My Birthday!!!!
We woke, well me later than the other two, but still early, having been well rested. I spent my first hour or so of awake time reading in bed firstly, and then in a hammock. The girls were no where to be seen, although Linnea had told me she was going for a swim, in part of the river Lena had shown us the day before, just outside their bungalow, where there was a large rock in the middle of the river about half a yard under the water where one culd just sit or lie, and be half submerged and half in the sun, a very nice little place. We had also decided that we were going to move up to one of the bungalows next to that of Lena and Dennis's, sharing a balcony with Christina and Romona (the Swiss girls). Anyway, back int he hammock, I finally found out where the girls had actually been. They'd been buying small cakes, a bottle of whisky and writing a postcard to be used as a birthday card. They entered the balcony singing happy birthday, with candles in these small cakes (that Jade had bought from home, I'm not sure If I showed my full level of thankfulness for that point) holding the whiskey and a wrapped up statue. The statue turned out to be one I had looked at a number of times at the Luang Prabng market, and really liked it, but didn't want to spend any more money, and had actually forgotten about it. I had no idea any of this was going on, and obviously I thought it was all extremely nice of the guys.
Linnea actually turned out to be ill for the whole day, which was the first downer of the day, when I say the first, it sounds as if there were alot, there weren't just the two, one at either end of the day. Linnea's ill starting at the start of the day.
Anyway after packing our things up, we moved up the path to th bungalows ajoining with our new friends. We had to pay 10,000 more kip for them, but they wre in a nicer place, with better people, and it was my birthday, oohh and 40,000 kip is $4 between three!!!
After a swim, we went down to the bakery. A place we hadn't been before but the other guys had been the night before, when we were already in bed!!! After an very long wait, we got some of the best, if not the best food we've had. The wait was so long because the bakery is run by an Aussie guy making breads and cakes the old fashioned way, with one gas 'hob' and a gas powered oven.
After sitting around waiting, chilling and eating. Jade, Christina, Romona and I decided to rent bikes and head to the beach on the next island along Koh Kohn. We had been told it was nicer than the one on Don Det, which wasn't so hard, but still, and apparently it was where everyone went during the day!!!
The ride was quite long, and we stopped for a drink part way, but when we got there the beach and the water was gorgeous, we got there late on, having spent so long at the bakery, so the sun was starting it's decline and the light looked amazing behind the jagged rocks further up the river.
We did some jumping off rocks, the highest probably being about 7 metres and did a bit of swimming, before sitting on the beach for a little while, with a beer.
When we got back to the bungalows on Don Det it was already dark, so we quickly washed off the sand and sweat from the ride back in the river and got changed. The humidity was fairly brutal, so the cleanliness from the wash was was short lived!!!
I wanted to phone home, and after attempts on Jades phone (no network coverage) and at an internet and international call store (no signal due to the thunderstorm that was a brewing!!) I walked back the restaurant everyone was now at fairly dispondant, not helped by the fore mentioned thunderstorm. When I got there Christina told me to use her Skype account, an internet telephone service, that I'm now becoming a frequent user of, but had previously hand no dealings with. It did work, and I was able to talk to my parents for the first time since leaving.
Back at the restaurant, the whole table, an international collection of souls sung happy birthday to me, firstly al together in English and then individually in the differing languages and tunes that go with that language. The Swedish I think was agreed to be the best!!!
After dinner, dissapointtingly it was back to bungalow balconies for well some drinks and chats. It would have been down to the beach again accompanied by my birthday present (the whiskey that is, not the statue, because although being nice, I can't imagine it provides too much entertainment as an intoxication method or product!!!)
The thunderstorm however dashed those plan. The balcony was nice however, I spent the majority of the evening talking with Dennis and Shep, at one point having a discussion about the monarchy, well a discussion/disagreement. Jade spent the majority of her night talking with Christina as Linnea had retired to bed, while Romona the Swiss girkl who the entire time we had spent with them had said about 5 words of English to me, was now having a chat with a Frenchman (Younes) in English, Younes couldn't speak much English either, and so If I'd actually been listening I probably could have had ours of fun. However, they were courting lets say, and I was enjoying our chat, which at one point moved on to how Shep and I would show Dennis around England, who wouldbe using his friends plane as transport, his friend needed ours of flying to keep his license he said!!
The highlight of the evening for me was a flat 5 minute period of compliments all being thrown in my direction, I'm a typical Englishman and am therefore not amazing at taking them, but I tried my best. The pick of the buch, I'll mentuion it just for a bit of self indulgence was when I was told that it was people like me that made Shep proud to be British, and that I had been bought up very well!!!
I left Dennis, Shep and Matt an Aussie who had joined us later on to it when Shep started falling asleep.