ch-ch-ch-changes -- I can hear Bowie in my mind

We kinda knew reverse culture shock was going to be bad. Yup. It was. Still is. I (Bob) just got finished questioning the site foreman for the street-wrecking crew lazing in front of our house. I was tasked with ensuring our landscape rocks were set aside for re-installation after the city's workers tear out and replace the sidewalks. The contrast between that in-my-home conversation and the 11 months of fulfilled wanderlust, well, it's left me flummoxed. No time today. Gotta go to work. See. Culture shock. Watch for our best Peru pictures . . . next post.

Soft landing in L.A.

After 33 hours in transit, we arrived dazed and confused at LAX on Saturday afternoon. That was the longest Saturday ever, but we're beginning to feel more human again after lots of sleep, short walks in the neighbourhood and good home cooking (thanks Deni and Cynthia). One more flight to go, for a total of 31 over 11 months. Not to mention all the other forms of transportation we've taken. More boats than usual, which is not too surprising considering the number of islands we've visited, but more surprisingly, nothing resulting in seasickness. Bob does not fit in southeast Asian buses, but there was often no other option, so we became adept at snagging a seat with optimal legroom. We took just one train -- from Hanoi to Lao Cai for our visit to the northern hilltribes near Sapa. It just seemed the few trains didn't go the same route we wanted to take. I can't wait to sleep in my own bed. We've stayed in a wide variety of accommodations, ranging from the bungalow on the beach in Than Sadet, Koh Phangan, southern Thailand, for $13 a night, or the homestay with a family in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, for $10 a night, to the big splurge with the overwater bungalow in Moorea, French Polynesia. I don't remember how much that one cost, but we calculated at the time that four days there cost the same as a month in Peru. I can't wait to cook in my own kitchen again, much as this has been a gastronomic adventure as well. We were surprised by the quality of the cuisine in Peru, amazed by the awesome tuna at Easter Island and enjoyed fresh fish and seafood almost everywhere. We savoured fine wines in Chile, New Zealand and Australia and sampled the local firewater, with mixed results. We rarely tried wine after reaching Asia in January because it was always stored in ridiculously hot temperatures that massacred the vino. Even the Two-Buck Chuck wine (from L.A's Trader Joe's) tastes better than anything pulled off the shelf in Asia, no matter how exhalted its provenance. Everything about L.A. immediately let us know that we were back in the North American culture: the differences from Europe are mildly amusing; the differences from Asia are profound. Much as we always enjoy going to Europe and after having immersed ourselves into Asia for half our tour, the return to North America has left us all tingly inside. It'll probably be another jolt when we finally get back to Canada. We can't wait for that last exciting hit of (reverse) culture shock.

Final days

We returned to Hanoi yesterday from Halong Bay, which was an excellent choice for the final scenic location after an 11-month journey. We spent a night on a sailing junk, but none of the hundreds of boats just like it used their sails. Lovely night though, up on the top deck looking at the silhouettes of all those oddly shaped islands lit by a cloud-filtered full moon. That night was followed by three nights in a fancy bungalow on an often empty beach on Monkey Island. It was worth waiting the extra few days for the latest typhoon to pass by, as the sailing was acceptably calm. Although the tour was pricey by Vietnam standards, it met our criteria for beautiful vistas, secluded beaches and sunny weather. Maybe a bit too much sunny weather, but hopefully Karen's sunburnt face will have recovered by the time we get home. We did tire of having the same menu every day (most tourists stay one night), even if it was tasty barbecue and seafood. Didn't much care for the breakfast of cold fried eggs and cold almost-toast. Today we did some last-minute shopping and had nail-art manicures (Bob's included). Tonight, on our last evening in Hanoi, we attended the Water Puppet Theatre, a charming display of traditional folklore and music. Tomorrow, all that's left is packing and maybe one final southeast Asian massage.

