Our Trip to the Rice Terraces in Guilin

We began our trip at the Shenzhen train station about 5:50pm on Friday. We booked three tickets on an overnight train from Shenzhen to Guilin. We had three hard sleepers. This means that there are three beds in a cabin. We booked the two lowers and one of the uppers. The lowers are essential because they're the only ones with a table and enough height so you can sit up without sitting in an awkward position. The upper's nice because you typically have more leg room because there's a place to store bags. That was nice for Matt because Matt's taller than me and Ross. The tickets for the lowers were 249 yuan (roughly $35). Oh yea, there was three of us, me, Ross (an Australian) and Matt (Polish).

We arrived in Guilin before 7am and made our way to the bus station, roughly half a mile's walk down the main road. There are other buses at the train station but those are privately operated and can stop anywhere they want until they're full - not recommended when the bus station's a short walk. It was very cold.

We got to the bus station, bought our tickets and hung around because we had about 30 minutes to kill before the bus left. We bought some drinks and snacks and had an interesting, half-understood chat with the workers. Typically, everyone will ask where we're from. When Matt and Ross say Poland and Australia, nobody really cares. When I say America, everyone smiles and says, "Ohhhhhhhh, ta shi mei gua ren!" That's them saying, "Ohhhhhhhh, he's an American!" It's interesting because that's all they really care about and they assume all white people are American, unless otherwise stated. Me being American gets the older worker excited and talking really fast. The three of us aren't the best Chinese speakers but eventually, I figure out she's saying she wants to hit me because America recently sold Taiwan some weapons and the fact that America supports Taiwan's freedom. It's time for the bus....

We hop on the bus and it's not too crowded, a few empty seats. I believe the ticket was 27 yuan (roughly $4). It was supposed to be a 2 hour ride to Longsheng...and it was. Longsheng is just a transport town. We had to get off here and wait for our next bus to Pingan Village. We had some time to kill so we threw around an Australian football, roughly the same as an American football. We walked around for a short time and saw the local dentist (I've posted a picture of his "office" on picasa). Now, time for the bus.

The bus to Pingan was 7 yuan ($1) each. It took a little less than 90 minutes, which was nice, and we arrived about 1pm. The view was just beautiful. We picked up locals along the way, as well. One guy loaded the bus with freshly cut timber, on top and inside.

The first hour was beautiful views then the last 30 minutes was just a winding road which quickly ascended the mountain, back and forth, back and forth.

Finally, we arrived at the foot of Pingan village. You had to hike about 30 minutes up the mountain to reach the village, the main village in the Longji Titian (Dragon's Back Rice Terraces). Or...if you weren't up for the hike, you could pay two guys 200 yuan total ($30) to carry you to the village, like royalty.

We made our way through the village, crowded with international hostels, boasting internet and western food. This wasn't what we were looking for. We briefly stopped here and there for photos but mainly just pushed through the tourist trap.

Once we got out of town and further up the mountain, the tourists disappeared and the terraces came in to sight, stunning. We played around up here for a while taking pictures with the terraces and the village in sight.

At this point, it had been misty and we had taken the rain gear on and off at least once. For the rest of the trip, we didn't put it back on and just toughed it out. It never really rained but was foggy, misty and occasionally we got sprinkled on. The temperature wasn't too bad, roughly low 50's. It was nice weather to be hiking in.

At this time of the year, the rice was harvested a month ago so there's no rice, no greenery and no water. It's definitely not the best time of year to go but it still made you stare in amazement.

We kept hiking for a while, over terraces, down terraces, back over and back down. We did this for about 2 hours until we came to the next village, Zhanglui. This village was pretty cool. We immediately saw it coming over one of the hills. We walked in on a couple washing their mushrooms in the stream for dinner. The lady pleaded with us to let her cook us dinner and stay at her house for the night, but we had plans to continue to Dazhai village for dinner and sleep.

We started making our way through the village, soon realizing that we had no idea which path to take to continue our trip. As we asked the old lady, her daughter popped out, offering to go with us for a small fee of 20 yuan ($3). We declined, wanting to continue on our own. Unfortunately, this made them unable to tell us the correct path. We headed out on our own anyway.

