Updates from Thailand

Ao Nang really is beautiful. If you are able to come here, especially during low season when the crowds are almost non-existant, you should.

In big news, Terry and I got scuba certified! We took the course, did the book work and pool work, then we did our two open water dives in the ocean near Phi Phi Island, which is supposed to be one of the top scuba sites in Thailand. We only got certified to go 12 meters, so we couldn’t go very deep, but it was still fun!

We were on a big boat along with about 20-25 other people from other dive shops. Unfortunately, there are no pictures, but there was video and we were on it, so we may watch it today and decide if we want to buy it or not.

If you are going to dive in Ao Nang, I HIGHLY recommend visiting Ao Nang Dive Shop, we loved the instructor, Punch.

We got a free dinner certificate from the hotel for the restaurant next door (which I believe they own) and of course ordered the most expensive items. It was probably the worst meal we’ve had in Thailand so far. I would NOT recommend the restaurant attached to Vogue Hotel.

I would, however, HIGHLY recommend Thailandia, the restaurant across from the McDonalds! SOOOO yum!

Today, Terry went painting this morning, and then we went to Thai cooking school. There were just the two of us and another girl from Canada. So it was a really small class. We learned that Thai cooking is mostly about putting together a bunch of pre-made store bought ingredients, and the class was about 3 hrs shorter than it was advertised to be. And we didn’t really do much cooking. We chopped the spices and veggies, and did some cookwork, but mostly we just ate the end result, which we couldn’t even do because most of the dishes became cold by eating time and there was a ton of food.

We made:
Panang curry
Massaman curry
Pad thai
Tom Yum soup (chicken, not seafood)
Banana shake

Tomorrow is our last day in Krabi. We are hoping to go on an elephant trek in the morning and be back in time for Terry to do one last painting before we have to head to the airport.

We did get our travel plans almost entirely together. We still have to fly to Bangkok on Saturday, but now we will stay overnight and spend the day in Bangkok. And we will have the exact same flight itinerary but on Monday instead of Sunday. So we are now getting home Monday at 230pm instead of Sunday 230pm. We still have to go through Beijing, which sucks, but at least it’ll be quick, and hopefully they won’t abscond everything in our suitcases.

But we keep getting “there are changes to your flight itinerary” emails, so we are hoping this is now the plan permanently and that something else isn’t changing.

And things are stirring for me back in the US. So I’m really excited about that. No word yet on coming back to Taiwan, though, for SOMA. Still waiting…

And “Congratulations!” to a special someone out there, you know who you are J

So in the meantime, I’ll probably not end up posting again for real until we are back in the US. But keep an eye out, there may be more over the weekend!

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Update: I wrote this post an hour ago, and in the process of coming over here, learn that there is a strike in all of the airports anywhere within a 5 hr time range of here, and we may not be able to get to the airport to get to Bangkok to go home to the US.

Ugh.

Keep reading, I'll keep you updated.