Thailand: The Good Stuff

Although just having survived one of the worst natural disasters in 40 years we did manage to enjoy some of our trip. Though, not much. We arrived in Bangkok and spent the evening hanging out with John and Bruce. We walked the vendor lined streets listening to bands playing at beer gardens in the background. We spent the following day on a tour of Bangkok. We saw all the famous wats (temples) of Bangkok containing theh world's largest Golden Buddha and the famous Reclining Buddha. Followed by a visit to a silk shop and jewel shop, purely for advertisement purposes. Bruce and John then left to go to Ko Samui and we had one more night in Bangkok. We spent it at the night bizarre. It is an amazing market full of Thai chochkes (or crap). Then we treated ourselves to a Thai massage. I say treated lightly because I have never been in such pain in all my life. They grind at every nerve in your body with this razor sharp callous on their thumb knuckle. It was awful! Bren was sweating, panting, holding my hand and cringing the entire time. ROUGH!

The following day we went to Phuket. Our hotel was on Patong Beach. We were less than impressed with the area. It was dirty, busy and full of fat tourists getting a tan. We wanted something more secluded and remote. Unfortunately due to the season this was impossible. We were going to settle for taking day trips to surrounding islands. Let me just comment on the amount of old, fat, white men walking around with young Thai girls on their arms. I thought they would try to be discreet about something so shameful but they weren't. They would walk down the street hand in hand with a look of disgust on the Thai girl's face. As a woman, I notice this a lot more than a man might. Apalling. So the following day we planned on a day trip to the Phi Phi Islands.

The following day was December 26.

We returned to Bangkok on December 30 excited to be one step closer to home. We did some shopping, got facials and went to the movies (first time since being in Asia). Unfortunately Bridget Jones was set in Thailand which really made Christine and I depressed. For New Years we hung out at a beer garden. Chris and Zach drank their sorrows away and Bren and I got ready for our long journey home. I also got sick the last few days of the trip, to make matters worse.

It took us about 10 hours to drive from Fukuoka to Tamagawa. We left the airport at about 9pm and got home at 7:30 the next morning. We got stuck in the snow in the mountains. Can anything just go right for us?