spoke English, so we asked her if she wanted to join us for dinner. After her shock wore off, she shyly said yes and came over to sit with us. Her name was Kate, and she was a recently graduated Medical Doctor from South Africa, on her first week of 4 months travelling solo. She was really glad to accept our invitation and very nice and interesting to chat with. She said we get the friendly award out of all the people she'd met on her trip so far. Then, just a few minutes later, another young guy showed up to the restaurant alone, and was again seated at a four person table. After a quick conference with Kate, we extended the same invitation to him that we did to her, and he too accepted. His name was Marvin, a late twenties guy from Austria who works construction during the summer and spends most of his winters in SE Asia. So, what started out as another average dinner for two turned into an interesting party of four, and was extended by going out for a pint to the local brew house afterwards.
A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH THE CITY WITH TWO NAMES
After three days in Nha trang, we caught a (very bumpy) night train to the metropolis of Ho Chi Minh city (or Saigon, as most people still call it) in the southernmost portion of

Colonial Oppression Art in Saigon

Vietnam. We arrived at 6am and had a plane to catch at 9:35pm so we just dropped our bags at a hostel and spent the day wandering around district one (the older part of the city), through the market, gorgeous art museum and post office, and chilling in cafes and restaurants. We didn't like Saigon as much as Hanoi, but it was still nice.

WELCOME TO THAILAND: HOW ABOUT A UFC EVENT AND SOME DUTCH BINGO?
We caught our flight with little rushing, and made it to Bangkok at about 11:30pm on Saturday January 31st, where we caught a taxi with two American girls to a decent hostel and slipped into their last available room for the night. In the morning, Cameron woke us up early to watch a must-see UFC event he thought was going to be on at 8:00 Thai time. Once we were all packed up and almost ready to check out, he realized it actually wasn't on til 10am. *facepalm* I wasn't impressed but was happy to lay down for another hour or so and catch up on some of the sleep I'd missed from two nights before on the roller-coaster train ride. After a bit of wandering from bar to bar on the famed Khao San road, looking for a place that was showing the match, we eventually found a place and settled in to watch it alongside a nice couple from Dublin. The fights turned out to be pretty entertaining and we both really enjoyed hanging out with the Irish couple. When that was over, we walked around a bit more down Khao San road before stopping at another bar for some refreshment. Lo and

Dan (l) and Edward (r) and us in downtown Bangkok

behold, who did I spot just a few tables away? It was either our friend who had visited us a couple months ago, or someone who looks a LOT like him. It was not him though, it was his brother, Edward! We had never actually spoken before as Edward was three years below me in Edmonton Christian, but we ended up spending the day chatting with him and his cousin Daniel like old pals. I felt like I knew Edward  a bit already because we'd spent so much time talking with Darren just a little while ago, and they are very much alike. Dan was also really friendly and easy to talk to, and I was  a bit familiar with his background because his family lives on a farm in Neerlandia. What a crazy, small world we live in. Dan and Edward left on a flight to Koh Samui the next day, so we didn't meet up with them again, but Bangkok had more in store for us. We had drinks at a lovely

Gigantic lizards lurk in Lumphini Park, Bangkok

rooftop bar with a 270 degree view overlooking downtown Bangkok, sampled some delicious street food from the Silom weekend night market (including my favourite heritage days dish - Mango with sweet sticky rice) and took in a Muay Thai boxing match inside a strip club on Pat Pong street, where every night at 11:00 the dancers get a break and the poles are pushed aside to make room for a small boxing ring in the middle of the club. Another day, we ventured out with some new Dutch and Japanese friends from our hostel and checked out a famous temple called Wat Pho, which was gorgeous, but irked us a bit by how the hoards of tourists with really obtuse manners would noisily take photos in the more solemn, reflective halls of the complex. We're coming to realize that this is a common side effect of tourism in spiritual places in Asia, and you just have to take it with a grain of salt while doing your best not to reflect that behaviour as well.

