Day 46-51

We flew early in the morning to Bangkok, and arrived at 8am. Becca extended her extended ticket, and I extended my flight so that we could fly out of Thailand together. We are now officially leaving Thailand March 22, 2007. We took a cab to Kohsan road and stayed at My House guesthouse. We spent most of the day at MBK mall. The air conditioning attacked us to the super busy mall. The mall was swarming with people. The mall was about 6 or 7 stories tall. Later we went back to kohsan road to eat market food. The food is amazing at the market, its so cheap and tasty. For our last night together we decided to hit up a bar that serves beer towers. The beer tower has a tap and holds about 4L of beer and has a center section that is separate for holding ice. We met some German's that loved Becca. The one guy was about 5'5" and told Becca to stand up, she towered over him, so he talked to her the rest of the time standing in a chair. We told the guys that we were 30 years old, and that Becca had kids at home "Kimmy and Timmy!" We spent the rest of the night chilling at our guesthouse. Becca and I ended up staying up the whole night and caught a cab at about 4:30am to fly back down to Koh Samui. We said bye to Kathryn. We will miss you tons....Good luck in New Zealand!

We booked our flight with Bangkok airlines, and they have amazing service. They had a passenger lounge with complimentary food, drinks, comfy couches, and free Internet. Its a little bit more comfortable than taking a 12 hour over night train ride. ("Do I work for Bangkok airlines?") We arrived at Koh Samui safely around 8am and headed over to Lami beach. The first open guesthouse that we found we crashed at, until the late afternoon. When we woke up we didn't realize that we checked ourselves into the trailer park of Lami beach. The resort had trash everywhere. We took another nap around 4pm and it lasted till 10am the next day......we weren't even mad we were impressed. We looked around for a better guesthouse when we had a clearer mind, and we found The Best Resort. It had a pool, and nice rooms for the same price as our trailer park trash guesthouse. We figured it had to be the best resort since thats what it was called "The Best Resort". We did a bit of shopping around Kah Samui, and checked out its night life. The streets were lined with lady boys, it was pretty disgusting. Koh Samui has an older crowd atmosphere so we decided to enjoy the pool for a couple of days then head to Koh Phangan.

On March 9th we left for Koh Phangan. We road scooter taxi's to the ferry pier. Throughout the ride we saw guys carrying propane bottles, dogs, and all of their children on their scooter. We met up with Lisa on Sun Set beach at Haddrin. We headed back to stay at Sea Side, and the guys that work there were happy to see that we came back. We have decided to hang around Haddrin till we have to head back home...........we have officially lost track of time, hopefully we remember to leave on the right day??????

Day 42-46

We took off for Chiang Mai from Vangviang at 10am. The first bus drove us to Vientiane which took about 3 hours. Becca sat with a heater between her feet which looked super comfortable, not to mention it kept her toasty warm the whole trip. More heat is always a good thing in Thailand right? We got onto a new bus in Vientiane around 4pm, and we had to pay 2500 kip to leave Lao (about 25 cents). We drove over the friendship bridge back to Thailand.......HOME (well familiar ground I guess). We changed buses again in Udonthani, which left around 8pm. For the final and longest stretch we rode a bus that had reclining seats, blankets and a snack pack for take off (we were riding VIP style). The snack pack had an apple, water cup, jelly cookies, and an orange juice (which I later found out was an orange flavoured yogurt drink.....pretty sick). I sat beside a girl from Victoria. We had the same travel backpack and I almost swiped hers instead of mine. I could have had a whole new bag of tricks. The roads were unbelievably windy. I fell asleep, and dreamt about being tossed around like a ping pong ball, oh wait we pretty much were being tossed from side to side in the bus. We would randomly stop along side the road while the driver would pick up packages that were being sent to Chiang Mai. We had a scheduled rest stop at 1am, and we got a free meal or a free pop. The meal looked like pork vomit on platter under a heat lamp..........mmm tempting. We decided against explosive diareaha and drank a Fanta instead (pop). We were scheduled to arrive in Chiang Mai at 8am, so we hopped on board to drive for 7 more hours. We arrived in Chiang Mai safely but super exhausted. We found a room at Johadda guesthouse. Its owned by an Assuie-Thai couple and they had a kangaroo statue on the top balcony. We slept until the late afternoon trying to forget about the bus trip nightmare!

