At the ripe hour of 7AM we descended upon the city of Ranong intent upon finding the immigration office. We need that exit stamp from Thailand so we can officially leave and come back with a fresh 15 day visa. Gives us plenty of uninterrupted time to “explore” the beaches of southern Thailand. Of course, that mainly hinges on the idea that “explore” means drink beer, go diving and snorkeling, and maybe—if duty calls—some lying on the beach, just to make sure it’s safe for future travellers, of course.

Boats at the Thai side of the border

At any rate, it really wasn’t that far, the Thai immigration office. After we left the guest house and set out on our own, on foot, we realized we were wasting time. We convinced the first moto taxi we could find to take us to the office. It was a tight fit with the three of us on the little moped but we got there and it was actually pretty fun. Turned out that we went to the old immigration office and by the time we could decipher this tiny morsel of info from the, shall we say, unhelpful chap within our moto taxi was gone and we once more set off on foot to find the proper office. Fifteen minutes later we found the right pier where the new office is located and another 10 minutes in the strictly “Foreigner” line, we had our exit stamp.

Saben on the boat to Burma

Now only to get to Burma. Hmm…Wait, what’s that little man with webbed feet? Yes, I do need a boat! No, that’s too much but we’ll pay 100 baht each instead. OK? Right, let’s go.

With another grumpy looking German couple, we descended some rather precarious looking stairs and hopped into one of the hundred or so identical longtail boats bobbing and clunking together in the black water. The same black water that just moments later unapologetically swallowed Saben’s sunglasses. Materialistic bastard.

The dividing waters

Just across the river there is a major visible difference between Thailand and Burma. The Burmese houses are so shabby and sad looking it is hard to imagine anyone living there. Big contrast between how the beloved King of Thailand treats his people and how the Burmese government neglects theirs.

The burmese side of the river

Anyway, back to the visa business. With a couple of scheduled border checks along the way and a river so choppy and with such strong waves it seemed certain we would capsize and die just like the fate of so many boats each day here, we eventually made it to Burma. Nameless border town which holds little import for us as we are on a single track mission: getting a stamp in and back out again. We made a single purchase during our time in Burma and that was to buy a Myanmar Beer for Saben’s beer label collection. Stamp, stamp, US$10 (ouch), beer, and we are back in the boat zipping noisily across the river that we keep taunting with our stubborn survival at its fierce attempts to make us “sit down and stay a while.” The whole matter took 2 hours and we were very lucky to have a good boat driver who did not indeed allow our boat to capsize and did not break down.

Our boat in the water

Back at the Thai side, we officially re-entered Thailand, got the stamp, paid our boat driver, and hopped into the back of a truck taxi heading for our side of town. Grabbed our bags and hopped a bus 45 minutes later and, whew! Finally we were on our way to Koh Samui. All that before noon and we didn’t even get the opportunity to eat a single meal yet today.

The minibus from Ranong to Surat Thani (port town where you catch the ferry to Koh Samui—or another chosen island destination) took about 3-4 hours. A bit of waiting around for another hour or so til we could get the next bus to the actual port where the ferry way leaving and then we were lucky enough to catch the ferry literally 2 minutes before it pulled off. During the hour and a half ride to Koh Samui we chatted up this nice German fellow with bright blonde hair and a hearty laugh. The sun was just setting at we pulled out to sea and made for a nice ride to the island. We arrived just at dark and hopped another truck taxi from Nathon (Koh Samui’s port town) up the coast to the northern beach Mae Nam. Big sigh of relief to be in one place for at least the next 7 hours. Definitely ready for some food and sleep!

Sunset on our way to paradise

Travel Tip:

Honestly, you can do this without a tour guide or going through a guest house. You can do it on your own, for less money and in less time. You will probably even get out alive! I mean, no guarantee there but we both did so there is that.

Anyway, since we have a certain affinity for using overpriced and generally unnecessary tourist setups, we decided to forgo the guest house’s border run package. We stayed at the Kiwi Guest House as a matter of convenience because we were dumped on right there by the bus station and it was getting dark and beginning to rain. We had heard mixed things about the place but turned out to be basic but sufficient for one night. Staff are really terrible, bathrooms not great but rooms are okay and there are a few local restaurants nearby that are much cheaper than the Kiwi’s. Of course, it didn’t help that we refused to buy the border run package or the minibus ticket to Koh Samui with them so that probably contributed to our ideas of their staff and service.

