Patong Beach

beautiful

creepy kitty eyes

hahahahahahah, YES! I got to hold him. Then the guy took my picture, and tried to get money from me. Heck no, 3oo baht for a polaroid? You are crazy. And we walked away with this picture from my camera before he knew it. I want one.
In Saigon Airport, the onlky place where Lucas could find a drink. How much was it you ask? 1 USD? 2? NO, he paid 3 USD for a can of Sprite. It was good though.

Oh my goodness. This situation in Bangkok is a little unnerving. We're currently on Phuket island, and are not going to attempt to make our way up to Bangkok for about a week. I'm just hoping that this situation is resolved so we are able to fly out of the country...not that I want to leave. But I don't know what to do about this ticket I have, or where to go for information. There is a man beside me trying to talk to whoever sold him his ticket to get home, trying to change it to fly out of Phuket, to any country that will fly him home (I'm definately eavesdropping), but he's having A LOT of problems. We are watching BBC and Aljezeera News every chance we get to see what new is happening. For the time being, we are okay, and heading to Phuket Town tomorrow for a couple nights. We're not sure if we are going to go to Krabi first, then Phi Phi (Phi Phi is smack in the middle of Krabi and Phuket). We need to figure out in the next few though because we are going to book a hotel for Phi Phi at least.

We left Ho chi Minh City with a little bit of a drawback. Lucas had bought a souvenier at Cu Chi Tunnels, a plane made from old bullets, and they held it in security, called us back, and then took it from him. I can see why, but why would you sell that to the tourists, if you're going to have it taken away in the first place? Also, Lucas didn't have his "departure card" for the Vietnam customs. He threw it away. I was going to throw mine away too, I didn't know that we had to keep it, no one told us anything. But I tucked it away to do outside of the country. Lucky me! So Lucas was sweating a little, until I went up to one of the immigration officers. We got things sorted, but in midsts of everything, they were harrasing Lucas a lot about marrying me. It was pretty funny. One guy asked me if he was my husband, I said no, then he said "I assume you are of age". Yeah, like that. And I said of course, so then he was all on Luc's case the entire time we were trying to get Luc on the other side of the desk.

I got my first sunburn today! It was sunny, and really really hot for the morning at least. It was nice knowing we weren't going to have to switch hotels (which we did yesterday cuase the first one was not for us). So we just spent the day at the beach. It was fantastic. We ate at a restaurant that has it's tables in the sand, and we went right in time because there was a quick shower, so we huddled under our umbrella. I don't think I've seen so many topless women in one place as I have today on the beach. And why, might I ask you, are they all so OLD? There were no young people sunbathing topless, no I think you had to be a part of the 55+ club for that. We bought a Thailand guidebook for more informationt than our one on SE Asia could, and those topless ladies are committing a Thailand faux pas! You can also tell who is European and who is not because of the choice in swimsuits: banana hammocks vs. swim shorts. I'm all for the swim shorts, thank you.

Patong is definately a party town. At night, it comes alive with it's million bars, go go ladies and lady boys. Then you see the sunburnt tourists buying into the goods being sold on the street (I for one am one of the, I admit). I find it interesting to see all the signs designating at tsunami evacutation route. I was trying to figure out where they go, but they don't see to be useful as many of the signs point you to go parallel with the beach. I would think you would want to be as far from it as possible when the time comes? But that's just me. Thailand also has cats with the freakiest eyes. I cannot turn away from a cat, but sometimes, it's like they are going to give me night mares!

We'll do our best to keep in touch, these computers are pretty old and rickety. They have trouble with simple things. We're keeping an eye on the news, but hopefully this will clear up soon. We miss everyone and are looking forward to being home in a couple weeks!

This is a video of the traffic in Saigon. I could feel the pollution in my lungs from breathing it in for a week. It was like this in Hanoi too.