THAILAND

  December 2, 2022 - Friday D'Endless hotel is at the high point on the 4015 highway, tucked way up in the mountains. It was a fun jungle spot, our room was overlooking the road, a few small Thai houses and towards the next mountain. There was a crazy intense wind and rain storm in the middle of the night. Mega gusts and thunderous rain, we aren't sure if that's normal or not, it sure seemed out of the ordinary for us. There's waterfalls every where here, most cascading down rocks but Graham found a tall one with a big drop that we decided to go find. It was beyond a few towns and up in the mountains. Turns out google doesn't know all and sent us up a plantation road. It was steep and slim concrete paths, just wide enough for dirt bikes (or for us, our scooters). We wound up and up, passing little huts, a scooter here and there and the occasional worker. All the underbrush was carefully cleaned up around the fruit trees and they were all spaced out to allow good sun...

  December 1, 2022 - Thursday Moving day! We had to leave the tranquil Koh Adang, it was hard to leave and would love to be revisited. We really enjoyed our stay away for the people and hustle of town life. It wasn't too early of a start, we had a slow packing morning and left on the 10:30 boat to Koh Lipe, ready to catch the 11:30 speedboat back the Pakbara Pier. Everything went smooth, we hit a bit rainstorm along the way hoped that wouldn't be an all day thing. Luckily it was dry when we picked up our scooters and we set off on our 230km journey north. We went through one rain storm off the bat, but it lightened up for a while. Less then halfway there were some big dark clouds ahead so we stopped in at a little cafe restaurant. Nothing on the menu was in English or used our alphabet so we translated our order through the phone to a friend and got a lunch of fried rice with beef and some fried chicken. We were happy with that and had a good time communicating with the older g...

Nov 30, 2022 - Wednesday Today was the day to finally climb the cliff on Koh Adang. After a tasty curry and noodle breakfast and a couple cappuccinos, we set off. Graham deciding to go no shirt to help keep him cool. It was a humid hike after all the rain from the night before but the skies were clear now and the temperature rising. We followed the path again to the park, nice and easy that part of the trail but instead of heading to the beach we started the climb to Chado Cliff. First it was in the jungle, nice and shady though still hot. Soon enough we were at the first part of the bluff and the heat rose in intensity immediately once you crossed the threshold from jungle to rock. Progress slowed a bit at this point, not wanting to over do it. We crossed the open bluffs as fast as possible and took breaks in the jungle, hoping for a cool breeze to help evaporate the sweat. We passed viewpoints 1 and 2 with a quick stop and photo but kept going up to viewpoint 3 where we knew the view...

   Nov 29, 2022 - Tuesday We set off right after a light breakfast, the boat left Koh Adang at 8:30 and we had a taxi waiting for us at Zodiac beach to take us to our dive guides. We went through the drill of answering a few basic dive questions to make sure we knew what we were doing, got fitted for BCDs and we heading out in no time. We had a French guide who was back on the island after working elsewhere for two years and his Italian friend who was just getting started with the dive company. We were in good hands! Since we were a last minute booking and couldn't get to the dive shop any earlier we set off in a long tail to meet up with the larger dive boat. Our first dive was where we snorkelled the day before, but this time we dropped in and headed north first. The big boat was anchored there and there were a few divers in the water already but some were still just getting their gear on. We sank down, ran through a few drills of mask on/off, losing the regulators and getti...

Nov 28, 2022 - Monday First morning on Koh Adang and its a beautiful sunny morning. It's nice to be away from the crowds and on the quiet island. We headed out early for a snorkel along the beach of the National Park just west of the resort. We signed out a kayak, hopped in and started paddling. Not an easy journey, the two person kayaks weren't easy to manage in the head on wind and waves. We found taking turns to paddle and staying as close to shore as the shallow reef allowed us a slow but steady progress forward. The kayak did steer much at all, getting caught in the waves and kicked this way and that, our progress would look like a zigzagging line. Finally we landed on the beach and walked around the point and to the snorkel zone around the east side of the point. We planned to start at the far off spot and snorkel back to the kayak. There was a designated swimming zone where we went in and an amazing coral reef that we could easily cruise along. Lots of fish, eels and cor...

Nov 26, 2022 - Saturday Today we hopped on the scooters nice and early and headed north to a secret beach Graham was keen to find. The map took us up to Mu Ko Phi Phi National Park and the Khao Non-Nak Nature Trail. We stopped at a drinks cart close to our destination and had a Thai milk tea and a green soda for Graham. We started up the trail, but Graham wasn't keen on reaching the viewpoints. He was determined to find us a secret and quiet beach. Instead after about a kilometre hike up and back down we ducked into the jungle. We crossed a little creek and followed an old disused nature trail down for a ways before reaching a clear cut. We crossed the logging and got onto a road which paralleled the shore line. After a short walk we came across a little old but used trail which we figured would take us down to the beach. Sure enough we popped right down onto a sandy beach all to our selves. Too bad the tide was so high though, there wasn't much of a beach to hang out on. It wo...