Of True Minds

Adventure is at our finger tips and we love it!!! This week has been insanely awesome! Ok, so here’s the low down:

On Monday we took a night train to Chumphon. The night train was TERRIBLE. We were sitting straight up b/c the one with beds was sold out. I was sooooo antsy because my dreds were killer uncomfortable and my mosquito bites were itching like crazy. Poor Alex had to try and sleep with me rolling all over the place in my chair. Half way through we looked back and all the tiny Thai people were dead asleep; totally fit in the chairs and were totally used to sleeping upright like cone heads.

Anyway, we went from Chumphon to this AMAZING Island called Koh Tao!!!!! Absolutely amazing, post card perfect! It blew our sox off. It’s basically the hub of all hubs to get scuba certified and we figured WHY NOT? With Nan and Rod potentially moving to Guam, and with a super cheap certification opportunity, there was nothing stopping us from the wonders of the sea. And, let me tell you, it was wonderful. Ok, for a biology nerd to be given access to one of the most beautiful coral communities- I died and went to heaven. The colors of the fishes were mind blowing and all the amazing creatures that live down there. Just imagine yourself as Nemo when he went to school on the sting rays back in Finding Nemo and you’ll understand what we saw.

Living on the island for 5 days was a dream, it was more than a dream, it was like an extended high on salt water and sea creatures. We spent the days in the water and the nights walking on the beach. One night we watched the movie “Australia”, projected on a sheet strung up in the wind with palm trees on both sides and the water lapping in the background. Dreaming!!! We even made an underwater movie with the course. It was so cute and Alex did break dancing underwater and we all danced with our goggles off and sunglasses on in stead underwater (can you tell I’m still tripping on the underwater part). It was so cute and we kissed underwater too, but alas, it was too expensive- so we’ll just have to pretend we could’ve shown it to you, cuz it really was sensational. Did I mention we saw barracudas and squid! And a sea turtle! Man it was cool.

Ok, so leaving Koh Tao was the craziest experience of our lives; we now feel as if we can relate to pirates at sea. We were going to take a night boat back to the mainland: departure 11pm arrival 6am. They said to get there at 7:30pm so we could save a bed with our bags. When we got there, there was this little lady sitting at a little desk stuck in the sand. She checked us in and directed us towards this rusty bathtub of a boat. It was a freight boat! You know, for getting cars over and stuff! Ok, so we climbed aboard and left our bags in the sorry room with mats for beds and broken windows on all sides. One window had a sock stuffed in the hole to keep it from breaking anymore. We were kind of wary that no other tourists were there but we figured when we came back at 11pm maybe they’d arrive. 11pm came and we returned for departure. Still the only whities. I mean there was no instructions, no “here’s the bathroom, you’ll sleep here”. No one even spoke English, and who knows were the lady at the table in the sand went! So we just tried to lay down and ignore the situation. Not to mention as we were back out of the pier we ran into another boat because the waves were crazy knocking us into things. We thought once we were settled on the water the boat wouldn’t rock quite so much. Wrong! In one second our bodies flat on the mats would go from 0 to 90 degrees and back. We just clenched each others hands and tried to figure out how the few crew members who wandered in could just lay down and sleep like normal. WE GOT AIR OFF SOME OF THE WAVES! Needless to say, we made it, and the motion sickness/hard core sleeping pills were a godsend. Ok, this is really long so I’ll just have to highlight our Myanmar border crossing experience, wish I could write more, it was a really cool experience:

woken up off boat by mad man who then drove us to Ranong, Thailand to cross to Victoria Point Myanmar.

10 slum dogs kids meeting us at the Myanmar side and showing us around town

4 of us on a tiny motor bike to local village; no electricity, no water, cute babies

Almost sure death on the long tail boat ride back to Thailand through a crazy rain storm

Making friends with Thai kids and swimming with them in running water pool

Hanging out with the Thai community in natural hot pots

Alex’s sexy hair blowing in the wind

Love Alex

We love Asia! Thaifood is sa-pie-seeeeee!!!

P.s. The “Beard of Zeus” dreds as we called them are now gone; Kirst, I’m a tennis ball head too; Sal, it’s your turn ;-).