white people vs. the sun

I think Lara and Amber came to a conclusion that my body is somewhere between squishy, twiggy, and hairy. Regardless, none of the guys at that club could be described using any of those adjectives...
But anyway, on to part two. After our night on the town we said goodbye to Lara, who alas had to return home. But I'll probably be able to see her in not long at all since she's making her way back to the U.S.. No Indian can resist it's shiny shores I think. Anyway, we took a budget plane down to Krabi, on the Southwest coast and took a taxi to a nearby slightly overcrowded beach where we spent the night. The beach wasn't fantastic, but it was still a nice view watching the sunset as a group of Thai teenagers played soccer on the sand. Relatively early the following morning we boarded a boat for Ko Phi Phi, a pretty popular destination in the area.

Here's a view from our boat ride. We ended up riding many of those long boats pictured here, but this time we were riding a more normal modern looking one.

Upon touching down we made our way to a nearby beachfront and found our 5 star lodging:

Amber may look at peace, but really she's grossed out by all the lizards and dirt that keeps our little bungalow together. It was fine for the night anyway, no problems. Plus I had never slept under a mosquito net before, and the thought of all those lizards eating all those malaria-filled bugs was a bit comforting. On our little island, we did all those things foreigners do on tropical islands: sleep, swim, snorkel, get really sunburnt, eat, drink, and so on. My favorite moments were on this little beach about a 15 minute walk away.

Beautiful, ne.
The next day we decided that our ALT salaries may not really be all that impressive, but its certainly enough to afford something without so many lizards and with a bit of running water. Of course left to my own devices I'd probably be on the beach with a coconut for a pillow... Oh the things I do for my friends.
Anyway shortly after checking in we played in our high class bungalow resort's little swimming pool and had a splash fight with two small Swedish children. Amber asked the little kid "Where are you from?" and in the little accent answered promptly "Sweden!" As adorable as that was, I think a little piece of our English teaching hearts sank. In all of our minds I know we instantly imagined the blank looks on our students faces if we were to ask them that same question. It's still a bit of a mystery to me as to how a 7 year old Swedish boy can seemingly have a greater understanding of the English language than the 13-15 year olds we teach everyday.
A hard fought splash battle with the little blond Scandinavians. The fight was cut short when another Swedish family came into the pool, and the mother serenaded her little daughter with the song "Ghetto Superstar."

You may have picked up on one theme of this trip so far: Swedish people. As far as I could tell, the islands we hopped around were practically little pieces of Sweden, only warm and tropical instead of cold and dark. I was brought back to my days in Denmark, and still think that for some reason the Swedes are warmer than the Danes. My Danish friend even slightly confirmed this observation, but added that it's only because Swedes are dumb. Anyway, the number of tall beautiful people wandering the beaches didn't really detract from their beauty, so I was happy to share with our blond friends.

Later that day we hired a longboat for a few hours and had a guy steer us around a nearby island for a bit where we occasionally jumped out and swam around and lied on a nice beach.

"crikey!"
Shane is wearing a t shirt while swimming, and no he's not the shy fat kid at a pool party. We all had to be a lot more careful after the first day in the sun, which left us a little lobstery.
Our mighty vessel.
I look a little sea sick in this one, but I think I was fine... It was a nice sunset. Another sweet note to this little outing was that while I was wading around in the water, I stumbled across a 1000Baht note buried in the sand (about 36 USD). This was the exact price we agreed on for the boat guy, making our trip free. huzzah! Too bad my travel companions were quick to point out how quickly their Jewish friend was able to find money buried in the sand. But they were just lucky I was stuck on a beach when I found that money, or else I never would have let those gentiles have it, and it would have safely gone to the hands of a nice Jewish stock broker in New York City who would've wisely invested it. But the sand and sun were clouding my thoughts, so I just went ahead and shared my prize with the goyem.

Here I am at the end of the trip, a little fuzzier and 50 pounds heavier. Guess that Thai food didn't go through me as much as I thought it would.

One last day was spent at my favorite little palm tree beach, before making our way back to the mainland. We made a brief stop at an island along the way, which I thought would be worth it based on the description in our guidebook. It was actually way more built up and overpriced than the one we had just come from, but still quite pretty. After an overpriced meal (by far the most expensive dinner we had in Thailand, with prices approaching 8 dollars an entree).
One last day was spent in Bangkok before getting on our plane which was ridiculously scheduled to take off at 12:30am. We did some market shopping and wandering around. The heat made that rather tough though, and I think the midday temperature may have exceeded 100 degree Fahrenheit.

So in conclusion, my only regret in Thailand is that we didn't have enough time. I would've loved to see a few more islands as well as spend a bit more time in Bangkok, and maybe take some sidetrips up North. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to make it to Cambodia and Vietnam sometime as well, as I hear no trip to SE Asia is complete with a look at Angkor Wat.

There's always more to say, but I've reached my bed time and I spend too much time on this machine again. Goodnight!

Aaron