taxi + bus + boat + taxi = beach

We are finally on the beach in Koh Phangan!! It is lovely, although the rainy season is still trailing a little bit so the water isn't perfectly clear...but the weather is warm and there's nothing to do but beach relaxation...

It was, however, an adventure to get here from bangkok:
- 2 hour taxi ride in HORRIBLE bangkok traffic. We are lucky we didn't get the train tickets we wanted because we surely would have missed our train and been stuck in bangkok. Since we took a bus, they waited for us! Very very nice of them.
- 11 hours bus ride. This was hard. The seats were uncomfortable and the most comfy ones were downstairs but they smelled like diesel! so they just weren't manageable. The bus had one stop at a series of markets in the middle of nowhere. I got a snack of watermelon which was perfectly refreshing at midnight.
- 2 hour wait at the river dock. At this point i was cranky from the contorted sleeping and missing my bed back home deeply. I don't miss the beds at the Shangri-La, or Le Meredien or the Davis because frankly beds in Thailand are hard and low to the ground and i much prefer my high, soft bed.
- 3 hour boat ride to Koh Samui and then to Koh Phangan. The boat ride was really quite nice.
- 45 minute taxi ride across the island to get to Thong Nai Pan Beach. This was a fun taxi - it was an open bed truck. We sat in the back. It started to pour! we got sooo wet. We moved inside the cab. Which was a good move because the ride was very bumpy.

After all of this, we arrived to our nice, very rustic, beach bungalows. We are literally on the beach! Yesterday we walked around, got in the water and ate delicious meals. Today I think we are going to kayak and I am definitely going to get my first Thai massage.

i will eventually post pictures of all of this to flickr...

happy christmas!

Another christmas, another year of wonderful adventures. Here's wishing you all of the best. I'm in Thailand now (great shopping in bangkok let me tell you) and lots of fun chaos as all of us (jasmine, joslyn and sheils) have arrived....adventures to be tracked online soon...

ads in gmail...

so i've been noticing lately that the ads in gmail are getting really good -- and by good i mean useful, relevant and things i just want to click on for more information.

This may in part be to seasonality - right now a lot of my e-mails deal with shopping (gifts for the holidays, my mother's birthday) and travel (i'm going to thailand and my sister and I are writing back and forth about where to stay and what to do)....

The other thing I've noticed is that the number of ads changes. Sometimes I get 3, sometimes 4, sometimes 3 on the rail and one in the web-clip. Sometimes I get a search link. Sometimes not. Hmm. Those google kids are definitely getting crafty!

There are of course those really, really irrelevent links...like the link to buy sushi at Target:
Sushi
Sushi online Shop Target.com
www.Target.com

Sushi? at Target? I love target but not for fresh fish.

I'm curious, are others finding the links to be better? More useful?

snow!!

It is snowing *right now* in seattle/redmond/washington. YEAH!!! SNOW!!!!

big puffy wet sticky lovely snowflakes.

I am totally delighted. I've been IMing people all day to let them know. Most of them are in CA and their response has been pretty much the same: "it's raining here!" "no, it's raining!!!" " We are getting rain." "lucky lucky It's just raining out here."

apparently, it is raining in SF. but it is SNOWING! in seattle! w00t!

home (in CA) for 39 hours

i'm in the midst of a travel whirl...LAX-SFO-SEA-ORD-SEA-LVS-SEA-SFO-SEA... and I just got to my mum's house in Mountain View. There is something so special and wonderful about coming home that reminds me that (a) I am so very much a californian at heart and (b) that i love my mum's home.

Perhaps it is that I walk into the house and get covered in enthusiastic kisses from the world's best dog -- Brizzie -- and then get treated with vague indifferency by MY cat (tuvi). But i think it is more the comfort and that special feeling of being somewhere so familiar, so loved that reminds me how good life is and just how lucky I am. Plus, I just love my mum's house -- there's always something new (they are constantly remodeling and changing things about) and yet the place is always the same to me. There's never food in the fridge that I would choose to eat, yet there are always yummy leftovers to nibble on. The plants are always alive and thriving and getting special mum-care. The computer always has a new virus that needs to be dealt with. Walking down the great hall I see memories, friends and family. It makes me all warm inside. Even though I am home for such a brief time, and with a packed schedule, i feel rested just being here. awwww.

new wheels!

I finally got new tires. These have been a long time coming...in fact, i have to say ... perhaps too long.

Mike and I went to costco to buy them as I had been hearing about how price efficient they are and at this point i just *needed* new tires. This is the third set of new tires I've bought for my car -- I have about 160,000 miles on my very trusty Honda -- and i decided that this time I wasn't going to go all zany trying to find the best tires for the price. I've done that before, and from what i can tell, tires are pretty much tires - if you buy good ones and rotate them regularly. All i wanted was a nice all-weather, rain-handling set of wheels. I ended up with Michelin, since they had a deal.

While costco installed my tires, mike and i shopped at costco. Oh my. We spent about 2 hours going religiously through every aisle. We looked at everything..."oooh, a new dyson!" "oooh, candy for halloween" "ooooh, 500 bajillion onions for a $1." Mike had also mentioned that we were going to eat lunch at costco. I was skeptical. I mean who goes to costco to eat food? Wow, was I wrong. Clearly everyone there is there for the food samples. On every aisle, in every nook, in every section there are people handing out food of all types and varities. Cheesy gooey things. Toasted things. Blended things. It was too much. The only thing they weren't handing out was water. Which is exactly what you need when you are snacking on an assortment of salty Costco samples.

When we were finally done I went to get my car so we could load it up with all our goodies. My tires looked so nice and shiny! Except for one thing. Green Caps! Costco fills their tires with Nitrogen. Which is apparently better than air -- more fuel efficiency and the pressure is more stable and longer lasting. (Read more about it here) All of this is great, but green caps on my wheels? on my silver car? no no no. Costco was nice and gave me replacement black caps. Me along with another couple who didn't want green caps. They use these caps to identify that the tires are filled with nitrogen. I asked if this was a safety issue and they said no, so i switched. It seems that most people switch. Maybe they should have a green stripe on a black cap instead of a green cap? As no one seems to like the green caps. We are really a fashion conscious people. ha!

jb in da house!

My very good friend JB is visiting from Washington DC for the weekend. We've known each other for almost 15 years and he's not only one of my favorite people, but one of the best wine drinkers and chefs i know. Right now he's prepping for our dinner -- halibut with some sort of walnut olive tapenade, fingerling potatoes and yummy brussel sprouts -- with BACON! i love bacon! It is so wonderful to have him here visiting.

Also, it is his birthday today! wooohooo! Happy Birthday JB! Get back in the kitchen! (don't worry -- he is getting spoiled, i'm taking him to Zoe tomorrow night for a celbratory dinner).

Adding a picture of us at Zoe on Sunday. We had such fun! and He loved the restaurant :)