koh tao pictures

i added in pictures to the previous blogs about my vacation. just scroll down. there are also some on the previous page.
here's the link to the entire album of koh tao (with a bunch that aren't on my blog) on facebook.
and you can click here to see the album of the grand palace in bangkok. it is so pretty.

thailand adventures

i haven't finished uploading/editing all of my photos from thailand yet and my eyes are fighting to stay open, so i'll go through and add them to posts on the right days tomorrow and put up a link to some facebook albums.

for nowww i'll leave you with these..
steve has lots of moves.
iced tea peach!
emil was being extra weird the last night. i think he needed some TLC.
emil, jane and jeff
jane, me, emil, dawn, leila, keith
steve, ashley and jeff

so much fun!

one night in bangkok

this keyboard leaves something to be desired. maybe it's a ploy to get me to pay for more time on the internet. slow going.

well this morning we left koh tao in the rain on a giant boat. 2 hours later we got on a bus for 7 and a half hours. it was amazing how all of that sitting around exhausted us by the time we moseyed over to koh san road in bangkok. it's super busy here, i think a lot of people must be heading home tomorrow since it's sunday. i guess it's busy here all the time though.

dawn, keith and i spent the evening shopping and people watching. i found a few things for jeff and matt and a few things for myself. i lost the battle for a necklace because the vendor wasn't willing to come down 10 batt (30 cents). haggling is no fun when you're super tired.

i've spent most of the day in a haze of DC excitement. it feels like i'm dreaming. really it just feels like a huge weight has been lifted and i know that it will just be awesome. i'm really excited. we get to help out at random social functions and attend a weekly lecture series headed by various 'senior white house staff' members which will be awesome.

5 minutes left on my timer! taiwan tomorrow. i'm excited to sleep in my own bed and have my own computer and see everyone.

ecstatic, excited, thrilled

i'm going to the white house in september!! i got the internship!
whew. i'm all trembly and excited. i just read the email, called my mom, dad and gram. my internet connection is too crap to actually talk to any of them for very long, but yayyyyy!!!

today was just perfect all along.
slept in late, had chili chicken soup for brunch, followed by some time on the beach with my favorite girls, then for an oil massage which made us all smell like macaroons, then a pedicure, then a brownie with ice cream on the beach, then delicious indian dinner with perfect company and lots of pictures, then drinks on the beach, then drinks off the beach, then white house internship email to come home to!it was sad to say goodbye to everyone though. we've had such a nice vacation. i can't think of a better way to have spent the last two weeks. we made new friends who were tons of fun. i got to see leila, derek and emil again when i thought i'd never see them. i got a chance to get to know steve, who is super sweet and lovely. it was great.
i am so excited about DC!!
now i need to work on finding [cheap] housing in DC. anyone with connections, feel free to start working on this right now.

peach tea

a couple of random things.
- a dog walked off with my leather flip flop :( at least that's our best guess as to what happened to it. they weren't super easy to walk in anyway, so i hope whichever dog nabbed it is enjoying it.
- dawn and i are thinking about going to hong kong for our birthdays in september. one of the girls who's joined our group, jane, is living there and she has a pull-out couch that we're welcome/planning to use
- they have peach liptons iced tea here in cans at 7-11 and it is so yummy. it tastes like those peach candies that come in the white box. the jelly ones. and 7-11 has "toasties" which are white bread sandwiches, put into a sandwich maker and sealed shut and grilled on both sides. ham and cheese toasties are my fav.
time for bed. we had to swim 200 or so meters to the boat after chris slightly miscalculated where the boat was and my legs are talking to me. the silver sands resident dog just curled up under my legs. one more day in koh tao! ..maybe my classes won't notice if i just stay.

tropical island band

i'm drinking out of a coconut while looking at the ocean. i think i've hit vacation nirvana. i've been dreaming about crispy duck on thin pancakes with plum sauce and we had some last night. then dawn and i had a candle-lit evening glass of wine on the beach, sitting in puffy bean bag chairs and looking at the ocean. it was heavenly.

