happy new year!

What a fantastic way for Reffa and I to start 2009.
We spent the day with four of our friends at a national park only 2 hours from our house. It's called Koh Sohk park. It is so amazingly beautiful!! mountains all around us, and endless amounts of rainforest terrain. There's a river right beside us and best of all , our bungalo is actuallya TREEHOUSE!!! how awesome is that? It kindof stinks, and there was a cockroach in Reffa's bed last night- so it certainly has it's limitations but overall it's really really cool. hahaha these creatures and scents are to be expected in the middle of the rainforest no?
We've been eating wonderful Thai food (it's a bit expensive here... averaging 3 canadian dollers per meal rather than the 1 dollar that we're used to.. ) but it's delicious and it's a new scene so it's worth it! our bus ride was only 2 hours and costed 4$. the bungalo each night is about 6$ !!! so overall it's a really cheap 5 days away in paradise!

We drank and relaxed in the hammocks last night to ring in 2009, all the while thinking of our friends and families. we hope that you had a lovely evening! If only you could hear the frog croaks and the monkey squaks and the bug clicks... grace, erin, carson's and my rainforest noises at the cottage don't hold a candlestick to the racket at night here!! hehehehe!!!

Today, January 1st 2009, we slept until we woke up, ate delicious food, and then decided that we wanted to tube down a river. 20 minute slater we each had our own tube and we were packed onto a big truck, just the 7 of us with 2 thai guys- and off we went for a 4 hour tubing down the rapids (which they described in the brochure as "rabbits" LOLLLLL) so that was really relaxing and so so much fun!! I wish you could all have come with us.

When we came back we decided to try a new place to eat called "welcome" . They treated us really badly, so if you ever manage to go to koh sohk boycott it for us will you? they gave our friend the wrong food and then yelled at him for not eating it and made us pay for it (inappropriate anywhere in the world, but extremely uncommon and unacceptable in thai culture to get angry AND charge for unwanted food... strange). anyways. bad experience won't be going there again!!!!

it's early evening now so we're just going off to lay in the hammocks for the night and get into bed early.

Tomorrow we have a rough plan to go on a day safari/hike. It will be a 9 hour adventure through the rainforest with endless sight seeing, exercise and cool experiences. we're pretty excited ! It's about 10 $ for a guide. Parrots and Monkeys and waterfalls etc!
Also on the agenda is the night time safari (really cool, all the night time animals come out like tigers and stuff. ! ) and at some point before we go home we want to see koh sohk lake. one of the largest and most popular lakes in thailand. It's a huge tourist attraction because of it's beauty.

Wish us luck! I would do anything for you all to be here with us. I will take videos and pictures of everything and post them for you within the week so that you feel like you're here.

miss you all so much. ps. mom and dad, when you come here one full suitcase will be dedicated to taking home hammocks-- rememvber how expensive those ones were that we looked at by peggy's cove???? they are better quality here and only like 6$!!!!!!!!!!!! and I cannot live without a hammock ever again after this weekend.

XOXOXOX keep in touch ya'll.