Happy New Year!

By now I think everyone in the world has rung in the new year. We are twelve hours ahead of Boston and another 3 ahead of Portland. Funny to think I was eating a late lunch in 2009 around the same time my friends on the west coast were drinking champagne and kissing strangers to celebrate a new beginning.

We are on Ko Phi Phi, or Kho Phi Phi, or Phi Phi Island (or Pee Pee Island as it's sometimes spelled here). Whatever you want to call it, I'll call it beautiful! A rose by any other name... Ko Phi Phi is actually two separate islands, Ko Phi Phi Don and the neighboring and uninhabited island, Ko Phi Phi Leh. The later was the filming location for Leonard DiCaprio's The Beach (1999? 2000?). It's one of those places that you see on screen and say, "Where is that!? That's where I want to be!" Of course it was not without some excitement that we made it here.

Jaran, our tuk-tuk driver in Chiang Mai arrived to the Siri Guesthouse to pick us up as planned. He was even a little early. We had printed up our boarding passes ahead of time. See, Air Asia doesn't do connecting flights; They only do single legs that you book separately. So we had a tight connection in Bangkok, and if we hadn't checked in ahead of time, we were going to have go out and then come back in through security to check in. We only had 50 minutes scheduled, so knew this wasn't a possibility. We tried printing our boarding passes, I should say, because of course the computer was only printing out Laura's and not mine. Luckily, when we got to the airport, because we had already checked in, the woman at the ticket counter gave us all of our boarding passes. Phew!

We got to the gate and were ready to board when...you guessed it...DELAYED!! That meant that our connection was going to be even tighter. We eventually boarded, but frankly, we were only going to have about 5 minutes between flights, if that. Flight took off, landed a little early, all was okay. I got off the plane to get on the bus that would shuttle us to the gate and then we figured we'd just book it to the next gate. Oh wait! The shuttle bus is going to take us right to arrivals? That meant it was going to dump us out past security and we'd have to go back through security. Good thing Laura was more on top of all of this than I was, since I was already on the shuttle bus. "Annie! Get off the bus!" I scrambled off the bus and the lead stewardess was saying something in Thai over her walkie talkie as Laura and I and a few others trying to make the flight to Phuket were waiting to see what was going on. A separate van pulled up a few seconds later and we piled in. Laura and I were the only two already with our boarding passes, so it looked like we were going to be able to board the plane. The van literally shuttled us from one plane to the next down the tarmac. We never even set foot in the Bangkok airport. The stewardess at the next flight checked our boarding pass and passports and let us board the plane. The other Phuket passengers who had been on our flight from Chiang Mai were not so lucky since they hadn't the foresight to check in online. Something tells me this would not have gone over so well in the U.S. Definitely not at SFO if you're trying to get to Tokyo on a tight connection...

On the plane we met up with Laura's friend, Alex Hammond (a planned meeting), and her mom, Laurie, and sister, Becky. They had just come from a few days in the northern part of the country, near Nan Province, where they spent time with some friends in one of the hill tribe villages. The flight to Phuket was without much excitement. We got the Hammonds' luggage (of which there was much, as they had acquired some goods in Bangkok and the village), and chartered a taxi to take us to our hotel, The Taste of Phuket. When we arrived, all of the power in the neighborhood was out, so we had a few cold beers across the street and found a restaurant that was serving food from their gas stove by candlelight. Needless to say, our air conditioning and hotel lights weren't working, and so we got ready for bed also by candlelight, took a couple of benedryl, and slept through the night.

In the morning we got the same taxi to come get us and take us to the pier where we got on the Phi Phi Cruiser for a ferry ride that was going to be anywhere from 1.5 hours to 3 hours. Ours was more of a 3 hour tour, but it flew by as we were both entertained and distracted (and a little grossed out) by the flying fish and the amorous display of a European couple sitting across from us. It was the later that grossed us out, not the flying fish. The flying fish looked like little golden snitches (a la Harry Potter) skimming the top of the water and then disappearing again--as elusive as the golden snitch, I suppose.

And so here we find ourselves on this beautiful island with no cars and beautiful beaches. Our hotel provided a buffet dinner to celebrate the new year. Some traditional Thai dancing and a singer singing the likes of John Denver and the Eagles with a Thai accent provided the entertainment for the evening. I went to bed before midnight only to be woken up by the sound of fireworks at 11:59 (by my watch).

Yesterday we made a little bit of a trek east towards Long Beach, which is a less crowded and much more swimmable (sp?) beach than the one we had gone to the day we arrived. Despite my best efforts at keeping up with the sunscreen, I got completely sunburned and today will be snorkeling with a t-shirt on (and better sunscreen). The most expensive thing I have bought so far on my trip was the $11 bottle of aloe.

Well, the rain seems to have subsided for now, so we will get ready for our long boat trip to Ko Phi Phi Leh's Maya Bay and other scenic stops.

Happy 2009! Now we can begin the countdown to 1.20.09!