Natala la la la ... ... ...

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

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...

Saturday, December 24, 2005

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...

Thursday, December 08, 2005

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?

Thursday, December 01, 2005

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!