i love bungalows

Hello friends, I promise I’ve been thinking about you but it’s hard to be a good blogger without my trusty mac on hand all the time. But I’ve finally found a comfortable internet setup that is costing me very little so here goes with a little update…

We left the farm after being there for about a week. Ultimately, it was a good experience but mostly because we met some really great people and had a few unusual experiences – like making coconut oil from scratch and harvesting lemongrass, for example. The farm was not well established though and the organization/direction of the whole project left something to be desired. But we are looking forward to farming in Malaysia towards the end of November at what looks like a very well-established rice farm.

After Bang Phra (where the farm was), we headed to a place called Kanchanaburi. After being in Thailand for more than two weeks, the nature we found in and around Kanchanaburi town was just what we needed. We stayed there a few days, in a little bungalow on stilts above the water at a corner of the River Kwai that goes through the town. Kanchanaburi town and it’s railroad are a pretty important piece of Thailand’s history during World War II. But, neither of us really in the mood for museums, we opted for the nearby Erawan National Park instead where we visited the Erawan Waterfall, a 7-tiered waterfall that is surely something to be reckoned with. We kept our pace consistent but not rushed for the two-hour hike to the 7th tier, coming across each equally impressive waterfall ‘step’ along the way. The equally impressive part only concerns tier 1-6 because the 7th tier was in a class all its own: extraordinary. And huge. We got right in the water at that 7th tier because by then we had earned it, being 120% sweaty. We had another lovely swim on our way down at the 2nd tier, sweaty once again. It was a fantastic day.

We also indulged ourselves in an absolutley delicious Indian meal while we were there, not because we don’t love Thai food, which we do, but because Ali Bongo’s Indian Restaurant was just impossible to resist.  Totally worth it. And that meal came just the night before our first Thai motorbike adventure (costing about six dollars for 24hours), which was truly an adventure as they drive on the left side and have a pretty unique style of driving. But Kanchanaburi town is very low on traffic, we promise we both wore helmets and I just rode on the back and let Gavin figure out the left side thing, so it worked out well. We rode our motorbike into the hills on the other side of the river to visit a Buddhist temple that had been established some time ago in the nine rooms of a limestone cave, now complete with a Buddha in each room (sometimes more than one) and bats. It was wicked awesome, as some would say. So I’d give 5 stars to Kanchanaburi town. There’s even more you can do there, like visit the Tiger Temple and go elephant trekking, but that was a bit out of our budget.

After that, we made the journey back to Bangkok to meet our two friends who flew in from Portland. We weren’t there long till we all agreed to head for the beach. We finally made it to Ko Samui after a long taxi-plane-bus-ferry-trucktaxi journey and it’s dreamy. We hadn’t really planned on coming here since it’s pretty touristy but decided we didn’t care that much and just needed to get to the beach as quickly as possible so here we are. We’ve been doing a lot of lounging, swimming and eating although Gavin and I have also been doing our fair share of trying to work out how to extend our Thai Visa, which expires on the 31st of this month. Turns out the hardest, most expensive place to attempt a Thai visa extension is Thailand. So tomorrow we’ll be embarking on a quick little journey into Malaysia; if you cross the border and come back in, you get a new, free 30-day Thai visa. Then we’re headed back up into Thailand, to Krabi, to take in the west coast for just a little while before we go to Malaysia for real-real.

But for today, in preparation for our ‘Visa Run,’ we’ll just be chilling on the beach and in our cute, rustic little beach bungalow.

Thinking of all of you, of course.

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I wasn’t really able to upload new photos to Flickr this time round but I’ll do that as soon as I can. Cuz’ I’ve got some real good ones;)