From the Southern Beaches to the Northern City

Christmas Morning
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Hello Hello,

Well, it has been a while since we have updated this, and we figured we should let you know what has been going on for the past week or so. On December 23rd, still in a lot of pain from our hike at the Wat, we left Ao-Nang and made our way to the beaches of Koh Lanta. We arrived at the Koh Lanta Riviera resort with 4 other Canadians and a lot of Christmas presents to find out that we ended up with a bungalow without a flushing toilet. I was not overly impressed, but we managed.

Koren with her presents
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Our first night in Koh Lanta we walked down the beach and found this cute little bar where you sit in tree-houses. We had a few buckets (wonderful vessel for consuming beverages!) and headed to bed rather early knowing that we had a big day ahead of us... we were spending the entire day in the sun by the pool. (hard life we live). Christmas eve we hung out by the pool the entire day with a couple of bacardi breezers (I don't like them at home, but for some reason here, they are a little piece of heaven) and luke carving out watermelons for yukaflucks later that evening. After a huge seafood bbq, the vodka watermelons came out and man were they good (strong). Koren and Luke took the party to the bar that night with a bunch of locals and the rest of us went to bed.

Christmas day on the Beach
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December 25th 2006- My first Christmas

I woke up on Chistmas morning with what seemed like 5 little children. We got up fairly early and all congregated in our room with presents galore! We had arrange a secret santa between the six of us, as well as another small present exchange. To our surprise, everyone got really nice stuff. We put a $15 limit on what you can buy, and all I can say is that $15 goes a long way in Thailand. Luke bought me a backgammon board, a t-shirt, a cd case and a cd. (Long story short, my ipod died, and I am officially the last back packer on earth with a diskman and cds!) I had Koren for a secret santa and got her a purse, an address book, and a photo album (since koren broke her camera and ended up with some disposables!) Christmas day was great. We spent it on the beach. It was by far the hottest day we have had in all of Thailand, and the beach and the ocean was the perfect place to be.  There was a volleyball tournament on Christmas day at the resort. The workers tried very hard to convince us to enter, and the team name they gave us was the Sexy Six, so from now one, Erin, Koren, Allison, Colleen, Krista and Luke were known as the sexy six, which we continued to hear for the remainder of the time in Koh Lanta.

Happy As Can BE
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Boxing day, or Remeberance day in Thailand. (it has been exactly 2 years since the Tsunami) we got into a van, onto a bus, onto another bus, into a van and then onto a bus and spend the day travelling to Bangkok. I wish there were good things to say about today, but it was a very long day of travelling. There were rememberance day ceremonies around Thailand today, with the largest one being in Koh Phi Phi, which was almost completely wiped out two years ago. It would have been very interesting to go to one, but it was time for us to leave the south and head up north.

UMMM STARBUCKS!
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We arrived in bangkok very early in the morning (5:30am) and got dropped off on Koasan Rd, where we had 13 hours to kill! We were a little grumpy, so we needed to cheer ourselves up. Koren went and bought a new digital camera from Kodak and I found Starbucks. All it takes is a 115 baut (About $3.50) and a non-fat vanilla late to make me happy. After buying the camera and getting a cup of coffee we were back on track and in good moods. We had some breakfast,and waited and waited. We sat in this little restaurant for about 3 hours waiting for my friend Nomi to wake up. She had no clue we were there, but it was a nice surprise! We had lunch with Nomi and Jamie, and then headed to Starbucks for an afternoon of chatting before getting on yet another bus to chiang Mai.

NEW CAMERA
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We are now here... Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. It is great to finally be in a city, since the past 5 weeks have been spent on the beach. We arrived in the morning and found the guesthouse that we wanted to stay at, and spent the day walking around. Last night we happened to find the night market... may have gone a little bit crazy, but after not shoppign ofr a month it was definately worth it!

Today is Koren's 25th birthday, so whenever i finish writing this, we are off to get facials, and back to the night market (but tonight I am not taking my wallet!) and tomorrow we are going on a treck. We are going to ride elephants, spend the night with a hill tribe, go white water rafting, bamboo rafting and be back in Chiang Mai for New Years Eve!

Happy New Years Everyone! We miss you guys like crazy!