Recovering from the bus trauma trip, we hit up a pub near our guesthouse. Customers wrote on the walls of the pub with sharpie markers. A certain Collen wrote "Oilers cup run 2006". Looks like their cup run might be a faint dream since they are stinking up the NHL!
We shopped around the night Bazaar (market). The market is set up every night rain or shine, holiday or no. It was neat-o!

We switched guesthouses for the next couple of days, and moved into the GM Blue Guesthouse. They had a nice court Yard, no drain pipes directly above my bed, and they actually let us put TP down the toilet. We checked out a Buddha temple, then tracked down the nearest cinema to watch a movie. The Tuk Tuk driver dropped us off at the mall so we could hit up a movie. We couldn't find an open door. We hiked around the mall searching for a way in. We got to the opposite side of the mall and saw a concert in the distance in the middle of the parking lot. We decided against crashing the Thai concert and continued our search. We found a parking lot, where we were informed that the cinema was on the 4th floor, but no one had a useful clue to where an entrance was. We finally found an open door in a shady part of the park-ade and headed up to watch Babal. After the movie was over the cinema was dead. There were no Tuk Tuk drivers in sight to take us home. We started walking in the direction which we assumed was toward home. After walking for a good 20 minutes we finally hitched a ride home safely.

We spent one afternoon chillian and relaxin' in a pool near our guesthouse. We met a couple from Calgary who had just come from traveling New Zealand. They gave Kathryn some useful hints and wished her luck on her trip. Later we hit up the market for the last time to finish our shopping. We bartered for everything , even the beer.

We headed out early in the morning to hit up Bangkok with Kathryn for our last night toghether in Thailand as the "Triple Trouble Yaul!"

Laos

We have decided that Lao was definitely the highlight of our trip. Who wouldn't want to laze around on a tube, drink BeerLao, fly off 30 meter high swings, and be a millionaire all in one day. Kathryn has officially left us for New Zealand and we miss her tons.........COME BACK TO THAILAND!!!
I decided to rehash some of our trips events in Kathryn's honor. One night we were playing cards (asshole to be exact - sorry about the language but that's what its called). Kathryn had put herself in a very dangerous position. She had been president for the last few rounds and had one card left. We were all laying doubles hoping to surpass her one card. She finally layed down her card but then snatched it away as quickly as possible thinking she was making an incorrect move, and hoping that no one had seen her card. Becca and I clearly saw a 2 of spades, if you are unfamiliar with the game 2 trumps all other cards (by our rules). Kathryn kept the card pasted to her leg, ashamed at revealing her previous card. Becca and I played the game on edge waiting for any minute for her to play the card. We finished the game with Kathryn at the bottom still with her card pasted to her leg. She finally flipped the card over and realized that the card was a 2 of spades and the whole time thinking it was a 5 (which is a low card). Oh Ballywood......

Who is Ballywood you ask???? Well we decided that we would start calling Kathryn Hollywood since she always took the longest to get ready..........who was she putting a show on for,the Thai men? One night in Koh Pi Pi Kathryn was approached by a man saying "Pakistan? .......Pakistan? Excuse me miss are you from Pakistan?" We all knew that Kathryn was getting tanned but didn't realize that people were mistaking her for being brown (are you related to Rahul?). Hence forth she was called Ballywood!

Throughout Laos Ballywood insisted on carrying her water bottle around on her head. She insisted on being proper. I decided to take one for the team and shove her aside to knock her bottle off her head. She was not at all impressed and threatened to hit me in the face with her water bottle. Later in the evening I picked up an ice cream cone just before heading up to play cards for the evening. Ballywood was doing her usual ritual with her amazing bottle of water act, when she stumbled and the bottle tumbled off her head. With her cat like reactions she tried grabbing the bottle before it hit the ground, but instead her reactions were not cat like at all and she ended up swatting the bottle straight into my ice cream cone...................... I cried like a baby and stared at the end result in dismay!

We will miss you Ballywood!!!

