Happy New Year everyone! We're feeling pretty good about this new year and all of the good things we are sure it will bring. Of course, it is bringing us home to Canada, which we are excited about! It si also bringing us back to work...We'll have to work on getting excited about that :) Phuket was beautiful, relaxing and soul-satisfying. We were a bit disappointed at how removed we were from the locals, but you can't have it all! We were a heck of a lot closer to the ocean than any of us expected, so that was a definite bonus. We just couldn't get out and eat in local restuarants--that meant it was more expensive and most of the dishes were toned down (especially in terms of spice content!). One of the highlight's of Dad's visit was the day we rented motorbikes. After a shakey start we headed off to a gibbon research centre. Man, can those monkeys sing! It's a really eery sound as they call for mates or sing to protect their territory. I wouldn't want to be out in the Thai jungle trying to figure out what that sound was! All of the gibbons at the centre have been rescued from being pets, taught to drink and smoke in bars or used as props in photo shoots, etc. The majority of them, they hope, will be released back into the wild. That day we managed to find a little roadside restaurant. It was a neat little spot and we all enjoyed it. They spoke a little English so we knew what we were ordering. This is one spot where we got authentic Thai food. Joel's dish was so hot his sideburns were pracitically sweating. He was almost crying and he had to drink the local water (usually a no-no). I'm not sure it helped too much, but it calmed his tastebuds a little. The low point of Phuket was definitely the trip down on the overnight, freezing cold bus. It was terrible. We met a couple from London, Ontario who had done the same trip down and they decided that it wasn't worth it--they were flying back up to Bangkok. I can't say as I blame them. New Year's Eve was pretty neat. We spent the day on the beach and watched our last sunset on Phuket. We ate at a little cafe close to the water where Dad and Joel got free BBQ pork. We were joking that it might be dog, since we hadn't seen the beach's resident pooches all day :) After supper we went to the little local shop that we had been frequenting during our stay. We would buy a cold bottle of tonic (250mL), take a little drink, top it up with the gin they were storing for us, and we were good to go! Their shop was at a central point on the town strip, so it worked well. And they had lots of cold beer to keep Dad stocked. All of the different resorts that line the strip were putting on shows/parties. My personal favourite was the "BABE Q SERVICE". Hee hee. There was a guy serving up amazing dessert pancakes from the side of his motorcycle (we had visited him a few times during our stay) and he was parked right in front of our resort. I got a pancake and I got my photo taken with two sweaty Thai boxers who were putting on a show. Excellent. We saw a Thai band doing cover tunes, traditional dancers (dancing and then clamouring into the back of a pick-up truck to head to their next venue). The neatest thing was when we were sitting on the beach waiting for the final countdown (as the Thai cover band played "Final Countdown"!): a few resorts started sending off paper lanterns, lit with candles. One party right behind us set of close to a dozen. Then a resort way down the beach set off more than 25. They were beautiful, floating off into the distance, staying lit for a really long time. Then around midnight the fireworks started. Little did we know that we had planted ourselves right in between two sets of fireworks! We were literally in the middle of them because they had set them up in the sand. It was really loud but so colourful! Then someone kept settinf off fire crackers in the street behind us. We didn't know which way to turn and what to look at. I have no idea how long it went on for, but it was impressive. We crawled into bed at about 1:30 and slept the night away. Luckily we had packed earlier that day so that we wouldn't have to do it in the morning before we left the resort. Yay for foreplanning! We took Dad to the airport :( and then hopped a bus to Surat Thani, in hopes of catching a boat to Ko Pha Ngan, an island full of fun in the sun and a HUGE full moon party. More about that in the next update... :) m & j