Hanging out in Hanoi

We have even more down time than we anticipated, as we bide our time here in Hanoi, waiting for the latest typhoon to leave the area so we can go to Halong Bay. Not to worry, folks, the authorities here won't let the boats go out if there's any cause for concern. Not that we really want to be sailing in 18-foot swells. It's raining here as well, and there are not too many tourist sites in Hanoi, so we've been focusing on finding air-conditioned restaurants with comfortable seating and enough light to read by. But Sapa lived up to our expectations and more. We started with a two-day trek down the valley, assisted by our local guide, My, and a group of Black Hmong women in negotiating the steep slopes. We kind of knew they were tagging along in hopes we'd buy some of their handicrafts at the end of the hike, and we didn't have the heart to disappoint them. The other thousand sellers were out of luck after that, though. We lucked out with perfect trekking weather, with clouds drifting on the mountainsides and occasionally blocking the heat of the sun. Our first day ended at a homestay, where we played pool on a much used and abused table, and enjoyed an excellent meal and conversation with a group of other travellers from Spain, France and South Africa. The next day, we continued our trek along rice terraces and through a bamboo forest to a small waterfall which must be more impressive after a heavy rain. Returning to Sapa by jeep, we booked into a fabulous hotel room, with a curved window and balcony overlooking the valley. Another day's outing took us to the market at Bac Ha, across the Red River Valley from Lao Cai on the other side from Sapa and a gathering point for the even more colourful Flower Hmong people. If we could remember where we packed the connection cord for the camera, you'd be getting photos of this. But everything's packed up so we can take the trip to Halong Bay, with Bob's pack jammed with everything we don't need for that excursion and the plane ride home. Only eight more sleeps until we head back to North America.

Cultural delights amid capitalist mayhem

Central Vietnam has been more interesting for us because it has more of the cultural sites we like to visit, and smaller towns. The big Vietnamese cities are filled with buildings less than 20 years old and are so hooked on capitalism that it makes them unpleasant to try to relax in. Because it's exactly the opposite of all that, the old town of Hoi An has become our favourite spot in this country. It's smaller, so there's less traffic and the stroll to the historic centre is only a few blocks from our hotel. Of course, it could be the hotel itself. The Thien Nga has a friendly, helpful staff, AC, satellite TV, a swimming pool and good breakfasts (banana pancakes and tomato onion omelets are our usual choices). We didn't realize how much we would use the swimmimg pool, but it's been a real lifesaver to take a quick dip when the afternoon highs approach 40 C. Or it could be the plethora of excellent restaurants and cheap beer in this town. Or the relaxing and not painful $5-an-hour massages. Not to mention the best beach on our trip: a long stretch of white sand, gentle waves and a gradual slope into a clean ocean, with few tourists except at sunset when the locals swarm the place. Karen took her third cooking course of the trip (the others were in northern Thailand and Bali). She finally learned how to make rice paper for spring rolls, although this will take a lot of practice. We're enjoying the fresh, green emphasis in the cooking, a pleasant change from the spicier food in Thailand and Indonesia, and Karen finds using less fish sauce feels much better on the tummy. We also found several riverside cafes serving fresh beer (by which they mean draught) for 20 cents a glass, quite a palatable lager that goes down well in the 40 C afternoon heat (notice the repetition). We took a side trip up the coast to the imperial city of Hue. More great food, a 19th century citadel and a boat cruise up the Perfume River to the Royal Tombs filled our days. But it was a bit more of a busy Vietnamese city, so we were happy to come back to Hoi An for a few days of rest before our last leg to the north of the country. We plan to see Hanoi, Sapa and Halong Bay before flying home. And, for those who've been asking, we depart Hanoi on July 30, pop in on Deni in L.A. for a few days and land in Toronto on Aug. 4. We've been thinking a lot lately about the things that we miss from home: wine at less than 35 C, fine cheese, home-cooked meals, our bed, sidewalks you can walk on. Those are the things. Most of all, it's friends and family we miss. The last 10 months have been a long haul and we are awfully tired of restaurant food, hotel rooms, packing, motorcycle dodging, uncooperative ATMs and shop owners calling out "buy something", "you want massage", "come inside", "free for looking", "rent motorbike", "I have big sizes, more colours, other styles". That's a huge part of the Vietnamese scene, but this an easy country to travel in because the staff will arrange anything for you and the prices are ridiculously low. Those factors and our end-of-tour fatigue have caused us to take more organized tours than we usually do, which also helps with the language barrier. Vietnamese is quite alien to our eyes. How does one pronounce Nha Nghi, for instance? We see that sign quite often on storefronts. We also see Dai Ly a lot, which makes Bob think of a newspaper stand, but no. So. Just 18 more days in southeast Asia before we begin our journey home. (We wanted the last word in this post to be "home").