this morning everyone but leila went diving and it was a bunch of fun. another early morning. keith, dawn, steve, jane and i were all in the same group when we went diving so it was nice. we saw a bazillion fish.. i bet if i look, i can find pictures.. first we were at red rock. it was a little tiny island and the bottom was all rocks covered in giiiiant coral.
next we went to japanese gardens. it was mostly one kind of coral and pretty flat, but there was a diving boat that sunk a few weeks ago that we got to swim around. it was covered in a thin layer of seaweedy stuff.

this website isn't affiliated with us at all, but that's what it looks like. it's on this island somewhere. i guess i'll be posting my own pictures soon enough.

i had a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel for lunch that was super lovely. now it's time to check out on the beach for a few hours before massages. buy a ticket!

red roses, too

ahhhh i wrote a whole post, saved it, and it disappeared. round 2..
i spent seven hourssss on the beach yesterday reading, napping, tanning, listening to music/the ocean. i think this beachy lifestyle is really starting to appeal to me. derek, leila, steve and emil all came here once their contracts were up and they're here for several months teaching or getting scuba certifications of various types. jealous. i don't really want to be a career diver or i'd follow suit.

while we've been here, we've met steve's friends ashley and jeff, who he knows from home. yesterday was ashley's birthday so we went to dinner at the italian place, farrango's, which i love. their pizza is better than all of the "pizza" in taiwan and rivals my favorite pizza at home. and they have peach iced tea. ymmm. ashley is super sweet.
after that we spent a little while on pillows on a deck overlooking the beach, sipping cocktails. steve tried my pina colada and said he thought it was disgusting. unbelievable.

today is another low key, beachy day. dawn and i are going to lunch in a few minutes. i'm thinking about a pedicure.
i'll hear about the internship in the next couple of days, so it's time to cross our fingers again.

forever young

we're PADI certified open water divers now! yay. it means that we can set up our own equipment unassisted and go diving with a dive master who makes sure we go down/come up at the right speed and who will show us around in the water.
today we had to meet at 6:45am to go to the boat. we did one fun dive just to swim around and look at fish. we saw some angel fish munching on a coconut. i held a starfish the size of a rugby ball. i didn't turn upside down and twirl around in circles. happy about that. keith and i both used way less air than yesterday, so we're improving. he was noticeably calmer today.
(they drive on the other side of the road in thailand. who knew? this is the truck that would drop us off at the dock before dives. emil insisted on sitting inside the cab because there was like an 80degree incline at times.)

then we took a break and did a second dive at hin wong bay, where we practiced the last of our technical skills. taking the mask fully off under water (which still makes me a little paranoid because you're so afraid you'll forget that you can't breathe through your nose) and clearing it, blowing air rings, using a compass, stuff like that. glad all of that stuff is out of the way so from now on we can just look at stuff underwater. my ears are feeling the pain of being popped and filled with sea water for 2 days. i need a break.
aside from diving, our days have been perfect and tropical-island-paradise-y in koh tao. we had delicious curry and fruit smoothies for lunch with dawn and then got a thai massage. keith giggled like a schoolgirl the entire time. dawn, leila, keith and i had dinner at wind beach which faces the ocean and has pillow chairs on the deck. i had pad thai with a baileys, rum and banana shake (!!!!!!). at night, they dig holes in the sand and light kerosene lamps on fire so it's all beautiful and lit with the palm trees. there are men who stand on the beach twirling batons with fire on the ends and people playing soccer and dogs playing with coconuts. could it beeee any more fantastic?

today i made friends with a black community dog with one eye and who was missing part of a paw. i was scratching the lower part of her back while i was sitting on the porch and now we're best friends. good day.

