whew! i never thought i would be able to get to the internet again. but i have an hour before the van leaves to take us trekking through the jungle for three days where we ride elephants, white water rafting, bamboo rafting, sleeping with the locals in their villages and hiking the mountains. should be a fantastic trip!

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today, dee and i went on a full day boat tour of phi-phi don, phi-phi ley, and bamboo island. the island we are on is phi-phi don. the island you see so many times in the photos from where we are is phi-phi ley. phi-phi ley (ppl for short) has a bay where they filmed the movie, the beach. there was about thirty five people on the boat and we had a great time. we laid on the front of the boat, talked about how many israelis there were on the boat, especially the couple next to us. he wasn’t attractive enough to be with the girl he was with. according to dee (just to keep everything clear), she was hot, and he was not. however, this kid loved being photographed. he would constantly have the girl take photos of him. dee explained that he was from the rich part of tel aviv (by his dialect and his mannerisms (gayish behavior of thinking he is so damn cute)) and the girl, from the way she talked to him (in hebrew), wasn’t really into him. i am amazed at how oblivious i am to how many israelis are around us on the island and on the boat. there were four israeli couples on the boat and a lot on the island. dee likes to play the game name the nationality. i can win most of the time if i choose either english or israeli.

anyways, despite the gossip, the views of the islands were beautiful. Continue reading »

last night, we went to the carpe diem bar, which is across the path to our resort, to have a drink and watch their fire dancing show. the people who run that place are constantly high. they walk around puffing on huge joints. it is funny but also really frustrating as the service is shit. before and after the fire dancing competition, they were constantly playing marijuana related songs. we left to the tune of “I was gonna pay my child support but then I got high; They took my whole paycheck and I know why”. now, we try to avoid that place after 4:20pm, but it is hard due to it being right in front of our resort.

anyways, the fire dancing wasn’t as professional as the other night, but it was still fun watching them. i posted some pics of it. the most talented of the “kids” juggled fire, used the bar, spun the two chains and, i have never seen this before, spun the two sticks and bar that ragan used to be really good at doing. my camera’s battery pack died halfway through the performance which didn’t upset me until the talented kid showed up. i wanted to document the two sticks and bar trick. so, at one point, the talented boy came over juggling the fire and dropped it a foot away from our mats. they all come with smiles and thumbs up meaning it is all good but ya know, they have no insurance, you get hurt, you’re screwed. you smile back and say no problem, but in the back of my mind, i was thinking about shoving that damn thing down his throat.

here is an update on the bathroom situation and how i became to be flush bucket. instead of the usual way of flushing a toilet by using the handle, you have a bucket and a scooper to take water from the bucket and dump it into the toilet. you put enough water in it, the waste goes away. the water level remains at the same place as you dump water in it. so, dee has dubbed me flush bucket, or bucket for short, or buck for the one syllable nickname cause that is where i hid my money wallet and forgot about it. ugh. at least we are laughing about it. dee commented that it is such a twist to the drama. i’m just happy to have the passport back and everything is back on track.

to add to the drama, we rented some snorkeling gear and headed out from the beach into the ocean. the water is shallow for a long while so dee was walking to where it was deeper and she stepped on a sea urchin. ouch! Continue reading »

we got a recommendation from a knowledgable scuba instructor of an italian restaurant on the other side of the island named ciao belle. it was perfect. next to the ocean on the beach with candles and good food. the owner was a kind italian with an incredible story about the tsunami. he barely escaped and saw many people die. he lost everything. after a year and half, he was able to rebuild the restaurant and reopen on july 26, 2005. before the tsunami, he had the restaurant for seven years. after the water receded, he found only a cappuccino cup and a sign with his restaurant name on it. his boat was shattered into three pieces. he didn’t know anything about tsunamis before it happened. now, he wrote a book about it.

the dinner was perfect. Continue reading »

while dee is getting a thai massage, i went to write. i finished my book, State of Fear by Michael Crichton. it is well written and ends to fast. action, action, information, action, end. oh well, it definitely opened my knowledge to the situation with the global environment, more specifically global warming and more personal, how the media, legal, and political fields shape the way we think. it is a good book and a fast read. even though it is fiction, he cites real sources during and at the end of the book.

anyways, i wanted to let you know her birthday is going well. she woke up not feeling well so we took it easy. we went to the other side of the island where the most destruction happened from the tsunami. it was completely different than the other side. i took a pic of a poster they had up that showed the aftermath. i will post it soon.

so, she is getting a massage because she is tied. haha. then we will go to a romantic spot and have dinner. afterwards, she is meeting some people she met last night and we will party til i fall asleep which i hope will last longer than the usual 10pm. i had some rest today so i think i can make or at least red bull can give me wings to fly to the end.

before i forget to write this funny little side note, let me tell you about the spelling mistakes.
would anyone care for some fillet migong? it is served with salad, bread, and friend fried. um, yum!
how bout a thai massage? it is good when you are really tied.
then they have funny things like for rent signs in english. at first, you don’t really notice but dee pointed it out. why is it in english and not in thai?

when we arrived in phi-phi yesterday, i went shopping for presents for dee which is kind of difficult since she has seen everything already. every island vendor has the same apparel. i ended up getting a real pearl necklace for 500 baht (12 usd) and a pair of pink roxy shorts. this morning i went exploring around and collected a really nice collection of seashells that i will give to her as well. when i was exploring, i saw the shell crabs. tons of them. i have never seen them in the wild. i also noticed that they take the best shells as their home.for her birthday, i plan on doing some snorkeling and having a massage ending with a nice dinner on the beach and partying on the beach.

so, last night dee had fun at the bar and came back really late. she is still asleep as of writing this morning. this is good because i can go get a fruit smoothie and bring her breakfast in bed. i should go do that right now.

we left koh samui in a small taxi that picked us up from our bungalow. the taxi was so slow, old, small engine, i dunno what it was but it barely made it over a large hill. it took us to a big bus which we boarded and the bus took us to a ferry. we got off and asked about our bags. we, as in the service people, take them onboard was the response. as we approached the ferry, it was a car transport ferry and here comes our bus? are they lazy and don’t want to mess with the bags. what the hell is the point of transporting a bus back and forth? so, we got on the ferry, proceed to the rear where we can get some sun and read our books. i took a few pics of the voyage and the cars underneath the ferry. we land in suratthani and get back on the same bus, which takes us to a roadside shack with a small kitchen and seating. we wait for the next bus and confirm a hotel room on phi-phi since the travel dude said it would be hard to find a place when we arrived in phi-phi. i will save you from reading more unless you are really bored and have some time on your hands.
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after elephants, we decided to hang out on the beach and ride the jet ski. it was a little expensive (800 baht ~= 20 usd for twenty minutes) but definitely worth it. dee was a little scared but i assured her that i was an experienced driver since dad had several at his lake house. the water was moderately flat and we didn’t do much exploring just going really fast and then figure eights and circles. we did check out this huge yacht that was anchored in the bay. unfortunately, i don’t have any pics from the rest of the day. i don’t like taking the camera to the beach since it could be stolen while we play in the water.

chaweng beach on koh samui is a lot fun. there were more people on the beach than on koh tao and we found a bar that was having happy hour, which meant 2 dollar cocktails. the water was a bit colder than koh tao, but we still played in it anyway.

That night we scheduled our departure to koh phi-phi island in the andaman sea on the west side of thailand. it is supposed to be a beautiful beach where you can go scuba diving, snorkeling and rockclimbing.