While I was in Hanoi, I booked the package tour through my hotel which includes hotel, all means, train and bus transportation, and 2 days of hiking to rural minority villages.  I don't remember what I paid since I did it as sort of a package deal with Halong Bay but I think it was around 75-80 USD.  Well worth it.

The train was an overnight sleeper that left Hanoi at 9:00PM and arrives in Sapa around 6:00AM the next morning.  Not the best train in the world but I had a soft sleeper car so it was comfortable enough.  From the train station, it's then another 1.5 - 2 hour bus ride up all sorts of mountainous roads with breathtaking views until finally reaching the main town of Sapa.  Since Sapa is very high in elevation the temperate is actually very cool compared to Hanoi and Saigon.  There is virtually no humidity which made it quite a change from the rest of Southeast Asia.

The hotel I stayed in was called the Royal Hotel and my view overlooked one of the numerous valleys.  The room was extremely nice like most of the hotels I stayed in Vietnam.  The room had old hardwood flooring and a brick fireplace which gets used in te winter when they occasionally get snow high up in the mountains.  The entire place has a sort of cosy small town feel to it where after a while every local remembers your face and will greet you by name. The included food although very few choices (could only choose from a set menu of 4 things) was excellent and the portions were very large unlike Ha Long bay where the food was pretty horrible and was basically re-heated Spring Rolls.

There are a handful of ethnic village tribes up here that don't really fit anywhere else in the world but here.  They're not Vietnamese, not Chinese, or Laos.  They're just what they are; they've lived here for thousands of years and they don't really fall into any boundary of any country.  The tribes here though are probably most closely related to the Chinese minority tribes than Vietnamese.  In fact, some of these villages here use supposedly speak a dialect of Mandarin (or another Chinese language) and don't speak Vietnamese at all as you get closer to the Chinese border.  All of their clothing is made entirely by them.  Everything is extremely colorful and dyed with indigo. I've got some fantastic pictures. What I found most interesting was the Black H'Mong tribe (as seen in many of my pictures) spoke better English than almost all of Vietnam even though they claimed they didn't go to school for it and learned it entirely from tourists.  Most of the girls all wear their traditional clothing and hike up to the main town every day to sell clothing, bracelets and handbags made of hemp and dyed with indigo to all the tourists.  Even though they live in the villages their entire lifes most of them still have some sort of western influence.  Even in the remote tribes, they have televisions with satelite. I also saw one of them with a cell phone of all things and some of the younger girls even have email addresses! Not too bad for a small little minority tribe.   Still their culture is pretty unique.  I don't know enough about it to explain but it definitely warrants more reading into.  They have no religion and basically worship living ancestors, when people die, they're forgotten about.   Men can have wifes and girlfriends at the same time.

I could have definitely stayed in Sapa for a week, I actually felt bad for leaving and didn't feel like I had seen enough.  The people weren't pushy or aggressive like lots of the Vietnamese people who try to sell you stuff in the markets.  Their smiles were genuine unlike most places in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam who see you as a walking ATM machine.  One of the girls actually gave me 2 free bracelets because I was talking to her.  In return, I gave her a bracelet I bought in Cambodia; sort of a trade I guess.

Anyway, I got back from Sapa this morning at 5AM on the train and walked around Hanoi until 11:30AM to catch my flight to Bangkok.  Now i'm back in Bangkok. My AirFlight took 2 hours, passed through Thailand immigration without any problems. For some reason, it just feels like i'm coming home.  This was my first place in Southeast Asia I traveled and stayed the longest. Coming back to it has a good feel.  It's funny, if you read my first post about Bangkok, I mention that I thought it was extremely dirty, crowded and polluted.  After traveling much of SE Asia, I have to say Bangkok now feels very clean, modern and certainly less polluted than Saigon. Bangkok is certainly less crowded than Saigon which has 8 million people and 6 million motor bikes.  Bangkok travel and congestion is nothing compared to the small side streets of Hanoi. Bangkok looks like a sterile hospital compared to Phnom Penh.  Basically, you get my idea.  After revisiting this place, it just feels more impressive than it did 3 months ago when I first arrived.

