In Australia, plus Thailand comments

Ok, so it's been a bit.  Sorry that my Thailand comments were pretty pitiful.

So here's what's up:

-I just made it to Australia tonight.  Just try to keep track with me being a day ahead of all of you suckers for about all of your waking day.  I'm staying at a hostel in Sydney, and I'm thinking 3 nights to try to get in the sights so that I can just get back in to the city to fly home on the 4th.  I'm currently trying to figure out where in the country I want to go.  It's hard to decide, as travel is rather expensive here.

-My visit to middle-of-nowhere Thailand was awesome.  Really, really awesome.  Beau was the only person around who spoke english, so I was heavily reliant on him, but that worked out just fine.  We were going to go to a school he was working with, but I quickly learned that no plans are reliable in Thailand.  Instead, we ended up picking rice in a nearby field, which was actually quite cool.  It was a lot of fun, but that's just because we did it for less than an hour.  I can't imagine what kind of pain I would be in if I did that for an entire day.  Thailand is not a country for tall people.  Also, we ended up throwing a frisbee with a bunch of Thai kids, which was a lot of fun.  I'm not sure if they had ever used a frisbee before (I don't think they had), but they picked it up quickly.  Also, I got to live using bucket showers and a squat toilet for a few days, which felt more like real Thailand.  I'm quite glad I got to go up and see Beau.  Props to him for learning Thai, and then his dialect of Thai, and then living in the area for a couple of years.

-Toursity Thailand beaches were ok.  Not too many great stories from there, but it sure was beautiful.  I can give y'all more info on this later.  But, it was nice to scuba dive there and to chill out on the beaches.  But, you can tell that these areas have a high number of European and Australian tourists there just to party.

-I got a ride from a friendly airport police officer from the airport to the bus station.  This was nice, seeing as he was one of the few people in Khon Kaen that spoke English.  However, I have picked up about 2 or 3 Thai phrases that came in useful.