Surprise, surprise, we got lost. We ended up in the middle of the rice terraces with no path. We had seen another path and knew how to get there so we made our way that way. This was a great accident because this provided the best pictures of me from the whole trip. I was on a lower level than Matt and Ross and they got pictures of me walking in the middle of these huge terraces on the mountain with the village in the background - love the pictures.

We kept on moving and got back on the right track, thanks to a local man and his family who was wildly amused by the foreigners walking through their muddy rice terraces.

Unknown to us, we had just started our 3 hour hike to the next village. Up to this point, there weren't any really hard parts. Most of the path had stones laid down, which wasn't pleasant in the rain but it was pretty easy. It was more of a walk with some stairs. We soon came to a massive climb that just seemed to go on forever. We did stairs for over 30 minutes straight. We were finally sweating and exhausted. We encountered young children going home from school on the path. We assume, since it was Friday, that they spent the week at the school and went to their village for the weekends.

We hiked and hiked. It was starting to get dark but we could just see the next village in the distance so we went quickly to beat the sun. We came to Toutai village. When we got to the village, we arrived just in time to watch the village finish raising the last wall of a new house. All the men in the village were there to help out. Most of the women were there to watch. It was an interesting sight. Their houses are 3 stories tall and they don't have machinery. They still do it the way it was done hundreds of years ago...and not for entertainment but simply because that's the way it's done. We got pictures and video of this. Very interesting.

We picked the hostel that was next to the happenings and decided to call it a day. By the time the men were done celebrating with firecrackers, it had turned dark...as did the whole village. There were no lights and it was pitch black outside. We wanted to walk around and find somewhere interesting to eat but quickly turned around and headed back to the hostel for dinner.

We ate a hot, decent dinner and took our showers. We were exhausted. We went to bed and slept until 10am the next day. We woke up at sunrise just to see if we could see it but it was too cloudy.

So I wrote everything prior to this while sitting in the Newark, New Jersey, airport thanks to a winter storm. I'm going to make the next parts a little shorter, simply for time's sake.

We woke up and went downstairs for a simple breakfast. During breakfast, we were treated to another local tradition. Since the house was raised the day before, they were throwing a type of roll from the top of the house. The people all around were supposed to try to catch these rolls. There was a catch. The rolls were like rocks. At first, I reached with one hand to grab one and it practically broke my hand. After that, I started using my sweatshirt to catch them. The village people were impressed. Ross, however, was able to catch them easily with his bare hands while taking pictures. He said it was just like cricket and it didn't hurt.

After the festivities we made our way out of the village and on to what was supposed to be our sleeping point, Dazhai. It was an easy, 30 minute walk. Dazhai was not so beautiful so we just walked through and caught the next bus back to Longsheng.

In Longsheng, we were able to catch another bus to Sanjiang's main bus station. The ride was almost 3 hours and was on the only road in or out of the entire area. It was a full bus with nothing but local people, everyone stared at us.

Parts of the road had been recently wiped out thanks to landslides and rain. One part had completely given out and fell into the river below. Needless to say, it was really a one-lane road, but not by design.

We finally made it to Sanjiang. From here, we were supposed to take a local bus or taxi to Chengyang, the ancient capital of the area and where the villages are. We got in a local taxi (a motorcycle with the back cut off and a 2 wheeled cart welded in place) and went around the rainy roads for a couple of minutes. After the local bus station said no more buses, we got in a van/taxi and made our way to Chengyang.
This road also seemed quite perilous but it must not be with the way the drivers were flying around corners in the rain. It had gotten much colder since we arrived in Chengyang. There was a cold front coming through and I think it hit during our 3 hour bus ride.

We paid to get in the village and made our way to the first hostel we saw, agreed on a price, added clothes and took off to eat.

The food that night was horrible, the worst pizza we had ever eaten at any point in our lives. Why'd we order pizza? Because we ordered a lot of Chinese food but we still didn't feel full after all of it so we decided on a pizza to be our dessert and hopefully fill us up. It didn't.

