The Rest of Day 29-32

the rest of day 29:

not much!

went to dinner next door and watched sherlock holmes which they were showing on their old, discolored big-screen tv lol jens was super skeptical but said the movie was better than he thought it would be. i thought it was pretty good too, but not great.

had drinks at heaven (outdoor bar) and my mint julip was more like lime juice with some mint in it lol waaaay too sour to drink! but they played nice music and we saw the best fire dancer that we had ever seen before. he was amazing! it just blows my mind when i see people performing for free and they have all this talent and most people in the world will never know, ya know? i felt lucky to see it.

Day 30

didn't feel well in the morning but pushed through and scootered to koh ma with jens anyway. it's a little island off of ko pha ngan. we actually just scootered to the beach that's across from koh ma and there's a little sandbar you can walk along to get to koh ma. there were quite a few topless woman sunbathing there. it's always a shock when i first see someone doing that but then i get over it immediately when i think- oh yeah, boobs, i have those too, no big deal lol so i laid out while jens snorkeled some and i think i just need to give up on this whole tanning business. it takes forever and now i'm the color most americans would consider "the whitest they've ever been" lol plus it's really hard to tan evenly. my arms and upper back are darker than the rest of me for obvious reasons and i just don't feel like lying around in the sun for hours each day. so i give up. if i tan, i tan. if i don't, i don't. whatever. i don't care lol

moving on...i snorkeled with jens some but there wasn't much to see. the water wasn't that clear. it was really clear in the shallow areas but once it got deep it was really foggy. we saw some fish that we had already seen before but not many and barely any coral at all. it makes me really sad that the world's coral is dying so rapidly. we actually haven't seen any of that colorful coral you see in movies/tv/photographs because what makes coral colorful is the algae that grows on it. with global-warming the temperature of the oceans have risen and when coral gets hot it expels all the algae and slowly dies. so all we've seen is dying or dead coral :o( it really wakes you up to see something like that. i wish everyone could see so they'd take global-warming seriously!!!

had lunch at the local restaurant and it took FOREVER! slowest service we've ever had. i completely finished my drink before the food arrived, ordered another drink when the food arrived and then finished my entire meal before the 2nd drink came lol

from there we went to see a waterfall. the main roads here are fine but all the side roads are just dirt and they've been rutted by rain water and have all kinds of random rocks and holes in them. it's crazy. we drove up one road to get to the waterfall and there was another road we needed to go down but i refused lol it was too dangerous. so we parked and walked the rest of the way. we got to the beginning of the waterfall area and saw some people coming down and asked them if there was much water and they said no and that it was really difficult to climb up. so we decided not to go. there was just a bit of water trickling down, nowhere to swim and i was starting to not feel well again. so we left.

went back to the bungalow, swam there, showered and went to dinner at dolce vita. i had major heartburn so i had to get all bland non-acidic foods. we got milk tea, steamed tilapia and a baked potato and it was all good but i still had really bad heartburn afterward. that's exactly what happened to me the last time we traveled for a month. it was last august when we went to japan for two weeks and then traveled all over korea with ben and vivienne for two weeks. the last couple days i had bad heartburn and couldn't get rid of it. it really sucked! what saved me was it was the end of our trip and we were going home. i researched home remedies and found out aloe juice helps. but there's no aloe juice here in thailand. so we went to a pharmacy and i got some conventional medicine. it was so disgusting! like drinking soupy toothpaste- UGH! :oP hope i don't have to take it again!

i think my body just gets really tired of eating out after a month. it's like ok that's enough! time to go home! lol thing is i have a month left of vacation! so i think i just have to lay off the fried foods which is hard in thailand when the main dishes they serve are fried spring rolls, fried rice, fried noodles, etc. i have to be careful about what i eat. hopefully i can make it another month without having too much if any heartburn!

Day 31

breakfast, hammock, read, slept, lunch (coconut milk and veg. soup) didn't feel great but didn't wanna lounge around all day so we went out.

we scootered to another waterfall hoping it would be better and it was somewhat. the waterfall was another trickle but there was a big pool of water at the bottom of this one that we could swim in :o) there was also a rope you could use to swing into the pool which was pretty fun! the most surprising thing was the little fish that come up and bite the deadskin off your feet! i knew about them because in korea they have places called "dr. fish" where they put a bunch of these fish in a tub and you stick your feet in for a fish "pedicure" lol i was never interested in that so i never went but i got a free session in this pool! only one fish came up to me right when i got in and it totally freaked me out because i wasn't watching. i just felt this fish bite me all of the sudden! lol now it doesn't actually feel like a bite. it kinda feels like a teeny tiny little suction for one second but it still freaks you out if you're not expecting it. later i stood there and watched (the water was really clear) until a fish came up. but he wasn't as interested this time. he bit my ankle a couple times and swam away lol it didn't scare me as much if i could see him though.

we swam a while, had lots of fun and then scootered down to an archery range where you can shoot arrows. i had never done it before and it's actually really difficult! lol you have to have really strong arms! i shot 10-12 arrows and hit the target about 3 times. i never hit the center of the target. all my arrows hit the outer edge of the target or the ground or the building behind the targets lol it was fun though and jens did much better than me.

next we drove around and happened upon a cute little cafe that sold coffee and baked goods. we got a coffee that was more like a medium sized espresso, a REALLY good croissant and a yummy raspberry cream tart. it was quite the treat after eating almost all our meals in one of 3 restaurants on our beach!

after that we went "home", showered, watched the sunset over the ocean which was gorgeous! and then we went to dinner next door so we could watch the movie, american gangster while we ate.

we got tea, burger and baked potato and the movie was really good! based on a true story involving the drug trade in the 60s/70s.

the end!

