thailand

right now were in kantharalak, visiting with a friend beard's mom went to high school with. he has a nice house in the country with cows and ponds and kids. before this we were on the island of koh tao where i did 3 dives and beard did 6. met a nice irish couple there and had drinks on the beach after eating at an indian restaruant. then cam e the marathon tour north. one hr twenty minute boat ride to champorn, 7 hr bus ride to bangkok, 9 hr bus ride to here. got here at 7am this morning. les, ya and their kids, ben, jackie and tony picked us up, brought us to breakfast and then we came out to their farm. nice and relaxing. well spend tonight and probably tomorrow night here and then take off to perhaps vang vieng laos. do some tubing, check out luang probang and then back south to cambodia. we're trying to pick the best way now b/c we are really close to angkor wat cambodia right now, about 150km.
i thought this area would be a lot different from korea/the us/what i'm used to but it's really not. a bit more run down but not in a bad way. people smile a lot more in thailand. happy people must live here. it's more relaxed than korea and of course eating and drinking is cheaper. most of our meals come to between 3 and 5 dollars together. the dives were 20 bucks a piece. our bungalow was 8.
koh tao was wonderful. although much more touristy than we expected but you'll have that. outside our bungalow there were 2 roosters, several hens, 7 puppies and who knows how many other dogs. the puppies were the cutest things ever, til about 6am when they started whining. the food was great--lots of curries and noodle dishes.
i can't upload pictures here b/c itd take too long so i'll do that later.