The next day, we woke up at 8am so we'd have time to explore before returning to Guilin for the train. We went downstairs and ordered some breakfast. Again, eggs and some meat, nothing special. This time though, we realized we didn't hear the "dragon's breath". That's the sound of the gas under the wok, it's so hot and so much gas it sounds like a dragon.

We poked our heads in the kitchen just in time to see the husband putting lit pieces of wood under the wok. Then he got down on his knees and blew on it to stoke the fire. We realized it'd be a while before we ate.

We walked around the village and made our way to some nearby villages that were less kept up for foreigners.

It was really cool to see everything like it's been for 800 years. I could've walked around villages all day.

We met some local school boys, roughly 12, and played a little basketball with them at the local school for all of the children.

Time had passed and it was time to head back. We got our bags, retraced our steps all the way back to Sanjiang's bus station. We did make one stop at a spot next to the road. A couple raises bees on the side of the road so we stopped and got a big piece of honeycomb to take back for the Chinese teachers at the school.

From Sanjiang, we hopped on a bus to Guilin from here.

In Guilin, we had some hours to kill so we decided to have a nice, big dinner. We walked around for a bit and finally settled on a great place. We ate the best dinner of the entire trip.

We didn't have any problems with communication the entire time until the restaurant. There was a picture of ribs in the menu. The picture showed 6 ribs together and had a price of 8 RMB under the picture. I asked in English and Chinese, how many ribs does 8 RMB buy? Both times, different people said 6, counting the ribs in the picture. We all thought, great. There was 3 of us so I ordered 12 total ribs, 2 orders, so I thought.

During our great dinner, we saw a waiter walk by with 2 ribs on a plate and thought, that's not good. Why would people order just 2 when the order is 6? Uh oh. That would also explain why all of the waiters were amazed when they saw our waiter bring out a plate of a dozen ribs. In the end, we ended up having a little more expensive dinner than we planned but that was ok, it was great and we barely spent any money the entire trip.

We made one more quick detour to Guilin's lake. It was very beautiful, all lit up at night. Next to the lake was a hotel that had a waterfall show at 8:30pm so we decided to stay and see. It used to be called the Lijiang Hotel but had changed names and I never actually saw the new name, oh well. For 10 minutes, water pours from the top and blue lights light up the water. It really isn't that interesting but it sure does draw a crowd.

After the interesting waterfall show, we made our way back to the train station and our trip was over. We soon fell asleep on the train and ended up back in Shenzhen.

It was a great trip. The rice terraces are so much more beautiful and amazing than pictures let show. It was similar to the Great Wall. You really can't imagine how beautiful and amazing a feat it really is unless you're standing there looking at it. China has many, many unique, beautiful places to see and the rice terraces are definitely high on the list.

My Trips to the Hospitals

No, I don't mean that I was hurt or sick and was in the hospital. This last week, one of the assistants in my class had her appendix removed and one of the children in my class had a bad case of the flu (no, not H1N1).

Last Friday, I walked in to school to not find Traci. I was told she was sick and at the hospital. Later, through a game of charades, I found out she was actually having her appendix removed. All of the teachers, a mom and dad from class, Vi and me all went to visit her Saturday night. Everything had gone well and she ended up being released from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon. The hospital was just a 10 minute walk from the school so I visited her during lunch on Monday and Wednesday, as well. Oh yes, after Saturday's visit, Thomas' (a student) mom and dad took us to dinner, great.

I didn't know but a student, Happy, had been hospitalized that Sunday for the flu. I didn't find out until later in the week. The other teachers in the class and myself went to visit him on Thursday night. He was doing much better so we visited for a while. Happy said he missed me a lot. The boys are much closer to me than the female teachers, it's nice. After that, Happy's dad took us all out to dinner. Oh, I forgot, that was my Thanksgiving dinner.

The only thing new with me or Vi is that I bought a new camera. One of Ross's children's parents works for Samsung and got a really nice discount so I went and bought one. In Asia and Europe it's ST550 but the model number is different in America. Anyway, yesterday and last night was spent walking around Shenzhen taking pictures. I will post them soon, the night ones are really cool.