Wat Pho, Bangkok

SCUBA DIVING DREAMS COME TRUE
Koh Tao was where the magic of Thailand really hit us. Situated in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, southeast of the mainland, Koh Tao is famous for being a backpackers haven and a Mecca of scuba diving in Southeast Asia. With more than 50 dive shops on the small island, there's plenty of competition between shops to provide various levels of certification for cheap backpackers wanting to dive, such as ourselves. We both already had our Open Water, but came to Koh Tao looking to get our Advanced diving certification, enabling us to dive deeper (up to 40 meters/130 feet) and in different environments such as at night and around shipwrecks. We obtained our certification in 2 days through New Way Dive centre, following one day in which I had to do a "refresher" course to brush up on my scuba skills which I hadn't used in the four years since my open water course. My favourite of the five dives we did as part of our course was definitely the night dive, which I had been looking forward to for the past year pretty much (since we decided scuba diving in Thailand was going to be a goal of ours post China). It was absolutely magical. It's definitely an experience I will never forget and plan to do again and again as long as I can dive because the ocean at night is oh so mysterious and completely different from the daytime environment. It literally gave me goosebumps (and not because the water was cold - it was  only a couple degrees

Getting geared up for our Night Dive

colder than the 28C temps we dove in earlier that day). As far as fish went, we didn't get to see anything too different from the daytime,  but to see the underwater flora at night (using a flashlight) compared to what we had seen during the day was crazy. The color palate of the reefs was so different, changing from a rainbow of bright pinks, oranges, greens, yellows, and turquoise blues during the day to browns, blacks, pale pinks, and fluorescent blues and purples at night.  Mesmerizing. Our last dive of the course was a wreck dive where we got to explore the HTMS Sattakut. One of the island dive shops's website describes it like this: "At 48 meters in length, this former US World War II Navy vessel (formerly known as the USS LCI(M)-739) was commissioned into the Royal Thai Navy in 1947 where it served until it was decommissioned in 2007. Previously, as a US Navy ship it most famously participated in The Battle of Iwo Jima – one of the fiercest and most strategic battles between the USA and Japan during World War II." It was pretty cool. The ship had two big anti-aircraft guns positioned on its deck, and we got to swim right up to them. When we were looking at the gun on the bow, I swam closer to take a peek down its 2 inch wide barrel and just as I squared up to look in, out swam a little blue fish - right into my goggles practically.  That made me giggle. One interesting tidbit: our selection for dive sites during the course was severely restricted compared to the norm because we had the bad luck of visiting the island at the same time as members of the Thai royal family. One of the Thai princesses wanted to go diving and as a result her security team had notified all boats that they wouldn't be allowed to drive or dive near the sites that she would be diving around those days. For us, that meant that all the sites we dove at had at least five other boats of divers going down to the same ones as us, making it a very busy place down there, and a bit of a disturbance to the marine life. 

R N' R IN KOH PHA NGAN (pronounced: ko pay nyaann)Once we officially became certified advanced divers, we decided it would be best to take a break from it for a few days. Not because we wanted to, but because Cameron had sustained a couple injuries (involving

Taking a spill on a motorbike is like a rite of passage
throughout the Thai islands, but most people survive;
Cameron did!
(I was not co-piloting at the time of the incident)

diving fins and motorbike) over the course of the previous days which needed to stay out of the saltwater to heal up. So, we headed to Koh Pha Ngan - an island 2 hours away by ferry, infamous for the Full Moon parties (but the full moon happened about 5 days before we got there, so we missed it. Bummer? No, neither of us were too keen on going anyways) and hippy vibes. We struck gold on our second night there when we checked out of a run of the mill hostel near the (very quiet) full moon party area and got ourselves checked into a lovely little bungalow just off the beach about a quarter way up the island's west coast. The bungalows were more like huts because they consisted of one room with a small porch in front and were completely made of wood and dried palm branches, with a bit of mud and tile to make a bathroom in the back. We were sooo happy with it though because it had everything we needed, plus a tonne of character - by which I mean it wasn't just a room for the night, it was an experience. Like, I'd never slept in a bed with a mosquito net before, even though I've wanted to since I was seven years old! There's something so romantic about them for me, despite their utility. Oh yes,

Home Sweet Hut <3 in Koh Pha Ngnan

the net was really vital because those huts were very much open to the living world outside; thatched roofing and walls meant we got beautiful beams of golden sunlight to set the room inside aglow as they shined in through the porous surfaces and onto the whites of our sheets and netting in the morning, but it also meant that the ever popular nocturnal critters could fly or crawl in to pay us a visit as we slept. Oh and the place was also littered with hammocks (yes we had one on our porch too), old hippies, and puppies! (Resident animals is starting to become a must-have for me in order to say I really liked the place. They create such a warm, loving, family atmosphere in guest houses.) on of the island's stray dogs wandered over there a few months back and found shelter under one of the bungalows in order to have the pups, and now the management leaves scraps of food and fresh water out to help the mum feed her 8 babies, who were about seven or 8 weeks old and adored by all the guests while we were there. Cameron and I very much enjoyed holding them and being greeted by them every time we went to the beach or the reception area. Puppy therapy is the best therapy, and the only therapy, for us. (For now.     Haha, jk, we're happy campers.)

