Koh Phangan

The days are slipping by easily in our tropical paradise. Beautiful warm sunny days, enjoyed from our beach-side bungalow with a coral reef right off the rocks, Ko Phangan is a great place to be right now. We've settled into a quiet little corner of the island with a handful of stilted bungalows on the shore. Our view is straight West and each night we've had quite a show of a sunset, best enjoyed while swinging in the hammock on our deck... It's going to be tough to leave here. So we won't, at least not just yet anyway. We will be here now for almost another week, which has forced us to alter some plans for after we leave here, so that we can stay longer than expected. So, not much to tell really, just a lot of blissful relaxation.....
Oh, but we should mention the Elephants.

A couple of days ago we took a motorbike to the center of the 190 Square Kilometer island to see the Elephants. There are 9 Asian Elephants there, that are fascinating to watch. We realized that other than in Zoo situations, we've never really spent time up close with Elephants, they are amazing animals. You can tell that they are intelligent beasts, the way they use their trunks and feet (which are super cute looking things) is with some real skill. Apparently an elephant can use it's trunk to pick up everything from a small coin to a 600 pound log.

A Thai elephant experience would be complete without riding on one of these huge animals, so we arranged a ride on the back of one of the larger elephants, a 50 year old female from the North of Thailand where she worked in the logging industry, excellent training for carrying both of us on her back with a bag full of camera gear. It's pretty amazing how high up you sit on these elephants, i felt a bit like a character in some fantasy novel, exploring foreign lands on giant mythical beasts. Sadly elephants don't fly, as 'Dumbo' might suggest but none-the-less it was a great experience. Hmmm, actually now I think about it, it was a 'mostly' great experience, there was one unfortunate incident.

On our elephant ride through the jungle we had a Thai elephant driver who spent time walking along side our elephant talking to it and tugging its ears,(i think they like each other). Anyhow, after about 15 minutes on the top of our elephant our Thai guide and driver suggested that we give him the camera so he could take a picture of us on the elephant, what a great idea, I thought. I set up the camera and handed it down to him, he then took his position 10 feet or so in front of us, it looked like he might have gotten a couple of decent photo. He returned to the elephants side and got it moving up a particularly steep section of trail, meanwhile holding onto the camera. While the elephant was working to get up this steep trail our guide had decided to walk a few feet behind the elephant. Now, i am no expert on elephants, but in retrospect, when we are really straining physically it would not be unusual to pass some unexpected wind. Well, keeping in mind that an elephant can consume tones of food a day and the fact that its bowels are surely big enough to house a Thai couple and their child, maybe standing behind it was not such a great idea. So as we were climbing this steep section of trail there was a horrendous sound from the rear of our beast, i turned around to see that our guide/driver was covered in the discharge of a very wet, very large elephant fart. He was trying to wipe the elephant shit off the camera, unaware that we were watching. He held onto the camera for a bit (presumably letting the wet splotches dry in the sun and giving himself time to wipe it off some more). All i could think of was trying to explain this to Canon's service department "...yes, thats right, the substance is elephant shit. Does my warranty happen to cover this? Do many peoples cameras get damaged through elephant shit, or is this an unusual case......yes, uh huh.........I see..." this most certainly wouldn't go down well. Anyhow, all unnecessary worry in the end. Canon has apparently already considered this eventuality and it turns out that the camera is in fact shit proof. fantastic!

Lots of love to our family and friends, wish you were here!!!

Underwater Photographs Around Koh Tao

Just a quick update here. Just before we left Koh Tao we were given a disk of underwater photos from various people on Koh Tao. We thought we would post a few for you to take a look at. We did have a few questions from some of you about some underwater shots, so here you go. I am sure that for those who enjoy the experience of Scuba, it will be nice to look at some of these shots of the divers, for us it is a real reminder of gliding along under water.

Note that these are not our pictures, but were given to us from other photographers. The link can be found under the 'Photos of Thailand' link.