Boats and bikes in south Vietnam

The Mekong Delta was a series of National Geographic moments, Saigon was a traffic puzzle requiring steely nerves to survive, and Dalat, ah, Dalat has been the antidote to too much time in the tropics. We crossed the border from Cambodia into Vietnam on a boat down the Mekong River. Our first taste of Vietnamese culture surprised us because we never saw the border officials. One of the boat crew took our passports to the officials, and returned half an hour later. We don't know how the officials knew we weren't imposters. Boats and floating buildings are ingrained in the culture of Vietnam's far south. The first hotel we stayed at, in Chau Doc, had a floating restaurant connected by a fragile-looking bamboo stairway where the menu was seafood and warm beer with ice in your glass. People passed by in small boats, some of them honking squeaky toys to indicate that they were collecting recyclables. Everywhere around us were floating homes and businesses. We did a short river trip into the islands of the Mekong delta, where we stayed two nights in the homes of local people, were rowed through the narrow waterways by a woman standing in the rear of our small sampan, and had a mad cycling tour along narrow paths with dozens of wicked little bridges over the canals. At one point our guide recognized some friends having a drinking party to mark the anniversary of the death of a relative. We joined in for about half an hour and drank three or six beers each. Luckily we didn't crash off any of the bridges as we made our drunken way back to our homestay. Saigon was overwhelming after the relatively quiet start in the Mekong area. Picture a city of 10 million, mostly racing around on motorcycles. Crossing the street is so scary we tried to avoid it if possible. You have to shuffle steadily forward as the motorcycle drivers decide whether to swerve in front or behind you. The further you get across the street, the more imprecise the decision-making, and then you have to start watching for motorcycles coming the other way. Cars are another matter. They basically don't budge and honk incessantly to scare everybody else out of the way. Don't even think about crossing in front of a bus. But the food has been excellent ever since we left Cambodia. There are no peppers and we're learning to ask for no MSG (we got someone to write it out in Vietnamese). Carmelized fish cooked in a clay pot, rice paper wrappers with extremely fresh leafy greens, chicken chunks grilled with garlic, french onion soup, rabbit and venison, it's all been tasty. There's even a red wine here in Dalat that's the best we've had in six months, although that's not saying a lot because wine just doesn't survive the tropical heat. Dalat is up in the hills of south-central Vietnam and the days are a bit cooler - high 20s - so we don't have to hide from the midday heat. We trekked up a mountain yesterday, starting at an altitude of 1,400 metres and climbing steep pine-clad slopes to more than 2,100 metres. On the mountain we encountered local kids from the Lat minority climbing trees to collect orchids to sell at the market. Bob used his extra height to help one boy climb a tree with lower limbs just out of reach. Another boy had knocked a beautiful multi-coloured bird out of a tree with a slingshot and pulled it out of his pocket to show us. The result of our four-hour hike was more painful than we expected and showed us how little real strenuous exercise we've actually done since we hit southeast Asia. Again we blame the heat. If we can convince ourselves to leave this slightly cooler part of Vietnam we will soon be headed to the beach at Nha Trang. It's been more than a month since we stayed by the ocean and we miss it. Beach life is part of what we've been loving about this tour.

Strange times in Cambodia

It's been a weird time for us since our last post, which was quite a while ago. We have been feeling a bit homesick, a bit tired of restaurants, tired of visiting tourist sites, tired of the heat, tired of touts and beggars, tired of Asia -- tired of travelling, perhaps? We both have had occasional dreams about home. Now they are no longer the job nightmares of the first few months. Instead we both dreamt about going home for the weekend. That's impossible, of course, but there we were, dreaming about seeing family and friends for a few days before resuming our Asian adventure. Weird, huh? Perhaps the negativity at the start of this post can be attributed to our visit to the Killing Fields memorial outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the Genocide Memorial at the main Khmer Rouge torture prison. But how did we get here? In our last post, we were in Ubud headed for 10 days of fun in the Gili islands. The Gilis are three specks on a map and we stayed on Gili Meno, the quiet middle one, which is why we chose it for our rest break. We stayed at the Sunset Gecko and it lived up to its name and our expectations. We chose it for the sunsets and stayed because of the owner's environmental attitude. The resort makes its own biodegradable soap, recycles its grey water in the gardens and spearheaded a composting program for the whole island. Gili Meno is surrounded by coral reefs and is criss-crossed with dirt trails. There's also a trail that encircles the island which took us about 90 minutes to walk. The only other choice of transport besides a bicycle is a horse-drawn cart, which we used one evening to cross to the other side of the island for pizza after dark. Bob tried snorkelling because the coral was so easy to reach straight out from our beach. It took him a while to adjust to the moustache leak, the sound of his own breath and the creepy feeling of hanging over the deep ocean past the coral wall. He went out longer every day, saw thousands of fish and followed a sea turtle, though if he'd known that first day that that would be his only turtle he would have watched it for a lot longer. Karen got to enjoy some of the coral sites when we took a two-hour glass-bottom boat tour. For someone who can't swim and doesn't like boats, she sure has been in a lot of them this year. We read a lot of books while on Gili Meno, mostly flaked out on the beach-side platforms that had huge pillows, a low table and a thatched roof to keep off the afternoon sun. At day's end, they were great places to lean back with a beer and a fresh tuna dinner while watching the sun set over Gili Trawangan and the more distant volcanic mountains of Bali, which dominate the skyline. Ten idyllic days later we bounced back to Ubud and pushed ourselves through a horrific flight combination that included a night in a Kuala Lumpur airport lounge (seats with armrests) listening to a three-year-old shriek for hours on end. But we arrived in one piece in Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the country's one major (non-genocidal) tourist site -- Angkor Wat. We visited a healthy sampling of the associated Buddhist and Hindu temples which are jaw-droppingly amazing, especially the trees busting through the walls at Ta Prohm and the giant heads and the elephant wall at Angkor Thom. However, after three days in the 35-degree heat we grew temple-tired, even though they all have unique features and designs. So we moved on, taking one of the few six-hour bus rides of our tour. Now we've been in Phnom Penh for three days and it feels like it's been 10. At least we caught Games 4 and 5 of the Stanley Cup finals. Strange scenario: drinking 50-cent draught, the only two people watching the game on a giant screen in an Irish sports bar in Phnom Penh. There's some fine French dining here, but the underlying odour of Cambodia is chasing us away. It smells something like a mix of fish sauce (which they make by letting it rot), composting household garbage and a soupcon of human waste. Which brings us back to our first point. No more temples, no more Asia. Okay, maybe some architecture and scenery in Vietnam, but one more country and then we quit. We just booked our flights out of Hanoi on July 30. That's seven long weeks away and yet it already feels like this tour is almost over. Nine months on the road sure does strange things to your sense of time.

