Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy new year! Have fun tonight but also be safe. Take a taxi or have a reliable designated driver!

Man, I can't believe it's going to be 2009 tomorrow!

Searching For Elephants

Kaeng Krachan National Park is considered the best place in Thailand for bird watchers. Because it was theweekend, dozens of bird watchers were camped at our campsite.

Tom, our tracker/guide, talked with the head of a group in Thai about where to look for elephants. Choke's wife, who was coming along on her first trip, gasped at whatever they were saying. Choke told us the man said where the elephants were.

After breakfast we ventured into the jungle. After walking for less than ten minutes we heard some trees rustling in the distance. No, it wasn't elephants. It was langur monkeys. The monkeys were jumping from tree to tree as we watched. After having our fill of monkeys for the moment -- we would see dozens throughout the weekend -- we continued our trek. We were looking for the largest animal in the forest but kept encountering some of the smallest species:

(PICTURE: A beautiful chiccata that we were told is good luck if found.)

(PICTURE: A pretty freaky looking spider.)

I'd like to take a moment and say how proud I am of my sister. When we were kids you would often hear a blood curdling scream come from Hannah's room, "SPIDER!!!" Hannah was petrified of spiders, especially daddy long legs. Now here we were, in the middle of the jungle and Hannah was searching for spiders! Man, times have changed.

We continued our trek through the jungle following various trails of elephant poo and tracks. Along the way we saw a bunch of cool birds, monkeys, giant squirrels and other things but unfortunately, we couldn't find the elephants.


One quick anecdote: In another case of me trying to be a good big brother, I held a large tree branch back at one point so Hannah could pass and not have to step into a a creek. About ten seconds after she passed I felt a tingling sensation in my hair. I ran my fingers through my hair and saw hundreds of tiny black ants crawling on my hand. Apparently I had held back a tree COVERED in ants and they all conveniently jumped onto my scalp. I got most of the ants out with the help of Choke in a minute or two. Yeah, I said "most of the ants." For the next few hours I was continuing to pull more ants out. For those of you who are counting that's twice I've gotten the bad end of the stick for trying to help my sister!!!

An Often Overlooked City

Lonely Planet called the city of Phetchaburi, "An often overlooked city." Hannah and I didn't want to overlook it so we had the bus to Bangkok drop us off.

Hannah and I were the only people to get off the bus which meant around 50+ people were indeed overlooking the city. I have to admit, it's kind of an easy city to miss if you're not looking for it. When the bus door opened up and Hannah and I jumped off, we quickly realized we had no idea where we were. Hannah, who I have appointed in charge of the guide book, quickly got her bearings and pointed us in the direction to the one guest house mentioned in the book.

After walking through the city for about thirty minutes -- and turning down various taxi drivers -- we arrived at the riverside guest house. Immediately we were greeted by a man with a scar across his face who spoke about ten words of English. Eight of the words he spoke though were, "You go trekking in jungle with me tomorrow?" There are only two things that could make a man with a scar across his face scarier: 1) If he carried around a big machete. 2) If his English translator's name was CHOKE. Hey, Mom and Dad, I'd like to introduce you to our new friend Tom:

(PICTURE: Once again, a smile can be disarming.)

The reason that Phetchaburi attracted Hannah and I is that it is located near Kaeng Krachan, the largest national park in Thailand. Hannah and I really wanted to go for a jungle trek but the prices in the book were a little above our budget. Luckily, Tom had already signed up two Germans for the trek which meant the total cost was cut in half.

The next morning we all piled into the back of a pick-up truck and headed to the park to look for wild elephants, monkeys, leopards and other animals, insects and birds.

(PICTURE: The Germans and Choke, our translator.)





(PICTURE: Hannah and I in the back of the pick-up truck.)

Immediately upon entering the park we saw a crab-eating mongoose run across the road. This is ironic because when we were children I used to call Hannah, "Silly Mongoose." Why? I don't know. Another thing I didn't know -- what a mongoose looked like.

A few minutes later while driving we all spotted a giant pile of dung on the side of the road. Tom immediately stopped the truck and jumped out. His excitement for big piles of shit couldn't be contained. I guess that comes with the territory of being a tracker. The poo belonged to a herd of elephants...and we were going to find them.

(PICTURE: Hannah was pumped to see elephant doody.)

Bathroom Signs

Hannah is on a big kick taking pictures of bathroom signs in different countries. Here's one sign that we saw at a rest stop that I think could work in any country:

Hot And Cold Water

(PICTURE: Hannah trying to flee the fleas...)

On the sixth day of our trip Hannah and I checked into Ban's Diving Resort on the other side of Ko Tao. Ban's was highly recommended to me by my buddy/blog fan Steve who took a dive course with Ban's a couple months ago. Hannah and I were originally going to take a course with Ban's too (Hannah to get her open water and me to get my advanced) but we opted not too. I'm glad we made this decision because frankly, the diving wasn't that good. I'm sure normally the diving on Ko Tao is great but the visibility this month was terrible. Out of all the dives I've ever done, these two were probably the worst.

