Thailand: Day 6

Our first full day in Phuket was another day of scuba diving! Well, Christina was a good friend and went snorkeling even though she doesn't like being in the water and I went diving. The coral and fish were much better in this part of Thailand. We got picked up in the morning by our dive company and headed to the pier. We loaded up in a nice boat with multiple other dive companies. The best part? It was just Newton, my dive master, and me diving together. Small groups are definitely better because they can point things out to you and you don't have other divers scaring the fish away.

We had a long boat ride out to Racha Yai (behind me in the far distance) so we took advantage of the sun and saw a few jelly fish too. Our first dive was in a cove off the island. Christina enjoyed a beer when she was done snorkeling and feeding the fish.

The most memorable part of the trip were the Trigger Fish. Thank goodness that Newton had warned me about these guys ahead of time!

 When one starting biting my fins the first time, I freaked out a little bit! I thought I had kicked Newton's tank or hit the coral, but it was an 18 inch fish chomping on my yellow fins! He attacked a few times, swam around us and the longer we held still, the further away he swam. During the second dive, when another one came around, I just watched him and laughed. At least he didn't go for my fingers. Those teeth were scary looking! Definitely a few memorable dives.

After we got back to Phuket, we headed back to the hotel and got cleaned up, put on some nice clothes and headed to dinner. We went to a restaurant one town over recommended by LP. Christina and I had a nice romantic dinner, just the two of us. :)

Over dinner, we decided that we wanted to go to Phi Phi island the next day since our trip to the Vegetarian Festival didn't work out. At 10:00 pm, we headed in to Patong City to find a tour company. Luckily, things around there were open late, so we found a place still open and booked a trip that left at 8 am the next morning. Perfect!

We even had time for a beer and to check out the Lady Boys. I love Thailand!

Happy Halloween!

He's Home!

Glenn's favorites

Glenn's favorite beer... in the fridge:

Glenn's favorite sheets... on the bed:

Glenn's favorite food... in the drawer:

Just sayin'.

Birthday Shenanigans Part II

A group of us headed to Yokohama's Oktoberfest on the Saturday after my birthday. We had snagged a few plastic hats with feathers from the O'Club's Oktoberfest and decided that they would be perfect for our outting. My student, Keiko, gave me the glasses for my birthday with the cutest note inscribed on the inside. We also lucked out with the most perfect weather on Saturday!

(Note: the hats worked perfect when locating the group as well! A few of my students met us for the afternoon and could find us quite easily!)

These guys generously let us share their table with them. There were so many people at Oktoberfest since it was the last weekend of the 2 week festival.

 Aya, Mike and Mai.

 New friend, Hatsuki, Mai, Keita, Noriei and Aya
.

 Lauren, Angelica, New Friend 2, Noriei, NF3 and Ann.

 Yum-o!

Ann and I showing our skills!

Such a fun day! Thank you all for joining me for my birthday! Such a fun way to celebrate. Two days in a row of drinking though! Birthday Lesson #1: I used to do 4 nights in a row when I was 21, it doesn't work the same at 28. Sunday was a couch day. :)

Thailand: Day 5

Bright and early on Thursday morning, Christina and I were headed back to Bangkok airport to catch our flight to Phuket. Phuket is a territory/island of Thailand about a 1 1/2 hour flight south from Bangkok.

We checked in to our hotel in Nakalay Beach and decided we were going to check out the biggest city just south of us, Patong. First, we checked out the hotel though.

How does one get to their hotel room? A cable car of course! It was novel at first, but then we realized if you forgot something in the room, it took 20 minutes to get to the room and back. It was worth it for the awesome view we had from our room though!

In Patong, we checked out the beach...

Did some shopping and rode around in a tuk-tuk (nice ones!)...

Enjoyed the sunset...

We headed back to our hotel before dinner to enjoy the beach and little and see some more of the beautiful sunset...

We brought our own little mini bar to the beach and enjoyed some duty free gin I bought on the way to Thailand! I'm being frugal, people, my momma taught me well...

We relaxed on the beach til we got too hungry and then headed to one of our hotels many restaurants. Since they didn't have Hendrick's on the menu, we just decided to bring our own with us!

Yummy, yummy Thai food! Then, we were off to bed, another day of scuba tomorrow!

Birthday Shenanigans Part I

 I don't think the pictures need much explaining. We had dinner at La Ricetta, an Italian restaurant in Zama, with the folks who couldn't make it to Oktoberfest the next day. Pre-dinner cocktails followed by dinner drinks and then to the O'Club afterwards. Thanks for a fun night, ladies!

Pictures below courtesy of Heather. Thanks!

  Shots with the Mommas!

I spy Captain Gardner!! (the CO of the base) Haha! Thanks for killing the giant spider for us, sir!

Fun times!

Thailand: Day 4

My last day with Glenn. Sad. Why do port calls go by so fast? We started the day with breakfast at the hotel. They had eggs. Exciting. I love when Asian countries actually have western-ish breakfasts. Rice and fish for breakfast is something I don't think I'll ever learn to adapt too. Give me some bacon and eggs!

So yeah, we had breakfast and then we walked down the street to the main road to catch a baht-bus. We learned that if you get a driver from the hotel they charge you pretty much 500 Baht ($18) but if you catch a baht-bus, you can ride as far as they are going for 20 baht (75 cents). So we caught a baht-bus and Glenn managed to not fall off the back (since the seats were full, he had to stand and hold on to a railing overhead), we pressed the doorbell when we saw our destination and hopped off and paid. Success, $15 in my pocket!

Our destination: the floating market. So it's a knock-off of the real floating market near Bangkok, but fun souvenirs to be found anyway. I always have to come back from vacation with gifts for my students. It's a Japanese thing for sure. Gifts for everyone! I guess cause they couldn't go? A small trinket or candy will do, but it's polite to bring back something.

We wandered, we shopped, we sweated, we attempted to order some food, we sweated some more. This was the only really hot day Glenn and I had in Thailand. While we were waiting for our food, Glenn was talking about lounging in the pool and relaxing back at the hotel before he had to depart for the bus to take him to the ship.

"I really wanna ride an elephant," I blurted out knowing that it was the opposite of what Glenn wanted to do at that moment. "I'm sorry, I can't come to Thailand and not ride an elephant!"

"Really? I wish you had mentioned this earlier."
"I know! I'm sorry, I did, kinda, not really. Can we ride an elephant."

Being the wonderful husband that he is, he made my wish come true!

We attempted to get a ride from a taxi at the market, but they didn't really seem to know where we were talking about. We decided to head back to the hotel first, I made some phone calls and got an Elephant Village driver to come pick us up! Ya ta!

We even had some time for lounging before they picked us up.

Elephants! I think Glenn enjoyed himself feeding the elephants bananas even though he was watching his watch to make sure we would be back in time. We fed them, we rode one for an hour (30 minute would have sufficed) and we pet the elephants! :)

 

Thanks Mr! We made it back in time to pack (quickly) Glenn up and order some room service. Relaxing would have been wonderful too, but all I can ever think about on the last night is saying goodbye in a few hours. Maybe staying busy until the last minute is the way to go? Miss you so much, Mr!