Thailand!

afterwell, i wanted adventure!

and i have to say i got it.

there have been many moments during this trip where i just stop and think "what is my life that i am in this situation?"
Since I've been in Thailand there have been too many of those to count.

we ended up booking a hotel online for our first night in Thailand. a guy we met hitchiking in nz recommended it to us since its 500 meters from the airport, and since our flight got in at like 9pm and we were both so exhausted and sunburnt with no idea how long customs would take ( it ended up being quite easy - a joke compared to nz where they took my shoes away and washed them for me) we paid $50 which seemed reasonable for a hotel...now that seems like a joke. We got a better hotel the next day for $25, the night after that we payed $15 and now we are paying $16 for a beach front room.

Anyway we came out of customs thinking we were ready to deal with the onslaught of taxi drivers wanting to help.

"Hello Sir! Where you going? Taxi Car?"

This call is forever burned into my brain. They have a cool bird here that can imitate most sounds and I'm surprised most of them don't say that because that's most of what you hear walking down any city street during the day here.

"Taxi car? Taxi boat? Where you go? Koh Phi Phi? 500 bot."

So with helpful directions from the tourist police we braved the 600 meters in the dark to our hotel. The tourist police are a really cool thing they have here, if you run into trouble with the real police (who can apparently be a bit corrupt sometimes) you can dial 5522 and the tourist police who speak English will come help you. There are signs that say "tourist police, your first friend" they even have an app.

And i have finally learned what it is to deal with the frustration of not speaking the language of a country you are in. I'd made sure to learn at least a boched version of thank you and hello before I got here, and i even covered my hand in phrases like where is the bathroom, etc. Thai is tonal like Chinese so there is an extra dimension of being able to say things completely wrong. Definitely asked for the toilet one time and had the girl look really embarrassed, tell me "no, no" before I guess realizing what I had meant to say and pointing me the right way. Who knows what apparently weird thing I asked her for. The phrases on my hand were handy a few times, and helped me be more polite, but common phrases sure doesn't help much when you need to buy contact solution and can't find it in a store, and good luck getting a sim card set up for your phone! Phone data here is by time not by MB, so you buy hours of internet on edge, edge+, or 3g which is confusing enough in English. And in the entirety of Phuket we found not one proper store for any phone carrier, just privately owned shops and 7-11s where you can buy sim cards. On the most part people were nice to me as I struggled, but a language barrier is a language barrier and of course I'm in the wrong here by not speaking Thai.

By our second night in Phuket I got a message from a Russian guy living in Phuket on couch surfing who said we could stay with him, so we headed over to his house. Had a relaxing day getting to know Sasha and the house mates (all also Russian - and some who didn't speak English) funny enough they had lost their water bill last month and so the water had been turned off so, they were waiting for monday to call the water company. No stress, we were planning to eat out anyway, and we headed off to the night market. The night market was really neat, stopped and checked out a soccer game on the way, grabbed some food and a coconut with a straw, attempted to haggle for a taxi but ended up walking and dodging cockroaches all the way home - I'm slowly getting a lot better at not being deathly afraid of the stupid things.

Well something I ate at the market wasn't so good later that night... and no water means no flushing toilets. It wasn't very pretty. But they came and turned on the water the next day and I can say I survived. Spent another night at Sasha's  and cooked them the most simple American meal we could think of - grilled cheese and tomato soup. We even found Annie's tomato soup at the store, Tesco Lotus. We are now promised Borsch if we ever go to Russia or Serbia. One of the guys let us borrow his scooter and we took our lives in our hands on the crazy roads here. Don't think I mentioned it here yet, the roads are kind of a free for all where people TEND to the correct side of the road and TEND to stop at red lights, but only when there is other traffic around. It is perfectly acceptable to go into the wrong lane to pass someone in the middle of a city, as well as drive on the wrong side completely if there is no other traffic around. In the words of one of the Russians, "I think you don't need licence if you going short distance." Riding along with Dar was definitely more fun than scary and I even drove alone myself when we rented a scooter a few days later on an island. It was a bit of a skill avoiding (or at least going really slowly over) the sewage overflows which run from time to time across the street. I will really love going back to non open air sewers.

And its worth noting what an amazingly hard habit refraining from throwing toilet tissue in the toilet after you wipe yourself is. The number one rule in south east Asia is no toilet paper down the toilet. This wasn't clear to me at first because signs said "don't throw paper towels" or "don't throw garbage" down the toilet and I was wondering who was dumb enough to need that sign. Me. Apparently the sewer lines aren't large enough so they actually explode underground when people flush toilet paper. This is especially bad on islands where the sewer lines are under the beach. Don't want to hurt the beautiful fishies! The locals use little spray nozzles like for a kitchen sink.

The food here is really really super yummy. I tried the spicy papaya salad tonight for dinner. They toned the spicy ness down pretty much completely, so I got to really enjoy the flavor. Yum. And I finally got my mango and sticky rice fix. They throw sweet condensed/coconut milk over the whole thing. And the curries. Wow. I think the average Thai spicyness is just right for me because its always just perfect. And the portion sizes leave you just perfectly satisfied and not bloated. But the one thing that stands out is that while the real Thai food is certainly delicious, but its not really all that far above what I get at Thai restaurants in Eugene, or a particular yummy one Rob & Sharon take me to in AZ. I think we are pretty spoiled with the Thai food we get in the states. Its pretty damn close to the real thing! The one thing they have in almost every restaurant here though, that I haven't seen before, is a dish called "no-name chicken/pork/vegetable" - a friend ordered it today and she got a deep fried fritter/tempura like pieces of chicken & veggie mix with sweet chili sauce for dipping. She said it was yum so I'll have to try it myself before we leave. And the fruit shakes! It seems every street there are at least a few stands with fresh fruit which you can also have made into delicious shakes. Just fruit and ice and yogurt if you want. Not to sweet, just perfect. And the coconut shakes are served in a coconut shell. And they cost like $1.20

So after we left Phuket we headed straight for Koh Tao, an island off the East coast in the Bay of Thailand. The island is well known for being a great place to learn to dive, and we decided Thailand would be a really great place to learn! We started our open water course a few days ago. Its been a blast. We chose a really really great school, Impian Divers. The coolest thing about going there is since the water is so calm here, the two confined water dives which are usually done in a swimming pool, you get to do in the ocean! And wow the ocean here is incredible. We were in shoulder deep water and had schools of all types of fishes, sea cucumbers, and corals all around us on our first dive! Our actual open water dives were out of control. Christmas tree worms, clown fish and their (huge!) host anemones, schools of parrotfish and wrasses, angelfish, gobies and blennies, fish that glow, brain corals the size of a car -OK so things in water are actually 30% smaller than they appear, but still! It was such a treat for me after having only seen these creatures small and in stores, to see them happy and healthy in their natural environment - and therefore HUGE since they live so long here.

We are almost done with our diving certifications. We finished all the theory and tests, have 2 open water dives under our belt and just 2 more open water dives with a few exercises to go! We went to 12 meters yesterday, and next we go to 18. Would be done today but Dar got a bug so we are waiting a day to see if he improves so he can go too. No worries if he can't because then he will just have to go in Hawaii XD

Well I think thats about it! Will take the night ferry back to the mainland tomorrow and head up to Bangkok. We leave the 2nd for Tokyo! Planning to go with Takako to Kyoto for a few days and stay with Michiko in Tokyo when Takako goes back to work. Can't wait to see Takako again :) and also have plans to meet up with 3 different friends in Seoul, so looking forward to that as well.