THAILAND:I am in Heaven:)

Right now, I think that I may have died AND gone to HEAVEN:)

I am experiencing decadence:)) A steaming hot bath in the perfect Thai hotel!!

All the children are out of the room and I feel peace almost ZENLIKE! This is my first bath since we left South Africa 27th August 2010 and today is the 12th Dec!



We are so sad...Charl and Darren are leaving us tomorrow! This morning we all packed. I squeezed a few extra kilos of excess clothes into their luggage as I brought toooo many clothes on the yacht! Not once have I needed all the jeans, jackets and jerseys that I packed!

It has been wonderful having them with us! We have laughed so much and just had lots of fun!

Charl having a dance at the Hotel

In a few weeks the Palmers are joining us for the New Year! Lucky lucky us:) I could not ask for a nicer family to sail with us:) We are going to sail around Phuket with them.



We are staying for 2 nights  at this hotel. I can feel we are in Thailand as our rooms are very zenlike. The boys are staying with Charl in a unit next to us. Right now they are swimming in the maze of a pool downstairs. Cody just came up just now. He was quite upset as he had dived over enthusiastically into the pool and it was really really shallow. He hit his  head on the bottom of the pool...

Tonight is our BIG NIGHT:) We are supposed to be going out without the children. In Patong where we are staying while our yacht is anchored in the middle of Au Chalong bay, there is the infamous party street that our Crew had told us sooo much about. It is called Bungalow road ( i think:) )Apparently the women are beautiful (according to Travis:) ) and they all try and pull the men into their bars and seduce them.

I am a bit apprehensive that I may get lost again like in Lipe Street on one of the other islands we had been to recently.

 Or worse-Brent gets lost:( :)



Brent at Patong Beach

Wow- time is flying again...16/12 already. Charl and Darren flew back home yesterday. As usual- saying goodbye was very sad. We have to get used to having loved ones and friends come and go.We just so lucky to have them around....and then poof they are gone and the boat feels so quiet and empty again....And then the work starts again.  Scrubbing nooks and crannies and decks and EVERYTHING:) and of course poor Brent has to start his lists of REPAIRS... they are neverending.- the generator, the radar,the icemaker, the fridges, the microwave... and now after smelling an awful sulphuric acid or rotten egg  smell. ( and I checked our supply of eggs to be sure), a battery too needs to be checked.

The speedboats roaring past us in 1.5m of water.

Today we arrived at Boat Lagoon in Phuket. We sailed out of Au Chalong bay early this morning and then dropped anchor in 8m off an island to wait for the incoming tide that would apparently allow us to enter Boat Lagoon Marina.

 We got back to Micah yesterday after saying goodbye to Charl and Darren at the hotel as they caught their taxi to the hotel. On the spur of the moment, Brent decided to pick up anchor and head out to sea but it was already 5.30pm and eventhough it was apparently only a 2 hour sail to this marina, it meant that we would be arriving in the dark-NEVER a good thing as we have learnt through experience:)

All I can say is THANK-GOODNESS  Brent changed his mind and we turned Micah around and sailed back to our original anchorage for the night.

Speedboats roaring in to overtake us in a metre of muddy water!

If you could have seen the way we had to go to get here. First, we motored across a huge bay. We were sailing across the middle if the bay and it was very shallow. I noticed that there were a lot of speedboats using specific routes heading in the direction we were going. Through the binocs I noticed that there were a long row of beacons in the water. So, before we ran aground, we changed course and followed the beacons closely. It was frighteningly shallow!!! It looked like we were sailing in MUD! The absolute shallowest Micah should sail in is 1.5metres. At one point, it seemed like we were in under a metre of water!!!! We could actually hear the keel sliding on the bottom! It was horrible!

 It seems that boats can only enter this marina or the Royal Phuket marina, on the high incoming tide and one has to wind along through a mangrove swamp with a speed limit displayed on boards of 5 knots down to 3 on the corner. When I saw the stream of large speedboats roaring one behind the other in our direction, i started to break out in a sweat. They over took us on the bend in the 3 knot speed limit area, and they were flying!!!

Apparently they have to so that they don't get stuck in the mud!! We inched our way along...waiting for the grinding sound of running aground in the mud... And then suddenly from feeling like we were out in the middle of the wild mangrove swamps, we burst into a thriving marina jammed with expensive boats.

On inspection, this appears to be the place where all boats get repairs done and by the number of boats here-there are a lot of boats in need of repairs:))

 I have found a serene restaurant on the wharf with internet. Yup- we are eating again... this adventure is definitely the sequal to EAT!PRAY!LOVE! with emphasis on eating:) My title will have AND HOMESCHOOLING  added to it:) Lots and lots of pressure in this department with the principle  wrapping the  teacher on the knuckles for not reaching successfully  the whole years syllabus thoroughly enough in half a year:)!:(

I forgot to write about the rest of our supposed night out in Patong!

 Well, Caden fell apart that we were going to leave him at the hotel.

 Eventually we had to take the whole family with. We went for dinner.

We started off at the hotel with drinks and the Gay waiters flirted outrageously with Darren:) He was such a good sport about it!

It appears that in Thailand most of the waitresses are men dressed as ladies -ladyboys-or just plain gay men! They danced with Charl and tried to seduce poor Cody who kept slapping his chest and saying -no me boy!! Cody got such a complex that i took him to the barber and had his long hair cut:)

We then caught one of the popular TucTucs here-little colourful open taxis that zoot the tourists all over town. We loved them:)

We arrived at Bungalow street and Brent took turns taking the children and Charl and I down the road to see what all the fuss was about.

The ladies of the night at Bangla Street:)

Well I am sure Brent may have his own opinion but I found it to be very sad. I suppose it depends how much you have had to drink and if you are single or not. Travis and Vince thought this road was amazing!

It is a road bursting at the seams with the tiniest,shortest, tightest dresses and skirts and shorts...and the highest heels. To the average man- this probably sounds like heaven:) But the challenge here is to try and decipher if those beautiful long brown legs and high cheekbones are male or female!!!



The images that come to mind for me :

No-one really stands out as really beautiful. Just young chattering giggling  Thai girls carrying cute babies - at midnight!

Fat, loudly dressed white men possessively gripping their prizes- a young Thai woman who is only worried about her money that she will make- teetering along in their prickly high heels and skin tight dresses.

Pole dancing girls in pubs upstairs with foreign men sipping beers and groping them.

Lots of luring smiles and blatant invitations.

The false sense of love? Fun?Attention?

Sad images of middle-aged women whose beauty is slipping and fading into their once flourishig past. Standing, waiting, hope fading that some man may choose them and as the hours tick by, not caring...and blatantly showing how tired they are and how they long to be in bed- alone and  sleeping.

Tragic to see all of this when one is sobre. It is amazing how alchohol smudges and distorts all of this...

Cal showing off her new offcut shorts bought at a local market for R20!

Once again what is seen is not what really is ...

and the next day...emptiness would return to all parties...except the ladies are a little richer.

There was an old man sitting at the beginning of the road reading palms. He was combing his long black hair with his fingers. His two chairs looked welcoming as our legs were killing us. Not much was said but what i did like was that he said God is looking after me:) and that in 3 years time, our family would become famous and make millions...