Sunset on Koh Pha Ngnan

DIVING IN THE ADAMAN SEA
Koh Pha Ngnan was a wonderful and difficult to leave but after three nights we had to leave in order to make it to Khao Lak, on Thailand's west coast, where we wanted to get some more diving in before heading back to Bangkok. The diving was fantastic but more expensive than on Koh Tao, so we only did one trip, out to the Boonsung shipwreck, about a half hour off the white sand beach. This time, Thai royalty were not around so there were only a couple other boats out where we were, and we saw and amazing array of fish there, in much more concentrated numbers than in Koh Tao, and the visibility was also clearer so we could see more from a distance (not that it mattered because there were SO many fish - literally 150 with in 3 meters at any given moment). It made for a great days diving.

We love wreck diving!

SOME TURBULENCE
But Khao Lak also gave us some rough times. First, we had trouble finding a room at a reasonably priced accommodation, and then when we did get a room at a hostel after the tenth try, Cameron was attacked by an army of mosquitos and bed bugs in the night. He woke up at three o'clock am unable to sleep because he was so itchy. He counted 78 bites all over his body, mostly on his back and legs. In desperation, he tried sleeping on a mattress of clothes on the tile floor. So, the next day we were on the hunt again for some accommodation that wouldn't severely break our budget. Luckily, we found some, and then did ourselves the great favour of doing that wreck dive. When we returned from the dive though, it was time to start planning our return to Bangkok, so that we could arrive in a timely manner to submit our visa applications to get to India on March 1.  I partially blame our misfortune on technology, partially on myself. I booked us a flight from Phuket to Bangkok using an app called Kayak which scours the Internet for cheap flights and then when you find one you like you click on it and it takes you to an external booking site. So, I clicked on a flight for 6:40pm on the 17th, but ended up being brought to a site where the flight time said 6:00. I assumed this still meant PM so I went ahead with the purchase, fearing that if I backed out we'd lose the cheap fare (it's happened to me before where I hesitated to book and then went back a few hours later and the prices had doubled).  To my chagrin, when I read the confirmation email, it read depart Phuket at 6:00 AM. This meant we would not be able to stay in Khao Lak another night as we'd hoped, we now had to hustle up to catch a bus out to Phuket that evening so that we could be at the Phuket airport for our 4am check in time. Nice one. Of course I discovered this barely 10 minutes after Cameron left to go wander around town to find something to eat, leaving me to only hope that he'd get back in time for us to catch a bus to Phuket that evening, because I couldn't reach him on his cell phone unless he had wandered somewhere with wifi. In a nutshell, Cameron came back, we rushed to pack up, returned our motorbike, and successfully flagged down a bus to Phuket. The 2 hours later, the bus dropped us off on the highway 3km from the airport, and after walking for a bit we hitched a ride in a nice minibus to the airport. It appeared our luck ran out after that though because there was no cheap accommodation to be found nearby, forcing us to stay at a roadside bar until it closed. We had some supper and then took turns napping on the couch there, but got kicked out at 3am, so we trudged like zombies up the highway to the airport. We were too early to check in so we did like a few other backpackers we saw and found a corner to lay down on the floor for another hour. When the checkin counter finally opened, we got in line and waited some more, fantasizing about passing out on the plane.
"Do you have a booking number? I can't find your name on the list." Said the checkin clerk. 
I was ready for this and showed her the number on my phone. 
"Hmm. You're not on this flight. You're booked for March 17th." 
Lack of sleep hadn't improved my earlier retardation, so I said "What, no, today is the 17th." 
I showed her the calendar on my phone to prove I wasn't crazy. 
"Today is February 17th, miss. Your flight is booked for March 17th." 
My jaw drops. Cameron's does too, and the look we shared is pure agony. This can't be happening. This is what we get for busting our butts and staying up all night in a noisy bar and sleeping on the floor of the airport? Curses and facepalms ensue. We do the walk of shame over to the customer service desk, and the agent informs us that all their flights to Phuket leaving that day are fully booked, but she'll put us on the standby list just in case they have a couple of noshows. Great. In my mind, there's a 90% chance we're not going to get on this flight and because we don't want to potentially waste the day waiting to seize a spot on one of the flights that never opens up for us, we'll have to just take the 12 hour bus ride to Bangkok and hope that we can still get our visa applications submitted in time. But then there's the problem that Cameron begins to really not feel well. And by not feeling well I mean he's throwing up blood in the bathroom while we wait for our standby verdict. So, even though he's still walking and his color hasn't changed too dramatically, 12 hours confined on a bus is starting to sound more like torture than an inconvenience. But a miracle happens and we find out that there are indeed a couple of no shows on this flight, and if we just pay an extra $200 we can get on this flight. This is more than what I paid for our original (March dated) tickets, and they won't let me us the credit that I have with the airline from a previous ticketing error, but it appears now that we have no choice. So we get on the plane and make it to Bangkok without incident. Cameron manages to keep his blood and stomach juices inside him for the flight, but feels challenged when we board a bumpy, standing room only shuttle bus from the airport heading downtown. I'm nervously trying but failing to avoid imagining the bloody carnage if he spews while standing on this bus packed with unsuspecting passengers. We successfully disembark the bus and make it to our hostel, but it's 9am and our beds haven't been vacated yet. And we've realized that we left Cameron's almost brand new running shoes on the bus, which is long gone now. All he's got now are the oh-so-sexy crocs on his feet (which are the only shoes he's been able to wear since the Koh Tao diving fins massacred his heels) Once again my bad because I carried them, in a bag, onto the bus, but didn't pick them up when we got off.

