Flora Fotos

Well, Spring is on its way. Things are blossoming and making the world feel like new again. I've been out and about with the camera and thought I would share some of the little things that bring me joy.

And just because I like the picture, some men playing cards in the park.

And another non-flower park picture. I call this one, Escape. The "bird" is actually a kite.

To see larger, just click on the photos.

The Name Game

First of all, I would like to say that I will never write about being lucky again. A few days after my last post I was struck down. Yup. Ladutza. Fever, stomach cramps, the works. Lost a kilo. To top it off, David got sick too, so we were pretty much worthless this past weekend. I did a lot of reading and tea sipping though.

Second order of business, to all my faithful readers, are you having technical difficulties with my blog? Do the videos work? I have been told that sometimes the video doesn't have sound, or the commenting feature is on the fritz. Everything on my end seems to work okay, but if it is something I can fix, I would like to try. Any feedback you can give would be appreciated.

And just for random kicks, I'll share one of David's funny little stories. (Hey, until he starts his own blog, his stories are fodder for the taking! And I say that only with great love.)

"I named Mr. Pan this week." I looked at over at David, eyebrows raised.
"What?" I asked.
"Mr. Pan," he said. "I gave him an English name." David has given several of his coworkers English names, a common practice among many Chinese people. Some of them are kinda funny, like Joe Zhou.
"So, what did you name him?"
"Peter."
....
It took me a few seconds. "You named him Peter Pan?!"
"Of course." He grinned. I gave him a gentle thwap on the arm, chuckling despite myself.
"You're horrible! Does he even know who that is?" I asked. He nodded.
"Another coworker told him, 'Oh, that's a very famous story in America!'" David grinned again.
"Yeah, it's a famous story alright," I said, "about a guy in green tights!"

I'm going to rename David "Mischief"!

The Writing Is On The Pill

Since it took me a month to get that last post up, I figured two in one day would be a good way to redeem myself. Essentially, I was working on the post, trying to craft some nice words for you folks, when my computer did that stupid hibernate thing. I lost half my post and frankly, it royally ticked me off. Before I could brush myself off and make my way back to recreating what I lost, I got sick. This brings me to my topic for today.

If you tell someone you have gotten ill in China, they immediately think food poisoning. It's not an unreasonable guess really. If you come here, you will eventually eat something funky and then you're body will be forced to take action. That's right. That action. Well, there's two really. Not really sure which is worse, except getting both at the same time, which is pretty much just like dying I think. I have been fortunate in this respect so far. I have gotten sick two times, but I don't think it was food poisoning and it was over quickly. Friends of mine, however, have not been as lucky, and usually there is a loss in the downward direction, if you get me. In Chinese, the word is ladutza, which my friend swears is an onomatopoeia, just like "Zap!" "Sizzle" and "Guffaw!" LaDUTza! LaDUUUTza! Shout that in a deep voice in a subway in China. Trust me. Good way to make friends.

Anyway, it wasn't ladutza, but I didn't know what was going on. I felt like I had heartburn, but only in my stomach. It didn't hurt all that much, but it was nothing I had ever felt before. Guess what happens when you feel that way in a foreign country? You freak out.

What if I pass out? What the hey is the number for an ambulance? Wait, didn't people say you'll die in an ambulance, take a cab instead?! Wait, what's the word for hospital?! What's the word for help for that matter??!

It's times like these that I regrettably don't have a proper brown paper lunch sack to hyperventilate into. Luckily, I had a rockin' headache that first day, so instead of totally panicking, I collapsed into a desperate nap. I woke up later with the headache and stomach thing still going strong. Twas a bad day, indeed. Same story the next day too.

Two days later, the headache was finally gone, but the burning, weird feeling in my gut was not. I ate bread and it burned. Cola and fruit were out of the question. Even water was dicey. Very depressing. Well, depressing except for the green light to eat ice cream all the time, since it seemed to settle a bit better than most food and drinks. Sweet!

Even doctor's orders to eat ice cream didn't make me feel that much better once I was going on 4 or 5 days with no improvement. It was about this time that I started feeling hungry all the time, but eating didn't seem to be doing any good, for the pain or the hunger. I had a breakdown at day 6 when things seemed to be getting worse. David called right as I was panicking.

"I don't know how to take care of myself here!" Being alone in a foreign country when you do not feel so hot is just scary, plain and simple. He talked me through how to go to the hospital if I had too, told me I was going to be okay and I felt a little better.

