Scubaaaa

We went diving this morning and it was awesome (except for the getting up early part)! It was so cheap compared to Australia. Two, one hour dives was only about $75 and one of the guys that took us out said that this is one of the more expensive places in Thailand, wow!

Katy and I had our own instructor and he was really patient. This time was even easier than last time. The only problem on the trip was that I didn't take an sea-sick medicine and almost threw up before the first dive. We got in the water JUST in time.

On the first dive we saw puffer fish, an eel, a sea snake, tons of fish and an octopus! The octopus was really cool. It moved around a lot and changed colors. The second dive was in a different location and that time we saw a cuddle fish that changed colors and two sea turtles! I was surprised how many different things we saw here than in Australia. The coral was a lot different and I feel like we saw a bigger variety of animals. It was a great trip!

The dive sites were close to the island so we got back quite early, spent some time at the pool and then I got a Thai massage. The massage was more like half yoga/half massage. She popped, stretched, twisted, and cracked me for an hour. Not exactly relaxing, but still good.

One of the restaurants shows free movies every night so we might do that a little later. After that, early bed...I'm excited about my cooking class tomorrow!

Ko Phi Phi

This blog is mostly for pictures but I'll do a quick recap of my day. Katy and I got breakfast and then went to sign up for scuba diving tomorrow. Diving here is SO cheap compared to Australia. I hope they baby-step me into the water again so I'm able to do it. They said there's a 95% chance of seeing a shark so I don't want to miss that!

We went to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. It's so unreal that it's not really worth describing...best to just look at the pictures. They make fresh fruit shakes on the beach and today I had a mango one. So good! After the beach I went back to the place we got pedicures yesterday and got a body scrub. The lady scrubbed me for a full HOUR!! I thought I would have no skin left, but I do and it's super smooth. I think tomorrow I'll get a massage after all that rigorous scuba diving.

Then we had more delicious Thai food for dinner and that's about it! Oh, I also signed up for a Thai cooking class day after tomorrow so hopefully I'll be a master at Thai food when I get home.

Not Coming Home

Jaisalmer blog later...

Now, Thailand! aka the best place ever. The overnight flight here sucked. I had trouble sleeping on the plane. But we got here OK and spent our first night in Phuket before we took the boat out to the islands. I don't know if it's because we came from India where it's 24/7 chaos (mostly in a good way), but Thailand seems so relaxing! It's clean and quiet and we had no trouble finding where we needed to go. We checked into our hotel (which cost about $10 each!) did some shopping around town.

Then, we found the best place ever for dinner. We were so caught up with how cheap everything was that we ordered half the menu. I had a pineapple daiquiri, organic crab salad with creamy balsamic dressing, steamed sea bass, a glass of wine and Katy and I shared mango creme brulee and coconut custard for dessert...and all of that was under $30!! All SO good! It was a really good meal, but I think it was even better after 2 weeks of heavy Indian food. I've been wanting a light meal so bad but you just can't find it in Indian. And as much as I love Indian food, it got to be too heavy after awhile. Not that our dinner was particularly "light" with all the food we ordered, but it was an improvement. The restaurant also was decorated well and the bathroom smelled like flowers and heaven.

Today we got breakfast and then took the ferry to Ko Phi Phi Island. I'm sorry, but I'm going to stay here forever. The town is so cute, everyone is so nice, everything involves coconut, the beaches are amazing, my villa has HBO, the food is amazing (and cheap) and you can get an hour massage for about $4. WHY would I leave? I don't even need to write blogs while I'm here because I have a feeling every day will go something like this: sleep in, go lay on an amazing beach, eat some fresh pineapple on a stick, lay on the beach some more, eat delicious thai food, get a massage or body scrub, rest, eat more delicious thai food, maybe drink some delicious thai beer, go to sleep. NEVER LEAVING!!

Oh, but good thing the nice woman giving me my $5 pedicure today told us that they're testing the Tsunami alarm in the morning. That would have FREAKED me out!

Maybe I'll write blogs while I'm here, maybe not. I may be too busy getting pampered in various ways, laying out, and eating. Sorry Jackie, but you might have one fat bridesmaid in September...IF I come home.

