Pictures of Little Andaman

So...Thailand is great. Peter and I had a great time just north of Malaysia the week before picking up Mike. We rented bikes in a town called Trang, then rode down the coast until the rain forced us to stop at the Hat (beach) Yao Nature Resort. The owner was a really friendly Thai couple, the husband a former Anthropologist and currently working to establish several self-sustainable and eco-friendly island resorts. At dinner our first night there, he gave Peter and I rough descriptions of how to find caves hidden among forests of mangroves - caves that were apparently used by pirates to store booty as recently as 60-80 years ago. Early the next morning we rented a kyak and paddled towards a nearby cape. We were inside a big inlet from the coast that carved a grid of canals through shores thick with mangroves - their roots branching out above the water and plunging down to the mud below. We entered a small canal barely visible from the main waterway. After several detours in the maze of mangroves, we approached a cave opening up from the water. The top of the cave was about a meter above the water, then the rock continued upwards creating an enormous cliff. We paddled inside the cave to a small room with walls all around, except for a small dark patch to the left. We moved to the left, using our hands on the ceiling to propell us through, and were soon enshrouded in complete darkness. We crept forward and, just as we ran into a wall, saw a dim light coming from our right. We turned once more and now paddled to another small room that opened up to a lagoon of mangrove canals enclosed on all sides by cliffs dotted with greens that reminded us of home (picture of Pete above). In the side of one of these cliffs there was a dry cave that, after getting stuck in mud up to our knees, we entered and explored. The walls of this cave were tiered with natural shelves - a natural trophy room for pirates. Afterwards, we left the lagoon and caves, returned to the main canal and continued to paddle around the cape. Far ahead, we spotted a rock hanging of the water that looked like a good place for lunch. Just before reaching the rock, we saw and turned into a little canal to our left that wound us through the mangroves to another cave. We pulled our kyak onto the mud and, rather than going towards the cave in front of us, climbed a ladder to a small plateau that turned out to be the mouth of an enormous cave. The ground quickly dropped into the cave as the ceiling towered above us. We walked up a little ridge on the left side of the cave to a small opening that looked into anther section hidden from the entrance. It was amazing - Peter and I sat in this tiny nook in the far corner of the cave and looked down onto a natural cathedral of rock. The sides again sloped down in tiers to the center of the room where a giant pillar of rock shot all the way to the ceiling, supporting the enormous cavern. We sat in awe for a long time and ate our lunch despite the strong wind tunneling from the mouth of the cave, through our little hole and out a small opening at the top of the cathedral's far side. This opening gave the cave a brilliant light that sparkeled off the smooth rock. After spending a long time exploring this cave and discovering new routes between the two rooms, we geared up to leave - unfortunately, we spent a little too long in the cave and by the time we left our little canal had completely dried up. No problem. Peter and I grabbed the bow line and sprinted up the muddy canal, dragging the kyak. Now we were muddy and sweaty...time for a swim. We kyaked to a beautiful beach and played frisbee out in the water for several hours until sunset, when we returned to the resort for dinner and bed.
