It was a wonderful November and December; I am overwhelmed at all we've been able to squeeze in. Our trip to Thailand was a great adventure. We enjoyed reconnecting with our friends Lio and Tiffany, as well as meeting their beautiful daughter, Eva. They were fantastic tour guides and we didn't have time to feel bored at all. We have so many stories, but I thought I'd just share a couple highlights from emails I wrote back to Kelly and other family, while I was there.
One of the first mornings, Tiffany, baby Eva, and I walked down the road to a little Muslim family restaurant... if you can call a shack on the side of the road a restaurant. Definitely one of the advantages of being with Lio and Tiffany was that we ate at places that we wouldn't have even known were restaurants. We had rotti (this wonderful tasting crepe-like pancake) and very sweet black tea. The ladies running the place came and stole Eva for pretty much the whole meal and took her back with the other women. They spoke in Thai to Tiffany and asked her if I was her sister, which made us laugh because we don't look anything alike. Oh, and the restaurant had a talking bird, which completely surprised me when it began speaking in Thai to me. I'm so ignorant... I totally expected it to say, "pretty bird." Then again, maybe it did... just in Thai.
We had our first thai massage on our second day there. Tiffany took us to a little storefront massage place in the middle of a very non-touristy neighborhood. As we're going inside, Tiffany says, "Oh... just so you know, these people are friends of ours and they are all blind." She mentioned how difficult and unsafe it is for blind people in Thailand and that recently this group of people had started coming to her church. She came to get a massage from them every week during her pregnancy. Anyways, the whole experience was really interesting. Thai massage, I learned, is very different than regular massage back home. You leave your clothes on and everyone is in the room together. It was just a small dirty room with five cots lined up in a row. We went in, Tiffany talked with them in Thai... then they threw a clean sheet on a cot and I jumped on. But, no one spoke English... so it was a really interesting experience. To have someone who sees with their hands stretching and coaxing your body into strange positions--it was unique. Total cost for two hour and a half massages was about $12. We loved it. It was so outside our realm of understanding and certainly not something a tourist would easily stumble across.
Another highlight was eating on a floating restaurant which was part of a sea gypsy community. It was pretty amazing, you take a traditional boat out to the floating restaurant. Tiffany said sea gypsies are completely different ethnically and culturally than Thai people. It was a surprisingly big restaurant, probably could have seated 100 people, but we were one of only 2 families there. It was by far the freshest seafood I've ever had--probably just caught that afternoon. So delicious and so interesting. We were literally sitting on pontoons roped together with people serving us with bare feet and big smiles. It was dark, but they have a generator for lights at the restaurant. Floating across the water behind the restaurant are their small houses. We tried to take pictures, but it is really hard to capture.
Probably my favorite experience of the trip was scuba diving. I didn't think I was actually going to have the courage to go through with it, so it was quite an accomplishment to pull it off. We went off of Phi Phi Island for 2, one hour dives. It was a beautiful day to be on the water, and that alone made it worth it. Lance, Tiffany, and I were paired up with one instructor who walked us through all the basics. While down 40 feet under the water we saw a sea turtle, octopus, a black tipped sand shark, cuddle fish, schools of hundreds of fish, and a wolf eel... the list just keeps going. It was truly like walking on the moon for me. I couldn't believe what was before me and I felt embarrassed that such life exists below the surface of the water that I don't really consider or think about. Between dives, we took a break for lunch, eating delicious food prepared on the boat and drying out in the sun. During lunch, Lance turned to me and said, "I can go home now. I've got my money's worth." That is how good it was.
As most of you know, we had a few set backs when it came to flying to the second portion of our trip... and then back home. We had a great time in Phuket and had planned to fly up to Chiang Mai for the second half and then spend a few days in Bangkok on our way home. The night before we were supposed to fly to Chiang Mai political protests stopped all activity at the Bangkok airport. That is the major airport where almost all connections within the country and leaving the country go through. We had to cancel that part of our trip and stay in Phuket the whole time. Working to cancel airline and hotel reservations was annoying, but we survived. Unfortunately we didn't realize how difficult it would be to get home on time, which we felt was pretty important. Several hours online searching for flights and emailing our parents and travel agent back in Seattle, a trip to the bus station to see about buses, a couple trips to the airport... and eventually we made it standyby on a flight to Khula Lumpur, Malaysia. When we got there in the middle of the night, we booked a hotel room for 2 nights, booked a flight to Singapore, and then took a 45 minute taxi to our hotel in the city! The fun twist to our adventure home was it gave us the opportunity to spend one day walking around Khula Lumpur, which was really fun. Then we had a unbelievable day flying home through four countries. Our home and bed had never looked so good.
No comments:
Post a Comment