Where are we?

My sister emailed to tell me that I'm definitely the first person to have ever spotted a wombat in Thailand.  Apparently, the order of recent posts has been a bit confusing. I've tried to back-edit posts adding warning of temporal disorder.

For those who want to sort out where we are and where we've been, you can look back at my third post which lists all the places we visited in Australia and New Zealand. For the Thailand portion of the blog, here's a brief summary.

Nov 22
Bangkok. Just passing through this time.

Nov 23-27
Railay Beach, Krabi Province. Railay is a peninsula on the west coast that everyone refers to as an island because the only way to get there is by longtail boat. It's a bit touristy and a bit overpriced by Thailand standards but the crazy limestone formations (karsts) are popular with the climbing crowd.

Nov 28
Krabi Town. After Railay, this nearby town on the "mainland" felt a bit more authentic even though it was also largely focussed on tourism. I rented a moped for the afternoon and headed to a nearby National Park. The park was nice but I enjoyed the ride out there even more - it felt great to see the country side and see what Thailand looks like without all the tourists around. We also got Thai massages there. I told the woman about my separated shoulder (it took some creative gesturing to communicate that one) and tendonitis. By the time she was done with me, I don't think I had any ligaments or tendons left so problems solved.

Nov 29
Travel to Ko Lipe. A full day affair. 4 hours on a "bus" (minivan) followed by 2 hours on a speedboat to get to a tiny island in the Andaman Sea.

Nov 30 - Dec 3
Ko Lipe. Ko Lipe is hard to get to but worth the effort. Thanks to Mike B for the suggestion. It is a bit touristy and a bit pricey but really mellow with gorgeous beaches and great snorkelling. We also spent two days finishing our Open Water SCUBA certification. In case I forget to blog about the minnow schools and trumpet fish, can someone remind me? Very cool experience.

Dec 4
Getting to Hat Yai (a city in the south of Thailand). Getting from Ko Lipe to Chang Mai (from far south to far north) can be done in many ways. We decided that time constraints were a good excuse to avoid the 20 hour bus ride so we went the "easy" way. All we had to do was get to Hat Yai for one of the daily 1:30 pm flights straight to Chang Mai. See this post for the full story. Memorable day.

Dec 5
Chang Mai. Chang Mai is a major city in the north of the country. Lots of tourists, temples, students and tailors. Our guidebook told us that we should come to Chang Mai to learn. I don't think we consciously tried to do that but you can't really avoid it here. We spent 24 hours at a meditation retreat which was mostly focussed on learning how to meditate but we also picked up a lot about Buddhism and the local culture. The next day, we did a temple walking tour (9 temples in a day - apparently very lucky) and finished that off with a trip to a local tailor where we learned how to tell the difference between various cotton, polyester, wool and silk blends (and did a little shopping too). And today, we just got back from a full day Thai cooking class where we got a tour of a local market, did the shopping and then learned how to prepare five different dishes each (Pranang curry, green curry, hot and sour soup, spring rolls, papaya salad, deep fried bananas, sticky rice with mango...). Tomorrow we're off to the Elephant Nature Park and then a couple days of hiking in the mountains near town. Finally, back to Bangkok for a couple days before heading home on the 16th.

So now that you know the where, what and when, I can focus on telling stories for a while. But for now, I have a paper to resubmit and two MSc theses to proofread so I may not post anything for a little while.