Elephant rides and cave kayaking!

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

I had a very eventful holidays... and I got a great Christmas present! My parents turned up late at night Christmas Day, so we postponed Christmas and celebrated on the 26th. We tried to cram as much Thailand fun as we could into the week they were here, and we were pretty damn successful.

It started out with elephant riding and ATV riding. We drove ATV/dune buggy type vehicles up one of the mountains to see big Buddha and along the way did some serious 4-wheel driving. Mom and Dad were in one and Mike and I were in the other. I let Mike drive the first leg, which may have been poor decision making on my part, since Mike doesn't drive 4-wheeled vehicles. I understand my parents fear of teaching me to drive!! He does much better on a scooter. But we survived, dusty and bounced around. After that we headed up to the elephant camp!

 

Mom and Dad on their elephant! 

Elephant family photo! 

There was also a baby elephant named Lucy at the elephant camp... we bought bananas to feed her and took some photos as well... but those were on Mom's camera. When she hugged you, she wrapped her trunk around your head and made very silly fart noises on your neck. I'm glad Mom went first, so we got to see her scream a little bit and were more prepared! Riding the elephants was really cool. We had a bit of a wander around the camp, and contrary to the photos, our elephants did have drivers. But at one stage I did get to sit on his head and walk around while our elephant driver was on the ground. Mom and Mike also had a chance to try elephant-head-sitting, but Dad wasn't so game for the idea! 

Our next days adventure took us out on the high seas! We booked a sea kayaking and caving adventure that turned out to be a lot of fun. The best part was, just like the elephants, we had a kayak driver as well! It was the best kayaking I've even done! I didn't have to paddle once! It was a beautiful area up north of Phuket. The first cave took us into a protected lagoon area only accessable by the one small cave.

Entering Cave #1

We spent about an hour paddling around looking at the wildlife and gorgeous rock formations. We saw monitor lizards, lots of birds including a hornbill! The cliffs were amazing and the photos don't do them justice.

Pretty cliffs and islands!

Our second cave, they warned us, was going to be darker and smaller than the first and may require that we lay down at one stage to make sure we can make it into the next hidden lagoon. They certainly weren't joking. The second cave's entrance was about as big as the first, but it quickly got much much darker. There was a sizable family of bats living in the cave as well. When we got to the other end of the cave, we thought it was a dead end. The other opening of the cave was so small, our inflatable kayaks had to be partly deflated and we had to lay on the bottom. The ceiling of the opening was nearly touching my face.

Mom and Dad sqeezing out of the tiny cave opening

We spent some time exploring this secret lagoon as well and saw a couple of monkeys running around. During this time, unknown to us, the tide was slowly rising. We nearly didn't make it back through the cave! Our kayak had to be so deflated that we started taking on water and when we got halfway through the opening, I had to inch-worm my way through to get to the more open area. A couple people chose to get out of their kayaks and just swim through, but my parents made it through the same as Mike and I did! We survived the cave!

Mike and I also showed my parents the chaos of Phi Phi Island. We spent one night out there. The first day we took a tour of some of the beaches around, including Monkey Beach, where the monkeys stole my Pringles. We took Mom and Dad to the nightly fire shows on the beach as well as the amateur boxing ring in one of the bars, but I couldn't talk Dad into signing up (not enough beer, I think). The next day we did two dives in the morning on some of the local sites nearby. We had some pretty eventful dives... no sharks like we were promised, but some cuttlefish, a turtle, lots of scorpionfish and nudibranchs. And it's always lots of fun to dive with my parents. Since I got certified at such a young age, most of the diving we've done together my parents have been more worried about me, but now that I've become an instructor, the tables have turned! Now I'm checking up on them! We had some great dives and got back to Phi Phi just in time to get lunch and catch our ferry back to Patong.

We spent New Years Eve day recovering from all the fun we'd been having. Lots of early morning tours and late nights of drinking, we were pretty beat. So we lounged around all day like bums to prepare to New Years Eve. New Years in Patong was hectic! We had dinner and then went down to the beach for the fireworks, it was packed and there was a DJ just on the beach so their was some silly drunken dancing. My dad initiated Mike into the family by waltzing with him. Mike hasn't run screaming yet, so I think he wasn't too scarred. We light off paper lanterns over the sea for good luck in the New Year. My parents retired shortly after the countdown and midnight fireworks, so Mike and I ventured down infamous Bangla Road... the home of all debauchery in Phuket. It was pure chaos. There was silly string everywhere and I spent most of the night picking it out of my hair, but it was definitely a wild place to be for New Years.

Unfortunately Mom and Dad had to leave us late at night on New Years Day, but not before first taking a ladyboy show. It was a cabaret show with only men in the cast, but you would never know it by looking at them. Many of them have had lots and lots of plastic surgery and look more beautiful than some Thai women. Case in point, Dad didn't realize they were all originally men until AFTER the show.

It was sad to see my parents go, but we had a really awesome week and I'm so glad they were able to come out to Thailand and explore this crazy place with me!

Now, as soon as my parents left, Mike and I had to go on a border run. His visa was up on the 3rd and mine expired on the 6th, so we decided to go together so we were on the same schedule. We booked a visa run with a company that organizes millions of these things, but that doesn't mean they explained what was happening to us. We got on a minibus with six other expats and drove about 5 hours to the border of Thailand and Myanmar. When we got there, we were met by about 10 other minibuses full of people. We got in line and they took our passports off of us and ran away. What? Where are you going with those? Come back! Meanwhile, we waited in line for AGES until they finally brought our passports back... they had been photocopying them to help expedite the process later on, apparently. They laughed at all our pictures. We waited in line forever and ever and ever and were stamped out of the country. We were then supposed to climb on a boat and motor over to Myanmar. We were literally climbing. There wasn't a proper dock, so we were climbing over all the longtail boats and other ferrys stacked in like sardines. When we got on the boat, they stole our passports AGAIN without telling us why or where they were going with them. It was rather stressful. I've found I get separation anxiety when my passports not in my hand. We puttered over to Myanmar (or Burma, whatever you'd like to call it), about a thirty minute drive. When we got their we were ushered in to the immigration room (literally just a room on the dock) and had our passports stamped again and handed back. We then had ten minutes to wander around before we went back to Thailand. Let me tell you, my Myanmar experience was very extensive, haha! We went back to Thailand, walked over 47 more longtail boats, got stamped back in to the country and finally all piled back into the minibus for another 5 hour drive. All that for another month on the visa! Phew!

Hopefully we'll be spending that month working! Today we took another long bus ride and a ferry over to Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand on the other coast. We're going to start seriously looking for work, since Phi Phi and Ko Lanta didn't pan out so well. We're on Ko Samui for a couple days before heading over to the dive mecca, Ko Tao, where there are about 40 dive shops on a tiny island, so hopefully we'll find something! Off on a new adventure!

Love and fishes!