The next day it was onwards to our next adventure. We loaded our motorcycles onto a small wooden ferry and crossed over to Ko (island) Libong. Our two days spent there were wonderful. We saw the whole island on our bikes - riding single-track dirt roads with leaves falling in the wind and blowing all around us, beautiful scenery - it was amazing. We found several spots with decent snorkelling and some beautiful, deserted beaches. On our way back to Trang, while riding through pounding rain, my bike broke down, which caused some hassle with the renter and we missed our train to Bangkok. We hired a driver to take us 120 km north, to Thong Lo, where we got on an overnight train in the only section available...first class! I'm never going back to second. We had our own booth with comfortable beds...I think it was the best we slept the whole trip. On the sixteenth we picked up Mike at the Bangkok airport and went directly to the bus station and caught a ride going southest to Trat, a town just west of Cambodia.
Early the next morning we rented motorbikes (the only way to travel). It was Mike's first full day in Thailand and we already had him on a bike. We caught a ferry to Ko Chang, a fairly popular island with tourists - the west coast is lined with bungalo resorts. We spent lots of time in the water and enjoyed exploring the roads with steep hills, sharp turns and incredible vistas of the coastline. While enjoying the nightlife, we went for a little skinny dip in the tropical waters and I managed to lose my wallet...minor setback but its all worked out. For our last day on the island we rented a great two-story bungalo right on a beautiful beach. From this spot we rented a kyak and, in the pouring rain, paddled out to a small island a good way off shore. As we paddled out, the water was deep blue all around. I put a mask on and dove as deep as I could and still could not see bottom - so I just relaxed underwater and lay suspended, my senses drowned out by the temperature and silence of the water and the deep blue that expanded in every direction. It was a very tranquil experience...despite the lack of oxygen. As we approached the island, the deep blue was cut off by a shelf of coral. This patch of coral turned out to be the most incredible snorkelling ever. There were fish of all shapes and sizes, bright coral with giant neon anenomies and huge, daunting sea urchins...and we had it all to ourselves. The next day was an all day journey back to Bangkok where we saw Peter off on his plane back home. Then Mike and I boarded an over night train to Chiang Mai...first class of course. It was nice to see Liz again - her hospitality is so warm and her house so comfortable. However, we were only around a day before heading on our bikes (first thing we did in Chiang Mai was rent motorbikes) north to Mae Sai, the border town to Myanmar. I needed to cross the border and return in order to renew my visa - I can't believe I've already been here over a month! We stopped along the way and took a nice hike and later explored a market in Chiang Rai before finally arring in Mae Sai just at dusk. The next morning we spent about an hour in Myanmar buying DVDs at the market that practically sits on the border. We couldn't resist; the DVD's are from China and are the real thing, not pirated qualitly, and are dirt cheap. Mom and Dad...you'll have a nice package arriving next week. The drive home from Mae Sai was incredible. We took a small mountain road most of the way that wound us in and out of incredible hills and made for some of the most fun roads on a bike I've yet to ride. The last several days in Chiang Mai we've hung out with Bryce, a college roommate of Mike's, and his friend Joe. Tonight we are going to a Muy Thai match, Thai boxing (with a little martial arts mixed in)...it's 9 fights in three hours and I can't wait! Mike and I are hoping to head south in several days to enjoy some more beaches before I leave next week on the 7th! Having a great time here, but am also very excited to see Michelle and explore Europe. Sorry for the long post...hope I haven't bored you to death. I'm gonna put another post up right now with some pictures from my trip (something I should've been doing the whole time). Take care everyone!
-Sam

