Coming Clean...

Koh Phi Phi Don, Thailand

January 18, 2008
N 07°44.128
E 098°46.795

Our first day on Koh Phi Phi wasn’t as perfect as I made it sound and Marc said I better come clean with the whole story. Well, since I can look back at it and laugh, I guess I will do just that.

After we checked into our room at Bayview Resorts, the same place we stayed on our last visit, we instantly noticed the picture perfect view of the bay; even better than last time. “Wow, this great,” we both exclaimed, before turning our eyes on the beds. Yes, two twin beds.

There have been several places during our trip where we have slept in twin beds, but since we were going to be staying for ten nights we decided to call the front desk and ask to change rooms, especially since our reservation guaranteed a double bed.

How should I put this gently… customer service is not a well developed skill-set in Thailand, and after being in Europe and the US for the last four months, we both got a little soft and forgot about the good ol’ days in South East Asia. They insisted there weren’t any more rooms with double beds, but we could upgrade to a higher level room.

It took a few minutes for the lady to realize we weren’t going for the upgrade, nor were we getting off the phone without yes for an answer. They miraculously found us a bungalow with a double bed just two doors down. Perfect, or so we thought…

The view from our new room was just as spectacular, but when we went into the bathroom we found a medium sized puddle of water coming from the wall. I called back this time, got the same story about no other rooms and of course we could upgrade. I politely told the young lady a leak in their bathroom is not our problem and I would expect them to upgrade us or fix it. I was assured they would send an engineer to fix the problem as soon as possible. I forgot that as soon as possible in Thailand could mean tomorrow, the next day or never.

We waited at least an hour for the engineer before we decided to go out and grab dinner. When we got back to our room we weren’t shocked to find out that the engineer never showed up. However, the puddle of water didn’t grow in size; it seemed to be evaporating nearly as quickly as it was dripping. Still grumpy from our 40 hour trip I got back on the phone and told them nobody came to our room to fix the leak… of course they would send someone shortly.

This time someone knocked on our door within five minutes, took one look at the water, and called down to the front desk. The front desk explained that the engineer couldn’t fix the leak immediately and we should change rooms (again)—they even found us another room with a double bed.

Marc thought we should stay where we were, throw a towel over the water, go to bed and not worry about the puddle. However, I wasn’t in the mood to ignore the puddle and wanted the problem to go away completely so we packed up our stuff once again and moved rooms.

The view wasn’t as spectacular in our third room and it shared a wall with an adjoining bungalow, but it didn’t have a puddle in the bathroom and had a double bed. I was satisfied until four in the morning.

At 4:00 AM a baby in the bungalow next door began to howl and didn’t stop for at least an hour. I never fell back asleep; tossing, turning, regretting my hard-headed decision of changing rooms and blamed it on karma. Marc grumbled at me, something about how much noise the small puddle of water in the bathroom was making right now, rolled over and fell back asleep. I tossed and turned trying to block out the noise.

As I laid there listening to the warbling of the brat next door, I realized getting hung up on something like a puddle of water doesn’t make me happier. I am on a beautiful island with my husband (and best friend) on the final leg of an amazing journey and I should savor every minute.

We’re back in the room with the puddle, with the great view, and a hand towel tossed on the floor soaking up the water—an engineer still hasn’t showed up to look at the leak, but why sweat the small stuff? I know I’m not.

Familiar Territory..

Koh Phi Phi Don, Thailand

January 17, 2008
N 07°44.128
E 098°46.795

A lot of people asked us why we were flying back to Thailand from San Francisco and not going from Europe. Well, our Around the World ticket required us to travel in one direction, and going back to Thailand was simply against the rules of the ticket. Instead, we used the last of my hard earned air-miles to buy our tickets from SFO to BKK; a perfect way to end our trip, on the beach… far from the freezing temperatures in Europe over the past three months!

Our travel days over the two weeks were meticulously planned. We arrived in Washington D.C. just ten days ago. We then spent a couple nights in NYC and then flew to San Francisco; all fairly easy segments. However, getting from San Francisco to the island of Ko Phi Phi had a lot more moving parts.

