Just a quick note. Luke and Tabitha are visiting which is really fun. We’ve been doing alot of sitting on decks drinking coffee and beer and this and that. Today looks good for snorkling!

I also really want to thank rgsteele for buying us a flickr pro account! Which is responsible for the new high-res version of the image posted above. From now on I’ll be posting full versions of everything.

Sarah and I have been to Myanmar!

It’s been three months so it was finally time to do a visa run.

We have a tripple entry visa. Each entry is good for 3 months (after extending it for another month in Smaui). All we had to do was leave the country and come back. Stamping the visa with the 2nd entry.

Alot of people have to do this so it’s pretty easy to find a tour opperator offering the service. We ended up doing it along with a half-dozen other people from Koh Phangan.

It took us 24 hours door-to-door but that includes dinner twice.

We started off on the night boat. Which is pretty funny. It’s an old really slow boat with no seats but thin matresses spread out under the 4 foot ceiling. It left at 10 and arrived at the ithmus at 4:00am (a journey which usually takes 3 hours).

From there we all bundled into a van and drove across the Ithmus of Kra to Ranong Thailand. Which is seperated from Myanmar by a very large river. We had to check out of Thailand in Ranong and then were driven to the port and bundled onto a longtail. The port at Ranong was GREAT. So many boats and people going hither and thither. As soon as I saw the place my shutter finger just went nuts.

The chartered longtail took us to Thai immigration (standing in the river on stilts) to confirm the checkout (every boat has a young boy who runs passports and ropes around). And then across the very large river to Myanmar. There we checked into and out of Myanmar in the same motion (with 10$ american to smooth the way). And got on the same boat back. Then into the same van back to the east-coast, and onto a ferry that takes 3 hours istead of 6 to make the crossing home.

One beatutiful sunset later we were eating dinner in one of our favourtite restauraunts (congratulaions Won and Steve on the marriage!) and then home to bed.

So we popped over to Myanmar just for the day.

Some of the pictures are up on the flickr account. I think alot of them turned out quite well (although out of order, damned free account!).

Hey.

Still here in Thailand. Not really up to much. Just enjoying living in a house next to the beach in a tropical paradise.

Gin and Tonics have become very popular. As have the hamocks strung all over various decks. Reading good as well as bad books (Pete’s book is highly, highly recomended. Write me an email for an online version if you haven’t read it)

The wind has finally provided. I have finished my kitesurfing course. Which has, perhapse paradoxically, perhapse inevitably, left me in a worse place than when there was simply no wind.

See now I have to rent gear at steep prices or buy gear at steep prices in order to chase the sport. Which I find amazingly fun. Which was basically inevitable. Tempted to buy the gear. There is kiteboarding pretty well everywhere after all. (including Tokyo, which is pretty high on the places-to-move-to-next scale)

Food continues to be good. We got a small bag of curry paste that is the base ingredient in various curries we have been preparing. All subtle variations of eachother.

So far the crush a bunch of peanuts curry is being slightly eclipsed by the throw in a huge amount of garlic curry.

Also found a place that sells decent bread and a place that sells decent new-zealand cheese. Which sews up breakfast and snack time.

Yes. Well when the most exiting thing in your day is the gin blind taste test (larios > gordons) you know that life is being extremely pleasent.

Cherio.

– The Apes

This must be one of the last rainstorms of the season. There is a guy out in the water bailing out his longtail boat. We’ve hardly seen a cloud for weeks, and to be honest I missed the rain a lot. It makes such wonderful sounds on the roof and gives the ocean and amazing effect (although we haven’t been able to photograph the effect yet). Everything is so picturesque.

Looks like our job with the dogs is working; I would have expected all of them to come crowding up to the deck but we have only Brave (who is welcome) and Rope (the most stubborn one by far). I tossed Rope off a few times to give him the idea he isn’t welcome in our shelter, but he beat me back to the door both times and tried to squeeze inside. He’s upset about being wet, but I don’t think he sees the correlation.

We’ve heard that monsoon season has been so light this year that it hasn’t filled the resevoirs high enough. The same thing happened three or four years ago, and the summer after parts of the island were without running water for two months. We’ve enjoyed the good weather but aren’t looking forward to having to bathe in the ocean. Another reason we’re looking to be elsewhere when our visas expire in April.

You may remember past scenes of puppy mauling from our photo stream. For Colin at least, this one here was the last. After taking a day-off-dogs on the 1st, we discovered we couldn’t just close the door and be rid of them anymore. They live here now.

We’ve stopped feeding them treats since Newyears, and stopped paying attention to them except to boot them off the deck, but still they persist that this is their new home, and we are their chew toys. Colin is depressed and angry about not being able to control the buggers. At 2 or 3 months old they may be starting to teethe but haven’t learned any manners yet. They chew on things and bark at night, run inside if the door is open and jump up on us when we leave the house.

We still like Brave; the original, whussy Momma’s boy (the one with the black muzzle in most of our pictures), but his brother and sister are complete terrors. You toss them down the stairs and they scamper right back up again. You yell and point at them and they run through your legs. Whereas Brave cowers and whines even when you aren’t mad at him, and stays where you put him. I hope we can find a way to keep him around; if any of them actually needs our attention it’s probably him.

So far the puppies (even Brave) haven’t been too put out by our putting them out, but Momma is. She’s been living with us for awhile now, and I guess she’s got anxiety problems. When we finally emerged from our hungover state on the 2nd, she was so excited to see us again that she started panting very fast and loud and shaking all over. Her eyes went wide and her ears back in what I would call ‘a dog freaking out’. She desperatly licked our hands and faces (she’d never done that before) until we edged back to the door and escaped inside.

Then she whined and scratched at the door (which she’d also never done) until we closed the curtain. Still hyperventillating, she ran all around the house looking for a way in. At one point she made it to the other side of the deck railing and was confused about how to get back, then she tried to sit down on the two inches of clearance and fell off with a yelp (we checked that she was okay, then laughed our asses off). Ten minutes later I heard more scrabbling and hysterical wheezing at the bike under another window. I peeked out again, and when she saw me she lept from where she’d been balancing on the bike seat and smashed her face into the closed window between us (I think that one did hurt her).

We shut all the drapes that night and hid from this horror-movie stalker. I had nightmares.

Colin has their long-term survival in mind when he tries to chase them off. What if the neighbours stop feeding them because they’ve moved in with us? What if they become dependant on us, and we move away in a few months? What do we do if Momma’s suitor (still lurking around) gets her in the family way?

I would love for the answer to be “it’s not our problem”. If the people (our landlords actually) who feed these dogs don’t think it’s a big deal then why should we care? The puppies will get run over or poisoned eventually, and until then we can play with them and make their little lives happy… Except they are our problem, because they’re chewing up our things being pains in the ass every time we go outside. The lady next door called them ‘Bad news’ and probably blames us for enticing them from across the street. Well, I guess we did, but we’d like to send them back now, please.

I’ve been in touch with the animal clinic on the island. They are tiny and underfunded but spay a few dogs every month, and they agreed to get Momma on the list for next round. If we can get her on a Songthaew without her freaking out again and jumping off the back – am interesting supposition.