After an hour of that we headed to our go-to Thai place on the island, Khun Va where I got to have my first thai iced coffee of the trip. I probably would have had one earlier in the trip if it had occurred to me sooner that looking for "thai" iced coffee on the menu wasn't necessary- in Thailand, it might just be called iced coffee. I'll blame that on jet leg, which ironically could have been helped by a "thai" iced coffee.
I also picked up a spicy papaya salad from my lady at Pung Pond. She let me try the sauce before she put it in the box to see if it was spicy enough & I immediately had a coughing fit so I was pretty sure that it was. Since we missed the first boat- which may or may not have been due to Amanda's obsession with looking over the side of the dock at the fish- I had plenty of time to enjoy it before our 2 1/2 hour boat ride to Phuket.
The boat ride was awesome! Since we were an hour early for the next one, we got great seats in the top level at the very front of the boat. It felt so good to lean against the boat in the sunshine with the wind blowing, listening to our headphones and the occasional wave splashing up to cool us off.
When we got to Phuket, we hopped in a little shuttle van to the airport. Since they were having some sort of parade in the street, the ride took about 45 minutes and we had plenty of time to get to know our new friend Preston, who was also traveling to Chiang Mai for the festival. He works everyday for 6 months flying surveillance planes for the military in Afghanistan and then gets 3 months in a row off to travel & do whatever. I'm not sure if I'd be cut out for that schedule but it's a pretty cool concept.
At the airport we got some food while we were waiting and I was really excited to see that they had cracker coated peanuts because they were one of my favorite things when I was living in Mexico. There they were flavored with lime & salt and called Japoneses, these were coconut which I also love so I thought I was all set. Unfortunately I would be willing to give somebody $500 if they could correctly identify the flavor as coconut, and an additional $300 if they could figure out there were peanuts in there- they tasted just like cardboard....Mexico 1, Thailand 0.
Our plane took off late, obviously, and when we landed in Chiang Mai it was about 10, so we just checked into the Thapae Boutique and are going to call it an early night. On a side note, the option to add a third bed to our really cute hotel room turned out to really mean "add something sort of like a mattress to the floor" but I don't mind sleeping there because it is actually probably more comfortable than sleeping on the bed- all the beds in this country have been rock hard. And with that, we're going to do our best to rest up for the festival tomorrow.
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