hello!

where to start.... koh tao (island on the west coast of the thai penninsula) was AMAZING! this is the sort of life we've been waiting for!!!

we arrived via ferry to koh tao at about 10AM--just in time to grab some delicious fruit shakes & pancakes on the beach. after looking around at a couple of overpriced, under-furnished places in popular sairee, we decided to check out the quieter southern part of the island... we ended up staying on Freedom Beach in a private bungalow with a huge porch and attached bathroom for 400baht (US$12) a night with an amazing view and a (practically) private beach. there was a very relaxed restaurant that served Juicy's french fries with mayonnaise (mmmmmm) that we basically lived on for our entire stay!!

we did some exploring of the island (could take less than 20 minutes) on a scooter (150baht/24 hours) but most of the "roads" aren't even accessible that way--which keeps everyone out/in of their own space which we thought was a plus! everything is comfortably primitive in the greatest way.

we did a scuba course for 3 days and got our open water diving certification which could not have been cooler--i mean come on, WE WERE BREATHING UNDER WATER! we spent the rest of the time there (8 days total) just soaking up the sun and pretending we had no other life plans than to wake up there every morning.... thinking about it now, maybe we don't though......

when we finally decided to move on with our trip (which was VERY hard to do) we took a 6 hour ferry to surat thani and then 3 hour minibus ride to phuket (pronounced poo-get, you trash-mouths you). phuket town was alright to say the least, but we stayed at an architecturally interesting guest house (Talang GH) which made it a bit less disappointing.

we flew out of phuket the next day to head to malaysian borneo via singapore. all in all, thailand definitely exceeded our VERY high expectations! the food, the people, the prices--all of it did a great job of ensuring our return as soon as possible!

as always, we hope all is well with everyone there! keep us posted on your lives! love & miss!--cat (& matt)