We've been in Thailand nearly a week now and felt like we should update the home page. Partially because so much is happening, but also because a friend from home gave me a suggestion on how to improve it and I wanted to try and get it done as soon as I could because I thought it was such a good idea.

But first, a little about our experiences in Thailand and plans for the near future! We arrived by bus into Hat Yai. A small, but bustling town about 95 km across the border from Malaysia. The town caters primarily to Malaysian tourists coming across the border for the, lets just say, flexible sexual attitude the Thais have:") Malaysia is primarily a Muslim country, with a blend of Hindus and Christians mixed in, and there are clear signs that pornography and prostitution is not tolerated. Hence, Hat Yai.

After a quick overnight stay, we caught a bus-ferry to Ko Phi Phi. Movie buffs may recognize this from the movie 'The Beach'. We spent a few days here, and Eric got to do a bunch of diving on an overnight boat. In the end, this is not a place that was truly memorable as it is overrun with tourists and not really what we imagine life in Thailand to be like.

We are currently in a small town near Phuket. We opted to stay here to get away from the tourists, but there are still a lot here. Tomorrow Eric will be getting a 4 day live-aboard dive boat and Val will spent the time shopping, sunning, and snorkeling.

After this it's across the peninsula to the Sea of Thailand side and a visit to Ko Tao. This may also be pretty touristy, but it is supposed to be very inexpensive and we could use a break in our budget after all the diving and shopping.

After that we'll try and get out into some of the smaller villages for a few weeks. Our visa expires on May 29th so our plan is to head into either Cambodia or Laos on that day and spend a few weeks seeing sights in those countries before heading back to Bangkok where we fly out on July 2 to begin the next phase of the trip.

So now for the change to the website. We have added a banner across the top of the page that we will update any time we have posted new journal entries so any time you visit the website, you can tell when the last time it was updated. This will save time scrolling through all the calendars and finding we haven't changed anything since the last time you were there. Hopefully this will help. This suggestion was courtesy of Rick Layne, so if it's useless ... just kidding Rick. Thanks!

That's it for now.

Eric and Val