Karon Beach

Our hotel is conveniently situated at the north end of Kata Beach. We're happy up here. You don't want to be in the middle of the beach because there's a Club Med that spans almost the entire length of the beach and you can't get through it, so you have to walk around it. The south end has more restaurants and bars, but up here has quick access to Karon Beach for a little change of scenery.

Just a 15 minute walk from our hotel put us at the south end of Karon Beach.

As you can see, today was gorgeous. We laid out for a few hours on our his & hers towels we picked up in Hua Hin.

Then we went to go play in the beautiful warm water. Seriously, so nice. And then the waves started picking up...

I've always wanted to get a picture inside the curl of a wave like the ones you see in surfer magazines. Turns out they're a lot harder to get than I thought. They crash too early or too late or the curl's not big enough or the picture isn't level or there's people in the way or water on the lens. I took about 40 pictures and videos, most of which were examples of all the things I just listed. But I'm really happy with a few of them. I'm really excited to make that video. I'll embed it here later. But here's my favorite picture for now...

After a few hours, we went back over to Kata Beach. We like it better than Karon. The sand is nicer and it's wider and a little less crowded. Laying out here was cut a little short when a 30-minute rain storm came through. We hid out under some trees and then we found a vacant stall tent when it got really heavy.

When we finally decided to call it a day, we stopped to get some rotee, which is a Thai banana pancake. It was surprisingly yummy.

We ate dinner in the same area at the south end of the beach. This time we ate at a place that gave us free garlic bread and minestrone soup. It was called Tomato Restaurant. And it was awesome. Thai food with Italian appetizers. :)

Kata Beach

We took a way too expensive taxi (we negotiated down to 350 baht for the 20 minute drive) from Patong down two beaches to Kata. It's a cute little town with a nice beach that is far less crowded than Patong Beach. We picked out a spot that happened to be right next to the lift off spot for the parasailing people. It was fun to see people "Running! Running! Running" and then pop into the air.

As you can see, it was a pretty cloudy day today. The sun popped out a few times, but not for very long. It's amazing how different a beach looks in the sun compared to a cloudy day.

After a few hours of laying out (Isa is reading Divergent) we walked along the beach for sunset...

...and then wandered through town looking for food. We were hoping that Kata would be a little less expensive than Patong, and we were happy in that every restaurant offered discounts and deals. We ate at one that gave us free fruit and veggies (all you can eat, YUM!) and all Thai food on the menu was just 99 baht. So we ate a lot.

One last thing about Kata, it's like little Russia here. We felt out of place on the beach. We were completely surrounded by people speaking Russian, and it was weird. We've never been in a place with so many white people and still felt like such a minority.

Oh, and here's a picture of our hotel room. It's pretty sweet.