15 minutes in Myanmar

Well not much has changed here really, except that a few days ago we realized our 30 day visa for Thailand was a couple of days from expiring. We asked around about what to do, and checked out some of the 'official' resources on the matter. It turns out that the visa situation is a little bit odd and we basically told that we have to leave Thailand and then come back in to renew our visa.

Here on the island of Koh Tao some people we met have lived here for over 12 years that have been making a monthly trip out of Thailand to renew their visa (what a pain). It is sort of a strange situation, the government here makes no money from the visas since they're free, the travel agencies that sell 'visa runs' however, they make a nice little profit. We signed up for the trip to Myanmar (Burma) to reset our visa, the other popular option from here is Malaysia, but that trip takes 4 days. To add to the confusion, one can only renew a visa 3 times by crossing into a particular country, which means that every 4th month people from here will make the longer trip to Malaysia. We were given another option, but with some questionable legality. It was offered to us that we give our passports to a guy who disappears with them and returns with fresh stamps 3-4 days later, a lot of people that work here go for this option since it does not require them to take any time off work, the cost however is the same as if you personally leave the country. Using this option your passport will come back with new stamps that could be from anywhere, we heard of one guy whose passport came back indicating he had been to Cardiff, Wales and then returned to Thailand, funny! The not so funny side of this way of renewing your stamps came from a couple we chatted with whose friend ended up in an awkward situation doing this. He had given his passports to someone who would have them stamped, everything seemed fine, except that this guy got caught by the police with dozens of Farang passports (Farang is what the Thai's call foregners). The police then rounded up all the people who the passports belonged too and the Thai guy who had them and everybody ended up in jail. Most of the people who use this 'send it off and get it stamped' system are actually working in Thailand illegally. The ironic reality is that without the illegal workforce the Thai tourism industry would collapse. You see it everywhere, the majority of workers at the hotels and restaurants here for example are actually Burmese and not Thai, it is a little bit like the Polish in England for those who are familiar with that situation, only here the Burmese are not legally in Thailand. This leads to some strange situations between the local Burmese and the local police. Some people might pay the police not to be reported (and deported), others might be told they are never allowed to leave the beach they work on, and essentially become prisoners of their work. Many of these Burmese do not have passports either as it costs over 300 pounds sterling (about $640 canadian) to get a passport. Myanmar is not a country where the people have very much money and i don't think it would be out of line to suggest that the cost for a passport is more than most peoples annual income. The government there basically prevents anyone from traveling legally by making it impossible to afford a passport. Anyway, lets get back to our 'legal' situation of renewing our visa.

Two nights ago we boarded an ant infested night boat to Chomphon on the main land of Thailand. The boat had a large open area of dirty mattress' and pillows, the air was stuffy and humid and then of course there were the ants. We were the only Farang on the boat, the others mainly kept to themselves paying no attention to us (which has been the case with most Thai's so far, unless they are trying to get money from you, ironic since Thailand is supposed to be the 'land of smiles,' but this is another story entirely and our opinion on this will be best left until we are finished with this country and have a more rounded opinion of Thai people as a whole). The boat rolled over the waves for about 6 hours, fortuantely Steff had gobbled down a couple of effective motion sickness pills. We arrived in Chomphon port at about 4am. We stayed on the boat until a small van pulled up near the boat, it was still dark and there was an eerie quiet in the port, we were the only ones around. The van sped off, picked up a few others and we made our way across the width of the Southern peninsula of Thailand to a place called Ranong. We went to a small office, got stamped 'out of Thailand' and then got back in the van where we driven to a small gurney alley between some buildings. We were told to hand over our passports and some money ($10 US each) and then walk down the alleyway, one of the girls in our van voiced her suspicion and was basically just told to do what she was told (we had remembered from our travel agent, who organized the trip, that she had informed us to just do exactly as we were told). The alleyway ended up at a small pier behind the buildings and our passports were handed to a totally baked teenager sporting a giant pot leaf on a satchel which he loaded our passports and money into and told us to follow him, the girl who was already visibly uncomfortable once again started asking questions, we told her to relax and go with it. Our boat steamed off into the large inlet from the Andaman sea and made the choppy 20 minute journey across to Myanmar. We got off and everything went fine. We got stamped in and out of Burma and were given 15 minutes in the town. We were offered a plethora of pharmaceutical drugs, you name it, they can sell it to you, and all this before we left the immigration office. Outside the immigration the closest shop, just past a large sign that reads "Let us all cooperate for the eradication of narcotic drugs", is a drug store, with a few more punters hanging about, truly astonished that we had no appetite for at least some Vallium. We had a quick walk around the town, the people seemed very open and genuinely friendly, much more so than Thailand. It was more run down, definitely poorer, but in a strange way we felt very comfortable, it reminded us a little more of India.

