Sak Yant

Sometimes in life you find yourself working in a rice paddy in SE Asia.  Sometimes after you're done working in that rice paddy you explore the countryside via motorbike.  Sometimes when you're exploring the countryside you make a random left on a road you've never been on.  Sometimes when you make that left you find a beautiful Wat and meet monks there.  Sometimes you make friends with those monks and go back time after time.  Sometimes, those monks are heavily tattooed and you think it's wonderful.  Sometimes you ask those monks if you can have a tattoo like theirs.  Sometimes, they say yes and take you to their Ajahn.

Rainy rice day

This morning we rode bikes out to the farm alone to work in the rice paddy.  After a few hours of pulling weeds it started to pour rain - South Louisiana style!  So we ran for cover at the nearby open aired hut to wait it out.  After a minutes the rain let up and Mo decided to take a spin on the bicycle around the lake.  When she returned three cows were chasing her thinking - is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?  Well, she didn't have any bananas to give them (which they love) so they just kind of hung out around us and the hut.  After about 5 more minutes it started to rain again and really POUR.  Well, after about 30 seconds of standing outside the cows decided to join us in the hut to wait out the rain.  Mo, Richard, one heifer and two bulls.  Unfortunately, we didn't bring a camera.

Smile and Breathe

Phuket and Bangkok are exactly what you'd expect so we can skip over them.  Minus to say that they were nice cheap stopping points (filled with con artists, drunken Europeans and every venereal disease known to man... and probably a few that are yet to be named.)  However, Faasai to the East of Bangkok is a different place - a world unto its own.  We have finally left the "Lonely Planet" guide and ventured off into somewhere actually remote.  The resort we are staying at is beautiful, filled with all types of flowers and, again (and I think this is going to be a reoccuring theme) the food is amazing - prepared by a sweet lady named Sula (I'm 100% positive that's not how it's spelled but that's the best way we've figured out to pronounce it thus far. 

We wake up in the morning around 6 and sit on our porch and drink coffee.  Around 6:30 we head to fields to work... and I mean work.  We either work on the farm clearing land, working in rice paddies or planting things (today it was Mango trees.)  Or we work around the resort weeding, trimming bushes or making compost.  Around 8:30 Sula makes us a wonderful breakfast that we take our time eating and then it's off to work again until noon.  The work may seem boring but from the Buddhists I've spoken with around here there is a key to it.... just smile and breathe.  It's amazing how much that really can change your attitude when you're bent over in a rice paddy pulling weeds for hours. 

Since we're done with work at noon everyday we have the rest of the time to lounge and do as we please.  So far our favorite activity has been to hop on one of the scooters and drive the beautiful curving beachfront roads - Mo hugging onto Richard... Richard remembering to drive on the left side of the road.  We've really been able to explore a lot of the country side this way and if it were easier to navigate and read the road signs we would seriously consider just buying a motorcycle and side car for the remainder of the trip (it's amazing how cheap they are) and get to explore more of the "true" SE Asia (ie, not what's in the guide books.) 

In any event, we couldn't be happier here and will be uploading pictures very soon.  Remember, friends, smile and breathe. 

Damnit, Monkey

What a great past few days.  We left the silk draped women of Kota Bharu and made it to Langkawi Island on the West coast of Malaysia.  Langkawi is a beautiful archipelago of 104 tiny islands about an hour ferry ride from the mainland.  While there we hired the parasailing guys to drive us out to a deserted island and private beach and spent the day on "Diamond Island" before they picked us up 6 hours later.  The next day we took a cab to the cable car that goes to the top of the island and got some amazing pictures and finished up by playing in a nearby waterfall.

Funny story, when we were on Diamond Island we had a humorous encounter with a monkey who decided to to go through our stuff while we were swimming.  We ran up to the beach to get him away but before we could shove him off he went through all of our stuff debating whether to take our clothes, a life jacket and our books before he finally settled on taking the rest of Mo's food. 

Today we hopped on a ferry to Satun, Thailand then took a bus to Phuket.  We aren't sure how long we'll stay here but the hotel room is very very nice (for $20 a night) so we might be persuaded to stay a few days.  The bus ride up here was interesting... for the first time we didn't have a luxury bus and our driver must have been playing Meatloaf's masterpiece, Bat Out of Hell, on his iPod.  Surprisingly, no nausea for the first 6 hours... until the baby behind us had to go to the bathroom and the mother couldn't do anything with it for over an hour... in a hot bus with no AC.  WOOO!  :)  But it's all funny now that it's behind us.

We'll leave you with one really nice mental image from the past few days (not regarding baby poop or a beach.)  Kota Bharu is a highly Muslim city and all of the major intersections have huge loudspeakers that play a chanting prayer 5 times a day.  Since there isn't much to do in the city, one day at dusk we're laying in the hotel room reading with all of the windows open.  It started to pour raining and as soon as it did, the prayers started up on the loud speakers for 20 minutes.  Everything combined for a most lovely scene.

Pictures

It has come to our attention that there was some confusion as to where the photos were being uploaded.  You can see them all here.  We've got a lot more that should be auto uploaded as soon as we have a solid Wifi connection.  Enjoy.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108781435296042098143/TravelGumbo

Onward thru the fog!

Yesterday we hopped on the ferry back to the mainland and got on a bus and made our way North to Kota Bharu.  We're headed now to the West coast to Pulau Langkawi.  We plan on spending a few days there before traveling to Thailand by boat (to miss as much of Southern Thailand as possible... and spend some more time on the beach.)  I wish we could upload pictures but our current hotel, while being the largest most accommodating room we've had, doesn't have Wifi so we can't connect the K1 to the internet.  However, expect a bunch soon now that we're back on the mainland and internet connections aren't so slow.  Just know, the food is still spicy and cheap, the weather is warm and "slightly" humid and the people have been wonderfully nice.

Sometimes you bite the jungle, sometimes the jungle bites you

Our most eventful night to date.  One of the most adventurous parts of traveling to exotic and beautiful tropical destinations is getting to experience first hand the wonderful bugs and insects.  Morgan has a most unfortunate experience with one last night, about 9:30 PM a 7" long red centipede stung her on the foot.  We had no idea centipedes could be so painful.  It has been over 12 hours since the sting and still her leg feels like "dry ice burning the inside."  No joke, I've seen this girl break toes and lose nails and hardly a peep - this was something different all together and unfortunately it doesn't look like the pain is out of sight yet (maybe another 12-36 hours from what we can google.)  That's the fun in traveling though, right?  Sometimes, you're on top of the world looking down on creation... and sometimes, you're a dead female pop star from the 70's.  We'll spare the pics on this one.  ;)

Of Mice and Men

Much to our displeasure, after having worked here for a while we've realized this job is not exactly what we had in mind.  The 4-5 hours a day of work and then relaxing in the sun did not come into fruition.  In reality, its more like work from 7:30 am till 9:30 pm with a 3 hour break... turns out there is a ton to be done on a resort with only a few people trying to do it all and we aren't content not having time off to be together and explore/enjoy the island (that is, afterall, why we're here in the first place.)  As such, we've decided to move on down the road.  We told Sylvia and Peter we wouldn't abandon them and would work until they had found replacements but it is our intention to move on.  Where to?  We've got a few options!  Maybe we'll head South towards Singapore, or we'll head up to Thailand... where ever the wind blows our sails.  Stay tuned!