So, after 9 days of this silliness, David took me to see a doc. She was really nice and she spoke English. The place was nice too. Even though I live here, I still get this image of foreign countries being way behind in modern technology and medicine, so I pretty much picture a cholera ward from the turn of the 19th century with people moaning on cots. But it was very modern of course. It was actually a foreigner clinic, so it was even better than most and quite nice. That helped. I wasn't really eager to experience roughing it in a Chinese hospital.

She asked me a bunch of questions and said she would give me meds to reduce stoamch acid and see if that helped. She also gave me meds she said were for protecting the mucus lining in my stomach. Hrm. Great. The lady at the medicine desk (which was in the same place! How convenient!) told me to take the granules, or as I like to call them, mucus granules, three times a day without water. Gagola! Are you serious lady?

"You can take a little sip if you can't get them down, but not much."

Oh how generous. Sounds like a party. Sounds like I will feel sicker after taking them than before. Good plan.

I decided to start the meds the next day. Now, I am not normally very hung up on where things come from or whether they could have asbestos in them, but this is CHINA after all. So I consulted our friend Gregg, who just so happens to be Dr. Gregg. He had already given me advice earlier in the week, but I wanted to run the names of the drugs by him. He had no problem with the pills, but he seemed puzzled by the granules.

"Can you send me the name?"

I sent him the only English words I could find on the packaging. A few minutes later I got a return text message.

"I don't know what that is and it's not in my US drug reference. Maybe stick to the acid meds and tums."

Whoa. That freaked me out a little. Can't say I was disappointed not to have to take the mucus granules, but it was weird. I hadn't expected an unknown drug. Gregg is pretty even keel too, so I knew he was serious when he told me not to take them. Better safe than sorry. Best case, it was just cornstarch or something. Perfectly harmless, but ineffective. Worst case...well, I'd rather not get stomach cancer if I can help it, thank you.

So, I went ahead and popped a pill out of the bubble pack. A little picture was carved into the one side. I flipped it over and my eyes bugged out.

OMG

No, that's what was written on the pill. OMG. Oh my god! My pill says 'OMG'!

My thumb was actually covering the 2 that made it 20MG. The two and zero were the same size as the MG, so it definitely looked like OMG for a second. Ha ha....ha.....ha......It just says 20 mg! No problem! Haha. Right? Ha....gulp.

I threw caution to the wind. Down the hatch. I started to feel better a few days later. So, maybe the OMG sign was more like "Oh My God, a cure!" Well, I guess we'll see once the meds run out. Until then, I'm trying to find creative uses for 3 dozen packs of mucus granules...

Joyful Apocalypse

We've seen it all before. We stuff our faces all evening with freshly grilled hamburgers and potato salad and maybe some corn on the cob and if we're lucky, apple pie. Everyone gathers on the blankets with an ice cold coke and light sticks and then we wait, eyes to the darkening skies. Then a tell-tale silver streak makes its way from the horizon to above the tree tops and then explodes in a dazzle of strawberry twinkles. Everyone in the neighborhood cheers. We watch for half an hour, as the frequency increases with time, until the stream eventually tumbles into the mass of fire balls, whistles, flashes and bangs that no reputable fireworks show would ever end without. We clap, we smile, we find the cats hiding in the closets, we go to bed.

Ok, so take that, multiply it by 5000, stir in some element of surprise, raise it to the power of echos created by a skyscraper forest and add a healthy dose of crazy men with lighters. That, my friends, was Shanghai on Chinese New Year's Eve.

Year of the Ox!

Fireworks have been set off since the day I arrived in China. The folks in the neighborhood set them off for all sorts of reasons: weddings, festivals, boredom. It's mostly on the weekends and in the small alleys close to our apartment. They set off the loud strings of those suckers, which basically sounds like a pile of bombs lit in the street. But the Spring Festival, which starts with the New Year and goes for about 2 weeks, is the pull out all the stops, take leave of one's senses, fireworks hootenanny extravaganza! Seriously, businesses pay out big bucks for their displays, easily dropping half a million buckaroos in some cases. That's one business. Shanghai has over 16 million people, give or give a million or two. Individuals buy fireworks too. So if every single person bought just one firework or cracker...yeah, that's right folks. It's almost as good as the old question about whether the earth would move if everyone in China jumped at the exact same time. Crazy things happen when the most populated country acts in unison.