Anyway, feels good to be back in Thailand.  Though it's much more touristy, the people are friendly, you don't get hassled as much, and of course Thai girls are just beautiful to look at.  Staying here until the 4th and then I fly to Australia!    I'm off for some Beer Chang! 8% alcohol.  Stay turned for updates from Sydney

Don't get me wrong; It seems the main infustructure of the island has almost been entirely rebuilt.  Bars everywhere are open, bungalows are easy enough to find and shops everywhere on the main plaza/strip are all busy with customers almost oblivious to what happened. Development here seems to be continuing at an alarming rate to the point where Phi Phi will surely be overdeveloped to its' previous state.

The first night I got here I found two girls from Holland who had been wondering around for about an hour trying to find their resort and had no idea where they were.  They managed to walk in the complete opposite direction to where they were staying and got hopelessly lost.  Being the nice guy I am and with my extremely limited geography of the island, I had them describe anything that seemed familiar.  Suprisingly, I managed to figure out where they were staying and I walked them back to their place.  Crisis averted.  Now who says Americans aren't helpful?

Since this is the monsoon season it has been heavily raining off and on for a few days, only stopping for brief periods and then continuing on with more showers.  Today is the first day I've seen the sun out in a while.  The weather on the Andaman coast during this time of year is very sporadic with bouts of heavy rain and occasional spots of sunshine.

Because of the amount of my money I spent on accommodations and food on Railay, I decided that I would trim my expenses by finding somewhere cheap to stay.  I managed to find a shithole of a place for 250baht (6.50USD)/night.  It's pretty much the worst place i've stayed so far but it has a bed, a bathroom and a fan so it will surely suffice for a bit longer. The only major problem is that it is really far away from the main town with all the night life and restaurants so it requires me to walk about 15-20 minutes up a hill to the middle of no where. I've only got 3 days left on this island so i'm debating whether or not it's worth it to find someplace better.

A few other interesting things about this island.  There are no cars or motorcycles here.  Everybody walks or takes a bicycle.  Ironically, where motorcycle traffic on the other islands can be a hazard, the only dangerous thing here is being ran over by a peddling Thai on a bicycle. In effect, not so deadly.  Even with the hundreds of bars on the island, night life here seems to be centered on about 3 main bars: Apache Bar, Carlito's and the Reggie Bar. You tend to see the same people over and over again because Phi Phi is small compared to Koh Samui or Koh Phangan.  Every backpacker more or less follows the same route so i've met many people that i've seen in Bangkok and at other places. It's really funny.  Half the people you don't remember their names or have any idea where you met them but you know at one point you were drinking with them somewhere along the line.

Another strange thing about this island is that there are hundreds of stray cats everywhere which are extremely friendly.  Most seems obviously well fed and taken care of. I had one kitten follow me half-way back to my bungalow after I gave it some attention.  This is contrast to the other islands of Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao where the problem is not cats, but stray dogs.  Dogs seemed to have become such a plague on all the other islands that a dog rescue fund was started. For some reason, Koh Phi Phi appears unaffected.  I haven't seen one dog since I got on the island and I much prefer cats.

I did manage to met up with the two English guys, Alex and Chris that I hung out with on Koh Phangan and Koh Tao.  Since they're sort of doing a similar itinerary i'm going to follow them down to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia for a while.  We also briefly and randomly met up with the two Canadian girls, Tiko and Chloe that we met at our bungalow on Koh Phangan at the Apache Bar.  I also met up with two other English girls, Lauren and Laura, one of whom I met on a travel website and was supposed to met up with on Koh Phangan but I never got the chance.  I knew she was going to be on Phi Phi as well so I called her cellphone and i've sort of been chilling with them off and on.  I believe they're also headed to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia so i'll most likely see them again on my trip.

We all sort of drank heavily last night so I haven't been feeling too well. I finally got a bit of sun today to aid my ailing tan and I managed to walk around the island to explore a bit more.

Interestingly enough, although Railay is not an island it definitely has a most secluded feel to it compared to the other places I have been.  In order to get here you need to take a 25 minute longboat ride.  There are no cars and no motorbikes, you can walk to the other end of the peninsula in less than 5 minutes.   Other than for it's spectacular beaches and world-class rock climbing which I don't do, there is no nightlife here at the moment.  Since it's pretty much the low/monsoon season, there aren't many people here.  It rained heavily all day and finally cleared up in the afternoon.

