pictures

From the train on the Death Railway in Kanchanaburi, Thailand













Khao San Road, Bangkok during the waterfestival (Thai New Year, April 13th - 16th)















Maria and Malin after walking 100 m on Khao San Road on April 14th :)















Freedom Beach, Koh Tao











Krabi, Thailand
















Our outdoor bathroom in Koh Lanta :D

















Long Beach on Palau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia.
This is where we are at the moment, and we'll probably stay for 4-5 more days because the place is so great :)

Koh Tao

Originally the plan was to go north from Bangkok and in to Laos, but we ended up changing our plans at the last minute and went south instead.
Escaping the water crazyness in Bangkok we went to Cha-Am, a little colorful town on the east coast. We had intended to spend a few days there to realax, but because of dirty water and stinging gellyfish we decided to go further south after only one night. We ended up on Koh Tao, an island north of Koh Panang, and I can only say Koh Tao is my favorite place so far on this trip.
1st, we got a bungalow at FREEDOM BEACH. It had cracks in the floor, cocrooches (sp?) and a crappy fan, but still - the prettiest place so far. The beach (100 m from our bungalow) was pretty small, but there were palm trees, white sand and turqoise water, and the beach bar (decorated with Bob Marley posters and flags) played (of course) Bob Marley and Jack Johnson all day long.
On day two it rained as we woke up, but after breakfast it cleared up and we walked to another beach where there was supposed to be some small sharks and giant turtles. We didn't see any, but went to the city later to buy snorkelling gear so we can go looking later.
The food at Koh Tao (and in all the other places I've been so far) is delicious. We're being careful and only eating at restaurants (which is cheap anyways), and no one's gotten sick yet. The restaurant at Freedom beach is the perfect place for chilling, they have pillows on the floor and every night we lie down and listen to the animals making noises in the dark. Last night a lizard ran across my stomach and onto Malin's leg. We screamed and people gave us weird looks :)

This morning we took the boat to Koh Pangan and on to Surat Tani, from where we were put on a minibus to Krabi. We got a really nice hotel room with a beautiful bathroom and a toilet that flushes, for only 450 baht a night. Tomorrow we're going on a boat tour to 4 different islands, one of them is Koh Poda, which according to Vagabond is supposed to have psychadelig snorkelling, so we're excited :)
I'll try to post some pictures, but so far I havn't found a computer where I can easily plug in my camera.

Happy new year!

Discoveries so far:

# There's a thai version of Hana in Kanchanaburi.
# Chips have really weird flavors over here ("Seaweed" and "Spicy Seafood")
# The mountains around Kanchanaburi look a lot like the Appalachians.
# In Thailand they celebrate new years in April, and between the 13th and the 16th everybody goes crazy with water and some kind of chalc (sp?) mixed with water which they rub on everybodies faces, smile and laugh.
# New years celebrations are great fun, but only for so long when you're chuggalugging all your stuff around.
#Thailand is great :)

"Vi befinner oss naa over Nordpolen. .. altsaa den nordlige delen av Polen.."

I made it from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi without any major difficulties.
After being positively suprised by SAS on the way over here (excellent food, Juno, and a humorous captain) I fell in love with Bangkok the second I got out of the airport.
After some wandering around the bus stop and dodging sneaky taxi drivers I found a guy with bright pink lipstick on, selling bustickets to Khao San Road for only 150 baht (4$, 18 NOK).
From Kaho San Road I tried to find bus 155, which supposedly goes to Bangkok's southern bus terminal, but after walking back and forth on the same street a couple times I gave up and got in a tuktuk instead. I quickly discovered the driver didn't speak a word english, but thanks to the map lipstick-guy gave me (with both thai and english names on places), he got me to the bus terminal. I did concider spending the night in Bangkok earlier, since I didn't know if I would have enough time getting to Kanchanauri, but I ended up making the very last bus (with about 5 minutes).

Kanchanaburi has been great so far. I've spent the day biking around town, going to museums and other tourist attractions, drinking as much water as I can and trying to get used to the heat.
Tomorrow I'm doing a tour to one of the famous waterfalls around here, some hot springs, the hellfire pass, the death railway and the bridge over the river Kwai, and on monday I go back to Bangkok to meet Maria and Malin.