So we had heard tell of this fiery free for all. We figured it would be impressive, but we made no real plans for watching the show. We met our friend Daniel to go out for jiaozi, or dumplings, which is apparently very traditional for New Year's Eve. However, hardly any place was open. Most Chinese folks get a week off around the New Year, so the place is oddly like a ghost town with a majority of the shops and restaurants closed down. many people leave to visit family out of town and those who stay, stay inside.

After walking around for at least an hour with no luck, we were darn hungry. I was willing to get some McDonald's at this point. We finally found an open hot pot restaurant, and as luck would have it, they had the jiaozi too. Perfect. So we chowed down, sampled some Chinese alcohol that didn't taste like battery acid, and then moved on to the next order of business: bowling.

I hardly ever bowl in the States, but hell, how many people can say they've been to a bowling alley in China? A bowling alley in China on Chinese New Year's Eve, no less. Plus, they were showing the celebration program from Beijing on the TVs. This was much like the celebration in Yanzhou, although I must say the acrobatics were far more impressive. I had never seen one person sitting on another person's shoulders, while the first person is balancing on a springy pole held between two groups of people, and then just to show off, the two people on top of each other do a back flip, together, and somehow manage to land on the beam again. Several times in a row, too. Wha??? I was completely dumbfounded and amazed. I made a note to see a live acrobatic show live in the future.

Our own physical displays were not so glorious. We bowled a couple games and David and I never broke 100. Daniel turned out to be pretty good though, utilizing skills from a former daily after work bowling habit with his coworkers. Show off. We switched to the pool tables later, but I stink at pool even more than at bowling. It didn't matter for long though, because that's when we realized there was a heckuva lot of commotion going on outside. It was close to midnight at this point.

The bowling alley didn't have glass windows, so we couldn't see anything, but we could certainly hear. We asked the staff to open the black shutters and revealed a world gone mad, the noise exponentially more deafening now. We were on the third floor and from there we could see a small piece of Shanghai, ablaze every 100 feet from the crackers on the street up to the huge fireworks littering the sky in every direction. We could have seen more if not for the smoke that had now joined forces with the smog. Directly below our window we saw at least 20 people setting things off on the sidewalk, running to and fro, switching between smoking their cigarettes and using them as lighters. It's the kind of thing you can never imagine and once you do see it, you can never quite capture in words to convey the way it makes you feel, the way it makes your heart flutter and your lungs forget to fill with air; a rare experience of utter wonder. It was like a joyful apocalypse, a disorienting assault on all senses.


And of course, this does not do it justice, but it's a sample!

We watched for a long time, but the show barely slowed down. It was almost 1 am now and David could no longer hold back the urge to get in on the action. If you don't know David, he loves setting off fireworks. Loves it. I have never seen him grin so much. He was like a 5 year old caught in a rainstorm of chocolate bars. So we hurried downstairs. The big glass doors at the entryway were the only thing standing between us and the madness outside. Before I knew it, David was out the door, armed with my camera. I stayed behind with Daniel, who was not as impressed since he grew up in China around this "very noisy" tradition. I stood at the door, covering my ears and tried not to picture a wayward firebomb crashing into David's face. (I'm really good at worse case scenarios, in case you don't know me.)

David disappeared from view for a while, but eventually returned, beckoning us outside. In a brief ceasefire, we scurried past the lines of red firecrackers and I found myself wishing I had brought my umbrella with me. Then I saw what David had been up to. It seems a few guys were setting off small crackers that you actually hold onto when they go off. The whole shell blasts out of your hands into the air and explodes. And you guessed it, David had made friends with them. I think he earned some serious Chinese cred with these guys that night. They could see he was really pumped about the festivities and they thought it was great. I half expected them to say, "You very Chinese. We are brothers now!" as they clasped their hands on his shoulders in a show of camaraderie. I was offered the chance to hold my very own cracker to fire off, but I declined. I have very bad luck and I figured I was pushing it enough just standing outside. The blasts were lessening now, but still going at a steady pace.





The thrill died down a bit after over an hour of explosions, so we decided to head home. Daniel caught a cab, but David and I walked for a bit, away from the major launch pads onto some semi-quiet streets. The sidewalks were a sea of red paper shreds and empty cardboard shells, but the skies were still filled with sprays of sparks. They remained that way long into the early morning hours. When next we ventured outside, the streets had already been cleared by the few street sweeping folks who had to work on New Year's Eve, but the smell of gunpowder was still in the air. And as we found out later, that was just the first of three major nights of fireworks during the festival, but the other two could never compare to our very first New Year's Eve in China, in the land where fireworks were invented so many centuries ago.