 I would love to stay here longer just for the beach but I need to be out of Thailand by the 30th. That gives me hopefully 5 full days to explore Koh Phi Phi, do some kayaking and maybe a bit more scuba diving.

So far i've only done about 5 dives. 2 afternoon dives and 1 night dive on the 17th and another 2 afternoon dives on the 18th. Today i'm taking a day off from diving to explore the island and rest. The diving here is fanastic compared to what i'm used to in Boston but I still prefer Mexico more based on the reefs that i've dove so far. The big difference here is the marine life. Massive schools of fish on most of the dive sites; much more fish than i've ever seen diving in Mexico. Other than that, nothing really special to report about. The night dive was fairly bland until the end when we starting to see lots of stingrays. On the afternoon dives, I saw a very large and curious sea turtle that seemed to follow our dive party with no fear for about 10-15 minutes. I also saw some other stingrays and a barracuta which are all too common sights in Mexico so perhaps i'm a bit jaded on the quality of the diving here. I would at least rate it on par with Cozumel, Mexico although in my opinion the reefs in Mexico have much more to see with massive swim-thrus and different coral formations. I am going to probably do one or two more days of diving then I am heading to Krabi since I only have 10 days left in Thailand. Going to try to do 5 days in Krabi and spend the rest of my time in Koh Phi Phi before heading to Malaysia.

The other aspect of diving here which I am not really fond of is the size of the dive boats and the number of people diving here. In Mexico, Florida keys, and Boston i'm used to very small dive boats with a maximum of perhaps 8 people. The dive boats here are massive with 60 people on one boat. The divemasters of course will split up the groups into smaller, more managable sizes but it still has a feeling of over crowdedness. Every dive site here is literally filled with divers, way too many. Besides these minor shortcomings, I quite like the diving here and Ban's Diving Resort is fanastic and well run dive operation. Ban's is well more organized than any dive operator i've encountered in Mexico. I am seriously considering coming back here to get my Divemaster certification because Ban's provides you free diving for life is you complete your certification here. I don't think anyone could pass up that offer.

The on-site restaurant here is pretty good as well but a bit more expensive than the last place I was staying. "Expensive" is all relative here.  You have expensive in terms of the United States (and other Westernized countries) and expensive in terms of Thailand.  Once you get used to the prices here you realize things can get expensive.  Of course when I say expensive I mean 50 cents to a dollar more which when you think about it is quite irrelevant back home but when you're traveling for 3 months you begin to realize that a dollar here goes a long wa.y

Anyway, since the Full Moon Party I haven't really been doing much except sit on the beach, peel my horribly burned back and go swimming.  Today finally intent on actually accomplishing something, the three of us took a long boat ride around the island all day and went to a couple different waterfalls, some really nice beaches and did a few hours of snorkeling as well.  It was pretty good to finally see a bit more of the island instead of just the same two places. We also went to this beach called Bottle Beach (It's heavily advertised in the Lonely Planet guide) which was extremely nice.  It's claim to fame is that it's only accessable by boat so it obviously wasn't very crowded compared to some of the other beaches here.  The rest of the beaches I can't remember their names or if they even had names but rest assured they were all postcard material. 

 It's getting scary but the longer I stay here the less and less I want to go home. Not to say I don't want to ever go home but I feel like I should do a fair bit more traveling.  What was originally supposed to be only a month when I planned this trip 6 months ago turned into 2 months; when I finally got here it turned into 3 months and even then I thought I was seriously stretching it beyond my limits.  Now I am having serious thoughts about extending my trip to 6 months to a year.  For the past 2 days i've been trying to work out the logistics in my head of me not being in the United States for 6 months.  My biggest problems are my car payment, car insurance, and the fact that i've already been on a leave of absence from Salem State College for an entire year working.