too tired

After a great week on beaches and islands down south, back in Bangkok to pick up Mike tomorrow morning...so excited!! Unfortunately, am too tired and worn out right now for a long post. Two words for what's to come in the next post: Pirate Caves.
Hope everyone is well. -Sam

Right on Schedule

Wedensday night, Peter and I took an overnight bus to Bangkok. We arrived at 5:30am, got some breakfast, and then rented a room and slept until 12. We then devised another one of our brilliant plans. We were going to take a train to Phattalung, in the deep south of Thailand, where we would rent motorbikes and spend a week exploring the coast. The next train, we discovered, left at 3:50. That gave us three hours to meet Peter's friend, store our bags, pack small backpacks for the trip, I had to change my tickets to Budapest at the travel agent and we also managed to find a couple to buy our room off of us...oh yeah, and we had to buy tickets for the train. Somehow, we managed all these tasks and, like always, were right on schedule. Now, after a 16 hour train ride, we are sitting in Phattalung trying to plan our next step. It's early, we're tired, and there are no motorbikes to rent in Phattalung. Change of plans. We're gonna hop a short bus down to Trang and try to rent bikes there. More to follow... 10-4 out.

Hello all!
After several relaxing days spent recovering from the Seahawks' devastating loss, Peter and I are packing up to catch an overnight bus down to Bangkok. From there it's either to some southern beaches or over to Cambodia where we'd spend a week before returning to Bangkok to pick up Mike Elliott from the airport.
Chiang Mai: 4-6 meals a day, a wide variety of food. Tennis, scrabble, or ultimate frisbee in the afternoon; or all three. Cards and games at night hanging out at Paradise Pizza, a friend of Peters' restaraunt. Nice chats with Liz, comfortable house, hot shower and great hostess. Not a bad way to relax a couple days. Sad to be leaving this great city, but excited to come back with Mike and show him around.
Michelle is doing well in Budapest. She is learning Hungarian, travelling the surrounding area, hanging out with locals and finding numerous vegetarian restaraunts to satisfy her diet. Having a great time now knowing that I've got months of happiness ahead of me. Hope that everyone back home is happy and well.
-Sam

A case of the mondays

Super Bowl has given us all here in Thailand a 'case of the mondays.' Actually it has only affected the four of us who really care...but we are really sad.
Saturday night Peter and I left at 3:30am and hiked up a mountain that sits on the edge of Chiang Mai to a Temple for sunrise. The walk was about 12 kilometers and took 2 1/2 hours. The sunrise was anti-climatic, it was blocked by a bunch of haze and clouds (the pollution is pretty bad in Chiang Mai - the city is clean but air pollution is terrible). However, watching the monks go through their morning rituals and teach a bunch of school children walking meditation was well worth the walk.
This morning (monday), we woke up at 4:45am to claim good seats at a bar we'd carefully chosen to watch the superbowl - turns out we were the only ones who really cared. Kickoff was at 6:30am - I wont go into the details of the game, the wound is still fresh. In several days Peter and I will head south to some tropical beaches. Not a bad life to be living...even if its a life where the Seahawks are only number 2.

Catching up

Okay...I'm really sorry I haven't published a post for such a long time. I'm gonna try to catch up now...I will try to make sure this sporadic posting does not become habit.

