Thailand 2012

After about 10 hours of travel (I know, it isn't really that much, but it felt long) we arrived at our hotel in Thailand at 1:30 in the morning.  By this point my contacts are stuck to my eyelids and all we all want is a hot shower and to go to sleep.  Who greets us but....

The guy behind the desk clerk, wearing ONLY a sarong.  It was quite hilarious, so I had to sneak a picture of him after he spent 20 minutes rousing the ACTUAL desk clerk, and then stood behind him smoking and "supervising".

If you would like to visit heaven without all of the messy death part, you should absolutely come here.  Let me give you a brief list:
breakfast buffet each day:  free
Full body massage (also each day):  $8.00
beer from the pool bar (again, each day):  $1.50
cheeseburger or pad thai (guess when... notice the pattern): $5.00
glorious sunset:  free

We absolutely love Thailand. 
We were able to visit with five other teachers and two other kids, and it was an amazing time.

This house is for the land and water spirits that live on the land.

Other than pool, beach, beer, massages, and pad thai, we did a day tour with some of the teachers and Mogli.  of Mogli's Nature Tours.

The tour was run by Mogli... this guy behind R-Man.  He really was a jungle guy.  He pulled over the van so we could spend about 15 minutes tasting plants by the side of the road. 

Here he is pulling out some shoots and roots for us to try.

This one was like eating a spider web.  I have to give some credit to the kids, they actually tried each thing. 

OK, first real stop of the day.  The long boat.  This boat will take us through a mangrove forest, to some caves for kayaking, to a floating village, and back to this dock, all without the benefit of any sort of safety equipement, life jackets, or bouyancy devices.  Who needs em???  Not US! 

The fearless crew!

Some homes we passed on the way.  We visit a floating city on our return trip, so this is a preview.

To get to where we are going our captain takes us through a mangrove forest. 

And some limestone tunnels.

When we signed up to go sea kayaking, we didn't realize that we would not be doing the paddling. But we didn't.  Instead we have a paddler, who also serenaded us on our tour.  Here Gary and Pooks are setting off.

This clever businessman sold drinks to passerbys.

Some of the tunnels are so low that you have to lay down to go under.  I think the kids thought this was the best part of the whole trip.

This is the floating village that we did stop at.  It is a mainly Muslim village, and all of the houses are built on stilts.  There is running water and electricity (to run the VISA terminals), but all of the household waste must dump right into the river.  Luckily the fish farm is upstream.  It was a very weird place to walk around.  There was also a school/orphanage, but we were not allowed to take pictures of that part. 

Next stop of the day was the Heaven and Hell Temple, a place with statues so vivid that parents bring their children here to scare them into being good.  The place was too weird for the kids and me, so we hung around playing with the lizards while the rest of the tour went on.  If you want to see some of the statues you can click on this link...


http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelblogs/1330/115357/Heaven+and+Hell?destId=357606



If you DID look at the pictures in the link you can see that there is a dragon with a live guy (we don't know him) standing in it's mouth.  Well, to get to the heaven and hell part of the tour you have to walk through the dragon (and come out the other end),  so we walked through and realized that hell was too scary.  We turned around to walk back through the tunnel but this time, as we were about half way through, bats started swooping around us.  Now if you have never heard me meet a bat, I scream.  Loudly.  and Repeatedly.  Which only disturbs the monks that are praying and meditating a little bit.  But enough so that they all get up and come to see what is causing the commotion.  And so, that did not end well for me. 

Ahem, so back to the story.  There is also this pretty Buddha. 

And flying lizards. 

And wild monkeys. 



The monkeys were also scary.  They do not MOVE, even if you try to walk by them.

After a stressful trip like that, we decided to spend the rest of our time visiting our old haunts, getting massages (did I mention that they were $8), and marveling at how the more things change, the more they stay the same.  We walked down to the Ramada, the fresh market, and to our old dinner place (Tonson's).   

Last time we were here it was still pretty quiet and in the recovery stage from the tsunami.  But business is booming, houses are being built,

you can take this ferry across the river for $0.25 (really a guy gets in the water and pushes it across, but still), it is progress.

And even Tonsons has new and inproved seating.  But the beer is still cold, and cheap, and it is the best view in town.   We will definitely be back to Phang Nga.