Remembering Thailand

Yahoo photos was closing and just recently transferred all the pictures to flickr. I was looking at some of the pictures that I have forgotten and remembered some of the memories that I had.

Like the time when my girlfriends and I went to Thailand. It was 2003 then. I had just settled down in my new job when we decided to head to thailand.

It was such an exciting time for me. We spent time walking to and comparing different agencies, scouring for a free and easy package. We spent about $350 per person for both the return flight tickets and the accomodations which seemed to be a reasonable price.

It was my first time taking an airplane. Hema let me have her window seat so that I could look outside and admire the scene. My heart felt like it was going to drop as the plane left the runway and tipped to the sky. I peered excitedly outside the window. Everything looked so small!

We arrived at the Krabi airport about 3 hours later. After clearing the customs, we headed to our bus and plonked our luggage in our beautiful villa and immediately explored the area.

We were walking about the sleepy town and chanced upon a beauty parlour. After hearing numerous accounts of how wonderful thai massage was, we couldnt wait to experience it for ourselves. We entered the small parlour and were greeted by three friendly thai girls. They were about our age and they started to chat with us friendlily and they led us to a covered room to change into a thin covering and proceeded to slather us with oil and gave us a good rub. It was a pretty good massage. It was so good that even Juli fell asleep through the massage.

There was no public transportation around the area. By pure chance, we noticed a scooter rental kiosk. Juli and I were game enough to try to ride one for travelling around. Prior to this, we had absolutely no experience in riding one. After about 10 minutes of demonstration, we were riding along merrily (albeit unsteadily)

It was awesome! We rode everwhere and I admired the rural scenery. On the first night we were there, we rode to a larger market and had our first taste of true thai food – it was significantly different from what we had back home. The ingredients seem to have a fuller and fresher taste to it and it was much much spicer. So much so that we were grateful for the sweet juice drink that accompanied our dinner.

The rest of the days were spent on doing fun things. We went kayaking and explored the beautiful sea and the mangrove swamps – it felt like we were in national geographic! Its such a tranquil and serene feeling going smoothly down the waters. There were some small monkeys who begged for the pineapple slices we had.

We visited temples and we explored monuments. I noticed a tiny woman who was sitting down outside and writing on some pieces of paper. As I approached her, she started to talk to me in Thai and handed me the piece of paper. I couldnt read it though. My knowledge of Thai was only limited to kap khun ka (thank you) and hong nam (toilet)

We rode elephants to traverse the jungle and observed the facinating landscape and vegetation in front of us. It wasnt all that comfortable riding an elephant as it swayed slowly back and forth. I felt like I was almost falling off.

We played around with jetskis. That was such an exhilarating experience, going at high speeds in the sea. Fun fun fun! The three of us took to it like ducks to water. It was awesome 😀

On the third day we headed to phuket which was more urbanised compared to krabi. The traffic was much heavier, thus we did not dare to rent a scooter this time. Our activities were less sporty here. Instead we spent time with spectator activities instead.

Like watching lady-boy shows where I was ashamed to see lady-boys who were much prettier than me. And watching a muay thai match as well as the ‘Phuket Fantasea‘ where the German lady whom we made friends with while riding the elephants recommended as a show that rivalled cirque du soleil.

On the last day, after spending all the pocket money that we had, we sat down contentely by the beach while waiting for the van to take us to the phuket international airport. It was a spectacular sunset view, one of my most memorable shot till today.

Pretty impressive for a decrepit 2.1mp camera 😀

O I’m missing beautiful Thailand already.

Sidenote :

Speaking of cameras, I’m completely obsessed about the Canon Ixus 860. Beautiful!