Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Elephant ?

We're now at our last beach stop before heading into Bangkok - 3 hours north by bus. We've flipped from the Andamen side (western) to the Gulf of Thailand (eastern). Surprisingly, the ocean is quite cooler and windy, something I didn't quite expect. We're about 5 miles outside the little town of Hua Hin (pronounced 'wah heen'), the earliest resort town on Thailand's southern penninsula.

The place we're staying is very nice, again providing us with a VIP suite right on the ocean.

However, it's not that close to town which has lots of charm and is popular with the older prosperous German and Scandinavian crowd, a demographic group I don't particularly belong to. But the night market in Hua Hin was outstanding, you could get a kilogram of prawns for $10, plus a few large Singh beers - easily under $20.

To arrive at this location required a 10 hour overnight bus, interesting only by the inventiveness of of the passengers as they sampled various positions to best get some sleep. Marge is always able to sleep on these trips - I'm not so successful. So I'll end up doing some reading and listening to my ipod which works out well.
 

                                                                                

Attached to this blog are some final beach shots  - in particular Marge - as she bravely took a ride on RaRa the elephant (hence the title of the blog). I have a personal rule not to mount anything larger than a human - a dog yes, a horse no, an elephant definitely not. The pictures are pretty funny, so enjoy.

The place we stayed outside Krabi at Klong Muong was really nice - great beaches, RaRa the elephant, walking distance to a little village, opportunities for interesting day trips - we think overall, this is the best location to base

ourselves when we return.

Khao Lak was also very nice but sobering, the miles of beaches really dramatic - but underlying all of this beauty is the troubling fact that this was ground zero for the tsunami. However, great place to go and just walk on beaches all day long !

So on to Bangkok for about a week, Marge cheering her team to victory in the Super Bowl early Monday morning. After that we're headed off to Laos before our Thailand 30 day visas expire on 8-February, then back into Northern Thailand beginning of March for another 30 days before crossing through Cambodia (Ankor Wat) into Vietnam the month of April (again for 30 days). Most countries give you a 30 day tourist visa 'on arrival' - if you want to stay longer than that you need to apply for a visa in advance at the destination country's embassy - or in the case of Thailand, you leave the country and return and get another 30 days. For Vietnam, you need to apply in advance for 30 days, for Indonesia, we applied in advance for 2 months in San Francisco - for China, we applied in advance for 3 months while in Kuala Lumpur. Our Russian visas need to be acquired by specialist while we're in Hong Kong later. Visas get expensive ($100-$300), so you need to manage where and how to acquire them - so unlike Europe where they hardly check your passport at the border.

Marge has laid out a schedule for China during May, June and July before we board the Trans-Mongolian train for travel 19-July.thru 15-August. Drop us a line if you care to join up on any segment, it would be fun. Trust that we're safe and healthy and appreciate and cherish the opportunity to share our travels with all of our friends.