Things that you like best about Thailand especially when you arrive from Nepal...

-Heat, and plenty of it

-You can leave an entire backpack full of fleece, gloves, hats, and boots in Bangkok and quickly 'fugettabout it'

-There is an abundance of fresh fish, fresh fruit & tasty food...Thai food, all day, everyday and the street food is as good as any

-You can have a large beer chilled to perfection at every meal, and Neil did!

-You can completely re-stock your music and movie collection with cheap cd's and dvd's, and rationalize that you're supporting the local economy

-There are tanned, friendly, and scantily clad scandinavians everywhere - Hej!

-The roads are paved, the mini-buses are air-conditioned, and as a whole, transportation is organised and comfortable

Upon our arrival, not to be out-done, Robin had Malaria!! -She tested positive for the Vivax strain just after we arrived back in Kathmandu. She had a fever early on in our Everest Trek that subsided quickly after some treatment, but reared its ugly head again as we headed down to our flight from Lukla back to Kathmandu. Luckily, she had the strength (or more accurately, the determination) to carry on until we got to good medical help in Kathmandu. The doctor in Kathmandu was more surprised than we were to see the positive test - they rarely see it in Nepal (we counted back to the likely cause and figured it was the last train ride in India - Oi!). Needless to say, Robin was completely sapped for our first week in Thailand, which only reinforced our plan to head straight to the closest tropical island.

We're not sure if Bangkok had changed drastically since we had been there last or if coming from India and Nepal completely changed our outlook. But, to us it was a reasonably clean and developed city, with easy access to decent accoms, reliable transport, endless entertainment, and even a few tourist sites. Of course, with all the decadence so close-by it was very difficult to motivate ourselves to leave the infamous Khao San Road area to see anything that would qualify as cultured in any way. We did wander over to the Grand Palace and the reclining Buddha but for the most part, our recollections of Bangkok will be largely of fresh fish specials, fruit shakes, 7-11's, Internet, and free movies. We even surprised ourselves at how happy we were to see all the westerners. Thailand has become such a tourist destination that seeing couples with young children in tow is not unusual.

After the many chilly days in Nepal, our initial Ko Samet island getaway turned out to be everything we had hoped for and more. It was a quick 4-hour mini-bus ride to this convenient island, which was busy and in places, overcrowded. We found this out the hard way on the first day as we trudged up and down the beach in a full sweat looking for a vacancy! But, we quickly settled into our own little private cove at Tao Tub Tim, and just lapped it up! It was the good life all right - Eat, sun, eat, nap, swim, eat, drink, watch movies, and start all over. The site of all the bare, tanned European skin alone was enough to shock us both into another reality!!

After our little island getaway we were psyched to take in some history and head to Cambodia, so off we went, packing quite light after leaving our big pack at the hostel in Bangkok...See the chapter titled "Heart of Darkness"...

When we returned to Thailand, we were very happy to be greeted by the 'comforts' of Bangkok once again. After trying to tackle a few nagging chores (try getting your Canadian bank or insurance company on the phone from Bangkok!), we did some research on the tropical getaways of the south and settled on Ko Tarutao National Park. It seemed to us to be remote enough and low profile enough to be relatively un-travelled. Although Ko Lipe lived up to everything we had hoped, we didn't realize until we got there that it had become a micro-Scandinavia. Swedish or German would have carried you much further than English on this island.

We couldn't get enough of the white sands and turquoise waters and must have gone through a few rolls of film from our cabin porch alone! We tried two resorts: one bare bones hut that came with a pet rat; and the other curiously named 'The Porn Resort' as there seemed to be nothing of the sort going on. We finally settled on the Adaman Resort on the other side of the island. It really was the optimal combination of comforts without being too well-travelled. We quickly got back into the groove of sun and fresh fish and really enjoyed the friends we made there.

The high-point of our stay was our snorkelling day with our Dutch and Swedish friends - we snorkelled four amazingy spots with colourful coral and fish. We had a close-up of a moray eel that had somehow lost its way from it's cave and was swimming in the shallows completely exposed. The funny thing is that we had just finished snorkelling, so we viewed it while standing in ankle-deep water! At lunch, we ate the freshest fish of our lives (caught by our boat driver just before eating) and enjoyed it 'survivor-style' on a stick over an open fire. Every evening, as we had vowed, we made sure to make time for the incredible sunsets :)

From here we had to say good-bye to Thailand and our new-found friends, but were really looking forward to discovering Malaysia together after a quick boat, bus, taxi, and boat again crossing to Kuala Perlis on the Malaysian side...