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Published: December 23rd 2004
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Well I sit here a sad little lady on Koh Phi Phi, Annecy has just emailed to let me know that her flight from Bangkok to Phuket was delayed and so she has to stay in Phuket town for the night and get the early boat instead - another whole night to wait!
Anyway, I shall take the opportunity to write about my last few days, I can't remember when I last wrote a blog really......I think it was about a week ago, I am loosing my grip of time and days of the week. Koh Lanta was fantastic, the island is not as beautiful as some apparently, but still gorgeous and the place I stayed at and the people I met were great, there's a real community feeling there. Lots of people come again season after season and so many people have met before and everyone seems to know everyone else through someone else because there's paths cross so many times there.. We all sort of became cocooned in our little area and I rarely ventured further than a hundred metres down the beach, or down the road to try a different restaurant, in the evening we alternated between
sitting at Gis's little bar by the beach, or a few metres away on Ali and Eltons balcony, occasionally venturing out to a bar later on to confirm that the music was yet again, terrible.
In the days I would wake up and go for a morning stroll and collect some shells, have breakfast and chat to whoever was around then sit on the beach with the girls, making jewelry out of the shells and chatting away, how very bohemian of me! I did some snorkeling with Steve and Lou and got more confident with it, not so many fish around, but quite a few and the water was pretty clear, I learned to dive under and swim down with my snorkel and force the water out when you get to the surface again and now I am really interested in doing some proper diving. In the afternoon big Don (he's been going there for about 9 years as part of his trips around Asia) and a couple of others meet up at 3pm for a game of scrabble and I was very privileged to be invited to join them, and didn't come last - hurrai!!!! I did attempt
a couple of Yoga classes on the platform by the beach, a stunning setting to do it in, but it was tough class and so hot it all became too much effort and decided that my shell collecting was exercise enough.
go shorty, its your birthday...
We had a great evening on Friday night, it was Ali's youngest sons birthday and so on the Thursday night we sat up with them wrapping presents and blowing up balloons ready for when he woke up. On the Friday I had a blissful day in the hammock on their balcony as they took the kids out elephant trekking (what a great way to spend your birthday for a 6 year old or any age for that matter - apparently one of the elephants played Happy Birthday on a mouth Organ while wriggling his bum...interesting.....) and in the evening we lit a fire on the beach and had fireworks and music and all the kids played on the beach. We were all meant to be going to a party at the other end of the beach later on, it's only a 30 minute walk or a quick taxi ride, but after a
few beers and the glow of the fire we all got a little too comfortable and kept putting it off later and later, even that little distance seemed to be too far to travel and it was so nice where we were.....so we stayed. A few folk headed out, but in the end it wasn't a great party anyway by all accounts.
It's not been very busy most of the time, a party seems to mean 20 people instead of the usual 10 in whichever particular bar. Apparently it is quiet for the time of year and should pick up soon, but it was so nice just to relax and drink and chat, you didn't really need anything more. I did manage a bit of a dance on Saturday night at the Earth bar again, the staff from Thai Cuisine (a fantastic restaurant, the food was incredible, I still dream of it now.....) and the chef is this little chubby bloke and is very funny and a waiter called Pong. It took me a few times to work out that yes, he was saying 'Pong' and nothing more exotic, although his real name is Kitteepong which I thought was
rather sweet, he was a nice bloke. Because it's fairly quiet you get more of a chance to chat to the locals and the people who work and run the guesthouses and bars and things, and the kids play with all the tourists kids and there's just a really nice feel to the whole area. I did manage to try out a motorbike as well, I'm not sure I'm a born natural but given time maybe I could learn how to keep it moving in a straight line.......
Also I met a girl called Louisa who is heading up to northern Thailand later in January so we are hoping to meet up again, I'd chatted to her a few times and something was really bugging me, she reminded me of someone and I couldn't work out who, I finally told her this and we worked out where we were both from, it turns out she was in the year above me at High School! We spent hours trying to come up with names of people in our years that we thought we might recognise and talking about old teachers.
toad of toad hall
It seems that
late night laxing on the veranda with Ali, Elton and Steve
(sorry its so dark, not quite got to grips with the camera settings yet I htink...) every time I have a last night in a place I am destined to share it with a different creature, this time it was a large frog. I got back to my bunglaow room and it was sat on my doorstep and rather than hop safely away it decided to hop into my door and then squeeze himself underneath with his little legs wriggling for all they were worth to force himself into my room, great. So then I had to try and tempt the ittle fella back out again but he kept hopping into the corner and banging himself against the wall, so I gave up and sort of trapped him in the corner for the night and jumped into bed. In the morning he had gone......hopefully he got away safely and didn't spend the night jumping around on my bed as I was asleep....urrghhh. Apart from that I've been pretty lucky with the bugs and creatures so far, I had a very big coackraoch in my bathroom one day, but I ignored it and when I came back it had gone somewhere I couldn't see it so I did my best to forget about it, but other people
have had snakes and spiders and all sorts, so I count my lucky stars (so far....).
christmas wishes
It feels quite strange being back on Koh Phi Phi after being here earlier in Feb this year. More stuff has been built already in that time, more concrete and modern buildings, but our bungalow is lovely and only a few metres from the sea. It's the most luxurious place I've stayed so far with air conditioning, a hot shower and even a fridge, bliss! We have our own little veranda too and you can sit on it and look through the trees down to the sea, I just can't wait for Annecy to get out here and share it all with me!
Well, this is my last blog until after Christmas now, I am sure I will have many more interesting tales to tell next time as I'll be much busier and up to more stuff, we have the wedding to go to after Christmas the sister of Annecys friend and they have quite a few outings planned for us, I'll have to get back into the idea of actually being active again.
Have a very very
Merry Christmas and have a glass of mulled wine on me, it is very strange to think I will not be there with my family and friends, but I'm trying not to think about it all too much and I am having such a good time that I'm not letting myself get too sad and the beautiful weather and setting is helping a lot! So drink, eat and be very merry and write me soon with all your Christmas gossip xx
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anonymous
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Good News!
I have received news from Annas parents that both her and Annecy survived the Tsunami on Koh Phi Phi. Should make an interesting follow up to this story. Best Wishes!! - Peekay