This Christmas we stayed a little closer to Hong Kong and took the short 3 hour flight to Thailand. We decided to visit a new city, Krabi. Krabi is just a short drive from Phuket (which Melissa and I love but becomes EXTREMELY expensive at this time of the year with all the Europeans fleeing their frigid winter temperatures.) A trip to the Adaman Ocean this time of the year is a dream! The water is like a lake with often times no waves and is almost bathtub warm.
Our hotel had a line of pine trees providing shade to lounge chairs just off the beach, needless to say we could not have found a nicer spot to have a siesta or just enjoy the view. During the day if we were not in our lounge chairs on the beach, we were floating in the water. Even at chest deep you could still see your feet! Even for lunch we would not have to wander too far as there was a beachfront Thai restaurant right next to our hotel. We also headed there after a bit of swimming for some fresh and cool coconut water (they kept their coconuts in the fridge), nothing is better when you are dehydrated from swimming in the ocean than fresh coconut water!
One day we took a long tail boat to Hong Island, a national park. The boat was fine, until we made it out into the open water where the waves were not that big but man they really threw our boat around. A few times I did an inventory check of what we would lose in our beach bag if we went overboard. Yeah, 30 minutes is not that long, but when you are holding on to a rope for dear life it felt like an eternity. I did relax a bit when I saw another boat trailing us, I reasoned that if we did go over, we would at least be picked up quickly...yes it was that bad!
Arriving on Hong Island, I realized why it was a national park. It was so nice that it was almost worth the boat trip....though next time, we will take a much larger boat! When we got there there were already several long tail boats beached = lots of other tourists. We hurried and found a nice spot under a huge shade tree by the water. We brought some bread to feed the fish which were so used to humans they would swim around you and practically eat out of your hands!
Every evening before heading out to dinner we attended the happy hour at the hotel's club lounge - free drinks and appetizers...what's not to like about that?
After breakfast on Christmas day we were deep into our routine of dozing off in the shade on our lounge chairs when the silence was broken by a HO HO HO... By the way he was saying it you could tell he did not grow up hearing it, in fact he was probably not coached very long on how to do it, but he probably had himself fooled going up and down the chairs with a large red bag giving everyone cookies from the hotel wishing everyone a Merry Christmas... I think I agree with Megyn Kelly.. Isn't Santa white? Guess not in Thailand.
The next night was perfect! One of the hotel staff did a test run showing us how to do it then left us with a huge bag of 10 lanterns. The first one took us awhile but we figured out the technique and got pretty good at it. After lighting the fire we would hold it down for the hot air to build up inside the lantern. After 5 minutes you could feel the lantern pulling up as if it was telling you it was ready. Slowly picking it up and straightening it out, it would slowly lift up, up, and away.
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