Beach

Sorry for the delay in posting, last week was very busy as we secured and moved into a new apartment, celebrated with birthday festivities, and then I hoped on a plane to southern Thailand to enjoy the beaches where I am now.  We're on a week long mid-semester break at the university that coincides with a Muslim holiday.  But I’ve been staying in a beach bungalow on Phi Phi Island without internet so there is no way to be productive and I am forced to lounge on the beach all day reading novels and enjoying the snorkeling, haha, poor me : )  I’ll try and catch up with posts in the next few days about my trip to Ipoh last the weekend before last and other festivities. 

After lots of pondering of where to go, and trying to get multiple people to join me on a mini adventure, I eventually kind of gave up and just bought a ticket to Phuket, Thailand and decided I would figure it out from there.  There are so many travel options when you are based out of Kuala Lumpur because everything is so close together, that its almost torture trying to decide where to go!  Especially coming from Alaska where your options are so limited.  I thought maybe Indonesia or Vietnam at first, but finally in the end just decided to do it quick and easy and visit a highly touristic area, since I was going to be traveling on my own most of the trip and its hard to get reliable information about the flooding up north.  Is it only Bangkok?  I've heard Cambodia too?  Does that mean it can be flooding in parts of Vietnam as well?  Better to not take the chance on a rainy vacation. 

The trip has been pretty sweet so far, I'm happy to be spending the first week of my 26th year in style.  I’ve been enjoying the beach, some more beach, and then after that, a little more beach which is exactly what I was looking for.  Although it’s always hot in Kuala Lumpur, I rarely am outside relaxing and soaking in the vitamin D.  One reason is because our “old” apartment doesn’t have anywhere that you can go outside and just sit and relax, your either inside the building, or in the parking lot.  There are two balconies in the apartment, but they aren’t “open.”  They have grates across the open space and another balcony directly above so there is no sky to see.  Thankfully the new place has a pool, open to the sky, so I have hope that when I return to Alaska I won’t be the same color as when I left. 

So far I’m a few days into the trip.  There’s no point in describing anything in too much detail so I’ll try and keep it short.  I rushed to the airport after a whole strenuous day of packing and moving into the new apartment, that was after getting up at 6am on a Saturday (after how many glasses of wine on the birthday night before?) to attending a Rotary meeting, and got to the airport to discover that my flight was delayed by 3 hours.  I ate and explored around before finally giving in and just waiting at the gate to watch the flight keep getting delayed even longer.  Eventually they called us up and I thought we were getting on the plane, but really they were giving out complimentary McDonald’s burgers and bottles of water to everyone for the inconvenience.  First of all, when does an airline ever give away anything for free these days, and second, yuck!  After that the whole lobby smelled like fast food and we were still late. 

Enough complaining, I made it to Phuket eventually and caught a mini bus to Patong. I didn’t stay too long, just one whole day which was enough to explore this uber/ultra/crazy/tourist bizzaro world. But I did enjoy that you could rent a beach lounge chair with a cushion for $3 USD and have a cocktail delivered to you without having to even lift your lazy eye lids. I scooted out of there quickly the next day to Koh Phi Phi (pronounced PP) by ferry, which is also very touristy, but I opted for a more remote beach on the island with only a few bungalows and 2 restaurants. The beach is plenty big and the snorkeling quite fantastic. Two days of pure toes in the sand and book in hand. Koh Phi Phi is where the movie“The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed. Off to another beautiful beach via water taxi…Railay Beach.

The islands here are very dramatic with beautiful limestone cliffs and vegetation.

View from my beach bungalow at high tide. 

I shared my bungalow with a few geckos, a mouse, and even a hermit crab that I saved and released back to the beach.  What more do you need besides a clean bed and a cold outdoor shower when you spend all day on the beach anyways?  For $15USD it did the trick.

Portion of Phi Phi Island.  I do miss the snow, especially reading about the crazy storm that is about to hit Alaska, but with this as an option, I'm sure I can survive one year without winter :)

Don't kiss the fish :)