Last I wrote, Noah, Ryan and I were heading off for our second week-long camping trip at the lighthouse on Little Andaman; this time without any guides and with a little buzz from the rice beer the Nicobarese kept forcing us to drink...which was great. Though, it only took about fifteen minutes of hiking in the intense noonday heat for us to sweat all the rice beer out, then we were left tired and dehydrated, packs laden with heavy bags of rice and cooking supplies and ten kilometers to the lighthouse. We managed to keep a good pace, however, and reached our campsite just a little before sunlight. We set up as much as we could, then cooked our first dinner of rice, vegetables and fish (we bought a fish from some fisherman who'd landed on the beach to fetch water from the lighthouse well just as we were hiking by) - with many, many more meals just like it to follow. The next day the waves had dropped to about waist high - so Noah and I went out spear fishing while Ryan went to collect water. Spear fishing was absolutely amazing - I was expecting to snorkel around for an hour, see several schools of fish and maybe get several shots off (the spear is just a long, aluminum pole with a three-pronged spear tip. At the base it has an elastic loop which you wrap around your hand and stretch out to the tip of the spear, providing about two meters of solid projection underwater when you release.) But when I finally got my face underwater and started out the channel towards the open ocean I was amazed: There were literally hundreds of fish in every direction, of all different shapes and sizes. The reef was for the most part dead and although that made the bottom a little less colorful, the contrast it provided with these schools of purple, yellow and orange fish was breathtaking. With so many fish you'd think it'd be easy to spear one. Wrong. The bigger fish are much more skirmish so you spend about fifteen minutes following a school of big, fat fish before finally diving down and trying, as stealthily as possible, to sneak up for a shot. Needless to say I was unsuccessful - as was Noah, though Noah did put some holes in a few fish that managed to get away. Our source of protein for the night was still alive, swimming far from us in the ocean. That night the waves picked up a little and we surfed our left point at about waist-chest high and had a great time. We walked in at sunset and on the dried reef exposed by the low tide I spotted a giant clam. So with my one free hand I worked for about five minutes to pry this huge clam off it's rock. Finally, it gave way and I jerked it back, slicing the inside of my hand on some coral...stupid Sam. It was not that bad, though, and we were happy to have a little meat for the night...though none of us really liked clams to begin with.
As the week wore on we continued to relax, joke and cook by the campfire in our remote corner of paradise. Only one thing dissapointed us: the waves continued to drop in size. By the fourth day it was too small to surf and so we began to make plans to head back. The night before our departure we were gathered around the campfire smoking beedies (an indian leaf rolled up around a tiny bit of tobacco), which had become a nightly past time to pass time, when we heard footsteps coming towards us from the jungle. Every night we heard strange noises, so at first we let it go unnoticed...but then it got closer. We stood up and went to the edge of our clearing shining flashlights into the jungle; "Hello!?!" No response except for the steady beat of feet coming from low down in the bush. By this point I had the cooking knife in my hand and Ryan was holding his spear gun; we were expecting a crocodile to emerge at any second. Finally the beast appeared...to our relief it was one of the thousands of stray dogs that roam around the island. Earlier that day Noah and Ryan had spotted a sea snake, the most venomous alive, while cleaning a fish. That and the ticks we all discovered around our bodies, I had two in my armpit and one where the sun don't shine, all signaled to one thing: "Little Andaman, we've had a great time, but I think it's time to leave while we are still alive."
The next day we hiked back to town and got on a ferry to Port Blair. I had three days left on my trip, so after a day in Port Blair, we got on another ferry, this time headed to Havelock Island. Noah and Ryan had more time before leaving the Andaman's, so they would stay about a week on Havelock and I would depart the next day back to Port Blair to catch my plane leaving early the next morning. Havelock was...interesting. There are pretty much four main beaches, beach #1, beach #3, beach #5 and beach #7, each with its own set of resorts. These resorts consist of many "eco-huts", little bamboo huts on stilts, and a center area where food is served. Each resort is set up so that you never have to leave, and the impression I got is that most people don't. It was very nice and relaxing and I could see how one could easily get sucked into the laid back lifestyle and have two weeks go by in the blink of an eye. More than anything, my day on Havelock made me appreciate even more the amazing adventure that we'd accomplished on Little Andaman. People on Havelock approached us and asked, "are you the Americans who were surfing on Little Andaman?" So many people had either travelled unsuccesfuly to Little Andaman, or had wanted to go but heard all the horror stories about no lodging and no restaraunt, that everyone was curious to hear our story and many, to our suprise, had somehow already heard of us. We were perserverent and patient with our trip to Little Andaman and were rewarded with one of the most unique, trying and beautiful experiences I will ever have. To top it off, Noah and I (Ryan was sick in bed) took a rickshaw to beach number seven, which everyone was saying was the most beautiful beach in the world. It was hardly comprable to many of the beaches we'd trekked on our trip, and didn't even touch the stretch of white sand beach we walked between Jackson Creek and Kumari Point. I felt blessed. Blessed to be on this trip following my bliss, but even more blessed to have the drive of adventure, to have met Noah and Ryan with a shared motivation of surfing and blessed for our interactions with the amazing Nicobarese people that made our trip so fantastic. Mission Accomplished. Now it was time for my next adventure: Thailand.