If you want to do the visa run yourself, it’s all quite simple. The immigration offices open at 7:30AM every day of the week. If you go on a weekend or other “holiday” you will be charged an extra 5-10 baht by the Burmese at one of the 2 stops on your boat ride. It’s called a “holiday fee” and as you might have guessed, is just a nice way for the Burmese border folks to make a little extra money on the side.

Take a moto drop or truck taxi to the port immigration office. If you are staying in the market area of town, it should cost maybe 20 baht for a moto. From the Kiwi Guest House it might cost 30-40 baht (just a guess since we didn’t pick one up til we walked to the market and a bit farther). The port is very busy with locals going to work or just hanging around. There will likely be at least a couple of guys direct you toward the immigration office for the hopeful 5-10 baht tip. You can’t miss it though. Just walk toward the noise and water and turn right when you get “inside” the huge building, which is kind of open air. There will be a line of foreigners waiting for their exit stamp so you’ll obviously want to join them. When your turn comes, you will wordlessly hand your passport into a low dark window and stand and wait patiently (2-3 minutes) for them to hand it back. Just before they return your passport to you, they will take your picture so be sure to remove hat and sunglasses and look at the little camera behind the dark glass so you don’t have to try to figure out what they hell they want from that tiny uncomfortably low and small window.

From there, you might get picked up by a boat driver or you might need to walk over toward the rickety looking stairs and ask someone around there. Negotiate a good price and find out how many other people will be in the boat. If are two people and want to rent the whole boat, a good rate is 300 baht. Of course the drivers start out asking around 1000 baht so don’t be afraid to seriously negotiate with them. If you can share the boat with say, 4 people, a really good rate is 100 baht per person. This is what we paid but the driver was charging the German couple we shared the boat with 200 baht per person. Just FYI.

Very important thing to know: have a photocopy of your passport ready! You will need it for the first Burmese border check (your driver will take it and your passport inside and you will wait 3-4 minutes in the boat). If you don’t have one, you can pay 5 baht for a copy at the Thai immigration office after you get your exit stamp (door on left side as you walk away from the stamping counter).

Once you are in the boat, the driver will get you to where you need to be and make sure you are properly checked and stamped. When you get to Burma, you will go into a little office where you will wait with a big gaggle of other foreigners to have your passport stamped and pay your US$10. They will hold up your passport and try to pronounce your name so you can come over to the counter and retrieve your passport; then you ca be on your merry way, whether into Burma or back to Thailand.

A note about the US$10. It must be American currency and it must be absolutely pristine! The bill needs to be as new as possible and without any creases or blemishes of any sort. If you don’t have US$10 you can pay the Burmese visa fee with 500 Thai baht. Of course that translates into about US$15 so it’s best it you have American currency. However, the Burmese border officials are known to be awful to deal with and will come up with any number of absurd reasons to reject your perfectly spendable US$10 bill and demand payment in baht. You can see why, when they would make an extra US$5 off each person they do this to!

So that’s it. Your driver will herd you back into the boat and zip you back across the crazy river. There will be two scheduled stops on the way back. One is to make sure you didn’t smuggle drugs or people or something else equally illegal and one is to check your passport again. Boat driver handles these again and each takes less than 5 minutes. Once you arrive back to the Thai side of the river, head back up the stairs, get in to “Arrival” line and get stamped back into Thailand. Done! You’ve got a fresh 15 day visa, now get to the beach!

Arrived into Gatwick around 3pm and since the costs of getting to/from and being in London for just one day are too much for our tiny budget, we are staying in the airport Yotel. Our “room” is like a space pod, pretty rad.

Lindsey soaking up some much needed english TV

It’s small but incredibly efficient use of space, softest bed we’ve known in months, and at least 40 channels on English only TV!! Of course, this is all very exciting for us and not our dear readers…more to come of interest….later.

