Thailand

Well... the rest was all travel, but THIS is a vacation. After a relaxing 2 day/1 night trip to Halong Bay, we made a last minute decision Sunday night to leave Hanoi, and jumped on the last plane to Bangkok. After several indecisive hours in the Bangkok airport debating which flight to try to take in the a.m., whether to pay $50 for a hotel room near the airport (highway robbery!), and proving ourselves inept at using payphones, the desire for sleep in a bed with a lock on the door won out over rock-paper-scissoring for who would stay up and watch the luggage while the other slept for the first shift.

In the a.m. we headed back to the airport and booked a flight to Phuket. We were a little nervous b/c the 5 day forecast for pretty much every beach destination was thunderstorms, thunderstorms, thunderstorms. However, when we finally arrived (after an aborted attempt to board the plane, and a return to the departure lounge for an additional 3 hours while they fixed a mechanical problem), it was gorgeous and sunny and has been for the past 2 days.

We tried to find a budget hotel at Patong Beach and were so underimpressed with the offerings that we decided to splurge and got a cab down to Karon Beach where we checked into a $30/night (low season has its benefits... it's normally ovre $100/night) resort hotel right across from the beach. The room is gorgeous, the pool is divine, the buffet-style "American breakfast" is a welcome change from bread and the occasional banana pancake.

We spent yesterday a.m. at the beach, yesterday afternoon at the pool, and then headed to the travel agent so I could purchase my ticket to India. After stepping on a piece of glass in their office and bleeding all over the floor (foot wounds...) I got one of the last 2 seats on the flight and we set off in search of sunset.

This was the sunset of the trip. Sunset over Angkor Wat was just as disappointing as sunrise over Angor Wat and Machu Picchu. But here it was glorious. Then we wandered through town to Kata, and ended up being ferried by motorbike to a salon where Jo got her hair cut and I got my legs waxed. The girl was precise, and deft, but SLOOOW. It took an hour. Jo was completely done and I still had half a leg to go.

After that we had dinner, booked our day trip, and headed back to the hotel. We were supposed to fly out tonight after the day trip so we were starting to pack, and decided to see if there was anything on TV. We flipped on the BBC and "BANGKOK TANKS! MILITARY COUP! THANKSIN DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY! MILITARY SURROUNDS GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS IN BANGKOK! MARTIAL LAW IN THAILAND!"

We were shocked to say the least, and it was infuriating b/c this happened to be at the time Bush was giving his platitude-filled, inappropriately smirky speech at the UN so BBC was giving live coverage of that with just the breaking news headlines.

The German(?) satellite station DW thankfully had it's English news journal on at the same time, so we watched that. By this point, it was the only station still broadcasting b/c BBC mysteriously cut out (turns out it was on purpose...) and the Thai stations--if they were broadcasting anything--were showing karaoke versions of the Thai "we love our king" song (in english... very very odd).

Anyway, we called the Embassy and they said they're monitoring the situation but don't see any reason to flee the country or not come to Bangkok for our flights out, so we went to bed and got up way too early this morning for our boat trip out to Ko Phi Phi.

The islands were absolutely gorgeous. Very similar to Halong Bay (which was another amazing boat trip---absolutely stunning scenery, but a very uptight annoyingly shrill tour guide) with huge limestone formations covered with greenery jutting out of the water. Here however there are also islands with beautiful beaches. The water here is turquoise and visibility is something insane like 30 feet. (Halong Bay has green water, which is gorgeous. In Halong we kayaked into a cove, which was beautiful).

Today we snorkeled a little, swam a little, sunbathed a little (I got a little too much sun, but it's not too bad), and ate a delicious lunch before heading back.

We were supposed to fly out tonight and spend all day shopping in Bangkok, but given the situation we've decided to bump our flight to tomorrow. Today was declared a compulsory holiday in Bangkok, and we're not certain anything is even going to be open tomorrow.

We really are in the best place to be riding this out, and it really doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. The PM doesn't seem to have a lot of support, the Thai love their king and will go along with whatever he decides, and so far there hasn't been any violence or anything. (Which is more than you can say for further south, but luckily we're not there and not going down to Malaysia).

Mauritania had a bloodless coup a year or so ago, and this appears to be the same kind of thing. Enshallah.