When we finally left Athens at the end of January, Jan would have liked to escape to warmer climes, but Gerry was determined to see some of the Greek Islands. As a sop to Jan and a kind of early birthday present for Gerry, we agreed to hire a car so that we could spend a week seeing some mainland sites before hitting the ferry terminal.

In the end, we did get to see quite a few Greek islands, although at first the weather didn't really cooperate, keeping us in Athens for five days when the seas were too rough for the ferries to run. Between February 6 and April 30?? we covered: Syros, Naxos, Mykonos, Santorini, Crete, Rhodes, and Kos. The weather did finally warm up some with the high point being Rhodes where it was deliciously warm.

From Kos, we hopped across to Bodrum, in Turkey, to continue our survey of ancient Greek and Roman archeological sites. We saw Halicarnassus, of course, in Bodrum, then Priene, Miletus, Didyma, Ephesus, and Hierapolis, before heading north into the hills and back into the land of cold temperatures. Eventually, we got to Istanbul, and there we found the kind of weather we had been looking forward to: warm, bright, sunny days and pleasantly cool nights. There we also had our lightning strikes twice experience when we had our notebooks stolen yet again, sigh!

Unable to find a replacement that pleased us at a price we could afford, we flew to Bangkok. Well, that wasn't the only reason to come to Bangkok, but it was a good one. In only two days we had one new machine and happily went off to Kanchanaburi for two weeks of R&R in the town famous for the Bridge over the River Kwai. On a return trip to Thailand's bustling metropolis we quickly found a second notebook, new glasses, new sandals, new passport (for Gerry) and lots of great eating. Our main reason for coming to Thailand was to pick up our journey to Australia and New Zealand that we had broken off in 2001 to go back to Europe/USA.

And since we were here in Thailand, we decided we ought to find out what some of the famous Thai beach resorts were all about. So after leaving Bangkok we headed south. First to Ranong to get new visas and then to Phuket where we stayed at Kamala Beach for a week and then in Phuket City for a few days and now are sitting in the wonderful jungle resort of Somkiet Buri in Ao Nang, near Krabi. Having already spent more than a month taking it easy in Thailand, we will doubtless be here another week or two before slowly making our way down the Malay peninsula and then to and through Indonesia before finally flying down to Oz.

Our first shopping expedition

A quiet moment on the balcony