Mouse the Cat

As many of you know, I think, Evan and I have recently adopted a cat. Or, a kitten to be more precise. She was living at the school, as so many homeless animals do, living off the food the kids drop at lunch. In Thailand, very few animals are euthanized, and even fewer are spayed or neutered, so there are a lot of animals living on the streets, looking the worse for wear and tear.

You might remember a picture of a kitten in the blog several months ago. I think what I said was that I wanted to take her home from the school, and Evan was saying no at the time. Fast forward a few months, I saw her again, weak from malnutrition, and tormented by the kids, but still friendly and gentle. Evan made the huge mistake of telling me we could take her home at the end of the day if she was still sitting outside the teachers room at school.

She was. So we brought her home, fed her, gave her a bath (she hated that part), and she's been here ever since. That was about a month ago. Here's a picture of her for size comparison, Evan's shoes are in the background, about 6 inches away from her.


Here's a pic Evan took of her. She has amazing eyes.


And another I took.


Crashed out.

It's amazing how civilized she looks with her collar on.


Here's a pan shot I took of her, still a little blurrier than I would like, but it shows how fast she can move. After she started getting food regularly and put some more meat on her bones she's become very energetic. She loves to attack things, and we're working on getting her to put that aggression into toys and nonliving things, instead of our hands or feet. She's learning quickly, but it's still a process.




To keep allergies down and to keep her clean, we've been bathing her every few weeks. Considering how much she hates it, she behaves pretty well, mostly sitting there stoically, waiting it out. Here are a couple shots of her wet. Check out that pink tongue!






That's all for now, check us out soon for another post. If you have questions about life in Thailand you want us to answer on the blog, post them as comments. I think we'll be doing a question and answer post in the next couple of weeks.

A Word Or Two On How To Use The Blog

Two things to note:

1) All pictures become much bigger when you click on them. Want a closer view of something? Try it out.

2) I have sometimes embedded helpful links in the text, like this one. That happens to be Evan's favorite news site, by the way. Look back through my posts and see if you can find them. I especially like the songtaew link.

That's all! Happy reading!

The End of Our Travels

Come out to the beach with us for Part 4, the final part of our four part series detailing our island idyll.

Make yourself comfortable. Pull up a chair.
That inviting view is in front of our bungalow on Koh Lanta, the next stop on our expedition. To get there we took the overnight boat Evan posted a picture of in the last blog. We arrived in Surat Thani at 4:30 in the morning, were taxied to the bus station, and waited there for our 6:00 am bus to Krabi, on the other coast of Thailand. In fact, as is characteristic of all Thailand travel, it wasn't actually a bus, but instead a van. Hardened travellers by this point, we just threw our bag on top of the van with the others, and squished in. We got to Krabi around 8:30, at which point we had to decide what to do: stay in Krabi, see the town, go to a beach nearby, or go to one of the nearby islands. We weren't really in the mood for crowded beaches or small towns, so we decided to go to Koh Lanta, which was about a two hour van ride away. We arrived at Klong Khong beach, grabbed a room in a bungalow, and headed for the water.

Unfortunately, the water was about two feet deep, and the bottom was all rocks. We thought perhaps that it was low tide, but actually it was high tide, and at low tide the beach was all rocks. Still, we did get a little swim in.

Here are a couple more beach pictures:










Other than the beach, the most exciting thing we did on the island was a little spelunking. We figured, it's for tourists, so it must be pretty gentle. I wore flip flops and a dress, which may have been a mistake.

Before we went into the cave we had to wait a little while for a guide to become available. Here are some pictures I took in the meantime. The light was very interesting and misty.







Now, onto the cave. It was pretty amazing, with several rooms and one passageway we literally had to crawl through on our bellies. I was very glad not to be claustrophobic! My dress may have been a little worse for wear though, as you can see here.
Fortunately it all came out in the next wash.

In the cave were some requisite bats.

Some spiders the size of my hand. (Our guide asked us, kindly, if we were 'scary of spiders.' We said no. But I still was glad we didn't have to get too close to any of the ones we saw on the cave walls.)

Some stalactites and stalagmites.


And, this is not from the cave, it's just a little something we found on our pillow one night after we came home from walking on the beach. Makes you feel right at home, doesn't it? Notice how it managed to make its way into the mosquito netting.
Here's a picture of a rubber tree plantation on Koh Lanta, which we passed on our way to the caves.
And a few random trees and bits of green grass for all you winter sufferers to rest your weary eyes upon. That's it for our travels, regular blogs will start up again soon, we promise.

Our Adventure Continues

We couldn't stay in paradise forever, so we decided to set off and search out more places. After getting back to town we searched for a travel store to take us to another island. After much discussing and reading, Jessica and I decided to go to Koh Tao. We were going to need to take a short ferry ride from our current island, Koh Pha Ngan. 