After our flirt with Myanmar we headed back to the boat and did the whole trip in reverse. So, after 17 hours we were are back on Koa Tao, 2 motorcycle rides, 4 boat trips and 2 van rides later, all for a little dated stamp in the passport(!). We are finally getting ready to make our next move. We are thoroughly relaxed now having spent 3 weeks in our little bungalow, it has been nice to stay put for a while, get to know people, figure out all the best restaurants and do some work. Yes, belive it or not we have been chompoing through a bunch of work while we have been here too, which has been good. The last thing we want to do here is a stock photo shoot with a girl we met who should be perfect for what we have in mind. Because the weather has been very poor we have two sets of shots to work on, one set for good weather and one set for poor weather, my guess is that we will end up doing the poor weather shots. But once we that is finished we will be off to the next location...

... Lots of love to all our family and friends, we are thinking of you! xox

Still on Koh Tao Island

Well we are still enjoying the slow pace of island life here on Koh Tao. We've spent plenty of time underwater, which has been great. It has been really nice to get out diving again, that feeling of weightlessness as you glide through the alien under water world, its like visiting another planet, right here on earth. So far we have done six varied dives, all within an hour of the island by boat.

Some of the highlights on the dives have been swimming through short underwater caves, hanging out with the huge range of colorful fish and coral, sometimes on reefs or in a field of life covered boulders, and other times swimming around giant pinnacles of rock (usually granite) that push up from the ocean floor. We also saw a larger shark on a dive this morning to Chumphon Pinnacles, pretty amazing.

Chumphon is full of life, it's pinnacles reach as high as 14 meters below the surface of the water. The location is 11km out from the island in fairly deep water, the site is teaming with schools of fish. We were greeted on our decent by a school of bat fish, each the size of a large dinner plate. They were totally unconcerned about the 5 of us bubble blowers descending, i assumed they were the pinnacles welcoming comity, funnily enough they were waiting for us at the end of the dive too. The big highlight of the dive was our shark encounter, we figured him to be about 3 meters long, he was a beauty. We were at a comfortable distance and he didn't seem to interested in us, which might be a good thing. We have actually been told that the sharks are quite scared of the bubbles we blow out, its crazy that these sleek underwater hunters are scared of a few bubbles! the rest of the dive we saw the greatest concentration of see anemones, along with their resident matching coloured fish, that we have seen yet. The nicest looking residents are the clown fish, each with its own anemones. We saw a cute family of clown fish today, mom, dad and a little one, all hanging out in their anemone. Just to mention, if you are not sure of what the clown fish look like, just think of the movie ' Finding Nemo.'

Anyway, so the diving is really nice, i will hold off on giving a description of each dive however, in order to preserve your sanity and consciousness. We have been out and done a few great snorkel trips, that has also been really nice. We decided to pick up some basic snorkel gear as it will be useful now for the remainder of our trip. So what else have we been doing? Relaxing, a lot. Reading books, enjoying a bit of meditation and of course eating. The food is still excellent and our bodies seem to be cruising along without any food caused illness, which is fantastic. And thats about all for now. Unfortunately we will be uprooting from here soon, but only to another warm tropical island, so i am sure we will be just fine.

Also we have added a few new pictures into our Thailand gallery, located in the link top right of this page.

Lots of love to all our family and friends...