Life changes mean more computer space...

Today I deleted some pictures. Some specific pictures. And guess what? Now I have 13.2 more gigabytes free on my computer. So, go ahead. Delete the memories. I deleted 5 years of them.

Tired

I just deleted my facebook account. Really, it was time. Probably it was time like 2 years ago. Maybe even 5 years ago.
Also, I feel tired. Physically tired. Also, tired of people. Why don't humans hibernate? I would love to hibernate for a good long 6 months, wake up and see if I felt social at all, and if not, go right back to sleep.

Buhbye, Thailand!

Now for our last bit of time in Thailand...que triste! Tuesday we slept in sort of. Later on, Janella went for a massage, I went and sat on the beach. Then we got in our suits to get in the water one last time :( We didn't stay in long at all. At AoNang I'm so paranoid about jellyfish! Also, I hadn't finished packing.
We got all of our stuff together, and then got a songthaew to the bus station in Krabi.

Here's the man who got us our songthaew. I couldn't resist...

We were on the songthaew with a couple from Singapore. Their darling young daughter spoke Malay, I think, but she was doing her times tables. In English. Super smart girl! She also kept staring at me and my braids (which were in awful shape by this time, by the way).
At the bus station, we went to buy our VIP tickets, and they were sold out! Nooooo! So we bought 1st class tickets--about 600 baht, I think. We got our excessive baggage on the bus, then went back inside, only to find out that there was another bus company whose VIP tickets were not sold out. So we went to refund our 1st class tickets. It had honestly been 5 minutes since we bought them, but she charged us 10% of the ticket price to refund them. Annoying. That lady wasn't very nice OR helpful. She wasn't even trying to let us know there were other VIP buses when we were so obviously disturbed on finding out VIP was sold out.
Our bus ride was fine. Our seats were opposite of eachother--Nella in the very front, me in the very back. We left at 5 and stopped for dinner a couple hours after. A very Thai experience.We sat around a table with a few other Thais and shared a meal. They have multiple dishes on the table, and you take from them, and put them on your plate. One person serves everyone rice. The food was good--mostly. Some yummy noodles, some gross scallops, some spiceeeey curry, etc.
I decided to undo my braids with the time on my hands. It took 3 1/2 hours :( For.Ever. Those braids were tiny. I slept at 11 until we arrived in Bangkok at 4. Unfortunately, none of the taxi drivers knew where our hostel was. Our taxi driver stopped multiple times to ask help, and Nella was the one who actually saw it in the end lol. We arrived around 5 at Thong Ta Resort and Spa ($12 a night, super nice), ate breakfast, then paid for early check-in since there was nothing else to do.

Tiniest gecko to date in our room. That silver thing is a towel holder, for some perspective.

Later we decided to get our last-minute souvenirs/gifts shopping done. We took a taxi to MBK--Mah Boon Krong--it's an 8-storey shopping center in Bangkok. It's enormous! Our taxi driver was trying to get us to make stops at the jewelry store and tailor with him. They get gas money if they bring people there. Luckily we weren't noob tourists.
Good times at MBK. We ate at a fastfood place called Santa's haha. It was real good and cheap!

Then we shopped. I bought way too many things--for myself and for my family. Hope they like what I'm bringing since I left that place with 120 baht ($4) to my name haha. It's just so hard to resist buying things here since in the U.S. they'd be triple, quadruple, and sometimes 10 times the price. When Nella tried to bargain with one lady over a t-shirt that was 99 baht, they lady goes, "No! Cannot. 99 baht good price. Cheap cheap leew." I love when they mix Thai and English. "Hello ka" and things like that.

