“Do you like Thai?”
“Yeah I like Tie, do you like Shirt?” (Homer)
I’m in our last hotel room, near Phuket airport. Tomorrow night we sleep in the plane on the way home. Today was the 5/11/10, we arrived in San Francisco on 5/5/10. We did it. 6 whole months. I probably marvel at that a little too much, but I really cannot believe we did it.
Thailand was not on our original list of places we were going to. This time last year we were sitting in STA travel finally getting around to buying our tickets and travel insurance from Kristy who was explaining that we should keep our time in the USA and Canada at less than 20% of our total trip (to save heaps of money for our insurance). I’d planned for around 38 days in the USA/Canada, which at that time was over 20% of our trip. Kristy was trying to get our time in North America down by a week when I said. ‘We should cut like 2 days off and then add two weeks at the end of the honeymoon and we can go to Thailand or somewhere cheap... it’ll kind of cancel out right?’
Kristy laughed and looked at Ri.
Ri did the *what she said* gesture.
Kristy asked if I always got my way and other general statements of disbelief/ praise for Ri’s awesomeness.
So that is how we ended up in Thailand! And I’ve loved it! The week with Mum was great, although she is a morning person and I am a night owl, we like to do the same sort of things, just at different times of day. So I think that drove her a little bananas. She did a lot of shopping for her three children (me, my brother and her favourite child, her son-in-law). Mum and Ri get along great, they both enjoy the sport of paying me out (also enjoyed by my dad and brother). With Mum we went on an elephant ride (oh the guilt! I just wanted to set them free!!) then to Phuket zoo (more animal related guilt, although I did get to pat a tiger which was AMAZING). Mum took us to Fanta Sea (I’d recommend it, but I do love a Vegas style show). I dragged Mum to get a fish foot spa, which is where you stick your feet into a fish tank while cleaner fish get all the dead skin off. If you close your eyes and relax it kind of feels like bubbles. And your feet feel so smooth afterwards!
Mum made her way to Bangkok, when we made our way to Phi Phi Island. It rained for the first two days! I was getting worried that I wouldn’t get to go home with sun burns! Luckily we had three days of sun, so we snorkelled, fed monkeys on Monkey beach and snorkelled some more. Turns out I cannot sink. We were snorkelling in 6m deep waters and Ri was showing off down with the fish while I was trying to sink myself.
On our last night on Phi Phi Ri organised a private dinner on the beach with a massive bunch of white roses. As a surprise! Since our honeymoon had to end, I’m glad it ended like this in Thailand!
One last blog to come!
Ri says Tori also got her hair styled by a monkey that was soooo high fashion
