Phuket - Initial Observations

Initial observations of Phuket: From Clara and Silas: It looks cleaner and there are fewer motorbikes. The houses look nicer. From Sharon: Wow! We haven't gone this fast in a vehicle since we left Maine. From Hal: There are actual rules of the road being followed here, and our driver is going too fast! Our driver tells us that if you can drive in Phuket you can drive anywhere in the world. What can you do except laugh after that and tell him to visit Ho Chi Minh City....

We're staying at a fabulous resort- The Movenpick Resort & Spa Karon Beach. The amenities, rooms, service, food and landscaping here are incredible. Our fellow guests hail from Korea, Australia, France, Germany, and England near as we can tell. The retailers in the small town next to our resort feature restaurants, tour operators, massage, pedicures, manicures, and soap carved into flowers, colored, and displayed in a cute little box. Popular tours include a giant buddha (200' x 300') which sits atop a nearby mountain. You can also snorkel, scuba, ride ATVs or elephants, and visit temples and monkeys. Golf and shopping are also very popular.

The first day on Phuket (pronounced poo - ket) Hal headed off to work and Silas, Clara and I spent the day trying out two of the three swimming pools and spending some time at the beach. So much for cultural enrichment...Yesterday we booked a tour to Phi-Phi Island (pronounced pee-pee). The tour started with a 40-minute speedboat ride out to a group of islands in the middle of the Andaman Sea. We saw the lagoon and beach where they filmed the movie "The Beach", fed some monkeys at another little inlet, passed near the caves where birds nests were being harvested for birds nest soup, snorkeled in several limestone-enclosed lagoons, and ended the day with a rough ride back to a beach to chill for an hour before returning to the marina. Although the day was a little frantic, what can you expect when you are LIVING the discovery channel?

Obama Tuesday Morning

We listened to Obama on the BBC this morning - CNN is not reliable here and usually comes through in digital fragments. So refreshing to hear America's problems enunciated in plain English and not disguised as poli-speak. He speaks of "crisis turning into catastrophe" but I wonder if the folks in the Midwest would agree - they may feel they are already in catastrophe. Also good to hear him speak of repairing infrastructure and healthcare. Of course, the money has to come from someplace but I have always said that I would be willing to pay more for healthcare if I thought someone was getting a benefit from it! And the ancient school he spoke of down south is just one example of how we are failing our future. We don't pay too much more per student for the school over here than what the taxpayers spend per student in Maine, yet the school day here is longer and the math curriculum more rigorous. And all the kids speak two or three languages. There has to be a way to transfer the quality of this experience to public education if we want our kids to succeed in the global marketplace. Let me know when you figure it out!

We have a great group of residents in our building. On Sunday there was an Argentinian bar-b-que (or should I say meatfest?) in the common area. Most of the families here work in shipping or the oil and gas industry. The host of the bar-b-que hails from Colombia, then lived in Mexico for 6 years (three different cities) and now is here. Another neighbor began in Aberdeen, moved to Houston, and are now here. The shipping couple started in Denmark, did 6 years in Namibia before coming to Vietnam. It is a whole corporate lifestyle that you choose - apparently you fill out a personal profile which helps the company decide where they are going to put you so there is some choice involved. There are also different pay scales and benefits packages depending on where you are posted. For example, if you are motivated by money you can make a ton of it if you choose Angola! None of the wives would do that - when you go there you live in a military compound and can never go anywhere. If your husband has to go out he is escorted by the army. The family who came here from Mexico said things were getting pretty bad there too - a lot of kidnappings and a lot of increased armed security anytime they wanted to leave the compound. A British/Vietnamese family is here while they apply for dual citizenship in Vancouver - apparently the economy is pretty bad in England too though the BBC doesn't speak of it like they do the economy in America. They applied in the US but the legal process was too daunting.

More later. We're off to Phuket and Bangkok on Thursday.

suoi tien waterpark!

Hello everyone, Silas here! We went to the Suoi Tien water park on Saturday, It was pretty cool. First we went to the water park. The walk over was interesting, with tons of fake Vietnamese dragons, and temples decor, fake but really cool. The water park was awesome. there were three main pools The first at the top, was the deepest with a bunch foam floats that were so buoyant you could stand on them! There was also a bunch of little green circles that were attached to a rope with starting and landing floats that were bigger. What you had to do was get onto the big float (that spun on the water on the rope) and skip across the little green ones as fast and lightly as you could. I only got to 7 steps (not even halfway) and fell off the spinning green floats (though i tried time after time to get farther). The next pool was less deep with one of the lame water slides in it and then the next pool was a little kids water jungle gym. so that was pretty cool.
Next we went to the actual rides, basicly the swings, hall of mirrors, the swinging boat thingymajig, a thing that makes you go in upside down in circles, and a lame roller coaster.
So basically the park was only half as good as fun town splash town (all the Maine people reading this will know what that is) probably not even, but it was fun anyway!
Silas.