The first problem realistically isn't bad.  I can always have my mother take over the car insurance and car payments for a while since they're already in desperate need of a reliable car.  My leave of absence from school presents a BIG problem.  If I remember correctly, the maximum amount of time one can take a leave of absence from Salem State is one year.  By September my one year will be up.  If I don't enroll in classes by that time i'll be forcibly withdrawn from school which means I would need re-apply all over again and I believe I would start having to pay back my school loans immediately.  Not very good.  I am going to wait a few weeks and give my advisor a call and see if there is another solution.

From everyone i've spoken to, getting a job seems like the easy part.  Teaching English in most places such as Thailand, Cambodia or Korea requires literally no experience or a degree. You get paid wages that are in essence much higher than the local population here because they're so desperately in need of English teachers.  The other option I was exploring (the one I would most likely do) is catch a flight over to New Zealand and acquire what's called a Working Holiday Visa which would allow me to legally work in New Zealand for up to a year.  Unfortunately, the United States is pretty much fucked over in regards to Working Holiday Visas but I assume it's because we do the same thing as well.  It's reverse discrimination since it's almost impossible for lots of these countries to get working Visas here. Countries such as Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland, and Norway can easily acquire Working Holiday Visas which allow citizens of their respective countries to live and work there legally for up to 6 months to a year.  Doing a small amount of research, the only country I could find that will grant a U.S. citizen a Working Holiday Visa is New Zealand.   I would have prefered Australia but it would basically mean that I would need to illegaly work under the table. 

That's pretty much what's on my mind right now.  I have a shit load of pictures I need to post on here but the internet connection on this island is extremely slow and twice as expensive as the last place I went.  I probably won't be uploading any pictures for a while.  Tonight, we're heading into the Haad Rin which is the main place where people go on this island for nightlife and the home of the Full Moon Party to watch the English World Cup Match (soccer).   Obviously, i'm not the world's greatest soccer/football fan if you know me but i've been trying to watch most of the games here because there is really nothing else to watch.  So far they've been pretty entertaining to watch.

The common drink is literally a bucket. It cost 150 baht (3.90 USD) or cheaper if you buy it off the beach and it gives a small bottle of sang som (thai) whiskey, a can of coke and a redbull with ice poured in a small bucket and served with multiple straws. Drink 2 of them and you'll be completely wasted. Hell, just one will do the trick for most people.  Hell, you can even buy them pre-packaged at the 7-11 on the beach.

The best way I could describe the Full Moon Party is that it's like springbreak in Cancun but ten times crazier. The beach has mats everywhere where you can sit and drink but most people are dancing.  The entire beach is one large dance floor on the sand. In the midst of all this madness there are also fire dancers performing everywhere. Lots of people also get their face or body painted. You see hundreds of people walking around with their countries' flag painted on them so you can tell where you're from. It's pretty wild. Biggest party i've been to. You can easily find girls. Lots of drunk people swimming.  Even if you're not a party person it's definitely a must see if you visit Thailand.  It happens every month on the full moon but there are also half moon and black moon parties.  Since it's started to become really popular, pretty much any phase or alignment of the moon is used as an excuse to have a party.  After everything is over, the entire small island of Ko Phangan turns to a ghost town and reverts back to a fishing village.  The majority of the people don't even stay on the island too.  They hop on one of the many ferries from Ko Samui (2 hours I think) and take the next ferry back in the morning.

Each bar/club on the beach plays different music. If you don't like rap walk in any other direction you'll be immersed in music from another bar completely oblivious to what's going on 50ft away from you. Rock, Reggie, Rap, Trace, House.   If you're feeling a bit more adventurous, you can walk out into the water and swim out to one of the many boats that also serve alcohol. 

They also had these massive projection screens on the beach that were being used to broadcast the World Cup. Apparently this Full Moon Party was pretty large due to the world cup.

Also, you need to be careful of broken bottles and burning cigarettes. Luckily, me nor any of my friends had any problems but you hear horror stories of people cutting their feet open on broken glass. You will almost certainly lose your sandals and step on at least 5 people passed out so don't bring any expensive clothing.  It will either be lost or covered in paint and sand.

Overall, I had a pretty good time. I am still trying to get all the sand out of my hair though.  I didn't take any pictures because I didn't want to bring my camera however some of my friends took plenty.  Once they email them to me I will post them.