This week marked Songkran, the Thai New Year, and my birthday. Songkran was a blast! It is celebrated with a water festival and with no car traffic to worry about, the streets of Phi Phi were mad! A few of us went diving in the morning and our boat was met at the pier by the merry pranksters of Barakuda – the young boys with faces painted in a mixture of talcum powder and water, armed with water rifles. Nic and I promptly ended up tossed over the side of the boat into yucky pier water. Barakuda had been hijacked and was battle station waging war on all passerby. Ice cold water being launched from water rifles. It took me almost an hour to get home as every turn was met with more lovely Thai faces pouring small amounts of water on me or rubbing my face with the water/talcum powder mixture.
Since Phi Phi has a huge water problem (at least I assume that’s why), Songkran only lasts a day. In Chang Mai, Songkran central, celebrations last for 5 days. Honestly, I can’t imagine this lasting 5 days. You can’t go two steps without getting soaked.
That evening Barakuda threw a BBQ – Lee grilled some chicken and Ruthie, Cliff, Heather and I made sides. There was a wonderful group effort potato salad lovingly concocted of potatoes, bacon and bacon drippings, garlic, egg, mayo, Dijon and wasabi. Cheesy garlic bread. Veg salad. Next BBQ I’ve decided should be New Orleans themed and Ruthie and I will make Crawfish Monica except with Shrimp instead of crawfish. With Jazz Fest right around the corner, I’m thinking that might be a good occasion for a BBQ even if only 3 of us care about Jazz Fest.
Post Songkran has been super slow. Oh and then there’s the other reasons why we’re slow. I’m fairly certain that the protests in Bangkok are affecting people’s travel plans to Thailand. And then the black cloud of ash over Europe has reduced air traffic by more than 75% and that can’t be doing us any good either.
I know that I start to sound like a broken record when I repeat myself and that you guys don’t want to read the same crap over and over again, but it has really reached levels of heat the likes us little white folk from California have probably rarely experienced and it is way too hot not to be diving. It seems like the island has suddenly come to a standstill.
I have to go see my parents and have been debating when to go. I was trying to coincide it with a visa run, but am now thinking that if it’s going to be this slow, I might as well go soon and just get a 30 day stamp in my passport upon return. Then Ryan and I can figure out what we’re doing and if we stay longer then we’ll just do a visa run together. I’d like to go back to Laos.
I never did write about our last visa run/Similans excursion. The Similans were a wonderful break. It was very nice diving but with killer currents and thermoclines. The temperature dropped all the way from 29 to 24 degrees on one dive – that’s bloody cold! I can probably best describe it simply by posting pictures. The highlights were of course being the follower and not the leader underwater, taking lots of pictures and all the new critters we saw. Whale sharks still don’t exist.
The liveaboard experience was nice. We followed this schedule: wake-up between 6:30 and 7:00 and light breakfast (piece of toast, cereal, coffee). 7:30 to 8:00 first dive. Then real breakfast generally involving eggs, pancake or French toast and the likes. Then about an hour break. Then dive 2. Then lunch. Then about an hour break then dive 3. Then a snack – usually sandwiches. Then another hour to hour and a half break. Then dusk or night dive. Then dinner. Many of those hour breaks were spent napping.
We spent two nights in Khao Lak which is essentially one street lined with restaurants, dive shops, guesthouses, 7-11’s and souvenir shops. On the outskirts are hoity toity resorts. Otherwise, it’s obvious it exists purely to service the Similans. We had one excellent but super pricey Indian meal and one decent but super cheap Thai meal.
And spent a day with our asses in a mini bus, me praying all the way to Ranong that my life wasn’t going to end with my head through the windshield. The Burma crossing was another experience in time suckage. We were picked up almost an hour later than we’d been told and winded our way up to Ranong, crossed water in a rinky-dink little ferry to the Burmese side, spent all of 5 minutes in Burma, which were sufficient to see that it is a completely difference world and then retraced our steps back to Khao Lak 1500 baht lighter apiece. What I did note was the large wad of crisp American cash that was handed over to the Burmese border officials when they stamped our passports. Ah, the all-mighty dollar!
And then we went back to Phi Phi. We got picked up from Khao Lak by a minibus at 6:20 in the morning and then there was a whole hoopla over our bags which ended up making us ten minutes late for the ferry and rewarded us with a 2 hour wait at Rassada Pier.
We arrived back on Phi Phi at 1:00 and at 1:30 I was escorting customers to Magnifica for afternoon dives.
Yesterday was my birthday, the last before a big one! It was spent doing absolutely nothing, which is how I like to spend my days off. We had sunset at Sunflower and a great Indian dinner. This morning I went for my birthday massage and learned to my great disappointment that my massage place is closing at the end of the month.
Well, that’s all the news that’s fit to print.
Peace. xoxoxo
