After spending several days indoors resting up and recuperating, I went back to Big Wave Bay with Pete and Simon to surf on Sunday. Instead of nice small friendly waves, though, the sea was angry. There was no way I was going in, and Pete and Simon decided against it as well. The three of us ended up sitting out for a few hours to just watch.
Afterwards Pete and I met up with Sue and Steve at a bar and formed a plan to meet in Shanghai in April…

I finally took the ferry to Macau and spent a day exploring over there yesterday. Macau is a former Portuguese colony now under control of China as a S.A.R. (Special Administrative Region) like Hong Kong. Today, its home to a booming gambling industry - casinos are going up by the handful and are constantly busy. Getting there from Hong Kong is very easy: just a quick $20 ferry ride.

I was surprised to hear (and get the chance to speak) a fair bit of Portguese around town. Of course, the main language is still Cantonese but many busineses and shops display signs in Portuguese. Parts of the city feel very different from what I’ve been used to in Hong Kong. There are plaster facades, stone-paved streets and sidewalks and beautiful Portuguese-style buildings mixed in with the familiar Chinese metropolitan sprawl. I had a nice day walking all over (all over) and the weather stayed dry for the most part. It was cool to see several Catholic churches and Chinese temples right next to eachother throughout the day.

I’ve now got my ticket to Bangkok for tomorrow. I’ll be arriving there tomorrow evening to meet up with Brandon and the next day we’ll fly to Krabi (southern Thailand) to do some island-hopping for a few days. Sarah arrives in Bangkok on the 14th so I’ll be flying back up there to meet her.

Bangkok is wild! I arrived at Don Huang yesterday evening and caught a bus to Khao San road with the horde of fellow backpackers. Brandon had already spent a night here, so I found him at the hotel (Sawasdee Bangkok Inn) and booked a room for myself. We went out for a meal and then wandered the surrounding Khao San area, stopping for drinks here and there along the way.

Being the main backpacker drag in Bangkok, Khao San road is bright, crowded and noisy. You can’t make eye contact with any one of the army of tuk-tuk drivers without being asked “where you going?”; the streets are full of food carts, minibus bars and loads of tourists. We ended up walking into a bar with a good live band playing thai cover songs and had some goofy fun with a bunch of really nice thai kids. In the morning Brandon flew to Krabi, and I had a walk around town for a couple hours before I got on a plane to Krabi as well.

My flight landed in Krabi in the evening so Brandon and I had planned to meet up at a hotel in the center of town. I split the taxi ride into Krabi city with some fellow travelers and joined up with Brandon who had already booked a double room for us after a short day-trip to another island. We went out for dinner at the row of food carts by the water and enjoyed some mystery-snacks and noodle soup. A few drinks later we walked around a bit and decided the only thing going on was a live band playing to a handful of people in a small bar. A good choice as the band allowed people to go up and sing songs with them, so Brandon rocked the mic for a bit. We chatted with some other travelers and hung out with the band as they were closing up. They bestowed upon each of us our new thai names: Som Chai (myself) and Som Suk (Brandon). We had bought a boat ticket for Koh Phi Phi earlier so we woke up the next morning to catch it…