Last India Blog...Jaisalmer

Jaisalmer was the last stop and most western city on our tour. Our camel safari was first and we did that about 30 km west of Jaisalmer in a small village called Khuri. Our “hotel” was just a small collection of huts and we were told that we had a choice of sleeping in one of those, or sleeping in a tent in the desert. Ummm, neither? If we picked sleeping in the desert, we would have to come back for dinner and then go out again on the camels. We didn’t know how long it would be before riding a camel got old, so we said we would decide when we got back from our first ride.

All the camels were saddled up and sitting down waiting for us. Camels look really weird when they’re sitting down…they have reverse elbows. Katy and I each had our own camel and our own little boy who pulled the camel along. Child cruelty? Animal cruelty? Not sure, but probably both.

So, off we went into the desert. Not very far into it we decided that 3 hours on a camel would be plenty of time. They led us out to the sand dunes where we were supposed to watch the sunset. Well, no one told us that if you get to the dunes early, you have to sit there and wait for the sunset with the sand blowing in your face. Good thing I brought a scarf because I wrapped it all the way around my head while we waited. It turned out to be cloudy, so we told our little boys we wanted to go back early.

They had dinner waiting for us when we got back and then we went to bed in our hut with no AC. It was hot in our mud hut and we didn’t sleep very well. We got up early and made Rajeev take us to our air conditioned hotel in Jaisalmer right away. After we checked in and cooled off, we went to get massages. Apparently Katy and I unknowingly signed up for a couples massage because they put us side by side in the same room, haha.

We went shopping for the rest of the afternoon and then Rajeev took us to dinner with a Swiss couple and their driver who were with the same tour company. Rajeev showed us a picture of his wife and then a picture of his girlfriend. He even paid for our dinner. He said we were nice people to drive around so he wanted to treat us.

The next day we took a tour of the Jaisalmer Fort. It looks like a giant sand castle and half the town actually lives inside the fort. After that we went to Elizabeth’s friend Shakar’s store to do some last minute shopping before we got on the train to Delhi. Shankar insisted on having us over for lunch, so we went to his house and his wife cooked for us.

Then it was time to take the 19 hour train back to Delhi. Katy and I each had a bunk bed. I slept most of the way and the ride wasn’t that bad. The only bad thing was that we got off in Old Delhi instead of New Delhi. And that day there happened to be a taxi strike so we had to take the metro to New Delhi and then get an auto rickshaw to take us to our hotel…meanwhile carrying all our bags. It was AWFUL.

Our last day in India we did some last minute shopping and ordered room service before our flight. India was super chaotic and crazy but still awesome. I’m really glad I went, but I’m also glad I’m not there anymore:)

Jodhpur

The nice thing about having a driver is that you can tell him what time you want to wake up in the morning and you don’t have to worry about him leaving without you. We left for Jodhpur around 10 that morning and it took about 6 hours. On the way we saw the people walking to Jaisalmer again, but at one point there were hundreds of shoes along the side of the road. Rajeev said that when they reached a certain distance from the temple, they had to take their shoes off. I didn’t think walking that far could get any worse but apparently it can.

When we got there, Rajeev took us to buy spices. The girl who worked there let us smell all of them and did a saffron demonstration. She told us that when you buy saffron in the markets, a lot of times it’s really shreds of newspaper that they dyed to look like saffron. Gross! We bought some spices from her but she had to add ingredient lists to them in order for us to take them through Australia, so she told us she would have our bodyguard pick them up for us later. What? Bodyguard? Ohhh, Rajeev. Haha. We never really thought of him as our bodyguard but I guess he is in a way.

It was pretty late in the afternoon after we finished smelling spices so we went back to our hotel to rest. Later we had dinner on the rooftop restaurant which had a great view of the fort and the city.

In the morning, Rajeev showed us the way to Mehrangarh Fort and we walked up to the top. That was the first place where people really seemed notice us a lot. They either stared, took pictures of us, or wanted to take pictures with us like when I was in China. We don’t know for sure, but we’re guessing that it was the people who were walking along the side of the road and they stopped to see the Fort along the way. Maybe they were from smaller villages and not as used to seeing tourists.

