Thailand

After that eventful 747 trip from Beijing that I told you about, we took a ferry from Phuket after flying from Bangkok and this was the first views of Phi Phi Island....it was one of the hardest hits areas of the tsunami...... and they are rebuilding...the boats are called longtail taxis and they are something else....as you can see there are a lot of them....they transport you to other parts of the island...if you want or need to go.

The beaches here have white sand and they are hot. We didn't drink much but we had to have a couple of cocktails to at least say the we had "Sex on the Beach".... the middle photo is interesting....this lady was out everday sunning herself...the beaches aren't necessarily topless but it didnt' seem to be a problem....I was discrete as you can see...

The left hand one is of a scene from the movie "Beaches"..never heard of it... the middle is the sunset cruise and it is an interesting sunset....lasting about 10 seconds and the right one is of the bungalow that we stayed in...it was at the edge of a clearing and I got to play Sepak Takra or at least practice with the locals there....I think I could make the National team.....about 53rd string....

The shot on the right was on the other side of an island off Phi Phi and I thought the Riders needed some PR.....the middle one is a boat transfer......the boats pull up alongside and if you are going to a different island, you get off the big boat and transfer onto the smaller one....sort of a shuttle service so to speak......and the left one was at Phuket....you could rent the motorbike for 300 baht ($9 per day).....we couldn't stay so we rented it for an hour (100 baht and basically took off for parts unknown...even on one of the major highways...the night before the owner of a bar told us if we got into problems just to put 200 baht into your passport as you handed it to a police officer and things would be ok...

Another good view of an island around Phi Phi....the water was 27 degrees when we went scuba diving and they thought that was cold....it was marvellous...and it was salty so you were bouyant....if you get a chance.....come to one of these areas.....Cambodia....Vietnam.....Thailand

the flight is probably costly but things are fairly cheap once you get here.....weather was great....the summer is there low season so it is even less expensive..the middle picture is of a condo unit that is being built....as people buy the units, more work goes on...the last one on the right was of our swimming pool on the top of the Zenith hotel in Bangkok on our last night there....we had a little trip down a bar strip and saw the local bars where the ladies are waiting for the men to appear.....it was interesting...Merle was the only one to buy anything there....a frog.....thus ends the trip to Thailand...a lot of things not seen but many things to remember forever....well worth the trip...and I am going to sign off here for this part because I have been lucky with my photos and don't want to screw it up.....but I did anyway so this is the order that it is going to stay

Well here we are again...but I had Don reinstall something in my computer...Thanks buddy...and now I have some pictures of the trip to Thailand and... Harbin....and Xi'an....not many because my camera was full. Merle has some and she is going to send them to me and if there are any new ones, I will include them in a future blog...

We started back to "work" today with a speech (in Chinese) that talked about the professional development ( through a translator) that put many of the Chinese staff to sleep....we stayed awake...the next few days will be a little slack except that we will be given our new classes a day before we actually start teaching them....not much for warning...I have a Science project that has about 4 outher countries involved....and will involve computer usage (oh goodie) but I am game.....

Now I will try to get some pictures on here and some commentary

After all that work, left right and middle don't mean a damn thing on my blog scene so just go with the flow.....no I am not a ambidextrous person who doesn't know left from right from middle....very funny.....