We are now doing absolutely nothing on a very small island in southern Thailand. We are pretty close to Malaysia on the Adaman Sea. The overnight train from Bangkok was much nicer than we expected. We upgraded to our own sleeper complete with a sink since Dave had such a hard time fitting in the dorm-style sleepers in Europe. We were a bit wary of the lovely chicken dinner included with our fare since the news is filled with not very useful information about the bird flu. Hunger prevailed. No fever as of yet.
We arrived in the buslting town of Hat Yai first thing in the morning and had to wait a few hours for our 2 hr. mini-bus ride to Pak Bara pier. We took the advice of our guidebook and found a Chinese hotel that supposedly served "real" coffee. No such luck, as we endured yet another cup of Nescafe. No, it's not growing on us! We had a yummy bowl of noodle soup to accompany our breakfast. It actually wasnt' THAT weird having soup for breakfast.
We luckily scored the front seat (thanks to D's long legs) for the steamy ride from the western side of Thailand to the east coast. After yet another yummy, filling, and cheap meal of pad thai, we boarded a ferry for an hour to the island of Koh Bulon Lae. We passed the most amazing rock formations and small islands along the way! The ferry stopped a few hundred yards off-shore. We dumped our packs into a long tail boat which took us the rest of the way.
We've been on the island 5 days and anticipate staying another week. We had planned on working our way north checking out several islands along the way. Not so sure now... We've found paradise. Since the island is so far south and hasn't made it into the popular guidebooks, it's not overrun with tourists. Good news for us. Many Europeans here. Clean beach. Our bungalow is $5. A nice meal with drinks is $10. An hour's massage is $7. However, an hour on the internet is $12...Rip off... We are going to try to unplug for a while.
