I LOVE Phi Phi!

 March 24, 2011

March 21

Today we had a very nice beach day. We rented chairs at the beach and spent the day out in the sun, playing in the water, eating lunch at the beachfront restaurant and reading our books. My book was very disturbing, but I'm going to recommend it as a must read anyway. It’s called "Only 13", and it’s the firsthand account of a young girl working in the sex trade in Thailand. It is very interesting and excruciatingly sad. (Perhaps people using the services of the bargirls should be required to read the book… although that probably wouldn’t stop them…)

Afterwards we went for a swim in the pool at our hotel, Steve worked out in the gym (he’s very happy to have access to a fitness center!), and we went out for a nice dinner. We also took a walk down towards the beach to see what the noisy side of the island looked like at night. There were people out drinking (you can buy a bucket in the convenience stores with a bottle of hard liquor and some mix), but it didn’t seem nearly as sleazy as Phuket. There is something quite charming about Phi Phi that really makes us both love it!

The weather has been blistering hot! Around 34 degrees and very humid! We’ve had to adjust back to wearing relatively little clothes. The sweater I took with me everywhere in Chiang Mai is hanging in the back of the closet!

Due to the hot humid weather we received my favourite kind of rainstorm late this afternoon… the tropical thunderstorm! The rain pours straight down out of nowhere… it’s excellent to watch!

Tropical rainstorm!

March 22

Steve ended up being a little sun burnt after the day at the beach yesterday, so we decided to stay out of the sun for most of today.

We started the day with a nice breakfast. The hotel has an open-air restaurant overlooking the bay, which is a pretty nice to setting to be eating breakfast in 😊

Then we decided to play a little CSB on the balcony. (Nobody became the CSB for those of you who care 😉) If you’ve ever played a game with us you know two things:

1)   We have to keep playing until Lisa wins!

2)   Steve always likes to change the rules to make things a little more interesting.

This is our balcony...where I crushed Steve in cards!

As we were playing Steve came up with an interesting new twist on the card game we invented earlier on in our trip. This rule was in honour of my dad… who liked to endlessly harass his partner when playing whist by bidding before looking at his cards or employing what he liked to call reverse psychology (calling trump based on cards he didn’t have, because surely his partner must have them then!) We called this new version of the game “Super Psyche Out Reverse Psychology CSB”. This game ended up being quite fun (it’s always fun when you are doing the psyching out… not being psyched out 😉)… and I suppose it’s only appropriate to mention that I won both games today...

The rest of the day seemed to follow the pattern of yesterday… playing in the pool, lazing about, reading, eating, watching a movie, going to the gym, and a tropical thundershower. This is definitely the life I was imagining when we started planning our year off adventure.

Steve did a little shopping and came back with these shirts...

Steve picked this shirt because it is appropriate for him...

...and decided this shirt was appropriate for me!

 

March 23

Okay, I’m going to stop keeping a daily log because the days are getting fairly repetitive. Eat, sun, walk around, read, beach, shopping at the little market stalls, CSB, pool, gym, thunderstorm… you know the drill.

Don’t worry about us if you don’t hear from us for about a week… we’re just hanging out in Phi Phi!