More Ubud please, and a side of Borobudur

We had a real blast with Bob's parents, bombing around Bali for three weeks, eating really delicious food and staying in accommodations that were just a wee step up from our normal tendency towards backpackerness. After they departed for Canada, we stayed two more nights in the luxurious Ubud hotel that the four of us had stayed in near the Monkey Forest, then we moved to a home-stay about two blocks away for less than a quarter of the price. There's no air-conditioning or swimming pool, but we get to make faces at the host family's grandchildren and just observe their lives. That part has become more and more interesting as the days drift by because most of the population of Bali is preparing for Galungan, a semi-annual Hindu ceremony and celebration that peaks about three days from now. The sidewalk offerings that sit outside every doorway are getting more elaborate. Everyone seems to be spending at least a few hours each day working up some even more spectacular offerings for the big day and decorating their houses, shops and household shrines with silky fabrics, woven baskets and dangling bamboo flagpoles. Although we keep saying to each other how sick we are of eating in restaurants, there is no end to the excellent dining options in Ubud. We've eaten at several hippie health food joints, a chocolaterie, an Indian restaurant and a wide variety of Indonesian warungs, both costly and not. Well, "costly" being relative. The last really costly meal we ate totalled $35 for the two of us. Before that there was the night we spent grooving at a jazz club, eating and drinking cocktails and a bottle of wine and listening to a surprisingly good three-piece combo, and that bill topped out at about $100. We might get near that again tonight, but it IS our 30th wedding anniversary after all. We recently got back from a three-day jaunt to Jogjakarta on the neighbouring island of Java where the highlight of the trip was spending hours circling the multiple levels of the ninth-century Buddhist monument called Borobudur with its thousands of relief carvings portraying the life and times of Buddha. Borobudur is one of the largest religious monuments in the world and the amount of detail to absorb as you walk its aisles is amazing. On some of the levels, there are four series of reliefs, one each at shoulder and knee height on the right and left walls. We'll post one or two pictures of the relief carvings -- imagine thousands of them. Astounding. The view of the encircling volcanic mountains was supposed to be spectacular but we only saw hints of their slopes amid the cloudy skies. The downpour held off until we were setting up our final photo of Borobudur from the exit area. The big volcano nearby last erupted at the time of a major earthquake in 2006, killing thousands. Some of the tourist sites we visited over three days were actually just fields of brick rubble and others were still the focus of major reconstruction efforts. Our guide told us an amazing story of his experiences on the day the earthquake hit. The roof fell in on his house; it took him hours to find his clients after they'd been evacuated from their damaged hotel; he stuck his mother in a stranger's car and sent her away from the city which was in chaos as people fled the volcano north of the city and a possible tsunami in the south. We've extended our Indonesian visas until May 31 because the occasionally violent protests in Bangkok continue and we don't feel comfortable using our return flight tickets. We may just scrap those tickets and go directly to Cambodia. But before that we will probably (our plans are never locked in) take a fast ferry to the newest backpacker haven in the Gili islands and crash on a beach for a few weeks. Sound familiar?

