Hello everyone...
Hope that you're doing well. I'm in Bangkok right now and our friend Julian is arriving tonight around midnight...perfect timing as Deanna leaves tomorrow for a short break (from me mostly) in Perth.
Had a wonderful time in Phuket, Thailand. It is crowded with a lot of tourists (like many people told us), but we stayed on Ao Karon rather than the super-popular Ao Patong and had a wonderful time. We stayed at a Nordic place called "The Little Mermaid" which was nice after ourstay on Phi Phi because we had hot water and air conditioning both (and a TV!)...the life of luxury.
We took a daytrip from Phuket which was a real adventure. Obstensibly the trip was sea kayaking on several different islands. It was incredible - they actually paddle for you (which was nice for Deanna as i would have made her paddle) and you have to actually go at low tide and duck to get through caves and into secret lagoons - which are completely inaccessible at high tide so they're still very isolated and serene. Very beautiful...make sure you check out the pictures labeled Phuket when I get them uploaded (this week). More entertainment came from a very fat Scotsman, who also happened to be very drunk, having screaming matches with his Thai girlfriend(?) and then come to physical blows with another passenger (German). It was quite exciting.
The other highlight of that trip was paying a visit to "James Bond" island where "Man with the Golden Gun" was filmed. Remember the last scene where Bond storms the island fortress and has the duel with the owner of the Golden Gun? Right...I must be the only one. Deanna thinks I'm crazy because I got very excited and ran around the island and had her take pictures of me doing James Bond poses and pretending to sneak around.
From there, another bus ride. You would think I would FINALLY learn about these. But no. This time we were pretty careful to ask about how many seats, do they recline, is it air conditioned, etc... So we take a minibus (reasonably comfortable) for three hours to Surat Thani bus stop. Then we wait until there's enough people to send a bus to Bangkok. In our case, we arrived around 4:30 and there weren't enough people...so we waited. We were actually going to have to wait until 8pm to leave, but it just happened another bus had a few open "spaces" on the bus. We just wanted to get to Bangkok, so we opted on.
I found myself sitting in the "lounge" area of the double decker bus rather than an actual seat. It didn't recline and I sat in a small semi-circle with 5 people who were destined to become my best friends given how close together we were sitting. The bathroom was right next door...first a good thing...then a bad thing...then a very bad thing as the girl across from me had a bout of stomach flu and had to continually run to the bathroom. Did I mention the in-transit movie was "DinoCroc" by Roger Corman? Ugh. The most insulting thing about it was that DVD's are 100Baht ($2.50) here and everyone on that bus was probably carrying better DVD's. I think it's the Thai way of saying FU.
Bangkok has been awesome so far. We're staying near the Khao Sahn area and it's a real trip. Lots of backpackers, lots of interesting people and things. We literally arrived into town at 5AM from our bus ride from hell and at Deanna's urging went to the Weekend Market. For shoppers, it's 15,000 stalls in 28 sections of pure bargain merchandise heaven. I think we covered at least 12,000. For someone (me) who doesn't really buy anything, it was tough. I just hung out in the 'pet' section and petted dogs and squirrels and watched the cockfighting (they didn't fight, but they were selling them for that purpose).
But I actually did buy a CD player on Khao Sahn. We've been thinking about getting some music on this trip, and it seemed like the place to buy. I "negotiated" a great deal by charming a Thai girl and got the player for probably twice the value I should have paid. Honestly, I'm a horrible bargainer...and she was cute...and she kept saying"Mister...I give you best price." and then giggling. Oh well. I was such a good negotiator that I actually gave her the box back so she could repack stuff in it and sell to some other schlep. It was only later that I realized that the deal didn't include the actual rechargable batteries even though I had bought the charger. The sad thing is, I'm thinking about going back to her to buy the batteries. Somebody stop me.
Last thing...I'll leave you with a teaser. Deanna got her nose pierced and I have all the pictures. Wait for it...
Best to everyone...
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