Safe Trip Home

Finally it was time to say goodbye to Thailand. We spent our last baht at the airport on snacks to take home. Even found some seedless Tamarind - safe for import. :) We were relieved when we checked in that we had seats together on the plane. No delays and no problems getting home. Perfect.

The Christmas Spirit

Why is it in a country with a 0.5 % Christian population that we are listening to baby Jesus music in the department stores? We've exported Christmas as a shopping holiday.

A day of local treats

We took a day bicycle trip outside of Bangkok. One of the highlights was having our guide buy various treats for us to try. We never would have been brave enough to try these on our own...

• on the train: lime wedges dipped in hot chillis
  
• along the road, a stand selling fried bananas and taro
  
• another roadside stop, a stand selling a local speciality: cocounut milk and meat mixed with rice and sugar, wrapped in a leaf and grilled. Sticky and delicious.
  
• on the train home: candied tamarind, sticky and full of huge shiny seeds. We loved it!
  

Just what are seatbelts for??

In Phuket, our tourist brochure warned that helmet laws for motorbikes are strictly enforced. We saw that was the case. Coming up behind a motorbike pulled over because the driver wasn't wearing a helmet, our taxi driver slowed and sneakily fastened his safety belt. He looked back at us and said something about police, so I guess not wearing a seatbelt as the driver is also illegal. We slowly drove past. But once clear of the pending danger of a ticket, he again unclipped the belt, sped up and went on his way. I wonder what he thinks seat belts are for? Observing the motorbike riders... it seems only the driver is required to wear a helmet. The three year old in front of the driver and girl riding side saddle on the back don't need one. On every motorbike in Phuket there are two, three, or more people, and very rarely is anyone but the driver protecting their head. Seems like not much is accomplished by the helmet law.

Luck flies high

While eating dinner at a sidewalk cafe in Patong, we watched a bright light go up over the bay. Another flair? No - turned out to be a lucky lantern! After dinner we crossed the street to check it out. "You light lucky lantern?!" How much? 200 baht. Hesitating... is it really worth $6? Ok - we don't know how to bargain, so our hesitation does it for us. 150 baht. Sold!

The man brought the paper lantern down to the beach and started to light the paper fuel in the middle. Then he told us to hold it for two minutes while the lantern filled with hot air. When we let it go, it went up quickly; we could see the fire burning inside as it rose, and then it was just a bright dot. Straining our necks we watched it through its whole journey; it caught the wind higher up and drifted far away, then finally the little light flickered and winked out leaving us to wonder where the paper remains would land.

Patong Beach

We went to Patong beach last night and saw all the action. Curtis wanted to see all the "night life". Its even harder to walk through that area than Bangkok. "Do you want a suit? We have an expert tailor. Please come inside." "Picture with Iguana! Picture with Iguana!" (You wouldn't believe how many people have that gig!) "You light lucky lantern!" "Tuk-tuk? Tuk-tuk?" "Ping pong show! Come to ping pong show!" ...
We sat at a bar on the beach and had a drink and I was amused by how many different roving vendors were trying to sell us stuff. We could have bought a watch, a dress, swim shorts, scarf, henna tatoo, a wooden harley, a flute, an elephant carving, sunglasses... all without getting up.

When we were tired, we finally indulged one of the people trying to offer a taxi ride to get us back to our hotel. But he had no idea how to find our hotel. After four phone calls and pulling over for directions twice, luckily he had made it close enough that we could see the sign. There's only one main road and we tried to get him to just keep driving straight until we saw the hotel, but he was determined to look for it himself and kept making U-turns because they told him it was by the 7-11 and there are a billion 7-11's here, so he was circling around the wrong one. Finally made it back though. Whew!

Refugees

On the last night of our dive trip we were on the deck enjoying dinner when Curtis exclaimed "There's a flare!". We all watched the flare on the horizon but there wasn't a huge amount of concern. About 15 minutes later another flare went up. This time the captain radioed the coast guard and we found out that a fishing boat had sunk, but that someone was on the way to pick up the people. We didn't hear much more about it. The next morning, we were back in the water for the last two dives of our trip. After the second dive, we came on board to find unfamiliar faces. Then we learned the whole story. It was a small fishing charter that had sunk. It went down very fast, so the guys aboard didn't have a chance to grab anything, just get on the life raft. One guy happened to have his camera which happened to be in an underwater case, so he has proof it all happened. They spent the night on one of the islands, and, since our boat was going back the next day, our captain agreed to take them back to the mainland. So much irony... Curtis had been reading a book on wreck diving that was in our boat's library, so he handed the book over to the guys for a laugh. They said they hadn't really caught much - making me all the more glad I'm a diver! Why stay in a hot boat waiting to hopefully catch a fish, when you can go down in the refreshing water and see all the fish you want??? Of course, they do get to drink more beer - no drinking and diving. After chatting with them a bit, we found out they were software engineers. Curtis naturally offered to try and recruit them and offered his card. He was just imaging filling out the referral form. "How do you know this person?" "I was on the boat that rescued him from a shipwreck."