These mannequins are everywhere here

I think we stayed there for over 4 hours. We tried to get a taxi--we wanted them to use the meter since we felt we got gipped in paying 400baht for our ride there. Noone wanted to take us since our place was so far haha. They'd call to us, "Taxi! Tuktuk!" We'd show them the address, and they'd get these really wide eyes and hand back the address to us lol. One taxi driver wanted to charge us 700 baht. Finally we succeeded in getting a taxi on meter. Good thing! It was only 280 baht, I think. But man, that taxi ride was a death ride. I'm really surprised we came out alive. He was driving in the emergency lane of the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic like we were running from the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service, and he was definitely going 140 km/h. Nella kept putting her hat over her eyes because it was so scary to watch out the windshield. What a tense ride that was!
Oh, Thailand. A couple things that were weird for me being there--seeing whitening products everywhere. No, not teeth whitening. Skin whitening. I'd never in my life even heard of that. But it really is everywhere here. I noticed that on their magazines, a majority of them have models who look very Western rather than typically Asian.
Another big thing: she-men! EVERYWHERE. It's always a bit disconcerting to say, "Sawadee ka" to a head of beautiful long hair and a mini skirt, only to have the person turn around, showing a face with masculine features and then say, "Sawadee ka" in the manliest voice ever lol. And these she-men are soooo into being girly. Flipping their hair all the time and being super coquette-ish.
Today (is that even considered today still?) we woke up around 4:30 and took the 5:30 shuttle. At the airport, they have these ginormous, ornate Buddhas on every row of check-in at the airport. Thailand without Buddhism would be such a different place, it's crazy. The ticket agent asked me my seat preference. I said aisle. I got a window and then a middle seat on my flights lol. The food on the BKK-NRT flight was not very good at all. I watched the movie Unknown. It was okay...it passed time.
My layover in Tokyo was less than an hour. I was running to my gate. Then at boarding time--at 5 o'clock--I found out that I was at the wrong gate. Two flights, both going to SFO within 5 minutes of eachother. Wtheck? So, I booked it to my gate, seeing on my way that my flight was in final boarding. There were flight attendants looking for me lol.
On the flight, I was on the very last row. The seat in front of me had no room for my bag, so it was super uncomfortable to squeeze my legs and my bag into the leg room. We had some major turbulence for the first 2 hours. Apparently 160 mph winds? They had the flight attendants stop dinner service and sit down because it was so bad. There was a pretty intense moment when on flight attendant jumped up from his seat and yelled at a lady who was about to get up with her whiney child, "Sit down!! Sit down!! You're gonna kill the kid! It's way to bumpy on here!" Seriously, it was pretty dramatic how it all happened.
I couldn't sleep, so it was a long flight. However, in the last few hours, I stumbled upon a Justin Bieber special. I watched the rest of it, which was over 2 hours. And I liked it. A lot. I didn't realize he was so talented. I'm a bit late on the uptake, I know. But it also disgusted me to see all those teenage girls bawling their eyeballs out and saying, "I love him sooo much!" lol On a more spiritual note, I had a great Spanish PMG study session, reading the 1st lesson and the Christlike Attributes chapter. So good. I love PMG.
Verrry rough landing in SFO. But it's nice and sunny here. I sat outside on the ground (yup) so I could be in the sun. It's weird since it's dry here. I went and bought some lotion because I was dying for some.
Anyway, one more hour til my flight. I'm so ready to be home, to sleep in my bed.
Also, I need a good job ASAP. Not ASAP. More like yesterday. This next bit will be interesting...

Hong Islands -- just like a swimming pool, only better :)

Yesterday night I fulfilled a dream of mine--and it was spontaneously done, just a chance encounter. I held a monkey. The cutest monkey ever. And now I can't stop thinking about how much I'd love to have a monkey. In fact, a monkey might be nicer than a boyfriend, even. Just kidding. Sort of--it's just that the monkey was irresistibly cute and soft. The monkey' owner man wanted to take a picture of me and the monkey and have me pay 200baht for the picture. But I was content to just have held him. Anyway, I want a monkey. Thanks, Santa. 

We got the usual for dinner--atleast I did--fried rice with chicken, pineapple, and tomato. I walked up to the street shop, and the lady said, "Same same?" Yes, I'm officially a regular. 

