So we're currently in Surat Thani in south-central Thailand, a non-tourist friendly town with few English speaking people. We're staying here tonight before heading to Chaiya early tomorrow to register for the meditation retreat. We'll have a few hours to kick around the town before we have to be back to sign away 10 days to eating mushy barley, sleeping on concrete slabs with wooden pillows, being eaten by fire ants, and not talking about it (or anyt...

So we're currently in Patong Beach in Phuket. It's really nice (and hot) here, though much more expensive than Bangkok (and cleaner). We're in the gay district of Phuket which makes for some interesting sights. The first thing that happened is that my bag never arrived from Bangkok. Luckily, after several hours and a lot of attempting to speak to Thai people who spoke very little English, my bag arrived at my hotel. Maybe there is a God (I'm still...

Today is our last day in Bangkok until we come back through on our way out in a few weeks. We leave for Phuket at 4:45am tomorrow. Beth and I have decided to do a 10 day silent meditation retreat in Suan Mokkh, an island in south Thailand. It doesn't start until April 1st, so we have a few days to explore Phuket and do a whole lot of talking and making noise. You can check out the website for the retreat at http://www.suanmokkh.org/ret/travel.htm. We won'...

A brief recap on the past 10 days or so... After spending a few days in Hololulu Beth and I set off to the big island to spend a few days exploring Hawaii minus all the tourists and resorts. We rented a car, more specifically a Chrysler Seabring, which turned out to be the worst rental possible. We started off by going to the Kona Brewery where we ate delicious pizza (which may or may not have later given Beth food poisoning; it's a toss up between that a...