Blue Dot Explore

  March 16, 2023. View of the Skycab from the Sky bridge, Langkawi Island, Malaysia After 40 days in Thailand (the second time around), we finally found ourselves in a new country when we entered Malaysia March 14 via ferry. We didn't know what to expect doing a customs crossing via boat, but it will probably go down as the easiest immigration/customs stop of the whole entire trip. Our speedboat left Koh Lanta a bit late, which made for a tight connection to make the switch from the Thai to Malay ferry. As we pulled into port on Koh Lipe to get our Thailand exit stamp, I was mentally preparing for not making the next ferry when a man hopped on before we were even fully docked and shouted with urgency "Who is to Langkawi?", to which I panic yelled "THAT'S ME!" as I ran towards the man with renewed hopes of making our transfer.  We ended up making the next (and last) boat departing for the Malay Island of Langkawi and walked through the ferry terminal customs

  February 21, Montha Than Waterfall in Doi Suthep National Park, outside Chiang Mai. From the start we'd planned to spend a good amount of time in South East Asia. With the inexpensive living and the tropical islands, it's not hard to see why, but here we are, 70-something days into our trip and we've only managed to hit two countries so far. We are enjoying ourselves so much that we just want to stay everywhere we land (added bonus; I don't have to move my still-too-heavy bag as much). And although there are still so many Thai islands to explore, we are finally ready to head to our next country, Malaysia.  To accommodate the slower pace and stretch the trip we've embraced a more budget approach, although I think we've reached an agreement that A/C is always worth the few extra baht. We have also learned that Johnny prefers a sleeping temperature of 23 Celcius without either of us having the foggiest idea what that is in Fahrenheit.  The end of February still f