dear friends and family!

First of all, thank you very much for your lively e-mails and Kommentare. I have been in  a very, very remote and secluded (abgelegen, einsam)  area for the last week - which I enjoyed a lot - but there was not even reception for my mobile, not to speak of any internet connection... So I am sorry to only come back to you now, and not be able to answer the mails personnaly, but I hope that I will have the time for that soon.

Secondly, I know that most of my blog's readers are german, but there are still some that do not speak or read german fluently (yet...) so this is why I try to put up this blog in english. I will try to make a point now of translating some words within the text, so that everybody will be able to understand it more easily. Falls trotzdem etwas unklar sein sollte, koennt ihr mir gerne mailen oder kommentieren, ansonsten kann ich die Online-Uebersetzungen von www.leo.org waermstens empfehlen. A propos waermstens...

I have finally arrived in the hot city of Bangkok (yes, Nicole, it is still on the list). I have been sitting in the internet cafe now since 6.30 am (morgens) when my overnight-bus from Krabi arrived. Well, I am sitting here, because some stupid spammer broke my blog and I had to fix it in first place. Then, I sit here because in the groovy area around Kao San Road, all hostels are completely booked out and I hope to find a room as soon as check out time arrives around noon. Well if not... I will just continue my travels.

Short update on the last two weeks:
From Taiping, my last stop in Malaysia (btw -meaning 'by the way' / uebrigens- I really enjoyed my time there. I have not yet had the mid-time frustration or Decke-auf-den-Kopf-fall-Syndrom. It seems like my last entry sounded a little frustrated, but it was just because the McD food was lying heavily in my belly) I slowly made my way to the southernmost island of Thailand's west coast, KOH TARUTAO. It was phantastic. I did not believe that there are places on Thai islands that are not yet packed with tourists. Yes, there are, on Tarutao.

The island is completely covered with thick rainforest, full with all kinds of wildlife. There are some white-sanded-paradise-beaches and some rocky areas. A few very nicely set up bamboo-bungalows and tent hire is the main touristic infrastructure. Guess, what I did.... Well I rented a tent (for 150 baht/day = 3,30 Euro) and made my way across and around the island. I filled up my fuel tank for the camping stove (Benzinkocher), baught some noodles and water and started hiking. Already on my first stop, I found myself all alone with only 3 Thai park rangers. I put up my tent on an elevation, so that I could overlook a very cute little pier.

The decision to go for a walk to spot some wildlife was a good one, seen that i spotted 3 water monitors, a rhinoceros hornbill and some squirrels. It turned out to be a bad one though, when I found a monkey sitting in a tree above my tent, chewing (kauen)  up my noodle packages...

Well, no more food...
So I decided to not go into unknown places any further but to return to the main 'headquarter' beach which already had been very beautiful. It came differently.
3 Canadians arrived, tourists from the 'totally laid back, being pierced and tatooed all over' - kind. I realized that they were the ones responsible for my unrestful sleep of the night before - due to their terrible guitar playing. But still....I somehow made  friends with them. We ended up continuing the hike around the island together. One park ranger, who obviously was surprised to see us wanting to do this endeavour (Unternehmen) joined us and even invited us for food, boat rides, hikes... It was phantastic.
His english was very poor, so we communicated with hands and feet. I ate some weired seefood-things that I never had before, but the best was collecting it by ourselves.

From this great nature-experience, I continued my way to Krabi, where I fell into a acute shock of an overdose of tourists. I left this amazing scenery after only one day to now be standed in Bankok. Chinese new Year is coming up tomorrow and I guess that is the reason why everything is full. I will now start searching for a place to sleep tonight. Included some pictures, there are some more in the album...but there are still more to come!

big hugs from Thailand.

a.