on a Bali beach with Bob's parents

We've been in Bali almost two weeks now, mostly reading, eating delicious Balinese food, hanging out with Bob's parents Rob and Carolyne, and relaxing by the pool. Karen and Bob remember the pool from 10 years ago but the rest of the small resort that we stayed in then has since tumbled into ruins because the owner went bankrupt. We're staying in a very small resort (5 rooms) that is adjacent to the decrepit ruins and encompasses the original infinity pool, the only portion of the old resort to have survived. We had a particularly spooky arrival. We recognized the small backstreet leading to the place where we had previously stayed but when we got out of the taxi all we saw was ruins. We barely recognized the tumbledown remnants of the reception area and the beach bar. But there were new banners blowing in the ocean breeze and as we stumbled through the site, wide-eyed, a resort employee approached and helped us make our way through the ghost-resort to the new bungalows. After Bob's parents arrived and had a few days' rest, the four of us hired a car and driver for a daylong tour of the northeast corner of Bali: spectacular rice-terrace views, a beach mostly known for snorkelling, a drive along a narrow winding road past fishing villages and a visit to a royal water-garden. The four of us have also enjoyed going to local restaurants and having barbecued fresh tuna at our resort. There are lots of shopping opportunities for lighter-weight clothes to help us cope with the heat and humidity. The plan is to move from here (just outside Candidasa) to the relatively cooler altitudes near the dormant volcano at Bedugal, and then spend about a week in Ubud (more window-shopping of Balinese artwork) before Bob's parents leave. Hopefully, the world-wide air traffic problems will have cleared up by then.

A slice of Pai

We picked a bit of an unfortunate time to visit northern Thailand; it's the end of the dry season and all the small farmers are burning off their fields of stubble (somewhat understandable) as well as any leaves that are lying around, and since this is jungle country there are lots of leaves lying around. The mahogany leaves are huge, up to half a metre long, and when they litter the forest paths it's hard to walk, so that's why they burn them off, but it sure makes a mess of the air. We've been known to lay a napkin on top of our beer glass to keep the black snow (corn stalk ash) from landing in our drinks. Nothing stops us from drinking lots of beer, however, except if Bob has a nap in the early afternoon heat. We just got back to Pai from a four-day sidetrip to Sappong, an even smaller town about 40 km away on a hilly road full of major switchbacks. Our bus was so old the driver was weaving from side to side on the steepest uphill bits of the road, sort of switchbacks on switchbacks, just so the bus could keep climbing. Our home in Sappong (the Sappong River Inn) was one of our favourite places yet (superb room with a deck over a ravine; great food) and we had a fantastic day trek, hiking for three hours up into the hills to a Karen hill-tribe village. (That's Karen the ethnic group, not Karen the blogger.) During the hike we spotted a lot of orchids growing in the crotches of trees. That was a bit of a surprise because an earlier visit to a Chiang Mai orchid farm led us to believe that orchids were rainy season plants, but some of them thrive in this dry heat. In the village, we met a few of the Karen people and bought a few pieces of weaving from some of the women. Our wander through the village was fun, going through their yards and seeing some of the women actually doing the weaving, chaffing the rice, doing the laundry or embroidering their fanciest clothe. We took a different route out of the hills by following a stream back down to Sappong, crossing through the ankle-deep water dozens of times in our squishy hiking boots. At one point we met some village men with small nets working in the stream. They showed us a shopping bag filled with their catch - a few crawfish, lots of giant tadpoles and a handful of wee silver fish, actually all about the same size. Apparently, they eat them all. We've been in Thailand (and especially the north) for so long now that we're getting quite used to the mixed ethnic makeup of the country and little really grabs our eye. At breakfast today, we were eating at a sidewalk table and motorcycles went by with the strangest things - a guy selling a dozen ladders; a trio of Muslim women veiled all in black except for the eyes; colourfully clothed Lahu families of mom, dad and two small kids; whole restaurants built onto complicated tubular sidecars. It eventually dawned on us to take a few pictures, but it was the not noticing that was the most striking part. On our way out of Thailand we plan to visit one more major site, Sukkothai, an ancient capital full of spectacular architecture. That should be enough to get us shooting a flurry of photos. After Thailand is Bali. Oh that sounds good. We hope Bali will be less hot, wtih more refreshing air. And of course we really look forward to meeting up with Bob's parents. It's been a long, long time since we saw a face from home.