Shrapnel...

When in Yanzhou

Just 3 days after making the trek back to Shanghai, I found myself on a train bound for Yanzhou. For the second time in as many days I was running like hell in public, with luggage, to catch my departure. I made it on the train, but found myself on car 13 when I needed to be on car 5. Insert heavy sigh here. Nothing quite like squeezing through several crowded cars, startling young children with my now flushed, but most definitely "white" face. Thrill seekers, take notes.

It seems silly that a 6 hour trip on the bullet train could seem long after a 16 hour flight across the ocean, but low and behold. The trip was easy and definitely less fuss than flying, but the real downside were the videos. Ah, the short loop of videos. Part train features information (look! bathrooms! and sick bags!), part ridiculous cartoons and a huge helping of Olympics videos. I was treated to super glossy, sometimes cheesy musical renditions where everyone is swelling with pride over the seemingly upcoming games. I've seen such stuff in America for sure, but the Chinese have it down to an art...er, well, maybe a science. I told David we should take bets as to when they will stop showing Olympics ads, as though they hadn't taken place yet. I say 2010. In April. If we're lucky.

After the fifth repeat of "Aren't the Olympics wonderful?!" I started contemplating the etymology of the word "torture" and its relationship to the word "brainwashing", but just then I arrived at my stop. A driver from the plant picked me up and we drove back to David's apartment. Later I met David and two of his coworkers for dinner in Jining. We had Korean food of all things and also got some bonus entertainment in the form of "bad/funny things happen when people who can't handle alcohol do the unthinkable and actually drink the stuff." Small town drama. Good stuff.

The next day, Wednesday, was the main event, the very reason I had made this journey. It was David's company's end of the year awards ceremony followed by their New Year's celebration. The celebration involved performances. The performances included David singing a cheesy song and acting out a funny skit, all in Chinese. Yeah, no way I was gonna miss this!

The ceremony was damn boring. There is nothing quite like listening to a thousand Chinese names being read off to make the brain want to curl up and die. A good study in Chinese tones though. I found myself trying to guess them. "3, 4, 2, 1, 4,or maybe 1?, 2, 3, 4, 4...blah, blah, blah." They had headsets for the foreigners so we could listen to a "translation." It just didn't work out too well. I got bits and pieces. Basically, it's like any company presentation/ceremony where everyone has to speak of good things and the value of hard work and achievements and...man, America and China aren't that different.

The second part was way more entertaining. Songs, skits, comedy routines, acrobatics, martial arts, dances, and traditional story telling. The neatest thing about it was that everyone works there. The acrobats work in the plant. Some of the dancing girls work in the company hotel. It wasn't all first class entertainment, but impressive nonetheless. A group of Italians from the other joint venture did a song in Italian. David and Scott sang Xiang Qin Xiang Ai De Yi Jia Ren (The Whole Family Love Each Other) with a big group and this, of course, required hand holding and swaying a la "We Are the World." I never thought I'd see THAT in a million years.


A few acts later David and 3 others did a sort of rhyming story called Three Words where each person has a line in each stanza, more or less. David was the 4th guy, who is supposed to be a dopey clown-like figure. I thought he was quite funny even though I had no idea what his lines meant. They gave him these specific moves to do with each line which only added to the effect. He thought he was the worst guy for that role because he's not comedic, but maybe that's why it was so funny, at least to me. The audience was genuinely excited when any foreigner attempted to speak in Chinese, but they seemed to be truly laughing at the content of his lines. They really loved it. So did I.

And now for your viewing pleasure...

A Star is Born

Afterwards there was a lunch with, of course, toasting-o-rama. I managed to get away with not drinking baijiu this time, just red wine. Yes! (I forget if I have talked about baijiu yet, but basically it's 50% alcohol, tastes and feels a lot like jet fuel and knocks out foreigners and locals alike.) Toasts happen all throughout the meal, but eventually people get up and wander around, doling out ambush toasts. And very often the toast is supposed to be bottoms up. People were drunk within half an hour. That's when the scene really picked up.

I was getting all sorts of attention because David's coworkers have all been uber curious to meet "the girlfriend". They know all about me. Word travels fast in that place. When I arrived, I met one guy who said, "You arrived at the train station at 4!" And he was right. It's a very weird experience. Take into account the curiosity, the alcohol consumption and the fact that in a sea of black suits I was the only one wearing pink, and I was in for it. All the foreigners present were obliged to pose for numerous pictures anyway. So we'd meet someone and then we'd take a picture (or 10) and then they'd get their friend and we'd all shift around and take another couple pictures.