Last Sunday, I went to a golf tournament here in Shenzhen. It's the World Cup of Golf held at Mission Hills Golf Club (the largest golf club in the world). The club has twelve 18-hole golf courses, all designed by famous golfers. One of Ross's children's parents is a member and has a house out there so they gave the teachers some tickets and sent their driver to the school to take us.

The tournament was fun but enjoying the time at the house was even better. We pulled up to a mini-mansion with a Massarati parked out front. We've all heard that in China, performance cars are taxed a minimum of 100%, sometimes as much as 200%. That means this car cost them over $300,000 while the house was priced over $3 million.

The father is one of the largest bbq grill manufacturers in the world. He builds the grills, then sells them to larger companies to put their names on. He has his American headquarters in Atlanta, off 285. His grills are sold in Home Depot and Lowe's, meaning he's doing OK. They're also sold in the top 3 hardware stores in Australia.

We had a great lunch, an assortment of grilled meats and excellent red wine. It was great to sit, eat and relax outside by a pool with a view of a pond and golf course. Not able to hear car horns or construction for a whole day was a new experience.

We'll definitely be going back up there for another dinner.

Also, I've posted pictures from Halloween and more of the kids in my class.

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween at the kindergarten on Friday since there was no school on Saturday. We, the foreign teachers, decided to have fun with it. We all went to buy Halloween supplies one day at lunch.

In the morning, I wore a long-sleeved shirt and placed my bloody, severed hand up my sleeve. We stand at the front and say, "Give me five!" every morning to the kids. When the kids would hit my hand, I'd let the fake hand fall to the ground and I would scream about my hand. Most kids looked at my hand and were scared because of the blood on it. I even got a couple of parents with it.

My favorite part was our morning show. We had borrowed a school uniform and made a dummy with a water balloon for a head. Chris was supposed to throw the dummy from the 3rd floor but was late, so I had the honor. I stood on the 3rd floor while all of the kids, teachers and many parents were in the center courtyard for the morning show. I held the kid up and screamed, "This is what happens when you're a naughty child!" and threw him in the middle of the courtyard for everyone to see. It was silent for a while. Three of my students told the head Chinese teacher that I had killed a student. We showed them the dummy and they saw that it wasn't a real child.

We spent the morning going class to class, dressed up as the living dead, scaring all of the kids. We spent the rest of the morning and lunch putting the finishing touches on our Haunted Hallway. I was able to convince the rest of the teachers that we should make one. It was great.

We took some kids through it and were able to scare them. I have some great pictures of kids in the middle of their scream. Also, I have some great videos of the kids being scared by the ghosts.

It was a great Halloween. Next year, we'll spend more time on the Haunted Hallway to make it bigger and scarier.

My Birthday

This being my first birthday away from all of my family, I took the morning off to relax a little and watch some American tv on my slingbox to make me feel better about being away from home. That night, Vi took me to an Italian restaurant for a great dinner, as is tradition. When we came back, she had bought me a Haagen-Daas ice-cream cake that was great.

We were still tired from the Thailand trip so we spent a weekend at the Sheraton Dameisha Resort, just an hour away by bus.

Days 4, 5 & 6 - Thailand

Day 4 - Day after snakes (I think)

Today we woke up to a slight rain, again. We had arranged for a driver from the hostel to the airport so we woke up and had a lazy morning. We ate the free breakfast at the hostel and took a quick, post-breakfast nap. We got up and began packing our suitcases. We took an hour long ride back to the airport and hung around for a little while before our flight to Bangkok.

The flight to Bangkok was a quick one, which was nice. We arrived in Bangkok and got in a taxi to head to the hostel. The taxis there work a little differently. To avoid being taken advantage of, there's a taxi stand at the airport where taxis line up for your business. You tell the person at the stand where you're going and they write up a ticket, tell you how much and you just give it to the taxi driver.