After spending 50 rupees (about $1) for a funky room in Port Blair the night before my departure, and after getting about 200 mosquito bites on my back during sleep (roughly 4 mosquito bites per rupee), I left for Chennai where I would stay one night before flying into Bangkok, Thailand. In Chennai, I splurged and stayed in a very nice four star hotel that did my laundry and provided my first real hot shower since I left America. I worked out in the gym and then enjoyed a beer on the rooftop terrace that looked over most of Chennai. Durfing the day I had wandered around the city and found myself enjoying it much more than I expected. It was quite pleasant the second time around without the initial culture shock and the lonliness I felt at the beginning of my journey. I, by this point, had fallen in love with Indian food and instead of eating at my hotel, was eating at the little hole-in-the wall restaraunts that are everywhere in India. I feel I developed a kind of love-hate relationship with India and it's people. At the start of my trip I would have never, ever believed I would say these words, but: Someday I would like to come back and spend time travelling the mainland of India. I can only imagine how beautiful the mountainous regions of the north and the endless rice patties of the south must be. However, for now I put India behind me because...I'm going to Thailand! Actually, right now I'm in Thailand.
After arriving in Bangkok, I got a cheap flight up to Chaing Mai on a Thai airline. Already I noticed the stark contrast between Thailand and India. Not only was everything so accessable, such as all different types of food, clean streets with (somewhat) organized transportation, but it was a different breed of travellers as well. Whereas in India where 80 percent of the travellers I met had dreadlocks and smelled of patchuli oil, Thailand had every kind of foreigner: the frat guy that just wants to get laid, the young couple on vacation, the old couple on vacation, the old, scuzzy white guy who wants to find a wife and the ragged surfer kid from Washington...that's me...oh yeah, and they're a lot of hippies (young and old) here too. Anyhow...I eventually arrived in Chaing Mai. I had by this point walked out of so many airports in the past month with one constant - I was alone. But walking out of the Chaing Mai airport was one of the sweetest sights I've seen: Peter Bonoff jumping up and down waving his arms. It was a nice feeling, to say the least. Peter has been in Chaing Mai since late September, so he knows the city and the culture well (and has even picked up a little of the language). Outside the airport I jumped on the back of Peter's motorcycle and we zipped into Chaing Mai where we got a cheap room at a guest house and went out for dinner, beers and lots of catching up. The next day we made contact with Liz Scribner and moved into the extra room in her beautiful town house near the heart of the city. Liz has been absolutely wonderful: she is such a laid back, gracious host...and she even puts up with my smelly feet - staying with her has been great. After a couple days of 'chilling,' I rented a motorcycle and Peter and I headed out to Doi Inthanon National Park, home of the highest mountain in Thailand. We stayed there for five days and had a wonderful time camping, going on beautiful hikes up to cascading waterfalls and majestic caves and doing some birding as the park is home to some 200 species of birds. Dad - you'll love this - on one of our hikes we scared a large white bird that flew up right in front of us. It was a beautiful white with long tail feathers and something oddly familiar about the sound of it's heavy, beating wings. We described it to one of the avid 'birders' in the area and discovered what it was: a silver pheasant. A silver pheasant! I didn't know there was such a thing. It was great to see such an odd variation of such a familiar bird. Although hiking is great, I might argue that zipping around winding mountain roads with amazing vistas in every direction on a motorbike is better. I've had so much fun riding a motorcycle...I love it!
Well...last night Peter and I got back to Chaing Mai. After a trip like that, coming back to a comfortable home and a hot shower is great. Today we slept in, went out and played tennis and ate several meals (we eat about 4-5 meals a day here) and are now back at Liz's. We are all resting and gearing up for the big game that airs monday morning at 6:30 here. GO HAWKS!! Well...believe it or not, I've caught up. I'll try hard not to get so far behind in the future...and I'll have more detailed descriptions of the amazing sights I've been seeing in Thailand. It is a beautiful country...and so clean! I love it. I hope this finds everyone who reads it healthy and happy. A few notes: Grandpa & Grandma - your first postcard is coming soon! David, Lindsay, Katie and Jenny - thank you for your wonderful note. Kris - thank you for your continuous comments and insight, they are a joy to read and think about.
Take care everyone -Sam