Hatyai Merridian Hotel Songkhla

... is constucted in the typical Southern style. Behind the temple, there is another ancient Khao Pe Harn Pagoda perched on the hill offering visitors a view of the great Songkhla Lake. You have ample of opportunities to mingle with the local villagers and learn more about their culture and living. Be polite ...

... was a bit heartbreaking to turn around and march back out of Malaysia, which looked lovely and actually wanted us to stay. As this is the second time Lisa has stared into Malaysia from the border (the first time was from Singapore), hopefully someday we can actually enjoy this beautiful country. But for now, we hurried back north as fast as we could to meet out friends on a tropical island to scuba dive among the coral and fish!

... the island to beautiful beaches, the highest peak and a mangrove forest. Langkawi was much quieter than I expected and the people were very, very friendly here. I had a great time with Inge. Yesterday I said goodbye to Inge and his yacht (again thanks a lot Inge!) and took the ferry to Kuala Kedah on the mainland of Malaysia and a local bus to Alor Star. Here I walked around for a few hours and visited the beautiful Zahir Mosque and the Alor Star Tower. Late ...

... is enormous!. normal is 3000 students during the normal school year...the campus seemed twice as big as the typical US campus....the students and teachers also have to use one of 8 'sign -in booths' ..they scan the finger print and get face recognition before allowing entrance into the campus.....a quick Thai dish at a restaurant across the street before returning home for the day! -Shane...aka...Braverhund-

... you can eat the whole head...quite delicious"....and she did!!!!...sorry I wasn't running the camera for you....next time...... Here are some Thai girls at the internet cafe and their 10 month old baby friend they are watching.....Nooch, Teena and Sky....I can get you single guys an email address if you'd like...they like A-may-re-ga's (Americans...) Sky saw ...

... will lend me the money to get me to Bangkok. So I spend my last 50baht in a cafe on a muffin because I'm starving and I need a place to sit and calm down. At 4 I check with the ATM lady, and the British couple give me 600 baht to get back to Bangkok. I can't stop thanking them and through all the stress I'm overwhelmed with happiness due to the kindness of strangers. 55 baht to get back to Phuket City, 500 baht for a bus to Bangkok and I'm ...

... different from a suburban gravel pit -- but Mr. Qu speaks of it with childlike enthusiasm. As he describes the workings of the mine, a Thai man comes out of the wooden house with a tray full of rough stones. Mr. Qu splashes some water onto the stones and holds them up to the sun one by one. "This is star sapphire," he says. "This is garnet. Here is sapphire. This is nice color, very blue. You want to pay him 1,500 baht for everything? We'll take them home, cook ...

... way there, and the ticket only cost fifty pence. It turned out that the train took four hours to travel forty miles as it went back and forth over the same line for some time.... still, you get what you pay for. We still couldn't get a train to Hat Yai so we stayed in a sub-standard hotel instead. Phatthalung is a tiny place, and everyone stops to say hello to the foreigners - which is nice, and reminded us of being back in China. Anyway we got the six am train to Hat ...

... to rook us into an overly-expensive taxi ride to Hat Yai. We opted for the cheap public transit route instead. This involved a "songthaew" (back of small pickup truck) for 25 minutes, then a 2 hour minibus ride with 16 people in it. We showed those taxi crooks! Not much to say about Hat Yai: grimy hotel, suspect food. We had a good ...

... lines, starting the curves wide, working into the inside lane for the turn, and then working to the outside lane to complete the curves as not to lose any speed. Hair-raising, if I had any.... The minibus dropped me at the wrong place, but the Hotel I was out the front of turned out to be cheap cheap ($16) with air con and Thai TV and thus good good. Songkhla is not a touristy town, and it is old style Chinese and rustic in an oriental kind of way. The National Museum ...