Well, apparently you just can’t have anything useful in your baggage when you fly these days. In fact, if I can’t leave home without my spare meat cleaver or my cross bow, why, I shouldn’t go anywhere! You should see the pictogram list of restricted items while you wait in the first of 3 security checks at the Bogota airport. As soon as you disembark from your connecting flight (where they check your passport before letting you go down the stairs onto the tarmac), you must queue up for another security checkpoint just to get into the airport when you are scanned and patted down.

Before you know you’re finished there, you find yourself being pushed forward into another search where you must empty the entire contents of your baggage onto a table before a scary looking military grunt who is obviously highly disgruntled to have been put onto such a lousy shift. We only have dirty laundry and sneakers… and lots of tiny, annoying hiding spots for tiny annoying objects….and some really weird stuff too…tiny llama talisman in a tiny pouch wrapped in toilet paper. Weirdest of all they choose random items to smell!?! For instance, Saben’s hackey sack which has been in more disgusting places than we could ever imagine, or Lin’s journal. What you could keep in there I have no idea.

After that mess was finished and we were waved through our same-sex searcher lines, we met back up and had to again pull everything out of our packs to repack them in the only way to make everything fit. Quite a task and equally frustrating to do on the floor of any airport but especially so in one where there are more military personnel and fat drug dogs than actual passengers. No wonder no one wants to fly through Columbia! I understand wanting to take necessary security precautions but sheesh! That was intense!

Unfortunately, the ‘’secure zone” of Bogota’s airport is nothing but airpoirt waiting rooms, patrolling police and military personnel, and 1 little snack stand with terrible, nearly inedible food (really; and we’ve eaten some pretty inedible things before). With 5 hours til our connecting flight to Madrid, we could do nothing than just sit…and sit…and sit a little more. We sat for hours, eyes glazed and drool swaying from our lips hoping the time would pass more quickly than possible until we got kicked out of the waiting room. One more security point before we could even technically go into the waiting room of our gate!

Finally, we felt like we’d made some progress–we were only the plane! But an hour after take off, we landed for a pit stop to pick up more people. We were told it would be an hour and a half and that we must stay on the plane. We were so hungry we could’ve eaten our complimentary blankets! Apparently noticing our ribs protruding through our shirts and taking pity on our sunken in cheeks from obvious starvation, the flight attendant took pity on us and gave us crackers and a juice box! Woohoo! It was like striking gold.

From there, just a boring flight with dinner and lots of movies and our vehement refusal to take proper anti-jet lag measures thus causing our bodies to feel the 7 hour time difference when we landed in Madrid at 10AM the next morning.

Oh, what a glorious breakfast at The Garden Cafe—literally the best place to eat in all of Granada, maybe the whole world! Saben had the world’s most delicious French Toast and Lin had some delectable chocolate & banana pancakes (so I love pancakes, alright?!) with the best orange juice and coffee ever (even better than Antigua, and that was some amazing coffee & OJ at Hostel 5). We just took our time over breakfast and wandering down to the ferry dock since our ferry to Ometepe didn’t leave til 2:00.

(Imagine a photo of the most amazing french toast ever, here)

We made it down to the ferry dock a little early, tickets were pretty cheap ($3 for a 5 hour ride). We got on the boat and settled into some seats (more like bleachers at a highschool basketball game). There are several TV´s onboard and they had some “entertainment“ which consisted of a dvd with five 80´s music videos on it, played over and over and over again, and a really sad movie about the holocaust!?! We didn´t quite realize how far the island was and every 30 min or so the ferry would (for no obvious reason) start heading towards shore. So we are thinking, great we are almost there! But, no… as we were getting close it would just turn back out to the water. We did this every 30 min for the five hour ride there.

