2006-01-06 - 11:59 a.m.

Hey there friends, family, and strangers….I hope the new year found you all very safe and happy. Our holiday season was a carbon copy of last year’s- so if you really want to hear about all of our adventures, please refer to last year’s entries. Love, Julie

Wow that would be lazy of me. There were a few minor differences between the holidays. We went bowling this year on Christmas, and Thailand, as a collective, tried to kill me. Let me explain…

We returned to the same island –Koh Samed. This time instead of ferrying to the island on the really big slow boat that was crammed with people and just waiting for an opportune moment to sink, we took a speed boat.

It was speedy. Only took 15 minutes. It went too fast for me to worry about it sinking. If we had spent any more time on it though, we would have barreled into another boat, I am sure of it. Once we made it the island all the random insanity began. I think I tripped, stubbed my toe, bumped my head on beach umbrellas, dropped bottles, plates, and silverware, and generally conducted myself like a two-year old just figuring out this coordination thing with no less than 15 episodes per day. (Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it felt like it. I have bruises to prove it.)

We took a day trip on a boat.

The "New Happy Tour". It was a little scary, but totally fun and worth the travel terror that always lurks in the back of my mind. The first hour or so we spent fishing. I say “we”-I meant “they.” If I was in charge of the “Seafood BBQ” that was promised to us, it wouldn’t have been fish that we ate. Does tofu grow in the ocean? We were really confused. No one explained what was happening. They just kept stopping the boat and eventually, by our killer observation skills, figured out what we were supposed to be doing. I took a nap, mostly because I didn’t want to watch all these little fish flop around and die. Mike didn’t fish- he just took pictures.

Ryan made a feeble attempt at fishing, but attention deficit disorder got the best of him and he gave up.

We started to get worried. We paid 10 bucks for this? A day of watching people fish with plastic bottles? Finally the powers that be (the man in charge) decided it was time to move on. We puttered along until we came upon a coral reef-

A CORAL REEF! Yes, it was a coral reef. Coral reef. (Just wanted to type it again)I am from Arkansas, remember. As far as I was concerned this stuff was only in movies and on postcards, and in someone else’s vacation pictures. Put me on the list. I saw coral reef. This might not be a big deal to y’all, but do me a favor- imagine growing up in Cabot, Arkansas. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but coral reef was hardly a household word. I once spent the day trying to catch crawdads in a creek behind my house (I got in trouble for it too because Mary Jones and I didn’t tell anyone where went and my mom spent hours looking for us.) so going snorkeling in Thailand is a very big deal to me. I will never forget it. I was too amazed to even worry about sharks. I was a little worried at first about our snorkeling gear however.

Even after they muzzled him, he still went at the tubes. But no one drowned, so little doggie’s plan was foiled. It is a different world down there. I was mesmerized. We took pictures with an underwater camera and we are still waiting for the pictures. Mike is the sweetest. He put his arm around me and we swam around together and we decided we would try to touch a fish, but they were quick little boogers. Once when I came up for air that wasn’t filtered through a dog-chewed tube, I saw a man with a giant sea cucumber in his hand swimming after a girl. The girl was screaming, and I thought-what kind of crazy person does that? I got closer, and it was our friend Ryan, terrorizing his sweet girlfriend Am. Then when I turned around to tell Mike that Ryan was violating the sea life AND his girlfriend in one swift blow, I couldn’t find him. There was guy with a Beatles haircut close by, but it wasn’t him. I swam away to look for him, and then turned back around and looked at the Beatles haircut guy underwater. I found the exact same tattoo that Mike has on his leg, and I discerned immediately that Beatles haircut guy was in fact Mike Pelino. He looked so different with his hair plastered to his head.

See? The guy on the right is Ryan, but who is that other guy? Beatles haircut.
After snorkeling, we were taken to a “Fish Farm”. They should have called it “We like to watch stupid tourists fall into rickety fish pens and get nibbled on by sharks, so here ya go…” There were turtles, huge fish, and SHARKS in these net pens.
Look at all the people! I felt like I was being sent to walk the plank- and we did, literally. The planks were only about 2 feet across at the widest- if that. Am asked if people fall in, they said yes. No big deal. They are lucky I didn’t fall in. Where ever you are in this world, you would have heard me scream. That’s got to be last on everyone’s list of fun things to do- to fall into a shark tank. I suppose they are little sharks, but a shark is a shark. I can’t believe there was nothing to stop people from falling in. Amazing. Mike has terrific balance. He took pictures and he didn’t fall in. Wow.
The rest of the trip was about like last year- Mike and Ryan made us laugh all weekend…

we played on the beach drank from buckets…

danced…
ate lots of food… (Read menu carefully)

.watched Muay Thai boxing…and had a flaming good time at midnight on New Year’s Eve (another in my series of lame lame lame jokes-sorry)

We also played with another praying mantis

(this one didnt try to eat Mike's eye), and launched a good luck lantern....I was quite excited about it.
Once again, thanks so much to Ryan and Am’s hospitality. Y’all rule!

?lt;/P>

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