"Sweet Room"

After a long journey, we are finally in the "chill out time" of our trip. If you're wondering why I am using terms like "sweet room" and "chill out time," it's because they are just a couple of the funny translations and advertisements we've seen so far.

As the plane descended into Singapore, the captain announced the date. It came as a surprise to us that an entire extra day had passed; we forgot to account for the fact that we had travelled twelve hours into the future! So, that night in the hostel we had booked for August 6th wasn't all that helpful. Thankfully, though, they didn't end up charging us for the room that night. The missed night did mean, however, that we had to leave Singapore the day after we got there . . . at 5:00 AM. Lots of travel.

We arrived in Phuket, Thailand yesterday at around 10 AM and took a bus directly to the pier where we waited for the next 3 hours for our ferry to Ko phi phi, the most beautiful beach either of us had ever been to. There is a narrow strip of land with pristine beach on either side connecting a wall of palm-covered mountains that protect the calm waters within the bay. We'll upload some pictures because you just can't put into words how beautiful the place is. We decided that we could cut some of our budget in places like Bangkok and Cambodia and really decided to splurge. We got a really nice 60 dollar-a-night room that overlooks both sides of the bay; this is the "sweet room" mentioned in the subject-line--I guess they meant suite! Margaret, not exactly the rugged backpacker type, is much happier in the luxury accomodations than she was at "Cozy Corner Guesthouse."

Dinners are 12 dollars a night and there are plenty of things to do like renting kayaks (6 dollars), getting massages (15 dollars for two of us for two hours). We have renting kayaks and going to monkey beach where you can feed monkeys and snorkel all day on tap for tomorrow!