reveille

in a few of the towns we've stayed, there are a bunch of loudspeakers all over the place. in some of those towns, they think it's fun to wake everyone up. before it was mostly in muslim villages, where they would pump up the volume with morning prayers. those were at like 4:30 am, and easily the most annoying. here in pai, it was some sort of dude singing some sort of song. kind of funny. as we never really adjusted to the time change, we're up at 7:00 every day anyway. the problem is that none of the stores open before 8:30 or 9, even those serving breakfast. wierd.

pai early in the am

we rented motorcycles yesterday in chiang mai so we could explore northern thailand for a few days. first leg of the trip took us to pai, winding around through the mountains and whatnot. the picture below was taken when the trusty watch altimeter read about 4,200'. we eventually climbed up closer to 5,000. pretty good scenery, although a bit dimmed. apparently the hill tribes all over the region are currently burning the forests, maybe for agriculture. we passed some rather large flamage on the way to see a geyser.

me and the wheels yesterday, all reppin' the flyers. yes, those are flames on the side of the helmet. two words: BAD ASS. it was my first time taking a manual bike out of 1st gear, and i was quite proud. got her up to a buck ten (kph), but i'm pretty sure i can beat that today.

'nanners

me in chiang mai about to enjoy hawaiian fried rice. picture worthy 'cause it was served in a halved pineapple. a word on pineapple: probably one of the best fruits ever, my love for it grows daily here. it's abundant and cheap (like everything else). pineapple fried rice is slammin', as well as pineapple shakes.

next to god, the parents.

Inland

boated and bussed to the BK on wednesday. the bus dropped us off at about 8:45 at night at some obscure spot coincidentally frequented by dishonest cab drivers. we had previously decided to make the couple night stay in the city a comfortable one, so we splurged on a shmancy $50/night hotel room. probably one of the pricier places in the city, dude said he could take us there for 500 baht. the tourist in me was all like "man, that's only about 15 bucks, and this guy probably has no reason to F us." anne is smarter than me though, and we continued down the street and found a legitimate cabbie who charged us 85 baht. his "english not so good, but japan ok." this was convenient, as anne was apparently able to exchange understandings with the guy using strange vocal manifestations as i sat quietly, amazed.

we went for a drink after checking in to the hotel, at the bar where we sat right next to the street. at some point, anne gasped and pointed over my shoulder. i turned around to stare into the face of a G.D. elephant! it was obviously of the asian variety, much smaller than it's african cousin, but very large indeed. this was a very crowded street in the middle of a large city. they were selling bags of vegetables that you could feed to the animal. wasn't much interested, thinking about where and how one would store such a beast in a crowded city. we found out later that the practice is illegal. the fuzz likes money though, and usually don't much care how they get it.

today we hopped a fright to chiang mai for 50 dorrar. this is a much smaller city than bangkok. i rented this jalopy of a bicycle for one bone, or clam, and tried not break it as i cruised around at top speed (maybe 8 kmh). we're far to the north of thailand, bordering the golden triangle. we'll hang in this region for probably about a week.

cartilage

rented a kayak and some sweet fins yesterday, then paddled out to "shark bay". absolutely amazing. it was almost as good as discovery HD. i was all swimming around looking at these pretty little fish and stuff, then all of a sudden i spotted a 4-foot black-tip reef shark. right after that, i noticed about three more swimming around. i was able to follow them around a bit, but they're pretty fast. they seemed to not care about me too much, despite having cut my finger open on some coral and gushing blood all over the depths. snorked around for a couple of hours, checking out cool fish and plants and whatnot amidst the (probably) fecally contaminated gulf of thailand. visibility was about 20 meters (i'm on metric now), but there's still something eerie about not knowing what's lurking past that.
waiting for a taxi now to take us to the pier. then it's a 3 hour boat to chumpon, where we'll catch an 8 hour bus to bangkok. the big city!

ko tao

this is a pretty sweet island. supposedly less touristy than ko samui (the perennial tourist fave) and ko pha ngan (home of the full moon parties), we set out from krabi on saturday. we stayed in surat thani saturday night, really just waiting to catch a boat. we could have sailed at night on a cargo ship, but though we'd just chill out for a night. surat thani doesn't have too much to offer other than transportation to other places, but it was ok. got up sunday morning early to catch a taxi to a pier, where instead of boarding a boat, we boarded a bus, rode for an hour to another pier, and got on a boat. about 5 hours of sailing, stopping at samui and phangan along the way. we got to ko tao, which appears to be the most heavily visited spot on the planet. we walked the main beach for three hours or so looking for accomodation with no dice. caught a cab to another spot on the island and the dice were hard to find. we made it to a divey but acceptable spot for about $10 a night. it's good for sleeping, but we'll move on tomorrow night to a sweeter joint up the way.

the island itself is beautiful, hands down clearer water than anywhere we've been. i read that the small island issues the 2nd most SCUBA certifications in the world (maybe Perth is 1st?). every place to stay here is also a dive instruction shop, and they all prefer that you book classes. i think instead we'll rent some fins & snorks tomorrow along with a kayak and head out to "shark island", which i'm sure is completely safe. i've heard that punching a shark square in the nose will make it think twice about the attack. could be a pretty good segue into hunting, which i'm confident is the most logical option (other than vegetarianism).

back to the scooters! that's the little orphan, about two bikes ahead of my slow ass. absolutely crazy traffic. it's kind of like the east coast on crack cocaine. once you realize that 1. everyone is going to cut you off, 2. everyone expects you to cut them off, and 3. single file is for losers, you kind of find a nice harmony to the madness.

anne chillin with a monkey. greedy bastard had 2 apples.

view from the top of Wat Thamm Suea, outside krabi. incredible climb. i think 1,237 stairs, some very steep! i probably lost 1.5 liters o' water on that one.

similar view

suprising likeness of Gautama Buddha all painted gold

top, top of the wat

ko tao. this is the bay where we're staying.

ko tao

map link

try this one

violently illin'

left tonsai beach today under wary legs. we "ate" "dinner" last night at a place that seemed pretty harmless. man, did we ever get served! the only thing we ordered that didn't end up with something weird or alive in it was beer, which anne didn't get. hit her about 4 hours later and through the night, my slower immune system didn't pick it up until this morning. we made it to krabi though, something resembling a city. we decided that we'd been 'skeetered and ratted into a splurge, so we kicked up $27 for some climate control. NICE! feeling much better after some rest. brought a bag into town which i plan to fill with all sorts of exotic fluids. ginger ale comes in a red can here. weird.

movin on up into the gulf of thailand soon, maybe tomorrow or the next. this place is pretty civilized, we might take advantage for a bit. need to lighten the load and ship some more stuff off to japan.

i've got a makeshift map of our travels here.