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Published: December 23rd 2006
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I cannot believe that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. It is really strange to be away from the Christmas buzz that I know everyone is enjoying at home. The Thais do Christmas a little bit, but it's not a huge deal here. You see the occasional Christmas tree and you'll run into a Christmas song or two here and there, but nothing like at home. What's even stranger is that I've been in my swimsuit practically everyday for the last two weeks. I know at home everyone is bundled up and Mom and Dad are even going out Christmas caroling with the neighbors tomorrow! But here, it's the lazy beach life. Swinging in the hammock, reading a good book, finding sand in everything I own, and cruising around the beautiful island of Ko Pha Ngan.
Since my last entry about six days ago, I did in fact make it home to my room safely from the dark streets of Surat Thani. Dallas said that he thought I had been killed in an alley somewhere because I failed to inform him that I was going out to find cheap internet. The morning after I wrote that blog, I returned to the Web
Guesthouse for a little breakfast and got sick sick sick. It was awful. Throwing up is the worst thing I can think of doing. I took one bite of toast and that was it. I made it back to the room and than worked on recovering for a bit. We finally got a ferry to Ko Pha Ngan that afternoon and it happened to be a very very windy day so it was a bumpy trip. Luckily I didn't lose anymore stomach contents on the way over. We got to our place and we settled in to the Liberty Guest House. It is so fantastic here! EU (I'm sure that's not how it's spelled, but that's how it's pronounced) is the woman who runs the place and she is something else. A little Thai woman who has a six year old girl and a two month old son and she runs around cooking for the guests all day. She cleans, cooks and does our laundry. A room costs about 3.50 each and the food is about 2.50 a meal. What a deal!
The first day we rented motor bikes and cruised the island. It was so much fun. When
I first got on I was sure that I would crash at some point because I had no clue what I was doing. I almost did crash into a fence, but other than that, things were fine. We cruised to a couple waterfalls and just explored the island. Other than that, I've just been enjoying the beach life. I have read a couple books in three days and I just got a new Tom Robbins book today. Hopefully that will keep my attention for a while. Dallas took of to Ko Tao yesterday morning to do some scuba and I decided to stay here until I leave for Bangkok on the 26th to see Heidi and Doc. I thought that I wouldn't like traveling alone before I started this trip, but I realize now that you're not really alone when you travel. I have met a ton of people to hang out with.
Last night I went to a Thai Boxing match with my Scotish friend Andy. So fun! What I loved most about it is that the people fighting were really slaughtering each other, but they would stop once in a while and give each other a little
smile and maybe a little laugh, as if to say, "Hey, no big deal man. This is all for fun." No Mike Tyson style ear biting or anything like that, just good ol' boxing fun. We saw two little tikes fight, then two women (boring boring fight...but it was interesting that the Thai girl gave up right away because she was being worked by the westerner. She was passing out at the end of the match. That's worth the money to get in.) Then we saw two really old Thai guys fight, and I must say that was the most intense fight of all "7 hot matches!" (that's what the flyer said).
Today we rented motor bikes and took off to town to find Christmas decorations. That's right, the place is decked out in Christmas lights and santa hats. It feels a little more festive now. I was getting depressed that Christmas might feel sad with no family around, but it seems like we'll get something going after all, even it is just wearing our Santa hats on the beach all day.
When we went to buy the lights, we had a little run in with the law. I
bought two strings of lights; one white and one colored. The colored one didn't work, so we took them back to ask for an exchange. Well, the lady did not want to give us an exchange because she insisted that we sabotaged the lights before we brought them back...this makes absolutely no sense. She demanded that we pay her 50 baht for a new set of lights. Andy kept telling her that he would just take the new white lights and she said, "I call the police." Andy said, "Go ahead and call the police! We were sold faulty Christmas lights!" I was standing there with a nervous laugh, like "Come on guys. No one needs to call the police." But, they went on like that for a while, with the lady yelling and saying we cut up the lights on purpose and Andy saying that she ripped us off. Anyway, we basically just left with the new lights that worked and tried to drive away as fast as we could so she didn't actually call the police on us. That would have been terrible!
I wish I had something more eventful to write about, but things have been
really quiet for me these days. On Tuesday I'm leaving for Chiang Mai (in Norther Thailand) and I'll be staying with Heidi and Doc until the 31st. I am looking forward to that so much! I'm sure that I will have a lot more to say next time!
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Aimee Feldman
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Merry Christmas
becky and dallas... again, always so great to get an update. wishing you a wonderful adventurous christmas eve (we'll be with mom and jeff...cari couldn't make it to fl,and ben and shanel are staying in clearwater) and christmas day. hope you are enjoying your christmas lights. especially after ALL you went through! may JESUS fill your day (and following months too!) p.s. second sono says its a boy, and i'm much more nauscious (sp?) with this one. love you, aim