short pit stop back in Bangkok

Just back from a lovely island in the Gulf of Thailand called Koh Chang. Our first impression was that the beaches were beautiful, but it was very crowded and overdeveloped, tons of obnoxious partying foreigners. Made a move and it turns out that the east coast of Koh Chang was really quiet, only a few restaurants and places to stay on that coastline, it was idyllic and restful.

We really preferred that side of the island. We found an amazing place to stay called the Treehouse. It was dirt cheap for a really simple bungalow, that was basically just a thatched hut on stilts with a porch and a hammock, there wasn't even glass on the windows and only electricity was two lightbulbs that only turned on at night. It was basically camping and we loved it. Lots of time on the beach, went kayaking... it's a beautiful island.

We left Koh Chang to come back to Bangkok to pick up our Vietnam visas, which took nearly a week to process. Bangkok is draining, it makes me kind of cranky. There is a lot about it I love, but it's busy, the air quality is terrible and it's just plain chaotic.

We've had a bit of a stressful 24 hours of constantly changing plans - we were originally heading south but based on a few conversations with people who were just there the weather turns out to be pretty crappy, so we thought to head up to Chiang Mai, a really interesting city in the far north of Thailand, but it turns out that there is a major festival for the next 3 days. This would be awesome except the trains are all full and the bus takes FOREVER to get there. Accommodation prices also spike like crazy during this festival, making it kind of too expensive to go. So we've been doing a lot of time consuming running around in the heat trying to make plans and it's worn us out a bit.

Instead we are heading to Khao Yai national park, described as one of the best parks in the world. It's only a few hours away so we'll do a couple days of hiking and hopefully see some cool wildlife. After the park we'll spend some time in a nearby city called Ayuthaya, a historic world heritage sight, the old capital city of Siam nearly 1000 years ago to do some sightseeing. Then head up to Chiang Mai afterwards when the festival is over. We'll stay in Thailand until Dec 8th, our one month Vietnam visas are from the 8th onwards.

We're both healthy and well!