Day 32

breakfast of whole wheat bread we bought at that bakery yesterday, toasted with peanut butter - yum!

went into thongsala (bigger town on the island). we wanted to mail our snorkeling gear, books we've read, hammocks, etc. to the states so we wouldn't have to carry them all over for the next month when we don't need them. we wanted to do the 3 month surface mail because usually that's really cheap but the snorkeling gear alone was $30! we said nevermind, unpacked the gear and went back out to the scooter but then we realized we definitely didn't wanna carry snorkeling flippers all over the rest of thailand, laos, cambodia, malaysia and then back to korea only to be packed somewhere and THEN taken back to the states AND we didn't wanna ditch the stuff and buy more later because it'd probably be at least $40 to replace- so we decided it was worth it to spend the $30 to send the stuff home now. so we went back in and did so.

we decided against sending anything else until bangkok. it might be cheaper there.

we dropped off the 3 disposable cameras i had used to get the pics developed. 2 were waterproof and had snorkeling pics on them and the other was a reg. disposable camera with pics from the full moon party, etc. after our digital camera went kaput. they said we'd have to pick them up tomorrow but we're leaving tomorrow so after much negotiation they said they could be ready by 6pm.

so we went to lunch at ando loco- a tex mex place! awesome huh? it always amazes me the kinds of foods you can get all over the world (except korea lol). it was open air and we got a margarita (for jens), iced jasmine green tea with honey (for me- it was amazing!), nachos and two veggie tacos. it was all delicious but i felt sick immediately after! :o( thank goodness they had a hammock for me to lie down in. i felt better after about 30-45mins. it was really discouraging though. made me feel like i just couldn't eat anything without feeling sick now that we've been on vacation a month. i felt like that was my body's limit. after one month it says- nope! you need to go home and eat your own home-cooked food now. no more traveling! lol but i don't have much choice! plus i WANT to see laos and angkor wat! so i willed myself to feel better and then we went to the hammock store.

it was AWESOME! this guy sells handmade hammocks in two styles and two different kinds of thread. he has regular hammocks for lying down and sitting hammocks that make you sit up more. he has them in a superfine thread that's really soft and really comfy but it's also really expensive! a large hammock made of that thread was about $90! the cheaper thread is less expensive but still comfortable enough for us so we bought a sitting hammock in the cheaper thread. i love it and can't wait to use it but we're not gonna string it up here cuz it's our last day. we'll probably ship it home in bangkok because we don't know whether or not we'll be able to string it up anywhere else we're going and we wanna ship as much stuff home as possible before the 2nd half of our trip.

we realized that we then had a lying down hammock (which we bought on koh samui) and then this new sitting down hammock and that would really work for something we were planning on doing on our u.s. road trip- sleeping in our hammocks whenever possible. so we bought one more cheapy lying down hammock like the one we bought on koh samui at another store.

so we now have two really cheap but useful lying down hammocks and one really nice sitting down hammock :o)

after that we just roamed around town either driving or walking, going into shops and book stores, etc.

we tried to go pick up the pictures at 6pm but the lady said - tomorrow. and we were like what? we told you we need them tonight lol so she was like ok come back at 7pm.

so we decided to go have a pint at this english pub we had seen advertised all over the island- the masons arms. we found it and it was awesome! the building is really nice and looks super out of place on this island lol it's a proper english pub! white with dark brown wood, inside there are nice tables and booths with a big bar, pool table, fuse ball table, upstairs there are darts, pingpong and a nice balcony! we were amazed! we got a pint of cider and a pint of guinness and had a seat. we chatted a while and then played a game of pool. we were both horrible so we went upstairs and played darts and that was more fun :o) jens won and then we played pingpong and let's just say we failed miserably lol

around 7:15pm we went to pick up the pictures and they were finally done! but let me tell you- disposable camera pictures SUCK!!! big time! the color's all off, some are grainy and many are out of focus. on top of that only 15 out of 39 pictures from one of the cameras even showed up! the rest were solid black! i have no idea why but i was really disappointed. there were quite a few from the full moon party i remember taking that didn't show up at all :o( the pics from snorkeling were ok though. i mean even though my digicam was working at the time i still couldn't use it for snorkeling since it wasn't waterproof so whatever. they're better than nothing. i can't wait to get my new digital camera though!

while we were at the shop i stubbed my toe really bad and it still hurts hours later. i'm hoping i didn't fracture it or something! :o(

after getting the pictures, and stubbing my toe, we went back to the mason's arms for dinner because they had steak and ale pies (like pot pie). we got one and it was wonderful! it had this flaky pastry crust on top and it came with mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, peas, broccoli and cauliflowers. OMG! IT AS GREAT!!!! they also had this adorable dog there and kept looking at us with sad little eyes lol she wanted some steak and ale pie but the owner said she had eaten so we didn't give her any lol

after that we came back here.

tomorrow begins the long journey to BANGKOK! ahoy!