THINGS DONT FEEL FINE
Then there's still the objective that we came to Bangkok for: getting those Indian visa applications submitted. This turns out to be a real pain in the ass. Sorry Mom, but in the moment I feel this was a highly accurate description. We had to fill in an application online, get the hostel to print it and make copies of several pages in our passports, fill in another form by hand ONLY IN BLACK INK, attach a specific size of passport photo, and then make a 50 minute journey to the Indian visa office. When we got there, there was still an hour and a half before they closed, but there were over a hundred sullen people packed in that waiting room when we arrived. We waited in line to have our paperwork checked before we could even get a number to join the real submission queue, only to find out that a. The hostel's printer was a failure and though the information was was all accurate, and mostly legible, the barcode was smudged so they wouldn't be able to enter it into their system. And b. We still needed to provide a copy of our flights in to and out of india, as well as a record of a least two weeks of accommodation bookings while in India. We had a flight in booked, but of course no flight out because we don't know how long we're going to stay there for. GREAT. Back to the hostel we go, where we face another problem: my credit card is maxed out and won't work. Even though I paid my bill online 3 days prior, the payment still doesn't appear to have applied to my MasterCard account. EVEN BETTER. Luckily, Cameron's angelic parents gave him a credit card he can use in emergencies, so we were able to use that. Now to find a reasonably priced, refundable flight out of india, and accommodation, and a decent printer to get new printouts from, which isn't as easy as it sounds, especially when we're both so tired and stressed and he's still potentially seriously ill. It feels like  the second last day of finals, where all you want to do is sleep but there's still one more day of exams to study for and the hardest one is last.
MERCY
We manage to get our shit together, and wake up early the next morning to be at the visa office when it opens at 8:30am. We arrive at 8:31, and there's already 30 people in line, waiting for the visa office doors to open. When they finally do, we shuffle inside to queue up again, only to see a groups of about 30 orange-robed monks already seated in all of the waiting room seats, waiting to be processed ahead of all the other people in front of us. Good grief.  Eventually, we make it past the pre-check station, and get our number (the office has barely been open for a half an hour and we're # 114) and wait. And wait. And then we get called and Hoorah! They take our finger prints, our money, and our passports, and finally the job is done.  Now we chill in Bangkok for 10 days until our flight to India on March 1st. Time to relax, and plan out the next leg of our adventure, which will include celebrating the Holi Festival in Mathura in the first week of March, and then to Rishikesh (the yoga capital of the world) to stay in an ashram for at least two weeks. Then, who knows!
Good job for reading this whole post, if you did manage it.  I promise to make the next one shorter. Thanks for reading!
Xoxoxo
Peace & Love from Bangkok,
Julie