The Grand Palace, Bangkok. This place was 4 blocks from our hostel, and yet it still took 2 days to get there and we never actually made it inside! We may revisit the palace on the way back to Bangkok if we get a chance.

I'm going to enter this photo in the "most touristy-tourist photo" category of the photo competition I made up in my own head.


One thing you discover very quickly in Thailand is there are lots of stray animals running around. This kitty's name was Maibelle. Actually, I just made that up. Yes, this cat was sticking its head through the bench. No I am not lying. Figure that one out!


Here we have captured a moment of relaxation in Bangkok. We found this pond in a beautiful park in downtown Bangkok. No venders, no Tuk tuk drivers, just a chill place to sit. There was a sea monster though.

You though I was kidding!?! This is the sea monster living in the Bangkok pond! This sucker was 5 or 6 feet long and just casually swimming around. It seemed as if we were the only people surprised by the gigantic lizard, so maybe it was a common occurrence.



This is Jenni. Here Jenni is eagerly anticipating the longtail that was coming to take us to Ton Sai. After a 15 hour train/bus/mini bus ride, we were all a bit loopie and ready for a break.


This is a longtail. Thats John. If you want to get in and out of the Ton Sai/Railay area this is the only way, which is actually pretty cool and interesting, to say the least.


Here we see Jenni making a nasty habit look sexy. Shame on you Jenni.


This is Ton Sai beach, the area where we live. Across that grassy knoll at the upper right is Railay West, just a brief but sweaty hike.

This is a monkey. A cheeky, naughty monkey.

Ahh, this is the life. Living off the Thai mainland, climbing on the beach and generally lounging around and enjoying the awesome people and food. Life is goooooood!

After the crazy trip south from Bangkok on a train/bus/minibus/longtail boat we finally arrived on Ton Sai beach. Ton Sai is actually mainland, but there are no roads here so you have to access it by boat. In the area where we live there are 3 main beach/housing areas: Ton Sai, Railey West and Railey East. We are staying on Ton Sai which has recently become the climber/dirtbag area as the other beaches are being built up with nice resorts and more touristy tourists. The accommodation here is simple and cheap. We live in a thatched hut with a simple bathroom (with a flush toilet!) and a double bed complete with mosquito net and fan. All for the low low price of 300 baht a night (approximately 10 dollars). As it is the high season, this rate is actually expensive, during June you can pay as little as $2.50 a night! On the other beaches the accommodation gets much more posh and can go as high as 120,000 baht, but starts as low as a few thousand. Now let me see. . .150 baht to 5 dollars, so divide 120,000 by 150 and multiply by 5, which equals. . . . .well I cant even do that but you don't have to be a mathematician to understand how dumb that is!

Life here on Ton Sai is great, especially after the crazy that is Bangkok. The awesomality (yes, I made that up) of the climbing is rivaled only by that of the people here. Pretty nice. Lately we have been climbing lots and beaching it up, partying a bit and are soon planing to go diving and deep water soloing. I often wonder why anyone would ever ask why I live my life the way I do!?! This place definitely gives me that home-like feeling I get when I am in Yosemite or Hangdog Camp in New Zealand. There are certainly places that just fit, this place is one of the few mates I have found along the way.

Pictures soon I hope, but I promise nothing! Except adventure, that I do promise!

I find myself with some extra time on my hands before we set off to the train depot to catch our ride south so rather than sit around I though I would write a little about our time in Bangkok.

We arrived really early in the morning so after a brief tour of the area we are staying in the three of us hit the hay. The next morning we explored more and did some shopping, which is pretty much what you are doing when you walk around Khao San Road, whether you like it or not. The area we are staying in is the backpacker capital of Bangkok, so there is an abundance of shops, stands, markets, people, taxis, tuk-tuks (motorcycle type rickshaws), dogs, cats, small vermin and smells both good and bad. It is kind of the Bourbon Street of Bangkok. The city itself is very cheap (money wise), very fast and very intense. You seem to have your every need met, unless your need is to be left alone, which is not going to happen, at least in this part of town (downtown is quieter). There is also someone willing to help you out, even if you did not ask and don't need help, which is nice as long as you remind yourself to not get frustrated. If you need a expensive looking cheap personally tailored suit then Bangkok is your place, if not, then you spend a lot of time stopping yourself from strangling well dressed suit peddlers. The funny thing is, although I realize I am not painting a good picture of the city, it is actually a lot of fun. The people you meet are so interesting and kind, and oftentimes genuinely want to learn about you even though you both know that after 10 minutes you are likely to never meet again. The architecture is beautiful, especially the temples (which we have not even explored yet).

