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Published: January 26th 2007
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As Dore and I buckled ourselves in on the plane from Hong Kong to Thailand, we realized this was the first time these two sisters had ever flown together! Oh, but this would be an adventure!
We touched down in Bangkok around midnight, and headed directly to our hostel to crash. The following morning was somewhat of a foreshadowing of our shared travels to follow. My sister, having spent the entire year prior travelling Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, was slowly waking up to a relaxed day of sightseeing and shopping and such. I, on the other hand, was up bright and early eager to see as much as possible in the two weeks I had to travel with my sister. This, undoubtedly, made me the annoying one... "K, let's go. K, let's go. K, let's go!" You can imagine how long this would last before leading to a few sisterly spats, but as best friends always do, we slowly but surely worked out the kinks of the duo that was us.
In Bangkok, we got to see the tuktuks, I had my first pad thai in Thailand (mmmmm... yummy!), and we checked out the night markets. Now
don't get me wrong, Bangkok is a pretty cool city, but we also spent a good portion of that day trying to figure out how to leave it as soon as possible. When you're in the heat, smelling smells that could only be produced in Thailand, New Year's eve is approaching, and you have two bikinis in your backpack just waiting to be worn, you can bet that you'll be ithing to get to the beach. Our original plans were to spend a day or two in Thailand, and then enjoy as much of Malaysia as possible. But with it being both high season and New Years, Thailand was that much more difficult to get around and we had very few options. There was room on a bus to Phuket, so plans changed and we hopped on early the next morning.
The bus drove ALL day. Seriously, overland travel in Southeast Asia, not quite the bullet train situation to which I have become accustomed. We pretty much went straight to sleep upon our arrival at our guesthouse in Phuket (which was crazy nice, by the way). The next morning, I woke up early and started charting out the territory,
essentially just sniffing out the beach. I found it in all it's glory, with the soft sand, the clear water, the juts of rock out of the water that so well characterize the sea around Thailand. We actually ended up at Kata Beach, a pretty touristy little area with all the shops and restaurants and such. I went back around noon to get my sister who was then well rested and ready for the long trek back to the beach where we got to just relax and let the sun bask in us. (Yeah, that's right.)
The next morning we strapped on our backpacks and sweatily headed to a new guesthouse to get closer to the main action. We ended up with our own little bungalow in a cute area sort of overlooking the ocean, through a lot of trees. But hey, it was 10% the price of the place with the really nice view next door. I think we did pretty well. Another day spent on the beach, and then preparations for our New Year's eve night out.
Every little restaurant and bar around seemed to have some little party planned. We opted for the cheapest and
closest one, right on top of the hill by our bungalow. We had liked our lunch there and the people seemed really nice, so why not? All we had to do was pay 150 baht for the supper and bring a small gift for the gift exchange. Turned out, this had more of a private party feel, with Dore and I not really part of the private people. We enjoyed the provided games with dinner. Really, you can't go wrong with Thai food, a Mai Thai in one hand, and a Jenga block in the other, can you? The gift exchange was, well, interesting. Let's just say we scored some pretty sweet gifts. We did spend some time with some of the other party go-ers, mostly Thai and Danish people who were actually quite fun. They set off some fireworks at midnight, as did the rest of the island, and after a few more drinks we called it a night. Happy New Year!
On the first day of the New Year, I woke to find my legs and feet were a little itchy. Some kind of allergic reaction that I seem to get when in tropical places. By the
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Phra Sumen Fort end of the day I counted 62 sores, averaging the size of quarters, covering my legs. If nothing else it lent itself well to a little comic relief as we'd pass by market vendors who would point and yell, "Mosquitos!", then his buddy, "Oh! Lots of mosquitos!". Awesome! None-the-less, I swallowed my pride and pranced around anyway. That day, I checked out another beach that was surprisingly close-by, Karon Beach. Just as beautiful as Kata, with all the tourist action: sun tanning, swimming, jet-skiing, parasailing. It was another shopping and beaching day.
The following day I finally got to do a little something that I had been anxiously seeking. I got to ride an elephant. I went on a small tour with a family of Swedish people (those Scandinavians really like their Thailand!). I got to ride on my own elephant, of course with a little guide man who sat on his neck and bopped him on the head if he tried to move off course. Poor thing. It was a really pretty little area though and we got to feed and pet the elephants after and even see a little baby elephant show with the one little elephant
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Streets of Bangkok who was actually born right at this tour site. I've loved elephants since I was a kid, so this was definitely a highlight for me.
The following day was another highlight. Dore and I went on a cruise tour of the surrounding islands. The things we saw were absolutely breathtaking. Maya Bay, snorkelling, Monkey Island, Phi Phi Island. It was all so beautiful. Maya Bay is where they filmed the movie The Beach with Leonardo Dicaprio and it was very clear why they would choose such a site to give the allusion of a paradise. I had never before seen water so clear and blue, juts of rock so incredibly pronounced, fish so colourful. Monkey Island was of course very cool too. It was actually a very small island and the amount of beach that you see in the pictures here is seriously all the beach there was, but it was full of monkeys. Fiesty little things too. When they saw we had bananas, they came running right after you! And they wouldn't be fooled by an empty banana peel either. They were smart little buggers. From there we had a wonderful buffet style lunch at Phi Phi Island
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A tuktuk! and had some time to see the area there which was again just absolutely awe-inspiring. We ended our day at one last island with a little too much broken and dried up coral. It felt a little like walking on broken glass, but the beach was nice and hot and provided a great relaxing time at the end of a very exciting day.
We spent that evening, our last in Thailand, taking some pictures of Kata Beach at sunset and having one last nice meal at one of our favourite restaurants where we were always provided with a Connect Four game to keep us busy and a fruit plate to fill us for dessert. The following morning, we said goodbye to our Thai paradise and flew off to Singapore.
To be continued...
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