Tonsai Daze

After our circus adventure and a few days in Bangkok, we did the highly unadventurous thing, and went straight back to TonSai beach. We contemplated Ko Tao and Ko Chang, considered Ko Phi-Phi, and kept in mind an opportunity to do some more volunteer work in Kao Lak. But we both kept thinking about TonSai and what a perfect little paradise it is for us. Not very cultural (more of a tourist destination than a Thai town), but warm & friendly, mellow, affordable enough, GORGEOUS, lots of opportunities to be active and play on the water, rocks, and beaches, and filled with very interesting and likeable backpackers. So, why not?

On our way back down south we stopped in Krabi town for a few days. We visited the night market and celebrated Valentine's Day at an Italian Thai restaurant with pizza and a huge feast... We rented a motorbike and headed to one of the bays where we rented a sea kayak and spent an afternoon paddling through limestone canyons, islands, and mangroves. It was a great trip- we went on a self-guided tour, and spent some time finding the route, but on the way we found a whole bunch of monkeys and saw incredible scenery.

Here in TonSai, days are again filled with morning jogs over the jungle trail, beachside lounging, swims to a small private beach, poi spinning, hula hooping, and yoga. We've taught several hula hoop lessons, and made some great friends that way. We get free coffee drinks just for bringing our hoops down and teaching a trick or two to the coffee girl now and then. And the beer is usually free when we spin fire at any of the bars down the beach. We're friends with a handful of the locals, and there's always interesting travelers passing through. So, we're quite comfortable here in our new Thai home.

I'm trying hard to think of reportable news here... We've had a few more misadventures with the food and our bellies, but nothing too serious. We also waged a war against bedtime mosquitos after a miserable night of being preyed upon. We've since won that war, employing mosquito coils, nets, clothespins, etc. What else...? We're both trying to eat with chopsticks in our left hands (hard!), Amy's on her 3rd pair of flip flops and 11th book. Brandon made a pet fish out of a water baloon and a sharpie, and strung a thread through it and hung it up at the bungalow. The rats make nightly visits to our bungalow to find anything they can, and chewed right through the lid of our tupperware to get at the banana bread. Brandon's still pretty obsessed with the slack line. We had the worst cocktails of our entire lives at one of the bars- undrinkable (but we choked 'em down anyway). Amy's learned lots of new poi and is starting to think of herself as a poi analyst- and is eager to become a poi dancer again. Brandon's head is filled with business decisions for the summer and is spending lots of time on the computer. There's phosphorescence in the warm ocean, and life is good.