We flew out of SFO on January 15^th and arrived in Bangkok on January 17^th at 12: 15 AM. We slept for a few hours at the airport hotel in BKK and then hopped on a flight to the small town of Krabi, in southern Thailand, at 9:45 AM. After we arrived in Krabi we took a bus to a ferry and arrived to Koh Phi Phi after a 1 ½ hour cruise. Amazingly, all the pieces fit together and we arrived at our bungalow a mere 40 hours after our departure from SFO. Everything went very well along the way, but there were a couple of tired, hungry people—us!

The island has changed in the five months since we were last here. There are a few new beachside bars and bungalows; however, the numerous barges, bags of concrete and ongoing construction to re-build after the tsunami still remain.

After we made our way from the dock, navigated our way through the construction debris and past new bars, the serene environment quickly reminded us why we came back to Koh Phi Phi Don.

It is a perfect place to decompress, think about our futures and enjoy the last two weeks of our amazing journey.

Coming in for a Landing...

New York City, New York --
San Francisco, CA USA

January 14, 2008

After watching Bret Favre and his Green Bay Packers dismantle the Seattle Seahawks on the Times Square JumboTron we decided to check out the news and the weather for the following day. The big story was the upcoming snow storm that was bearing down on the east coast and dumping 4”-8” of snow by Monday morning—the commute would be a mess and the airports messier. We brushed-it-off, at first, but the more the local weather forcasters talked about it, combined with my history at JFK, we decided to call the airlines and see if we could change our flight. Since we have another flight on Tuesday morning, pre-paid hotel reservations and the island of Koh Phi Phi calling our names, we didn’t want to miss our flight out of New York on Monday and create a domino effect on the final two weeks of our journey.

It was 11:00 PM when I called United Airlines. They could get us on an 11:00 AM flight out of JFK the following day. We jumped out of bed, packed our clothes, and instead of spending another day exploring New York; we would be on our way to San Francisco.

Since I mentioned it, I guess I better come clean. My history at JFK is horrendous. I try to avoid JFK at all costs. At one point I think I missed three straight flights, came close to missing another two and have sat on the tarmac as the snow came down. Marc was used to the panic call during my trips through JFK with my voice quivering, telling him I was going to miss my flight. With this in mind, we didn’t want to take any chances.

It was strange being back in San Francisco, especially for such a short period of time, but it was even more bizarre being back in our place. We walked into our home, but it didn’t really look like our home. We unpacked our stuff, almost like we were in a hotel, and basically moved back in. It was strange washing clothes and putting them away in drawers instead of in our backpacks.

Today was only a small taste of life back in the real world; a life of laundry, cleaning and being responsible. I think we’re ready to get back, but we are both pretty sure we’ll miss it after a few months.

The City is Calling Our Names...

New York, NY, USA

January 12, 2008

Marc claims New York City is the center of the universe as we know it. The world looks to New York for finance, fashion, cuisine, theatre, music, and politics. It’s a true melting pot of humanity; it symbolizes what the United States is all about. There are all walks of life on roaming the streets. Hundreds of languages are spoken; some only understood by the people speaking them. Although we live in San Francisco and feel like it’s a big city, the island of Manhattan alone has 10 times the population. It’s big, not just big it’s freakin’ huge!

We always knew NYC would be on our itinerary, we simply love it. There’s so much happening as you walk through the streets. People exercising, brunching, drinking, screaming, honking, running, loitering, and, overall, enjoying life. If the winters weren’t so bitter and the summers so oppressive, we might be able to live in NY.

We checked into the Marriott Marquis on Times Square; using the last of our Marriott reward points for two free nights. We schmoozed with the guys at the front desk and they were nice enough to upgrade us to a room with a view of Times Square. From our room we looked down in awe at the cornucopia of excitement; swarms of taxis, hordes of pedestrians, massive TV screens, flashing lights, office buildings, advertising and marketing gone mad.

When we were finally able to pull ourselves away from the hypnotic dance of humanity and lights we went downstairs. We could hear New York calling… it was time to answer and dive in.