off the beach and into the mountains

We finally overcame our extreme lethargy enough to get moving again. We passed through Bangkok's airport before the weekend protests and spent a few days in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. We stayed in Chiang Mai's old town, which is surrounded by a moat and throbbing with a backpacker vibe. There are guesthouses everywhere and if you wander down the alleys they get cheaper, if a little dingier. We finally got out at night and saw a few Thai cover bands doing mostly old rock tunes. It's easier to name the tune from the melody line than the lyrics because the singers' accents are usually quite odd to our ears. They mostly advertised as jazz but we never did find any. Karen took a daylong cooking class and learned how to make a few of the dishes we've been eating. The leftovers were tasty, although she needs a little practice rolling the springrolls. We should have a good variety at our next dinner party at home. The biggest disappointment in northern Thailand has been the air quality. Chiang Mai has a lot of tuktuks and rental scooters, not to mention the badly maintained cars, trucks and buses. Add to that the soot from the burning crop stubble and the air was quite hazy and gross. We've since left Chiang Mai and are staying further north in Pai where there's less exhaust but more ash, so the haze level is still high but the air seems a bit more breathable. The van ride from Chiang Mai to Pai was more strenuous than we anticipated with hundreds of sharp curves (the T-shirts say 762 curves) in the last two hours of a three-hour drive. We are definitely in Thailand's hill country where there are quite a variety of small-population tribes, each with different languages and traditions. It's part of what every backpacker comes up here for, but we have yet to get out of Pai to see the villages or the waterfalls or the hot springs. You see, Pai is another chill-out place and that's all we've managed so far. Besides there's about five hours in the middle of the day when it's too hot to do anything, but drink beer and read. Yesterday, we over-exerted ourselves walking out of town towards a waterfall but didn't make it due to the heat. We did manage to hitchhike back to town and got a ride in the back of an empty construction truck that was filthy with concrete dust. Got quite a few odd looks from other backpackers who didn't expect to see westerners jumping out of the back of an obviously working local truck. We changed from one guesthouse to another this morning because the first bed was too hard and managed to save some money as our costs dropped from 500 baht to 400 baht a night, that's about $17 to $13 Canadian a night. Everything is so cheap that Karen is having difficulty restraining herself from buying. But who can resist a 70 per cent pashmina and 30 per cent silk scarf for $3, or earrings for half that? That's enough for now. If we sit in these leather chairs much longer Karen's prickly heat will flair up again. It has become our major consideration at dinner - what kind of fabric is on the chair cushions. And because Bob can't sit crosslegged, we can't sit on the floor cushions. We have put up a few pictures of our beach adventure in southern Thailand and will add a few from the north soon. Hope all our new backpacker friends are doing well, we'll try to round up all your email addresses soon and send out a few messages. Thanks especially to Daniel for the comment. Of course, it's always good to hear from home. Miss you. Bye from Pai.

a month on one beach - are we nuts?

Bye bye Koh Phangan, we're back in the Cactus Bungalows on Koh Samui where there's an immigration office and we can extend our visas. We're still undecided on our next stop, however, as we continue to watch the Thai political situation. We are extraordinarily cautious and could just go back to Koh Phangan if there's a safety concern. We sure did love Than Sadet beach. It's the first time in our life that we've stayed in one place for a whole month. We weren't bored, although we did very little except read and eat and play in the waves. Even Karen played in the waves. We spent a lot of our time reading in the hammock so we're not as tannned as those who lay on the beach all day. We met millions of Germans. It was weird - 90 per cent of the tourists were German. It got so we could tell the Swiss Germans from the regular Germans and our own English picked up a bit of German phrasing as we spent so much time talking with them. Going to Thailand to learn German, who would have thought? All the Germans were remarkably friendly and welcomed us into their social circles. In smaller groups, they would all talk English to include us. Even when they had a big birthday party, we were invited and although they talked German among themselves, there were always a few talking English with us, late into the night. We exchanged emails with dozens of them and have even thought that we might go west through Germany to return to Canada instead of going east - it's about the same distance. Drinking beer in the ocean was fun and seemed to be the spark that got the Germans interested in socializing with us. The jungle wildlife freaked us out occasionally. We had our own gecko in our room so it's a bit surprising how many insects we had as well. The gecko was the big kind, a foot long, with a head bigger than a golf ball and he was a bright baby blue with orange spots. The thunk, thunk, thunk as he ran across the wall from one corner cranny to another was always worth a smile in the early morning hours. Still, there was other wildlife in our room. Cockroaches, of course, and Bob screamed like a girl when he found a huge millipede when he picked up a Tshirt from the floor. Then there was the hairy spider the size of a hand that kept us on alert when we entered our bathroom. He was actually only there for a few days but our spidey senses were on alert for weeks. Karen had a succession of small health issues, including both kinds of tummy troubles (too fast, then too slow), a wicked fever in between, and a bruised toe that she smashed between the dinghy and the ferry when she was boarding the ferry in high waves. She's all better now, but that was a bit of a bad end to her four-day solo visit to a yoga retreat at a beach a few kilometres down the coast. She went to yoga classes twice a day and ate lots of healthy vegan food, but despite a mostly positive experience, still wanted to reunite with Bob after four days. See, we're still getting along well after all this togetherness. Sorry our last picture is still from Christmas. Soon, soon, we swear.

