This actually went down July 8, 2006, but I wanted to add it to my blog for selfish purposes.

We're sitting at the airport waiting for our next flight to Phuket, a beach city. I can't wait to lay on the beach and have nothing planned. I think we've got a session of snorkeling planned somewhere, I can't remember when or which day. We ended up booking a tour, and we just flew north to a city called Chiang Mai. We rode elephants (not the glamorous, slide-down-his-trunk, play in the river together extravaganza I had in mind, more of a scared for my life, this metal bar is brusing my spine, our elephant's grumpy, one hour ride), visited a local village where I bought this amazing blanket that had taken the lady three weeks to make, I could cry about it, hiked to a waterfall, my camera's battery died, no more pics, I'll have to rely on the others', watched people fall down because it was so slippery, got yelled at by the tour guide because I was jumping from rock to rock while people were gingerly petering their way around all around me, I wasn't "being careful enough", slid down the waterfall on my bum, wanted to hike to a different part of the waterfall and belly down it, but the tour guide wouldn't let me, even though boys were doing it, saw ginormous spiders, floated down the river on a bamboo raft. I pulled an Andrea-in-Bear-Lake and fell off, but didn't really fall off. Becca and I actually did that a couple of times. We had to get out and walk when we came to a waterfall. Our tour guide told us that there are crocodiles in the river, my eyes got huge, my stomach ran away, but turns out he was totally kidding us. I still was wary though, and maybe a little sad that I wouldn't get to see them. But once we were practically sitting in the river, but still on the raft, man I was glad I didn't have to worry about getting my leg death-rolled off. Our tour guide's name was James, and he whipped out idiom after idiom, at first it was funny, then slightly annoying. He had some naughty ones, and he kept telling us that everybody had crushes on us, he did, the elephants did, the driver did ... He asked me if I wanted to learn Thai fighting, "I see you have muscles," as he strokes my arm, "you want to learn? Be a good fighter?" I told him I only fight my brothers, and he asked me how many times I had knocked them out.

We got a two hour Thai massage last night. Not too excited for it when we signed up, but I've got to roll with the group, and at first I was thinking, "I guess this is alright," then it evolved into amazement. It was so so great. We all decided that we'd have to sign up for another one. Becca said that you're not completely relaxed unless you pass gas without warning, guess I wasn't "that" relaxed.

Anyway, I'm doing great, just wasting time. It was so funny this morning, while we waited for our flight to Bangkok we watched people get ready to board, and they had to walk through this little walkway. Well the walkway had a tiny bump, but it was enough to send people supermanning it through the doorway. We sat with our arms crossed and laughed and laughed as passenger after passenger stumbled because they didn't see the incline. The boy in front of us was watching too, he was a little more discrete, his body would move as he laughed, but we were full-on busting up. Then later as we got off the plane when we arrived in Bangkok a passenger pulled this huge plant/stick thing out of the over head compartment and conked that same laughing-boy right in the back of the head. Becca and I laughed pretty hard.
We're off to Phuket to beach it up, I'll continue scouting out internet services.
Sending my love down the well.