I’m home!

Well, I finally made it back.  It feels kind of surreal!

To fill in, Petrie arrived and we proceeded to have an absolutely awesome time.  We hit the beach first thing after checking into our beautiful hotel, with a private entrance to the pool (literally, hop off the balcony and you’re in the pool).  We enjoyed the sun and the sea, and made the day fantastic by going PARASAILING!  This was just about the coolest thing ever.  We decided to do it, and I was up first.  I wasn’t nervous until they had me hooked up and were like, “Okay, now you have to run when we tell you to run.”  I turned to Petrie and told her that if I plummeted to my death she should make sure they used a good picture of me on the news.  But, it turned out there was no need – it was awesome!!!  The boat starts going, and you run, and the wind catches you, and before you know it you’ve been swept up into the air and you’re staring down at the gorgeous beach and all the teensy little people along it!  It was so exciting that I actually forgot to breathe until I was up in the air and remembered, and just took these big gasping breaths – it was just so beautiful!  It was definitely a rush.  Halfway through my ride he slowed down so that I floated downwards and touched the water, then zoomed away so I floated back up again.  It was SO WORTH it, and I’m so glad that we both did it!  Petrie managed to even wave at people, but since they had told us to hang on tight when we went up, I was a little bit scared to let go, so no waving for me.  But it was absolutely fantastic!!

We capped off the day with a massage on the beach, which sounds really cool, but there was actually just a lot of sand that kept getting rubbed into my sunburn, which I had by this time acquired.  We decided to walk back to the hotel, and of course went the wrong way, but that was okay because we had so much to talk about, and it ended up being a little detour to show Petrie a bit of Thailand away from the  main tourist strip.  We made it back to our hotel, and after a dip in the gorgeous pool, got ourselves cleaned up and headed out to dinner.  We chose a really beautiful restaurant and had some delicious Thai food, which I will actually miss quite a bit.  We also got fancy-pants drinks, and Petrie’s came in a coconut!  When we could eat no more, we rolled home to our hotel.

The fun thing was, there was live music going on in our hotel, and even though we were exhausted from our long day on the beach (and the fact that Petrie had woken up around 4 that morning to get to Phuket), we decided to stop and listen for a while.  They were this cute Filipino duo, and they had this hilarious friendly banter with each other and the (small) audience.  When we walked over to sit down, they decided that we were movie stars from America, for whatever reason, and called us Brooke Shields (me) and a younger and more beautiful SJP (Christine) which, what??  But okay.  Anyway, they were actually pretty good, and on their break, they came by to say hello!  Unfortunately we didn’t catch the woman’s name, but the male half of the duo was named Joemar.  As in, one of his parents wanted to name him Joe, and the other wanted to name him March, after the month in which he was born, so they compromised and named him Joemar.  I am so not kidding about this.  They chatted with us for quite a while, and when they heard that Petrie was a singer, insisted that she come up and sing with them!  Of course, this inevitably led to me joining them too, and I think that they were astonished that we could actually sing, and weren’t just bluffing.  So, we ended up singing at a hotel in Thailand.  It was actually really fun, but we were exhausted, and it was only when I had started yawning copiously that they allowed us to leave to go to bed.  All in all, a great day!

We spent day #2 on the beach, and it went by way too fast.  After our beach day, we stopped in for a quick massage on the way home – there are so many places to choose from, how did we make our decision?  Well, one of the ladies in front of this one was holding a pom-pom, which we figured was good enough for us. 🙂  This one was much better than the previous day’s, so we were sad when we had to book it back to the hotel to get ready to make our plane.  We made it to Bangkok, and stayed in the nicest Best Western I’ve ever seen, but for too short- we had to get up at 3 for our flight!  And one six-hour plane ride later, we were in Tokyo, and saying goodbye.

So now I’m home, and I can’t believe it’s over!!  I have to admit, it is not so much fun to come home to really cold weather and it getting dark at 4:30pm, but mostly I was just so excited to be back, it didn’t matter.  Dave came to get me at the airport, and I was practically jumping up and down with excitement on the shuttle from the terminal. 🙂

When I finally get my pictures loaded up and everything, I’ll post a link.

Thanks to everyone who’s followed along with my adventure and posted wonderful comments – it’s been really fun!

For now, Happy New Year, everyone!!!