A Show With Everything but Yul Brynner

So we finally left the island about 2 days after we thought we would. I know, I'm in Thailand and there are thousands of other things to do, but... it's a very hard place to leave. I was even asking about internships at one of the dive shops (I'm horribly under qualified by the way). We spent the first 4 nights on the busy part of the island (between Tonsai Bay and Lodalum Bay), and then we moved up to Laemthong Beach for 2 nights on the north side of the island which is a lot quieter. This area turned out to be mostly honeymooning newlyweds so the three of us were a little out of place.

There are a handful of other small islands around the main island, and we hit a number of them, hanging out at the beach or diving. I was looking online for a map of all the islands to add here, but couldn't really find anything to my liking. I'll have to put together some sort of Google Maps/Earth travel map when I get back. Because yes, I will admit it, I've been using my GPS to track where we've been.

I did finally put some pictures up. Check out my Picasa web album to see them. I only uploaded a few of the many I took, because I usually like to go through and edit them before I post them, but I thought a couple of you might be anxious to see what I'm up to.

The bad news is that I didn't make it to Angkor Wat. Mostly because we stayed a couple extra days on Ko Phi Phi and I would have had to skip most my time in Bangkok. Brandon and Doug weren't interested so I would have had to make the trip to Cambodia on my own, which I might still have considered had it been super easy. I called around and checked on the web for tour information and was getting rather complicated and mixed results. I'm sure in the end I could have made it work, but I decided I would be fine spending 2 days exploring Bangkok instead.

Which is what we did. We got in really late so the first morning was spent sleeping in fairly late the next day. Doug went to meet his friend Chin who lives in Bangkok, and Brandon and I wandered around some of the famous shopping areas. Most noteable was the Panthip Plaza, which is 6 stories of consumer electronic shops, and the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which is a huge outdoor market where you can buy pretty much anything from food to cheap cloths to... pets. I wasn't feeling great that night, so I skipped out when the other guys went clubbing.

The next day we went to Wat Pho, the location of the famous reclining Buddha. Next door was the Grand Palace where we saw more temples. After that... more food, more bars, more walking, more temples. Then, a dinner cruise down the Chao Phraya River. Which can only be explained by this video I took.

Our last night we went to perhaps the most amazingly swanky bar I've ever been to. I took a couple pictures, but the ones on company site are much better. I can't describe it, you really should just look at the pictures.

We said goodbye to Brandon in Tokyo, and Doug and I are now staying with our old high school friend Bryan Hollar (remember that guy!?) . We just got here, so I'll post more latter. I'm having a lot of trouble with Bryan's Japanese keyboard, and every time I go for the space bar in the wrong spot my writing starts to 絵えいおえおあ or something. I have no idea what that says.

Editorial note: blogger is giving me trouble right now when I try to upload inline images so I've given up after just the two. I'll try to add more later.