Hannah was battling a cold and I told her she couldn't dive. Rule 1 in diving is not to dive if you're congested or sick. Hannah didn't put up a fight and decided to snorkel instead. She came out on the dive boat with me and went snorkeling while I was under water. She was also disappointed with the visibility and marine life and after freezing our butts off on the boat after, we decided to hit the mainland the next day.

That said, this blog entry isn't about the cold water in Ko Tao. This blog entry is about the cold water everywhere in Thailand. Besides our first night here, we haven't had hot water once in our hotels/guest houses/bungalows. For those of you who know my sister well, she isn't exactly a fan of showering. It's not so much that she opposes being clean but hates when her hair gets really wet since it takes forever to dry. Up until this night at Ban's, Hannah had only showered once (REMINDER: WE'RE ON A HOT SWEATY TROPICAL ISLAND!).

After going in the salt water, Hannah's hair was already wet so she sucked it up and decided to shower at the hotel. Once we were both ready we went and watched another gorgeous sunset. This one was highlighted by a stray dog trying to catch fish in the water. After the sunset, Hannah and I went for a walk along the beach to find a restaurant. While strolling, I noticed something strange: a thousand bugs were flying above Hannah's head. There were no bugs anywhere else except above Hannah's head. I pointed this out to Hannah and she said it must be the gel in her hair. She tried to shake the bugs by sprinting along the beach. I'd say she lost roughly half of them. The sad news is that this really just gave Hannah a reason NOT TO SHOWER AGAIN. It's been a week since that night...and no shower (although Hannah claims rinsing in a waterfall we went to counts!).

(PICTURE: A pretty picture of a dog trying to catch a fish at sunset. Oddly, this dog had less bugs on it than Hannah.)

Ko Tao

(PICTURE: On our private beach in Ko Tao)

Hannah and I have talked about hiking the Appalachian Trail together for quite some time. We have a grand vision of our journey from Georgia to Maine ending with the publication of a book entitled: "Hiking with Hannah. Backpacking with Ben." Depending on how you hold the book you can read about our trip from my perspective or from Hannah's. You know, a classic "he said/she said" type of book. And yes, only our parents would probably buy it.

Well, those dreams came to a crashing halt on the island of Ko Tao. When Han and I arrived on the island we decided to start off on the east coast which we had read was the remote side of the island. After docking on the island we were immediately confronted by a dozen taxi drivers all asking us where we wanted to go. We told them the name of the beach (Ao Leuk -- it's pronounced Ow-Lock...I think) and they instinctively all laughed. We had no idea why they were laughing and they didn't exactly elaborate. We chose one taxi driver and got in the back of his pick-up truck. (On a side note, most taxis here take some form of pick-up truck form where the passengers sit in the bed). The taxi driver told us he would take us close to the beach but couldn't go all the way there because "the road was bad." After about a seven minute drive we realized two things:

1. We had paid too much for our ride since it was really close and easily walkable (Again, bad job by Lonely Planet).

2. The road was really bad.

Here's a picture of Hannah after she slipped on the road:

As you can see the road is pretty broken up. After this first little fall I took Hannah's bag (big brother points!) so she could go slowly down the incline. While Hannah inched her way along -- and sometimes purposely used her butt sliding technique -- I had an epiphany: this road is no Appalachian Trail! At the rate we were going on this road, we would need at least a year to finish the trail.

Eventually we got to the beach and paid $12 for a bungalow. Besides us, only one other bungalow was occupied (late in the night a couple also came). There were so few people actually staying at the resort that we were actually outnumbered by stray dogs...and one took a shining to us.

Odds and Ends

Here are some other odds and ends from Ko Phanang:

1. I woke up one morning and Hannah was doing pilates on the beach. That was roughly 9 days ago. She's been complaining she was sore up until yesterday.

2. For the most part Lonely Planet has been a pretty poor source of information. Many of the time tables are wrong as well as nearly every quoted price in the book. We've also had much more luck finding tastier food on our own compared to their recommendations. However, they did recommend a kick butt place for sunsets -- Amsterdam Bar. Every night on Ko Phanang Hannah and I would drive up this hill to a bar overlooking the west coast of the island. The place not only had a beautiful view of the sunset but also amazing fruit shakes.

3. Hannah is a slob. Yes, a slob. She has the unbelievable ability to dump out her bag all over a room. This is a picture of a hotel we stayed in just for a night before departing the island. Notice my bag in the foreground versus hers in the background.

4. It seems to me that every place Hannah and I go to Bob Marley's voice is pouring out of the speakers. On Ko Phanang there is even a Bob Marley village near Sallad Beach...and about twenty dudes (Thai and foreign) who look like Bob Marley. This is just a general question: at any given moment, how many beach/island resorts/bars around the world are playing Bob Marley at the same exact time? My guess is at least 10,000. On Ko Phanang alone there are probably 75.