The fort was one of the only monument-type things to see in Jodhpur so we went back to the hotel. I decided to get an Ayurvedic massage before dinner which is an Indian type of massage. It was really relaxing and very cheap.

That night we had dinner on the roof again and watched some kids fly kites. We went to bed early because we had to get up early in time to make it to Jaisalmer for our camel safari.

Udaipur

The next day we drove to Udaipur in the morning which took about 6 hours I think. We’ve had some really long drives but it never seems like that. Looking out the window here is never boring. And we got a flat tire along the way but Rajeev changed it quickly.

Rajeev told us Udaipur is the place to buy a saree, so he took us to a store so Katy could pick one out. She picked teal, of course, and they would make it and drop it off at our hotel the next day.

When we came out of the store, Rajeev ran into his cousin Jagdish who said that his wife could do henna for us if we wanted to come over to his house. He asked where we were from, we said US and of course he said, “ohhhhh Obama.” Yes, Obama. Then he asked, “Is he American or foreigner?” And we were like, “What? What is he talking about?” We told him Obama is American. He seemed confused and said, “Then why is his skin dark?” (*If you’re from Africa, then why are you white?*) We tried being PC and explaining to him that Obama is half African-American but he didn’t understand what that meant so we said he’s half black and he knew what that meant…but he was still confused as to why he’s president. Weird conversation.

We went back to Jagdish’s house and met his wife and two sons. His wife didn’t look too excited to be doing henna for us. It seemed like it was something he volunteered her to do rather than ask her. Their house was tiny, only a small kitchen and one bedroom, and it looked like they didn’t have much, but he still invited us to stay for dinner. Our henna ended up taking almost 3 hours so we decided that we would come back for dinner the next night. I actually didn’t really like my henna, I liked Katy’s better. It was like she did the wrong design on each of us. Katy’s was more flowery, like I wanted, and mine was more geometric. It was still very well done, just not really what I had in mind. When she was done, Rajeev took us back to our hotel and we had dinner on the roof.

On our second day in Udaipur, Rajeev pointed us in the right direction and we walked to look at some of the sights in the city. Udaipur has a City Palace too, so we took a tour of that, which took up most of the morning. More ornate carvings and fancy palace things. Udaipur also has a palace out in the middle of the lake that looks like it’s floating. Part of it is a hotel now, but it’s really expensive to stay there.

We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake palace and then met up with Rajeev at 3. He took us to a craft village to see how people outside the cities live. It would have been interesting, but it was about 1000 degrees outside and our guide was about as interesting as the cow dung that the huts he was showing us were made out of.

When that was finally over, Rajeev took us back to the hotel to rest and wait for Katy’s saree to be delivered. Jagdish volunteered his wife (again) to teach Katy how to wear it. Rajeev took us to meet Jagdish near his house. Since some of the streets near his house are too narrow to drive a car on, Jagdish took us the rest of the way on his motorcycle. I see entire families, including newborn babies, on motorcycles here every day and I like to think I’m tougher than a newborn baby most of the time, so I thought, why not. We weren’t going on the highway or anything so we wouldn’t be going fast. I’m not sure why, but Rajeev didn’t come with us to dinner.

Before dinner, Jagdish’s wife showed Katy how to wear her saree, and she even gave her a bindi and put lipstick on her. She looked pretty authentically Indian. They only had two rooms in their house, so we ate in their bedroom…no table. The food was really good and we could tell they went out of their way to get special things for us. It was also a lot different than the Indian food we’d been having at restaurants, but still very good. She made rice with a bunch of spices in it, chipati, and potatoes, and then she got some Indian sweets from the market. Indian desserts are SO sweet, almost too sweet. It’s usually some sort of fried dough soaked in sugar syrup. They’re good but there’s no way you can eat more than one.

After dinner, Jagdish took us back to our hotel on his motorcycle. It was really nice of them to have us over, especially since they had just met us and don’t have much money. Everyone we’ve met has been willing to share what they have, even if it’s very little.