Half way there...

As crazy as it is to believe, today is the halfway point of our trip.  Tomorrow we leave Thailand and head to Laos.  That means in the first half of our trip, we've spent 2 weeks in Japan, 4 weeks in China, and 4 weeks in Thailand.

We're not sure what's crazier, though.

Is it crazier that we've done and seen so much and we're still only half done with our trip?  Or is it crazier that we still have the same amount of time ahead of us, in completely new countries for us?  Either way, this whole thing is crazy, and we're loving it.

We still have to visit Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.  All places that we're completely clueless about right now, and will hopefully have a much better understanding of in the next 2.5 months.  Crazy.

We still get to spend time Ho Chi Minh City with Lisa, Steve, and Luke.  We still get to tour Vietnam and Cambodia with my (now our) parents.  We still get to meet the child that Carmen sponsors in the Philippines and volunteer with his community.  Crazy.

Any way, hopefully you've enjoyed reading about our adventure so far, and we hope we have just as much to report on during the 2nd half of our trip.  And we hope you all are having a great 2010 so far.

And in case you missed them, click the following for the videos we've created so far...

Click for the Japan video.

Click for the China video.

All our love!
The Palumbos

Days 44-45 Saturday – Wednesday December 19-23, 2009 Koh Samui, Thailand

Exit busy city life...

…Enter island living.

Even though we had arrived into Thailand a few days earlier, we didn’t really enter the Thailand we had been waiting for until we got off the mainland, and headed down to the islands.  Bangkok was busy and crowded and, well, big cityish.  We came to this country looking for much more of a retreat so we can recover from the past 6 weeks on the road through China and Japan, and we didn’t get that reprieve until we headed to Koh Samui.

While planning Thailand, Tania broke out the islands into three sectors:

1.     Koh Samui – for cleansing and body pampering after pushing ourselves so much through Japan and China

2.     Koh Pha Ngan, for relaxing on the beach and socializing amongst the Full Moon Party crowd

3.     Koh Tao – for complete seclusion and a quiet new years celebration

Knowing how the next few weeks would unfold, we made the most of our time on Koh Samui at Spa Samui, the original healthy island retreat.  We had planned on partaking in a 3 day fast (yes, that means no eating or drinking alcohol) and getting massages all over our bodies until there wasn’t a drop of tension left in our muscles.

We succeeded in doing half of that.

Apparently, the fast required the participants to ingest a specific diet of foods during the week leading up to arrival at the spa.  Well, we didn’t find that our until the day before arriving, so the fast was off the table.  I was really bummed about that.  Instead, we enjoyed fruit shakes and longevity drinks for breakfast, yoga, meditation, 2-hour long Thai massages and 1 hour oil massages, naps at the beach and pool, and quiet meals at the spa’s restaurant.  I was afraid that a restaurant at such a healthy resort would consist of vegan and vegetarian dishes, which it did, but it also had a healthy selection of options for carnivores like me.  So in addition to healing our bodies and minds, we catered to our stomachs in an equal capacity.

We also enjoyed the island by scootering around to neighboring towns.  We exchanged books at a cute little book shop (traded Dan Brown and Lonely Planet for some David Sedaris and HG Wells), bought some matching tee shirts (now we have two matching sets to show off to the vomiting world) and warm weather shorts/skirts), and passed through Cha Weng, the extremely touristy area of Koh Samui, which we quickly exited so we could return to our peaceful haven at Spa Samui.

 

Our few days on Koh Samui were a perfect outro to city hopping and an even more perfect intro to Thai island hopping, even though we didn’t get to treat ourselves to a good ol’ fashion fast.  (insert sarcastic crying sound)