World Backpack

You know you’re not in Canada when at 7am you are eating breakfast and you are dripping in sweat. Seriously dripping.

We’re in Ao Nang, Krabi Province, which is the place that we’ve always held so close to our hearts as our favourite place in Thailand. It has, however, changed so drastically, that I would hardly recognize it, had the beach not been in the same location. On the plus side, our hotel is the same one that we stayed in last time, and it is pretty much the same.

I suppose the increase in tourism here is what changed it, and prompted all the pretty stores to close and be replaced with vendors selling knock offs of Ed Hardy and Puma (which is often called “Tuna” instead… haha). Phra Nang beach, the one that is breathtakingly beautiful, is still as gorgeous as we remembered though, so I guess the rest of the craziness is worth it. Plus we met Kirstie from Ontario who’s really nice and we hung out with for the day which was awesome.

Anyways, we took a cooking class yesterday and it was awesome. It was so hot though – and standing over a wok for 5 hours doesn’t make it any cooler

We learned how to make the following foods: Tom Yum soup with Prawns, Coconut soup with Chicken, Cashew Chicken, Pad Thai, Banana Spring Rolls, Thai Spring rolls, Green Curry Paste, Red Curry Paste, Penang (spelling?) Curry Paste (along with thier coordinating dishes – served with rice), Green Papaya Salad, Minced Chicken Salad, and Sweet Sticky Rice with Mango. Deeeelicious. If you people want us to cook for you when we get home, it’ll cost you, as we are now professionals. ! Also, here are two random things we learned yesterday… 1: Thai food is always balanced with sweetness (sugar or plum syrup), saltiness (fish sauce), sourness (lime, kafir lime leaves), and spicyness (chilies). 2: The reason people in hot countries eat such spicy food is because when it’s hot, you really don’t want to eat – you just drink crazy amounts of water. So if your meal is really spicy, you need to eat other foods that are not spicy (ie: rice and veggies) to cool you down – and then you eat more! And it’s so true – we have hardly ate since we’ve been here! I guess we’ll just have to go to the market and get some chilies….

So anyhoo tomorrow I think we are going to go to Koh Phayam – it’s a little island near Ranong, and we are really looking forward to it being nice and quiet. We might not be able to email or update this for a little bit – so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us.

For the remainder of the day we are going to go to fossil beach – it’s a whole beach made of slabs of fossils. There’s also a pearl farm there and we might pick up some pearls for people – so if you want some, let us know and we’ll be sure to buy them for you We are also going to go to the beach north (? I’m assuming north…) of here later in the afternoon because the tide goes out like 1/2 a km and apparently it’s full of starfish!!!

Well, now that you’ve finished reading my novel, I’ll go – so enjoy the pictures, and keep in touch!!

xoxoxoxox!!!

-Steph

Oh! A quick last thought – we are contemplating perhaps cutting our trip 1 month short and heading over to Europe for the last little bit – any thoughts/suggestions?