Another weekend of Leisure

Thursday was our last night with Lila, so we headed to the Sky Bar on the 64th floor on top of the State Tower, with great cocktails and the best view in Bangkok. From their open air deck, ringed with leather couch seating, we chatted the night away surrounded by stars, fireworks and millions of lights in the city below.

Friday morning, Steve (aka 'Monk'), Erica, Alicia and I boarded a bus for Koh Chang, Thailand's second biggest island. A an hour taxi ride, five hour bus ride, 40 minute ferry ride and two 30 minute santheaw taxi rides later, we arrived at Lonely Beach (Tah Nam Beach) on the West Coast of Koh Chang. Since Alicia had been to Koh Chang a month before, we simply had to follow her around, no questions asked. Alicia is my kind of traveler and brought us to these really basic huts (mattress on the floor with a mosquito net and no roof on the bathroom) while Monk headed for the neighboring resort complete with king sized bed, a/c, cable, dvd, swimming pool with stone fountains; giving us the advantage of cheap accommodation with a great pool to lounge by and a comfy air-conditioned room to cool off in. We spent our time divided between the beach, the pool and the 'Tree House,' a restaurant comprised of a rickety looking wooden platform on stilts over the water adorned with your standard Thai tables and pillows.

Saturday was spent lounging on the beach and by the pool, eating tasty Thai food. Saturday night we went back to the Tree House and wound up being led by the resident 11- year-old to the dance floor where we spent hours dancing with some very interesting characters (pictures to come).

Sunday, while Monk, Alicia and Erica enjoyed the beach, I spent the day holed up with a severe case of "I slept in my contacts and now I can't see" in Monk's incredibly comfy king sized bed with the a/c down to about 19. A waste of a day, but an enjoyable waste. I did manage to listen to a really interesting documentary on maternal health in Afghanistan on BBC newsapparentlyly one out of three women in rural areas dies from complications, often because they cannot get permission from their husbands to leave the village. NGO's there are training 22 women from 22 different rural areas to be midwives).

Monday we spent about 5 hours lounging and another 12 traveling back to Bangkok on various modes of transportation that seemed to have every intention except to get us where we were going (the taxi that stopped to load more passengers every 5 minuteeven thoughgh we were quite beyond capacity; the one ferry that we missed and the other that backed up to picup morere passengers; and the bus that broke down ithe middle of the interstate 30 minutes before we reached our destination).

We made it home at 11:00 p.m. on Monday night, happy to be home, but feeling that our island getaway was well worth the trip.