favorite quote from yesterday:
keith: liden, do you feel like superman in your wet suit?
liden: not really
keith: spiderman? peter pan? nothing?
liden: i kind of feel like wendy.

liden is our dive master trainee who's been diving with us for the last 3 days. he's quiet, bashful, english and sooooooo attractive. i'll find a picture somewhere or be sure to take one before i leave.

techno has no words

i'm posting pictures of allen and alex's day at the children's museum with bobo and katie and at a baseball game. allen has been begging me to go to a game with him, but it is sooo hot outside, so i tried to steer him toward someone who actually wanted to go. and allen loves alex. he's always asking me about him and every time we see a temple we say "alex would love this" because alex is the temple king. so i'm glad they did that together.well this scuba certification thing is kind of trial by fire. we did some of the same stuff as yesterday, but this time you're 30 feet down. it was all pretty nice and wonderful except one minute of panic where i thought i was skyrocketing toward the surface and my BCD wouldn't deflate.. but it turns out that i was really upside down, swimming toward the sand and turning around in circles. i have no idea how that happened. i really thought i was going up and up and up.

today was fun though because we got to see some real fish and remember why we were going through the whole tedious learning process at all. there were cute little fish in these holes in the sand in the bottom that would pop out and pop back in when they saw you. while we were doing some technical stuff, this orange and gray stripey fish was just swimming all around my knees and checkin' me out.
apparently it was a choppy day, so everything else should seem easy. i'm hoping we have some sun in the next couple of days so i can have a thailand tan when i get back to taiwan. the last couple of days have been a little gray and rainy.
tonight we went to dinner with dawn and leila at the beeeest indian place. we stuffed ourselves with platters of food and chai tea. ymmm. then we went to watch a ladyboy show down the street. it was hilaaaarious. some of them really look like women, but this one guy was built like a football player and he wasn't super convincing (see below). they were lip synching to tina turner, whitney houston, etc. songs but they didn't know the right words so it was like weird kung fu movie with not quite right lips. pretty entertaining though. the costumes were all sequined or tasseled with giant, piled-up wigs and the highest high heels with eyelashes a foot long. one of them had more cleavage than me which i find perplexing. plastic? lots of tape? special bra?
we have to get up to leave at 7 for our final 2 dives before we're open water certified, so i'm headed in early.

croaking geckos

11 new skills:
1. enjoying coconut shakes on the beach and only getting a teeny bit sunburned
2. staying awake through 3 hours of dive videos starting at 8am
3. properly identifying the sound a giant gecko makes
4. hooking up a scuba tank/vest (BCD)/accoutrements while in and out of the water
5. getting water out of my mask while underwater
6. tackling the windblown, wavy vacation hair
7. getting to the surface without a scuba tank
8. getting to the surface with a broken respirator that's shooting out uncontrollable bubbles
9. getting to the surface with a buddy, using their air tank
10. learning how not to explode my lungs, fill my blood with nitrogen bubbles or get decompression sickness11. appreciating the serious, scuba instructor side of emil, who i had previously only seen only the silly, tigger suit wearing side of. he's awesome, direct, fun and comforting.

keith and i did scuba in the pool today and it was scary/fun. it took me a few minutes to stop thinking about how weird i felt to only breathe through my mouth, but it's ok now. it all makes me appreciate my kids and how we demo something once and then expect them to copy us without making any mistakes on their first try when they've never done it before. i had forgotten how hard it can be to do something you've never ever done before. but we did it.. in the pouring rain, too (not that it matters i guess, when you're already all wet).

we did 4 chapters in the book and 4 tests. 3 hours of pool stuff. it was a long, scuba-y day. tomorrow we're headed into the ocean for 2 dives. they don't mess around with the progression of things.
HEY i was just watching a show about mt. everest climbers and it was interviewing the men and what their next plan was and the man just said 'i'm headed to thailand to hang out in a hammock on the beach for three months.'