This morning we had an 8:30am pickup for our tour of the Hong Islands. They arrived early, and it was raining :( Bad forecast for the day. We ended up waiting for awhile at the "dock" for the rain to calm. It did, happily. We headed first for Daeng Island. Daeng means red in Thai. Pretty much this was a little island in the middle of nowhere--I kind of felt like they just stopped there so that the group would feel like we weren't spending all our time in the boat lol. BUT it was cool to see a red rock in the middle of the nice water haha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got out to snorkel there--definitely not the best snorkeling we've done. Also, it was kind of deep water, plus overcast skies. Do I sound like a snorkeling snob? Also, I lost my anklet there. I felt it come off, so I dove to the bottom to get it, tied it back on. Then when I got back in the boat, it was gone again :( Oh well. Next up was Hong Island Lagoon...oh how lovely. We love lagoons. Yes, we do. Especially since the sun came out for the rest of the day!

Passageway to the lagoon

Apparently when the big tsunami hit, some people sought refuge in this lagoon and were saved because of the set-up. Pretty cool. Also, it's a gorgeous place! The water is this light, sea green. But it's clear, too. 

Mangroves

Elephant foot-like rock :) Also, a man sleeping on his boat

 

Next stop was Hong Island Beach aka Ao Hong. Day just kept getting better! That water was an incredible emerald-green in the deeper areas, and then got lighter and lighter as the depth lessened. As we got in, it was as clear as a swimming pool. Incredible.

 

We fed the fish--I don't know why I like doing that. They swarm me, and then they bite. This time they bit me a couple times--once on the butt :( haha. Little buggers. They really do follow me around. For whatever reason, they like me. Or maybe they hate me. At one point, I sat on the shore and put crackers inbetween my toes so they would feed on them haha. It felt strange. 

Strange lobster shell

 

Right before leaving (we got 3 1/2 hours there), we decided to take the Nature Trail. Right off we saw wreckage they had left from the big tsunami. Pretty depressing. 

 

But the trail was pretty cool. It was from beach to jungle. Amazing trees everywhere, tons of mosquitoes following us, pretty birds. 

And naturally, some spiders. One very large one in particular.

We had lunch there as well. It was great to have ice and Coke. The lunch was pretty good actually :) We also had fresh pineapple and watermelon. Yum. Next stop: Paradise Island. 

 

Paradise Beach was a little nook of a beach on the island. It was great because it had palm trees--most of the islands don't have many of those, actually. Beautiful water again. All day we were spoiled with swimming pool clarity. 

 We got to snorkel some more. It was low tide. Very low tide, so snorkeling was kinda crazy. Also, it was uhhh-mazing. For the first time, we got to see beautiful colors in the ocean vegetation. Colorful coral! It was so cool! Pink, purple, green, blue, etc. A lot of it reminded me of Little Mermaid--the beginning when they're singing and the clams are opening up to show all the mermaids? Yeah, there were huge purple corals. I wish I could have just taken pictures since I can't describe them. We got to touch these cool things that were super soft and looked like they were being blown by a fan since the little hairs moved with the water.

 I got to watch a crab--an orange, big one like the ones we eat--while he was eating. It looked pretty crazy! Later I saw this one that's green, though you can't quite tell.

 We left around 3 o'clock. It was quite the ride back! It lasted an hour--and there were definitely some crazy moments on that ride. The waves were big, so we got some air plus a ton of sea water coming in. I got it the worst, but it was actually nice. I had salt caked all over my arms by the end. In the bathroom back in AoNang, I saw this cute little frog and then another when we were walking around later. I touched him.

After showering and all that, we decided it was time for our goodbye dessert at Swensen's--Malteser sundae with Rock at Heart and Reversible Chocolate flavors. Delicioso! Now we're packing up since we check out at 11. We'll spend most the day at the beach but need to be back so we can catch a songthaew into Krabi and then our VIP bus to Bangkok. It's so sad to be leaving this place. I can't believe it's already been a week and a half. It's been incredible. I'm so grateful for all I've been able to do here in Thailand. I'll miss so many things about Thailand:
--The wai! Man, I wish we did that in the U.S.
--cheap everything!
--The sweet people
--fresh fruit smoothies
--mango sticky rice
--Swensen's
--fried rice!
--beautiful beaches
--tuk-tuks and songthaews
--longtail boat rides
I love Thailand!