Day 36-42

A couple of the restaurants here play either Friends, Simpson's, or Family Guy. While mid episode of Friends we would hear the beginning of another friends episode across the road. We met some Australians who taught us a fantastic game called "Ship, Ship-ha". The one Australian busted out some pretty cool card tricks, and put David Blane to shame.

Majority of the tourists that hang out at VanVianne spend most of their day floating down the river on inner tubes. The tubes cost $4 to rent, and the tubing company was lending out Mountain Eq. Co-op water proof bags. We slowly floated down the river to a zip line swing that tossed you into the river. Riding the swings into the river had only one underlying condition, you had to buy a BeerLao...... no problem! After mastering the first zip line, and pulling out some back flips, we decided to float to the next swing (or maybe it was because a couple of ten year old girls showed us up on the swing). The next swing had about a 15m drop off. It was goooooood. We timidly took the risk and plummeted into the water. We hoped onto the floating train to the next swings. The next two swings were a tad larger. They had about a 20-30m drop off. We understood why BeerLao was the drink of choice, to ease the pain of the notorious belly flop! However, the belly and back flops proved to be the most entertaining. The third bar along the river had a volleyball court, which we played most of the afternoon then dove off the swing platform to cool down. While floating to the last swing we realized that we were pretty big pansies for being scared of the first swing. We left the last swing just before the sun went down.

All of us woke up the next morning with sore muscles, we had ripped them after all the intensive activity the day before. We lazed around to recover, and got one of the restaurants to play Blazing Saddles, then Little Britain, and we ended the day off with Family Guy. We had a very productive day! We decided to hit up the tubing track again before leaving Lao. We tried leaving Lao on Feb. 27 but were very unsuccessful, so we decided (without any hurt feelings) to hit up the tubing escapade once more. VanVianne has a little gold mine on their hands. We finally left Lao on Feb. 28 on a 22 hr. bus ride to Chiang Mai.

Day 34 - Backtracking a bit.........

We packed up from our little shanty tent, and said goodbye to Erin. The resort loaded up our bags onto a scooter with a side car. Becca and Kathryn sat in the side car while i had to snuggle with the driver. The roads from our resort to the beach are all downhill so the driver put the little cart into neutral and rolled out of Ton Sai. The taxi boat from Ton Sai to Krabi took about an hour. We shopped in the market to kill some time before our flight to Bangkok. We picked up some rad speakers for our MP3 players. Basically to play our music in the air like we just don't care. Our cab driver pumped old school techno the whole ride to the airport. Reminded me of back in the day cruising with Keith at lunch time in Sylvan. On the flight to Bangkok we hit some turbulence on the plane which made Kathryn freak out. So I put my engineering hat on and explained the concept behind turbulence, not to ease her pain but to try to sound intelligent..... I was very unsuccessful!

We got into Bangkok at about 9pm. Kathryn and Becca wouldn't be able to extend their trip till the following morning since everything was closed. We decided to ride the flat-track escalator up and down the airport......... for a little bit of entertainment for the evening. We decided to set up camp in the airport since we had to wait until the morning for the girls to change their flight, and to book a flight to Lao. We moved into a nice little neighbourhood. It was spacious and fairly quite. The chairs were made of aluminium which made them a little uncomfortable but the atmosphere was very inviting, until a Thai family moved in next door and started taking over the whole premises. We ended up moving into a very high class area, with cushioned seats and everything. We had two rows of chairs to lay on. Kathryn and Becca were on half of the bench and half on their bags, while I tried sleep in an "L" shape, half on Kathryn's side and half on Becca's side. At 4am there were people standing all around us cheering and celebrating the Chinese New year. Bangkok airport never shuts down. The girls got their flights changed, so I guess its off to Lao??? We hung around the airport waiting for our flight with Lao airlines to hit up Veintianne, Lao. We grabbed some Starbucks (mmmmmmm so good once it hits your lips). Someone stole our cards the night before so we had to kill time with useless chatter.

We got our visa's stamped then took a 3 1/2 hour cab ride to Van Veinne. We hit up a guesthouse that Luke suggested, and it was perfect.............Luke you have finally made it into our good books , jk you were always there ;).

This pic is a little random, we were just missing the islands. Scubasteve.........................