When we finally arrived after hours of torture by the song “Born to Be Alive,” we joyfully disboarded in the dark and tried to find a cheap taxi to our home for the night. Since it was dark, we lost a lot of bargaining power and ended up paying $5 per person (down from $20) for a pickup truck taxi that stuffed in/on 8 or 9 passengers. We were heading for Finca Magdalena, a farm & hostel near the tiny town of Balgue (pronounced Bal-gway). It was a fun but incredibly rough ride, and it really did take an hour like the taxi driver said, so it was actually worth the $5. The roads were, well, not roads by any account that I could have ever imagined. In fact, I’ve seen creek beds that are in better condition than the roads on Ometepe (no joke). When we arrived at Finca Magalena, there were some hippies playing music on the porch while some other guests ate dinner or looked on. We were shown to our beds—a tightly stretched piece of tarp over a homemade X-frame, kind of like a cot (really wish we had a photo of this!). There were 6-8 other beds in the “dorm” (barn) but we were right next to the bathrooms so we didn’t need to venture very far for a much-needed shower. The beds were only $2 but there were also $40 private rooms upstairs and hammocks for $1.50 outside on the porch.

We were just barely in time for dinner (stop serving at 9pm) and had a delicious, huge plate of food for about $3. What’s really cool is that reception keeps a sheet with your name on it and they write down your expenses and you just pay for everything when you check out. This was a wonderful surprise for us since we hadn’t gone to the ATM in a while and were really short on cash. Anyway, it seems like a really cool place but we’ll have a better idea in the morning when we can check things out in the daylight.

Travel Tip:

The ferry from Granada to Ometepe only runs Mondays and Thursdays. There’s an early morning ferry and an afternoon one, but be warned, the trip takes around 4-5 hours on the slowest ferry in history and the on-board entertainment is a mixture of 1980s music videos and then a German movie subtitled in Spanish about the Holocaust (talk about a downer…geez). There will be lots and lots of passengers on board so it’s a very hot, stinky ride. You can buy a first-class ticket but we saw both first and second class ticket holders all sitting in the second class area where we were. Not sure what the difference is.

Bought a ticket yesterday for today’s long bus ride at the same tour agency that we got our Tikal transportation from. We paid $30 each and made sure to ask (three times) that it would be a direct bus on a Pullman (the big “Greyhound” type, not the reconditioned old school bus, aka “Chicken bus”). However, like most things, the 9 hour “direct” bus turned into a 12 hour stop-every-quarter-mile-or-so-to-pick-up-more-passengers-than- there-are-seats ride.

We were pretty pissed, not so much because of the stopping and packed conditions but that we had paid extra to get to San Salvador in time to work out our ticket to Managua.

It was a long boring ride and crossing borders was no issue. We didn’t even have to get off the bus! When we arrived in San Salvador, we were hit with some major culture shock. It was like being in Texas. San Salvador is an extremely “westernized” city with Pizza Hut, Burger King, shopping malls, etc on basically every block. Not to mention they use the US dollar as their national currency (they have a currency but it has fallen out of circulation and the dollar is used instead). We ended up eating at a Central American fast-food chain Chinese restaurant (China Wok). It was really nice and surprisingly clean inside with meals costing around US$4-5. But our waiter was, let’s say, less than patient with us. We tried our best at ordering in Spanish, which we assumed was pretty much the most straight forward thing one can do. But no—he had about 20 questions for us in the most rapid speech I’ve ever heard, in any language. We spanglished for him to slow down as we don’t speak spanish well. He seriously laughed and then spoke even faster! How does he do that?! We looked at each other and back at him not having any idea what he wanted. After at least a minute of total silence, he just left and brought us some food. It was actually quite tasty but for some reason, when Chinese food is served in central America, it comes with a dinner roll. Same experience in San Pedro Sula (we know, it’s really weird to be eating Chinese food here but we LOVE Chinese food).

After our tasty meal we headed back to the hostel. We stayed at (Ximenas Guest House), a real dump. The bathroom was awful, the shower was not even worth using (and let me tell you, we have low standards and we desperately needed showers but it was that bad), and the beds, well, I don’t think you can call them beds. They were bunk beds that someone had made from some scrap wood (no big deal). But the “mattress” part was an unsupported 1/8 piece of plywood with a thin (3 inch max) sliver of foam pad on it. Since it was unsupported the whole bed was dipped in the middle (where your butt goes) so it was kind of like sleeping in a really hard hammock. Seriously, had a large German Shepard not already claimed the spot, we would have preferred sleeping on the floor. We were pretty tired from a long travel day and have to be up at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow so we were off to “bed” pretty quick.