There is a lot to learn here about getting used though. For example, our first and last experience with a tuk-tuk ride was from downtown back to our hostel, which was a long way. We marveled at how cheap the ride was (around 1 dollar for three people), until we realised that there was a stop along the way. We learned the hard way that the tuk-tuk drivers have deals with shops in which they bring tourists, and as long as the people go in and look for 5 minutes the driver gets free gasoline. This particular driver told us that in broken thainglish, but we misunderstood and thought he needed just to stop and fill up. It did not kill us and we helped the guy out, but from then on we have shied away form the tuk-tuks because they always try and take you places other than where you want to go! They would rather take you on an hour "tour" for free than let you pay them just to drop you off 10 blocks away!
Our other learning experience involves feeding pigeons. We were walking through the park and all of a sudden two people shoved/poured bags of corn kernels in our hands. Within seconds we were swarmed by a ridiculous flock of pigeons. The three of us were pretty confused but we naively thought it was just some kind of good luck deal as it was the Thai New Year and we did not have much of a choice in the matter anyway. We rolled with it, had a few laughs, got some good pictures and started to take off. It was then that the people who shoved the goods into our hands (literally) started to demand money. As they were asking for 150 baht each (approximately 5 dollars) we reasonably balked. They were adamant about the price however and grew semi-upset at the notion that we would not pay a ridiculous sum after being hoodwinked. Eventually we settled for less but lets just say that afterward we all felt a bit cranky and used. We learned some valuable lessons though: not much is for free, keep a sharp eye and with all due respect, don't let yourself be bullied. Finally, if you ever want to make a killing in Bangkok, all you need is a bunch of baggies of corn kernels and some unsuspecting tourists.

Hello everyone! It has been a really long time since I posted, partly because I am lazy and partly because it does not feel nearly as necessary when we are in the states. So, I will start with a brief summary of the summer and move right along to current events. Below are some pictures from Yosemite that are new so if you have not seen any photos from the summer make sure to take a look. Here we go. . . !





I have to say that this summer in Yosemite was great. Eventually, Shane spent most nights with his girlfriend so Jenni and I ended up having a tent of our own. There are too many events to describe in detail, so I will just mention some notable ones. I did my first wall climb, participated in a pretty sketchy all-night booty run where Russ and I came away with two full ropes (both abandoned and left for us), climbed my first Valley 12.a (a sport climb), climbed East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, finally after 3 summers climbed Royal Arches, got much better at spinning fire and playing my didge, had some epic drum circles, saw my first pole cat, found a nickle arcade with ski ball, saw many of my old friends and made many new great memories.



After Yosemite, Jenni and I road tripped to Vegas to go climbing and see the city, only to find the campsite we were to stay at closed for the season and the sky dumping cloud tears. So, we booked into an Econolodge (there is quite a bit more to this story, ask me sometime) pimped around the strip for a day and then decided to shove of as we were not to into Vegas at that point. We next drove to Colorado Springs a stayed with my sister for a bit before heading back to Kansas.

In Kansas we set up shop at my moms house who graciously let us stay for free in order to save as much money as possible and avoid signing a lease. We spent some time visiting friends and soon Jenni was back at work serving and I was job hunting. Tile jobs proved to be un-forthcoming so I eventually started to substitute teach in between jobs. Subing basically became my main occupation so it was good I started when I did, otherwise I would have had no money at all! September to January was basically spent working as much as possible, seeing friends, climbing too little, eating too much, putting on weight and planing for our adventure in January.

On the 18th of January after pulling an all nighter of organizing, packing, storing and cleaning (we subscribe to Leave-No-Trace after all!) we got to the airport around 6 AM. This was good because the night before it had snowed a few inches which made the roads to the airport complete crap and driving over 45 miles an hour a really bad idea. However, it seemed as if everything was going OK up until now which makes me nervous because leaving the country never really goes smoothly for me. The other shoe was to drop when we found out that our tickets out of Thailand were booked in such a way as to make our stay 30 days and 5 minutes, and without a visa we were only aloud to stay for 30 days! Seriously, was a lousy 5 minutes going to ground us? In the end the super nice checker-in-guy let us on the plan at the risk of getting the airline fined and after that we were on our way!

The flight to Bangkok consisted of: Kansas City to Chicago to Tokyo to Bangkok; a total of about 20 hours flying and 26 hours traveling. Finally, after reaching Bangkok airport we hopped in a taxi and for a total of $2.75 each Jenni and rode to Khao San Road to meet John, who had arrived 6 hours earlier. After a bit of wandering on Khao San, we found the hostel we had booked and had a happy reunion with John, as we had not seen him since he left me in Australia in April.

What a change it was to be in Bangkok! New city, new people and a new temperature and humidity! 80 degrees and 90 percent humidity at midnight! To think that it was snowing when we left Kansas and this is considered "the cool season!"

Well, that is it for now, I will relate our Bangkok stories a bit later, of which we do have many, one involving being robbed by pigeons!