Back from the Beach

After 6 days of being a beach bum I am back to reality. Well, kind of, anyway! The past 4 days have been spent in places with no roads so it's culture shock being among the cars again! The past 2 days we were living in a bamboo and grass hut on the hillside overlooking the ocean! Heaven! No wifi so no posts. Now we are in Phuket and back to technology, running water, air con, etc. It's great to feel clean and get the salt out of my hair, but I really prefer the roughing it on the beach...I'm just that kinda girl, I guess! Tomorrow we fly north to Chang Mai and the Loy Krathong festival which should be amazing. (more on that later) For now I will just post a few shots from the past couple of days on Ko Phi Phi:

Mark relaxing on the veranda of our hut in Ko Phi Phi.

The view from our hut. Notice how high we are! I am paranoid of tsunamis so requested an upper level one. Didn't know they were going to put us WAY up there, but hey, it was good exercise hiking up there a few times a day! Ko Phi Phi is one of the places most devastated by the Tsunami in 2004. The main town here was just wiped out. It has since been rebuilt and other than a memorial, you would not know they had experienced a devastating tsunami a few years ago.

The beach this morning. The weather has just cleared today and seems more settled now. I have had a few texts from people asking whether we had any effects from the typhoon in the Philippines. I didn't even know it happened until I heard from home about it! Nothing in the headlines of the papers here! (the English ones anyway!)The weather HAS been very unsettled and we have had some very heavy rain and strong winds, and a couple of VERY violent thunder storms.

One last shot of me and my new friend on the beach. He was my companion for much of my stay there. Oddly he has the same markings as Opal, my foster cat at home. I have seen a lot of cats in my day, and I have never seen these unique markings before I fostered Opal. Very odd that I have now encountered another cat with this "white on the underside, black on the outer coat" type fur. Maybe Opal is from Thailand!