  Walking through the town waiting for our ferry to leave we came across a small pet store.  Outside the store there was a pair of birds, each bright white with slightly yellow tails.  I should also add that both were quite feisty.

Here is a quick photo of some friends we met up with, Hannah and Nickolas.  They were boarding another ferry and then a bus back to Bangkok.  Their next stop is going to be India.

We are now down in the hold of our ferry.  The boat was probably 100' long and 15' wide.  Seats made of solid plastic for the inevitable whipedown they will require after a pass though of some rougher seas.  Fortunately for us the seas were very mild that day, though by the end of the trip I was glad to get off still having my lunch in my stomach.

However Jessica was not so lucky.  I started off in the hold, but quickly went on deck to watch the Island as we left as well as to get some fresh air.  Jessica stayed in the hold to watch after our stuff.  After we made our way into deeper, and rougher waters, I stayed outside and received a text message from Jessica saying "Yupee!!".  The boat was going up and down a bit, but it was fun.  After and hour of this I received a text message saying that we should switch spots.  I made my way back down and Jessica headed for the deck.  As soon as she started upwards she realized that she wasn't feeling that good, and soon enough her lunch was no more.  On a positive note, she didn't feel bad after it was all said and done, which I can not say about a couple of other people who were curled up in balls wishing they would die.

A fishing boat in harbor as we leave for Kho Tao.

A look at our recently departed island Ko Pang Ngan.

Two and a half hours later, Land Ho!  Soon dry land the the relief that will come with it.

Arrival at "Freedom Cove", you have the freedom to do anything but swim, as the water is only a foot and a half deep.  Unfortunately Jessica and I were very disappointed.  The room was way to expensive for what it was, you could not swim, and the food wasn't even that good.  We decided over dinner that a one night stay would be good enough, and we would go explore another island down further south.

A beautiful sunset from the balcony of our room.

Our wandering found this.  Save money now, pay lots later.

Our boat left at 8pm and arrived back at the mainland at 4am.  We were warned that the ride could be a bit rough, and after our last experience we bought some Dramamine at the local pharmacy just to make sure.  Jessica also recommended getting some Tiger Balm as it should help a little a swell.  The owners of the boat packed us in well, just like sardines.  Jessica and I read for a while and then made it to sleep without a problem.  However the same can't be said for a number of the other occupants, and the seas were mostly calm as well.

The Unnamed Cove

Part 2

The internet has become a mainstay in the lives of most. Need a new blender? Look it up online! Want to remember the name of that song? Look it up online! Need to find others who share your incredibly rare peccadilloes? Find them online! Sure, the internet isn't perfect, like all human creations. But on the whole it has made gathering information (and misinformation) ten times more efficient for the average human with access to a computer.

Hence, the title of this post. The Unnamed cove has a name, of course. But it is also so incredibly beautiful that I don't feel like sharing it with hordes of people I have never met. If I know you, ask me the name and I'll tell you. But if I don't, tough luck. Unnamed cove it is.

Here's a couple shots of it:

That's the view from our room. Not bad, eh?

The day we arrived we had to walk across the cove, with all our bags, tricky on the sand. But what was even trickier came next. Since this side of Koh Pha Ngan is very rocky, bungalow owners inventively came up with a way to get around that problem: boardwalks. These are not made of the strongest or the most standardized materials. Here's a good example:

Looks a little precarious, doesn't it? Imagine walking along it after a few beers and a rainstorm. I have no idea if there have ever been any fatalities, but I wouldn't be surprised. Worried relatives, take a deep breath. Evan and I survived without any mishap. Here is a view of our bungalow:
It's that blue roof. After the miles of boardwalk we had to traverse, we had several flights of varying sizes of steps made of the same material up to the bungalow. Most of the boards were sound and could hold our weight no problem, but more than a few were iffy. In a country that spends so much time damp and rainy, I can see how upkeep of the boardwalks might be always ongoing. Here's the view down the stairs from our bungalow:



The Unnamed Cove has lovely water, light aqua in color. It gets deeper pretty quickly off the coast, which is great for swimming, and there are almost no rocks in the water. So there really isn't any snorkeling, but for having a quick dip a couple times a day, it can't be beat. And it's only ever a few feet from your bungalow. You can only reach The Unnamed Cove by boat, which makes it feel private and cut off from the world.

And, the food - foreign and Thai alike - is delicious, with many vegetarian choices for me. It's a little more expensive than Bangkok, but the quality and the number of choices more than make up for that. We spent 5 days here, but we should have stayed longer. It was by far the nicest part of our trip,even if all we did was sleep, swim, eat, and relax. Probably between the both of us we didn't spend more than $25 a day while we were there.

I'll leave you with a few more picture of paradise.