I met David's fairly bizarre boss and he was WASTED. We'll call him Mr. Gone. I told David it looks like he gets in fights with junk yard dogs. He was significantly shorter than me and he kept shaking my hand, trying to focus his eyes on me while teetering to and fro. I was just afraid he would throw up on me. David's friend/co-worker Frank also paid his respects. I met Frank the last time I came to Yanzhou. He was beet red in the face, but much more composed than Mr. Gone. He said hi and then asked for a hug, which is something I never see Chinese people do, let alone request. David came over afterward and I told him about it. He said Frank already told him. He said, "Frank loves you. You just boosted my career by hugging him." A little later he added. "I might need to tell him to chill out though." Oh man, craziness!

At some point they were tossing us around for pictures so much I felt like the potato in hot potato. Add in the drunk Italians getting all chatty and getting on really well with all the drunk Chinese and it's just a wild mid-day "I love you man!" fest. Aside from the shenanigans, I did get to try a few non-scary food items, all fruit and vegetables, mind you. I couldn't bring myself to touch what looked like gray, bumpy animal innards, but I was all about the roasted sweet potato. I never thought of sweet potatoes as Chinese fare, but I'll take it!

The afternoon ended with a group photo and much staggering back to apartments to pass out. We were fine, but decided to head back to the apartment ourselves for some restorative tea and peanut butter cookies. That night, we went for hot pot with our friend Daniel in downtown Yanzhou. This place gives you your own little pot of boiling broth, so you can choose what to cook for yourself. Quite tasty. Plus, I managed to scare the pants off another two year old. Just another day in Nowheresville, China.

I am having a good time so far. Now that I'm back, I remember the things that I actually enjoy about this place and that is a nice realization. Even in an ugly, dirty place like Yanzhou there is life. At night the town and grounds of the plant were lit up with Christmas lights and huge red lantern displays for the holiday. It's a shame they can't leave them up all the time. It was beautiful.


Here are a few snapshots from the celebration:





And a picture of me, David, Daniel and Scott

I'll Be Home For Christmas

Thailand!

Did you know I have a barnacle beacon? Well, neither did I, until we went to Thailand. Yes, it was a case of Sarah swims in the ocean, Sarah sees cool fish, Sarah accidentally swallows some salt water, and just as the fun is starting, Sarah kicks a barnacle encrusted boulder with her bare foot.

Let's back up a little.

As I mentioned, we decided to take a week's vacation and travel to Thailand. As luck would have it, our original plan to go Thanksgiving week fell through because of David's work, so we went the week before all the protests went down in Bangkok. Whew. The stars really aligned on that one. So, after a 5 hour flight we were in the capital. We stayed the night there and left for Koh Samui in the morning. This is one of 3 islands in the Gulf of Thailand and the only one with an airport. Koh Samui is much more developed than the other two, and we were on a mission to take it easy and get away from all the hubbub, so we immediately boarded a boat bound for Koh Tao, the most northern of the islands and the smallest. And the farthest away, I might add, as I didn't thoroughly enjoy the long, choppy boat ride out there. I was having flashbacks of the diving boat incident in West Palm Beach last February, which was not pretty, believe me.

We arrived and were immediately solicited by every taxi driver on the island. We got away from the crowd and found our own taxi, which was a pick up truck with benches in the truck bed. Brilliant. Even though I kept a white knuckle grip on the bars the whole time, I enjoyed the unique view of the island as we made our way to our resort.

The town

It looked so prehistoric, like a dinosaur was about to waltz across the street.

Thailand is very affordable. We could have found a bungalow for 10 bucks a night. I would have been game. However, the cheap prices also mean that the really nice places, while expensive for Thailand, are quite a steal in comparison to most resorts found on tropical islands. I figured we should take advantage of this opportunity for at least a couple nights, so I booked our first two nights at a place called Thipwimarn. I was smitten the first time I looked it up and it didn't disappoint in person. Lovely little cottages on the side of a hill in the jungle, overlooking the sea. Relaxation personified. It turned out to be so nice, we stayed there the whole week. There were definitely other places that would have been fine, it was just easier to stay there. Plus, we were getting a fine work out going up and down all those stairs all the time...


