(2/1) Ah the insantiy. Believe me the Thai alphabet is no simple undertaking.
Skipped writing last night because we had a couple drinks. The moment finds me again not completely clear-headed. But hey, it’s ok.
We started yesterday in search of a cliff to jump off of. We eventually found it with the hlp of one of the hosts. There was a 5 meter one and an 8 meter one. We jumped the later three times. It’s long enough to give us time mid-air to say, “Wait, shouldn’t there be water by now?” Intense – wow.
After, we hosed off and took a nap ’til later afternoon. We’ve been really enjoying the food served here but due to the higher price we’ve been spacing them out as much as we can. I feel bad because I am my father’s daughter and I’ve taken on more than a few of his bargain buying ways. Rick seems to have good humor about it – in that he seems to humor such tendencies a bit.
…When we got up we had another nice dinner and convos with a Dutch woman named Willemyn. Very cool and has been more friendly than most of the guests here. Taught each other a few card games and drank a beer or two. After that we ambled about on the rocks and on the roof of our building stargazing. It’d been such a long time since I’d been able to really see them.
After a bit we headed to the bar and ordered this fruit juice and whisky concoction in a small bucket for 250. Very good and we found another American to talk to about our travels, about the islands, and about his 5-star hotel loving Korean wife who had apparently been complaining a fair amount this trip about “roughing it” out here. I met her yesterday (2/2) – nice woman. After our drink we turned in.
The next day we got up, split a curry-fried rice between us and set out swimming. I still had a pretty bad swimmer’s ear from the cliff diving the day before but swimming seemed to help a little bit.
We sun-bathed, we read. Rick from A Storm of Swords, me from Red Dust. Still working on it but it’s getting good. Ma Jian has seemed to become a deeper and deeper person as he continues his travels and subsequently has more and more meaningful things to say. As the sun began to wane we found one of the German girls we met before playign with a mini Diablo. We played around for a bit then she was nice enough to loan us her snorkling gear and we set off for the next hour or two snorkles donned. Gorgeous stuff out there that we had only seen a glimpse of floating around the shallows. Silver and black striped ones, camouflage suckers, schools of brilliant neon blues, reds, greens, yellows, and purples, big silver ones, flat, round, big, small, a ton of sea cucumbers and coral of many different types. We may have to do the day cruise that includes several snorkling stops (and lunch), but we’re not sure yet. it’s 650 a piece and stuff like that certainly adds up. Once we returned the gear we washed up, smoked up, and headed out to eat up.
More dinner, cards, and convo after with everyone heading to bed a bit early.
Today (2/3) is still young so I’ll have some more for you later. but I can guarantee lounging, swimming, munching, conversing, reading, and the like. Such is the life of an islander.
