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Published: March 13th 2006
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Our Everest
Ray, Jeano, & me climbing to the top of the flight of stairs that was tried to count, but kept losing track. Anyway, it was a LOT of freakin' stairs. (Taken by Warren) After all the sun and beer and food and laughter of last night, this morning was a relatively slow-moving thing. Yesterday started off easily enough... We checked into our "resort" (read: bomb shelter) in Ranong. A pit. Really. This, however, cannot be the fault of Ray & Diane as they had never taken a group to this place before so ours was the trial run... Needless to say, Di was looking for other places by the time with left! Still, after so many days at sea with mediocre on-board showers, it was lovely to get to stand in a hot shower and feel TRULY clean. I forgot how great that was...
We spent the day lazing, mostly. I went to lunch with most of the crew, and then afterwards relaxed with some of the guys with a cool drink in my hand. We scouted out a few places for dinner, finally settling on this one which was set up something like a Thai-version of a Mongolian BBQ, and then sat around the pool waiting for yet another Sunset in Ranong. 😊
After another shower (sigh) and change, we all met in the bar downstairs and went for dinner which
The...um...Waterfall
You can just imagine that it's probably pretty cool when it's working... :) (Taken by Warren) was a very interesting undertaking. I sat next to a pole that I got very friendly with (see picture) and cooking the food turned out to be a lot harder than it looked... You first went to their buffet, picked up whatever you felt like eating, and then proceeded to try and cook it on your table using these little metal cookers with water at the base. The mixing of raw chicken with raw beef on the same cooking surface made me exceedingly nervous, so I opted to stick mostly with veggies and spices (which had my mouth literally on fire at one point, making me afraid I'd burn down the place if I were to laugh very hard!)
Dinner led to drinks at the place next door where we'd had lunch which led to drinks by the pool back at the...er...resort finally culminating in everyone heading off to bed, somewhat saddened by the fact that Shauna (Lauren the Human Fishclip), Steve (Babyface), and Jim (Dances with Dogs) were going to be taking a ride back to another airport since the 3 of them were unable to get flights out of Ranong.
Surprisingly, I woke up early this
morning and decided to see off the 3 musketeers. I helped Shauna with her last bits of packing and carrying down her things to the lobby, said goodbye to all, and watched them drive off (Shuana with her banana smoothie in a bag - literally). Then I went back upstairs and tried to get a little more sleep.
By 9 or so, we were all up and downstairs drinking (if not
quite enjoying) Ranong's version of coffee and having some toast or whatever else they were offering that seemed safe to eat. Di then came and informed us that we had time for a bit of an outing if we were interested, before having to head off to the airport. Nancy opted out, but the rest of us thought it might be fun.
We drove around a bit and I for one was happy to see that there actually were some pleasant areas around Ranong. We stopped at a national park of sorts that supposedly houses the Punyaban Waterfall. I say "supposedly" because, while we saw pictures of a waterfall that certainly looked like they could have been taken at this location, from where we stood, there was
The Pool
The nicest part of the Ranong "resort" (Taken by Shauna) nothing there but some slightly damp rocks and perhaps a drip or two. We chalked this up to unfortunate timing of stopping by during the dry season and then continued on. Next was a stop at this beautiful area whose name I can't recall to save my life... I'll have to email Diane and get it from her later. Anyway, there was a beautiful walk with some caged animals in one area (I think they were being rescued or treated for something) and, the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow - a MASSIVE staircase leading up to the top of a hill. Jean, Ray, and I were the only ones up for the climb, so off we went. We tried to count the stairs to see how many their were, but kept losing track. There were a LOT.
We finally ended up at the airport in Ranong (sniff) and said good-bye to Ray & Di (sniff sniff).
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