p.s. the internship emailed to say they still haven't decided and they're pushing the notification back one week. good thing i'm too busy to drive myself crazy wondering about that for another week. keep thinking good thoughts.
p.p.s. for those sappy romantic readers, tonight allen said i was his 'angel of the air and water, flying around me and with the fish in the ocean'. we go back and forth with being friends and being sparkley. i think long absences fuel the sparkle.

to get away from it all

sairee beach in koh tao is everything you could imagine a beach to be. the water is blue, the sand is white, there are palm trees, the entire thing is lined with kitschy little restaurants and bars with low tables with cushions to lean up against. banana smoothies are 50 batt (less than $2), you can get a massage on the beach, you can do yoga, you can take a water taxi. there are resident beach dogs that will just walk up to you and lie down at your feet.

our hotel is right across from emil's dive shop and we're staying in a 'luxury room' with AC, a shower, TV, fridge and wireless for ~35US a night. the walls are deep gray and sea blue stained concrete. it's lovely.
anyway i'm getting ahead of myself. yesterday we spent the day exploring some of the sights of bangkok. we ended up in this open-aired (meaning a cart attached to a motorbike) taxi service that would take you to a few tourist spots and the deal was that you had to go to all of these handmade suit shops and just listen to the pitch. one guy actually talked keith into ordering a custom made dress shirt.
we saw the grand palace which was beautiful and dripping in gold leaf/paint. to be very honest, we didn't read much about it, so i'll let wikipedia tell you if you want to know. we spent a few hours there.. prayed to the jade buddha. no email from the white house yet.
the most exciting part of yesterday was showering in the train station for 10 batt, awesome, and then taking the overnight sleeper train south. we bought top bunk sleeper seats with AC for $30ish each and it was so worth it. i pulled the curtain closed, put in my ipod and slept from 9 until around 3. they gave you a heavy, white towel for a blanket and it had real white sheets and a real pillow. it was amazing.
then todayy we took a boat to the island, ate the best veggie platter of indian food right on the beach with a dog at our feet, and met up with emil, leila, dawn and derek this evening for dinner at an italian place. the spinach ravioli had real spinach leaves inside. it was deeelicious. i just got back from hanging out with leila on the front porch of her bungalow. seriously, is the awesomeness coming across? can you even imagine?
open water certification course part 1 with emil starts tomorrow morning. we're going to do it in our hotel room since it's freezing in here. life is good in thailand.

cabbages and kings

keith's keyboard is missing the L key, so if you notice any insane typos, it's not me.

let's do bullet points. i'm tired.
- we had a self described "happy taxi driver" on the way to the airport. he was adorable. keith talked to him before they picked me up and by the time they got there, the guy was calling me 'beautiful teacher' and asking if i wanted to sing songs in chinese. that guy was so funny. he taught me mimihuhu which means 'i don't know, you don't know' because we were all guessing between terminals 1 and 2. it was 2.
- then we're in line waiting to get on the plane and this guy asks us what numbers they just called. we say we have no idea, but i asked him what instrument he was carrying. turns out he's a taiwanese guy who has a serious passion for death metal AND went to school at UT (same as me). i think he might have been partially autistic.
- the flight was OK except we had a dude who didn't request a veggie meal but who was very upset that they didn't have an extra for him. keith almost elbowed him about a million times.

-right when we got out of the taxi in thailand, we ran into a junkie of a man who pointed us toward koh san road, all bug-eyed and making long pauses.. we didn't stay where he suggested.
-it is bizarre to be in a place with so many foreigners from so many places. i've gotten so used to only seeing asian-looking people that it's a real shock that the demographic on this road is 60% blonde girls, 35% frat guys and 5% hippies. tonight we had a drink with two dutch people who had a long layover on the way to bali.
time for bed! it smells so much like cabbage in our $30 a night (which i guess counts as a 'luxury hotel') hotel room. but it's beautiful. pictures in a week and a half.