Caught a taxi from our dorm in West End to the port at 5:45AM (interesting ride at 5 something in the morning…try putting 6 people into a 4-person car…cozy) and waited for an hour to board the ferry.

It’s good to arrive early so you can get the good seats up top in the open air (no sick bag needed plus a beautiful ride!).

The view from our seats

When we got to port we picked up our bags and found our friends’ truck. The 5 of us piled closely into the truck and headed on toward San Pedro Sula.

David, Lin, and Saben in the back of the truck

The drive normally takes 3-4 hours but we stopped several times along the way for snacks, fruit stands, traffic jams, and a really cool Garifuna village right by the ocean. The Garifuna are an interesting subset of Honduran culture. They maintain there cultural identity and speak there own language (also called Garifuna). We met a few young girls walking home from school and they were nice enough to teach us a little Garifuna and sing the national anthem in their language as well. Not something you would ever see on any tour!

Lake and Garifuna Village

Saben crawled out the tiny back window and rode in the truck bed for most of the way, waving at passing kids, people on bicycles, and other people enjoying the warm sun from a truck bed (very common in Honduras). Every bicycle had at least two people on it but many had 3-4 people stacked on. Whole families—father, mother, and two kids riding down the road on a single mountain bike!

Despite the natural beauty of the country, there is so much disregard for it. People litter as a normal practice, trash cans are common but rarely emptied so the trash just piles up and blows away. Still, it was such an amazingly beautiful—and fun!–drive. We drove straight up and through the mountains, passing African palm fields, the endless Dole pineapple fields, and lots of banana trees. We had fun trading and sharing snacks, chatting about the past week we shared in Roatan and learning lots of things about Honduras and its culture. David taught me how to eat a lychee fruit—you just crack it with you mouth and pull the halves apart and then pop the fruit out of it’s little case into your mouth. Very tasty!

Lychee fruit peeking from its shell.

We got to meet the family of our friends who had so kindly prepared an amazing lunch for us.

Beef Empanadas with salad on top. Very Very Tasty

They helped us make plans for getting to Guatemala giving us info and tips calling up friends they knew who could give us even more information and help. Frank and a friend who knows the city inside out even went further out of their ways to drive us around to find a suitable, inexpensive place to stay for the night! We were inexpressibly grateful and felt a little silly just saying thank you—it certainly wasn’t enough to properly thank our friends and their family for everything they did for us! We are extremely grateful for their incredible hospitality and generosity!

Well today is it, our last day in the states. We are very anxious to get started and on the road. I can’t believe how fast this day has come upon us. It seems like no time ago we were counting down from 100 days.

 We spent the morning packing up our stuff, trying not to forget anything. Enjoyed our last shower for a while and tried to sort through my (Saben) still not finished pack.  We were finishing right about the time that Latham (Saben’s brother) pulled in to take us to the airport … but first Anti-Christmas.

Anti-Christmas started about 6 years ago, Lin and I plus most of our friends did not celebrate Christmas growing up and so Christmas day was always a bit of a drag as there is nothing open and nothing to do. So a little over a year after Lin and I got together we started celebrating Anti-Christmas, Which basically involves us and a bunch of friends getting together for Chinese food on Christmas day.

So we went and had Chinese food with Latham and his girlfriend Kate and our best friend and com padre Jared. After a decent Chinese buffet meal we were off to the airport. Saying goodbye was pretty strange. There is not really any salutation that fits our situation. “See you later” doesn’t really qualify when “later” could be years away. So we said goodbye and snapped a quick photo before we went inside.

us at the airport

Check in was super fast and we would have been right on time had our flight not been delayed by a couple of hours. Flight was uneventful (the way it should be).When we got to Miami, we were starving and everything was closed for the night except this little pizza place. Being in Miami was pretty much the beginning of our culture shock because we heard more Spanish being spoken than English. It literally felt like another country (i.e. Not part of U.S). It was getting late and we were trying to find a quiet spot to hang out for the duration of our 9 hour layover. We happened upon a little back corner and camped out for a while. We were hoping to be able to spend the night inside the secure zone but the Taca desk didn’t open until 2:00 am. so we were stuck in the wilds of the public side of the airport until early in the morning.