in case you are worried about Thai protests

We have been on Than Sadet beach on Koh Phangan island in southeast Thailand for a month. You can't get any safer than that. We are avoiding Bangkok where protests would concentrate. Meanwhile, we are thinking of visiting the far north of Thailand. Fortunately, there are direct flights that don't connect through Bangkok. On March 1 we plan to go back to Koh Samui to extend our visa. We'll have more to say once we get back to the land of high-speed Internet.

Even paradise has internet access - if infrequently

Now this is a real time limit. The generator only runs till 4 p.m. and it's 3:34 so we'll see how far we get. We've crashed at Than Sadet on the east coast of Koh Phangan where the roads are horrid dirt tracks through the jungle and most transport is by rickety ferries or (even scarier) long-tail boats. We seem to have caught the "don't wanna leave" fever that everyone gets here. There's not much to do but we're coping. It seems we pushed ourselves a little harder than we thought for the first five months and now we're just resting. Plowing through books like mad. Lying on the hammock deciding which restaurant to eat at. We are on a small cove. The beach is lovely, 200 paces long and capped at each end by huge, rocky headlands with bungalows scattered all over them. Climbing up the stairs seemed excessive for us (Karen's legs were wrecked) so we grabbed a bungalow 10 metres from the beach. Actually, our first bungalow was 20 metres from the beach but we moved over one when our German neighbours moved up the hill. Did we mention we're paying $13 a night and we can watch the sun rise over the ocean without getting out of bed. Actually, we hardly have to lift our head off the pillow -- a good example of how we're living here. Just heard that Bob's mom and dad are going to Bali in April, so we're sorting out what bits of southeast Asia to see before we visit them and what bits to see afterwards. But more and more we're talking about coming back here. We swear we'll post some pictures soon but we have to arrange to be at the computer when the power first comes on, not when it's about to shut down. Met our first Canadians in a long time when half the town of Campbell River, B.C., popped in for an afternoon. That brings to mind our other major hobby - watching the ferry plow into the sand and calcuting the net gain or loss among long-time visitors leaving and arriving. The day-trippers don't count for much as they only crowd up the beach for a few hours. Two dozen people on the beach is a crowd. Often there are a handful or less. Food is great but we have to keep it down to one wonderful but extremely hot curry at a time. We don't miss the hawkers on the beach (none here) nor the restaurant touts trying to drag you inside (none here). Bob had a great birthday a few days back. Beers, swim, walk, whole fish dinner and a birthday cake ordered special from the big town on the other side of the island. The generator's about to shut down so we will as well. Good to hear from anyone who leaves a comment. Anyone who doesn't leave a comment is

My mouth is on fire and I have no beer

It doesn't matter how good the Thai food is, you have to switch to club sandwiches and burgers every week or so, if only to let your lips have a break. No tummy troubles either. Still, we've had remarkably good food here on Koh Samui. The three flavours shrimp dish (sweet, sour and spicy) and the chicken with cashews are favourites but we've tried a dozen or more dishes, usually two shared per meal with rice and beer. Most meals have been on the beach or overlooking it. One lunch was on a boat when we did a tour to Angthong Marine National Park. Oddly, we went to the marine park to go hiking. While other people were kayaking (too hard on Bob's back) or snorkelling (Karen can't swim) we were climbing nasty slippery rock trails to great heights for the spectacular views. As usual, the photos will have to wait until we bring the wire connectors with us. Sorry. Our stay on Koh Samui stretched a week longer than we anticipated because of a bit of a miss-step - Bob left his ATM card in our Bangkok hotel's internet room, we think. The bank was quick to cancel it and send out a replacement, but the rush emergency delivery took nine days. Actually, the replacement card didn't work today but Karen's card worked so the cash-flow is fine. It was interesting to stay long-term in a short-term place as we made a lot of friends and soon saw them off. There was Rich and Bec from Brighton going to a wedding in New Zealand; Ian and Colleen from the Okanagan in B.C. who kindly used their rental car to haul us all over the island scouting out yoga studios and to see a mummified monk; and Simon and Jacqueline moving back to Australia from England and their friend Peter who seems to be able to meet them anywhere in the world if there's beer available. Hi to all of them. Hope you see this and leave a comment (Rich and Bec did already, keeners). Other than that our news is a little weak because all we've been doing is reading, playing pool and getting massages (every second day). Tomorrow we take a ferry to the island of Koh Phangan where most tourists will be hurting themselves at the Full Moon Party. We're going deep off-piste to a beach with no roads to it and no pier. We have to jump off the boat into the shallows. Guess we'll be packing our hiking boots and wearing our flipflops. This also means there may be no internet. This part of the world is developing rapidly so that may no longer be true. If you don't hear from us before March, don't worry, we've found an even cheaper beach paradise with no internet.

