I'm a livin' for the weekend...

Hello, all. I have taken a couple of excellent trips the last two weekends, and thought I'd share, though I have no way to upload pictures at this point. So a less interresting, yet more informative post.

Last weekend I went to a beach called Pattaya. It is often called, deservedly, the "Armpit of Asia." It's only about an hour from Bangkok and is on the mainland, so the water suffers from being much to close to the city. I arrived Saturday afternoon (and checked into the Best Western--in Pattaya, Thialand!) and immediately set out looking for lunch. The whole city is like a giant crescent up against the Gulf of Thailand and the whole northern half of the cresecent--where I went for lunch--is completely Russian. Now I'm told that Nice, France is also highly Russian in nature, but let me assure you, this is no Nice. Though lots of large LARGE Russians without proper swimming attire. It was really a cool site to see all the official signs in Thai first and Russian underneath. Of course, I can't read either of those languages, so I spent a lot of time being lost. But they sure did look cool. That night I sat on the beach (I had to rent a chair for 30baht--about a dollar) and watched the sun set. It was a great sight, but I missed the tide rising. So all of a sudden my feet got a bit wet--and started to burn. I dried off, but my feet itched the rest of the day. So moral of the story: Place known for being really sketchy and dirty generally are dirty and sketchy. Still, it's a very popular part of Thailand and I had to experience the city.

This weekend, however, could not have been a less likely story. I just finished one of the best weekends of my life. I went with a friend from work, his Thai girlfriend, and two of his friends from college in California. My friend and his girlfriend had both been the island before, so they knew their way around and knew where to find great accomodations. They had all gone down on Thursday but I couldn't go until Friday. So I took a bus, and then hopped a ferry and then hiked across the island to find they had already booked bungalows right on the beach. Seriously 15 feet from the ocean. Of course, no air con or real running water, but who cares? It was the perfect version of camping. On the ocean, with solid housing. And hundreds of other tourists, Thai and farang, all just chlliing in the ocean all day and hanging out on the beach at night. We saw a show of firethrowers. It's really a big part of island culture, firethrowing, and is a very respectable occupation. And we met up with some other American and British tourists and taught them the game BeerPong, which was great until they started winning... We also explored the town, though I use "town" rather loosely. Rather than attempting imagery or description, which I've never quite mastered, I'll just wait and post pictures of most of these places.

So life in Thailand had been pretty great lately. And only a few days left!