View from our own little porch

Stairs!

So back to the barnacles. I have never snorkeled before. Gimme a break, I grew up in Ohio and I'm not the best swimmer. So we borrowed masks and those snorkel tube thingies from the resort and went down to the little bay directly below our room. We had the place to ourselves. So David gave me the basics and we went out. Koh Tao is quite popular for snorkeling and diving. Actually, the island is the number two place in the world to get certified to dive. There were tons of dive centers and tons of young people there to get certified. Myself, I have trouble with my ears, and I mentioned my poor swimming skills, so diving really doesn't appeal to me. Snorkeling is more my speed: float lazily on the surface and look at pretty things.

And what pretty things. It was so cool to swim in this clear, turquoise water and hang out with these brilliant fish. Yellow and bright blue, purple, orange. Real, live coral on the bottom with some urchins and wild colored animals that look like plants and suck themselves in when you try to touch them. Fantastic. I also enjoyed watching the little crabs above the water line on the rocks scurry in there little sideway manner away from David as he approached them. Actually, this is probably what I was preoccupied with when I sliced my foot open. Fantastic. Fantastic pain!

My first thought was, If I see my own bone I'll pass out. After I actually looked at the damage, I thought How does one tell if one needs stitches? David came over, looked at it, and proclaimed that it didn't look too deep and I guess that was enough for me. I continued to swim around, wincing as the salt water swished through my cut. I cursed all the barnacles I passed, staying far away from all rocks.

Swimming turned out to be easier, because walking hurt quite a bit, especially on the sandy beach. The stairs were now a double challenge. But luckily for me, David had rented a motor scooter, so we were able to explore the island fairly easily while sparing my poor foot. I had to get over my irrational fear that two wheeled vehicles cannot possibly stay upright, but after that it was quite fun. Half the roads are dirt and thus a bit wild to drive on. (Evil Knievel, eat your heart out!) We spent a good deal of time just riding to different parts of the island, eating some really tasty food, getting strawberry smoothies whenever possible (this might have just been me...), and taking in the nice views of the beaches, jungle and ocean.

We got some fins at another resort and went snorkeling again. This was uneventful on the boulder bit, thankfully. A pleasant evening swim. The next day we traversed to the southern end of the island and spent a good deal of time trying to get to Freedom Beach, because it had the most potential for calm waters that day. Beautiful, secluded beach, with hardly any other people. More beautiful sights. David tried to teach me to dive to the bottom. It didn't go so well. Swallowed a bit too much water and then dog paddled too hard and wore myself out. And as we made our way back to shore, I kicked a rock. I couldn't believe it! I think I hit pure rock this time, so not so much slice and dice as just scrapes to my foot and my pride. I ordered a strawberry smoothie the first chance I got to make myself feel better.


Freedom Beach

We were pretty chill this trip, so not too much action to report. We did hang out at a beach bar one night and got to see some cool fire dancers. There's quite a hippie vibe here, perhaps because of the large number of backpackers here. I enjoyed it. Much different than the city vibe I've been surrounded with for months.


That's hot. ;)

Our last day, we took in some more sights, but mostly chilled on a beach for the afternoon. (Lemon shake this time!) David had burned his back earlier in the week, so he did not want to risk getting in the water. After a while I decided I needed to take advantage of my last chance to snorkel in this really lovely water, so I went in by myself. David watched from the shore. As I tried to make my way through the jostling waves, I promptly stepped on a rock...covered in...BARNACLES! More like I stepped on, slipped on, and then again, stepped on a rock covered in barnacles. Absolutely ridiculous. It was a small rock in really shallow water just feet from the strip of sandy beach, so I wasn't thinking rocks. I couldn't see it anyway since the water is cloudy at the shore.

I had a Why me?? moment, but then I went out anyway and I'm glad I did. Fairly shallow water meant that I could try diving amongst the parrot fish and such, this time successfully. Pretty awesome. Too bad I didn't have an underwater camera.When I came out, I discovered that I had at least six cuts on my foot, with one on the bottom running the length of my arch. Pathetic. I must have bad karma or something.


We weren't the only ones taking it easy...

Despite using an obscene number of band aids, I did enjoy the trip. We couldn't have asked for a more relaxing place. I know David needed it and I think it did him a lot of good. We both agreed that we would come back to Thailand if given the chance. Friendly people, beautiful place, good food. Get rid of those crusty devils of the sea, and I would be tempted to call it heaven.


For more photos, click here.