Now this feels like a travel adventure again

Strange delay getting to Bangkok. Our flight from Sydney was 18 hours late taking off because of the bad weather in London, where the plane originated. Not a big deal, though, because the airline put us up in an airport hotel and chitted us for dinner and breakfast. It's not like we were in a hurry. Probably saved a few bucks on the dining. Prices are brilliant here in Bangkok, and this is the expensive part of the country. We bought airline tickets to Ko Samui and fly on Wednesday. Cost about 5,200 baht which, let me think, works out to $150 one-way for both of us. See. Cheap. Can't wait to hit a beach cause we are badly in need of an ocean breeze. God it's humid here. It's 10 p.m. and we're still sweating. Can't complain though, it's not as crappy as Europe or North America. We're sending heat vibes to all our friends and family in our thoughts. We are definitely leaning towards the "lucky us, pinch me, I'm really in Bangkok" end of the "how's it going" scale. No question. We felt a little homesick in Australia because things kept reminding us of home. That's gone now. Nothing here reminds us of home, especially not the tall cockroaches. Not only are the cockroaches long, but they are TALL too. Yikes. We spent this afternoon (about 35 C) wandering around the Grand Palace, which is really a walled area of the city, sort of like Beijing's Forbidden City, but with many huge domes plated in gold. Many photos later and we were suffering from dehydration so for a late lunch we ordered two huge bottles of water and two huge bottles of beer, just to get started. Total bill for the meal and drinks was 461 baht or, let me think, $14. And that was the most touristy part of town. Our local street food, half a block from our hotel, is better food and cheaper. Yesterday we had hour-long foot massages for 250 baht a person or about $7. Equal parts relaxing and painful, and Bob had to go straight to bed afterwards. We might try it again tomorrow after we visit a few more Buddhas - standing, reclining and marble.

Keep those cards and letters coming

First off, we wanted to let everyone know how much your comments and greetings meant to us as we tried to get through the holiday social season without our friends and family. We kind of knew it would be hard. It was.

Back to the bloggy bit. We wrapped up Australia with a week in Sydney, mostly because we had to hit the Thai embassy, but also because we wanted to see the New Year's Eve fireworks at the Harbour Bridge. That was fun, if a bit weird. Sort of like one of those big all-day rock concerts - without the music. For us it was 12 hours of waiting around, drinking expensive beer and chatting with lots of other foreigners. I think most locals decided been-there-done-that and the crowd was tourists, just like us. All that waiting and spending $120 on beer seemed like a lot for 15 minutes of fireworks, but it was quite a spectacle. Our favourite bit was the hundreds of little rectangles of blue light underlining the splashy lightshow on the bridge as nearly everybody filmed it with a cellphone or camera. Us too. We'll post a photo if we hit a better internet cafe. Other than that big night out, a twisted ankle has forced us to take it a little easy in Sydney. However, we did manage a bit of sightseeing and ended up at the oldest pub in the city, Lord Nelson's Brewery Pub, where we tried many of their made-on-premises pints and got a little looped. We shared a table with a really nice bunch of Aussies - hi Steve, Steve, Steve*, Stephanie*, Sequel and their friends whose names we drank from our memory. (Actually, Karen might remember a few more names, but, unusually, Bob is writing this post alone while Karen rests her sore ankle.) When some of the Aussie gang first sat down half of them were named Steve so we just called them all Steve. Double-clinks to Steve and Steve. All in all, we're a bit down on big-city Australia (except for our drinking pals) because it's so much like big-city Canada. Bangkok will certainly be a change. Wish us luck.