It was a little over an hour trip, rush hour traffic in southeast Asia is the worst I've ever seen, but interesting to see the different sides of Bangkok. We drove through the more modern downtown and also through the older, poorer downtown areas.

We arrived at the hostel and were pleasantly surprised. We unpacked and went for a walk in search of street food. Luckily, we picked a hostel just a block or so away from a popular market street. We enjoyed some spicy, strange Thai food and some great coconut, Thai sweets.

After a while, we decided to head back and call it a night. We had big plans for the morning.

Day 5 - Floating Market and Drag Show

We woke up early this morning to catch our tour minibus to the floating market. While there is more than one, we went to the biggest and oldest one, Dumnoen Saduak Market. It took about an hour and half drive from the city. We got to the market and got ready to board a long-tailed speedboat to get to the actual market. Here is where I realized that I had left my memory stick in the laptop back in the hostel. Luckily, there was another couple from our hostel who had an extra memory stick and he let me borrow his for the day. Very lucky.

We took a speed boat into the main area then got off at the center of the market. Here, we were free to explore for about 2 hours. You can walk around the area but we opted to share a paddle boat and get a little tour. It's very interesting to see how these people use a paddle boat for everything in their daily life. The real market opens at 4am for food for the locals and closes around 7am to get ready for the tourists.

The floating market was cool to see but wasn't great...just interesting.

We made our way back to hostel and went for lunch. We just ate somewhere nearby the hostel, some more Thai food.

We took a rest then decided to have a fun night out in Bangkok. In China, everyone is amazed by the drag shows in Bangkok so we had to go see one so Vi wouldn't be embarrassed when she returned home.

I looked online and found what was considered the best drag show in Bangkokg, The Mango Room. It was more expensive than I would've liked but the production quality was very good. Some of the men were very beautiful and you would never know they were men without being told. Just look at some of the pictures posted. The one with me and Vi and 2 women, those are both men.

After the drag show we went to an area called Phatong. It's another walking street on the other side of Bangkok from where we were staying. We walked around for a while checking out the markets. We saw many interesting things that should not be written about on the internet. If my blog wasn't already blocked in China, it would be after I wrote what we saw. I'll just say that this area is the seedy, underbelly that Bangkok is notorious for. Needless to say, we left shortly after for the hostel.

Day 6 - Return to Shenzhen

Today we are returning to Shenzhen. Our flight is in the evening but we're not close to the airport so we had another relaxed day. We woke up and ate the great, free breakfast and then packed. We had to check out by noon even though we weren't leaving until 3pm. The hostel held our bags for us while we walked around the area and mailed our postcards.

The previous night we had gotten in a taxi with a great driver. She painted her taxi pink and everything inside was pink. Since she was a woman, her taxi actually smelled nice inside. Also, she loved to dance to club music. She would be dancing at all the red lights. The best part was that she made sound effects while she drove. Everytime she passed someone, she'd go "Vrrrrrrrrrrrooomm" quietly. She was always smiling and laughing, great woman.

Anyway, we called her and she drove us to the airport. She got us there much faster and much cheaper than the last guy, simply because she knew the side streets rather than the suspended highway.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare so we wandered around Bangkok's airport. They have one of the nicest airports I've ever been in. Any top of the line store you can think of, they have somewhere inside. Although the restaurant selection is not as varied or as nice as I'd like.

The flight back to Shenzhen was nice and easy. We were able to get a bus back from the airport to nearby our apartment even though it was after 11pm.

Overall, it was a great birthday trip. Thailand's beautiful but I would definitely recommend the islands over Bangkok. We will be returning to Thailand to visit some more islands.

Day 3 Mom...DO NOT READ!

So we woke up this morning to rain, not surprisingly. We made it a lazy morning, slept late and took our time getting ready. We decided since we couldn't enjoy the beach, to do some sightseeing. We had seen a place where a guy does tricks with cobras and even kisses a King Cobra, he's an internet hit.

We found out where this was, luckily just on the other side of the island in Chalong, and hopped on Sasha for a quick ride in a light drizzle.

We arrived at the snake farm and made our way to the Phuket King Cobra Show. It was a little shack with a sunken ring in the middle and a set of bleachers on 2 sides. There was one family joining us for the show.

