We went to Paradise Beach on the Dawei Peninsula for 4 days. The water was like a warm bath. There are little crabs that run like the wind on the beach and leave gorgeous patterns, some alien language. We were surrounded by some local children who wanted to take our picture, they were sweet. At dusk all the green lights of the squid boats came on like spaceships on the horizon.

To get there we rode our motorbikes about 2 hours, on a narrow mostly paved road through tropical countryside and little villages. There was a lot of roadwork, they are expanding many of the roads in the country. It's all manual labor, except the tar is heated in barrels and they have small steamrollers. But men and women carry gravel on their heads, wearing only flip-flops, and dump it in place. They're all blackened from the tar and we saw a bunch of them sitting on the side of the road eating ice cream cones on a break, it was beautiful to see the bright white of the half-eaten ice cream against their tarry faces.