never again...

i can't think of a worse time and place to be travelling right now.  actually, i've been plagued by this since i left for australia at christmas.  it was so hard to find hotels or hostels due to christmas, then new years, then the australian holiday month, then the boat races and shows.  everything that was available was so inflated in price that i spent more money in the 5 weeks in australia than i did in 4 months in the rest of the world.

i was so relieved coming to southeast asia, i'd get back to $20 rooms, cheap food, plenty of space, but how far from correct that turned out to be.  happy chinese new year.  this entire week has been searching online for places to stay, modes of transportation that aren't sold out, paying way more money than normal, worrying that we'll be homeless.

we went to the train station yesterday and bought tickets to ko phi phi, an overnite train to a bus to a ferry to the island.  we got home and every hotel on the island is booked.  we spent hours searching. even the way overpriced luxury places with 200 rooms were all sold out.

tickets to an island with no where to stay.  great.  so today pablo and i went back to the train station to change our tickets to ko tao on the eastern side, its a shorter trip but we didn't get any of our money back.  there were hotels available and we scrambled and booked the first decent one we found.

but that changes our departure, we were going to take a flight from phuket to chiang mai and now we are on the opposite side of the country to do that.  so we're back to searching for ways to get to chiang mai and it seems that it'll add an extra day for travel any way we do it.

i gotta say that i'm over this travel thing.  i'm ready to be done, but i hate thinking about how much worse its going to be finding a place to live on kauai.  i wish there were some magical housing fairy to make this all go away.

great public transportation here