The guy from the videos and pictures came out and gave a bow. He then proceeded to pull out 3 Thai cobras. These were the 2nd deadliest snakes he'd be playing with. If they bite you, you have a whole 20 minutes before you would die. They're very common all over Thailand, especially in the jungles of Phuket.

It was a good thing we saw this show after our night scooter ride through some jungle areas.

He did some tricks, mainly teasing them and getting them to strike at him. It was pretty cool to watch. The bleachers were less than 10 feet away from the snakes so we were on top of the action.

The handlers then brought one of the cobras in the stands for us to touch. Vi was too nervous to touch it but of course I had to feel. It's cool being that close to something so deadly.

The second snake (3 of them) a new handler pulled out, also venomous, was smaller but would coil up and jump at the handler. If you were bit by this lovely snake, you would have 30 minutes to get help before dying.

This handler, for his finale, bent down as if to kiss the snake but then bit the snake and held it in his mouth. I then went down in the ring with him and took a picture with him with the snake in his mouth.

Finally, the big time. The first handler returned and pulled out a 4 meter (roughly 12 feet) long King Cobra. Wow! The cobra immediately rose up looking for a fight. If this King Cobra were to bite you, you'd have 15 minutes before death.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention. All of these snakes still had their fangs and were still producing venom. How do I know this you ask? Well, they brought the snakes around to show the people the fangs and then got them to drip venom on this metal thing. Just to let us know there was a real danger.

Anyways, after a couple of minutes of playing with the cobra, he set up for the Kiss of Death. He seemed to lure the cobra in to a relaxed state and slowly kissed the cobra on top of its head. I have to say, I was nervous watching this.

We walked around the grounds and saw some more snakes then decided to go get some lunch. Nothing like watching people handle 12 feet long cobras to work up an appetite.

We continued towards the town of Chalong to see what we could find.

We decided to stop at a little place that ended up being a gem of a find. From the outside, it looks like another runned down restaurant ran by locals. Inside, it has an awesome, traditional Thai set up. Everything is off the ground. It's really cool and you should just check out the pictures to get the idea.

The food here was amazing. I had garlic chicken that was incredible. Vi had a seafood Thai fried rice that was also great. Everything was so great we even returned for dinner.

After lunch, we went across the street and Vi got to try her first milkshake, strawberry. She was in love. We've decided that she will put on a lot of weight her first year in America simply because of the food.

Once we had finished the milkshake, we came back to the hostel for a nap. It was still a rainy day so it was perfect for napping.

We woke up from the nap in the mood for some adventure. We got back on Sasha and drove around to some areas we hadn't been before. We did some more shopping and after not being able to find an interesting looking restaurant, went back to Chalong to the place we ate lunch at.

We returned to find that the restaurat was packed with people and there was only one place to sit. The great thing about this place is that only one person there spoke English and everyone eating there were Thai, no tourists. Everyone kind of watched us sit down and the 2 tables across from us even attempted to talk with us a bit and help translate to a waiter.

This time we got garlic prawns, fried catfish in margo sauce (incredibly spicy) and Thai spicy soup with prawns. All of it was amazing. Thai food is great, although unbelievably spicy. We loved dinner and Vi loved the milkshake so much, we had a 2nd on for dessert.

We made our way back to the hostel but we stopped off to do some more shopping. I was very happy with some little things I found for Christmas gifts for the family. We found some interesting things last night that put us in a good mood.

We got back to the hostel, showered and went to sleep. It was a relaxed day but today we're leaving the island and going to Bangkok which should be quite a bit busier.

Day 2 One of the best days of my life

Day 2 started with a quick breakfast at the hostel at 8am. I then rented a scooter so we could explore the island and the other beaches. This was just $6 per day which is a great rate, plus no deposit.

Well, we got ready in our bathing suits and went downstairs to ride the scooter. As I had never driven a scooter, the lady wanted to give me some tips. I listened carefully and got on and hit the gas. Needless to say, I wrecked it immediately. Nothing serious but enough to give the locals a good laugh. The gas is extremely sensitive and the acceleration is incredible. It's so you can zip in and out but they really should give some warning. I've driven similar in China and you have to turn a lot harder there to get going, not with this bad boy. You're at 20 km per hour in a couple seconds.

After a few rides around the building, Vi finally got on. We (me, Vi and Sasha (we named our bike)) made our way to the beach north of us, Karon Beach. We didn't stop because it was a good beach but we wanted to visit a couple we had looked up online that were incredible. Plus, riding the scooter was very, very fun.

We continued up the coast and past Patong Beach, the most popular and most built up beach on the island. We kept going. We did stop along the way and take some pictures from the cliffs because it was just so beautiful.

Next beach was Kamala Beach. We went just past that as between Kamala and Surin was Laem Singh, a small cove, few visit. We walked down the side of the mountain and were happy to see this quiet little cove with 3 restaurants and about 20 people. It was nice.

We decided to go to the restaurant to have some lunch. We both ordered fish, sat back and relaxed. Vi's fish came first. It was huge and delicious. Suddenly, I realized, we misunderstood the menu. Our lunch was going to be very expensive. When we ordered the fish, we thought the dish would be 80 baht, but really it was 80 baht per 100 grams and Vi's fish was over 500 grams and mine on the grill was even larger.

We called the people over and explained the situation. They weren't happy but after enough discussing, they charged us a couple US dollars for the inconvenience and allowed us to just pay for what we ate. Needless to say, we decided to move on to the next beach.

This trip to the next beach was about 40 minutes on the scooter through small towns and away from the beach. It was a beautifu ride. We finally arrived at a beach called Naithon Beach. We read online that not many people go there. We parked the bike and made our way to the beach.

We got there and were amazed to find that we were the only people on a beach that's more than a mile long of perfect, golden sand. This was incredible. No locals, no tourists, nothing. We were so excited. We layed out our massive beach towel and went to play in the water and take a walk. We took pictures and video because it was just unbelievable. It was like out of a movie. Suddenly you come upon this perfect beach that you have all to yourself. We ended up calling our beach as it felt like we were the first ones to step foot here. Wow.

After some time at our beach, we hopped back on the scooter for the next beach up to catch a good sunset view, Nai Yang Beach. This was another 30-40 minute ride that took us away from the beach. We arrived at Nai Yang and rented 2 chairs to put our stuff. We took a walk and enjoyed the scenery.

The beach was a disappointment having just left a perfect beach with nobody on it but we still enjoyed it. We both took naps under the sun as the sun began to be mostly covered by clouds. We woke up and ate some food at a restaurant the sand, which was very nice.

As the sun began to sink, we moved to a better position to view but only to be blocked by too many clouds to really see anything. We decided at that point to head back to our hostel. We began our journey at the bottom of the island and had made it all the way to the top over the course of the day.

We had no idea how far we were from the hostel until we reached the nearest town, 20 minutes away, and saw a sign that read Patong Beach 32kms. Uh oh! We had driven over 50 kms that day. Instead of taking all the winding, small, unlit backroads, I hopped on the big highway.

While it sounds scary, it was actually way better than the small roads. I was able to go faster and it was pretty much a straight road the whole way. Near the end of trip it began to rain on us. We were still a good 4o minutes from our hostel so we just had to push through. This was really ok because it never rained too hard and we were only going up steep hills so far, not down.

On the way up one mountain, we witnessed a bad accident. A girl on a scooter fell on her side and slid down the side of the mountain making a horrible noise. I hope she was ok.

That jolted both of us and on the way down each mountain I was very, very careful and we had no such accidents. The people here can be crazy on these things.

We stopped at Karon Beach, just north of where we're staying, and laid out under the stars for
a while before continuing to the hostel. It was beautiful to just lie under the stars and hear the waves.

We arrived back almost 2 hours after we had set off for the hostel. It was a great day with amazing beaches and a great journey. We ate at the same restaurant that we had before and enjoyed some Thai Phad noodles. We came back, took showers and went to sleep exhausted.