Hong Kong Garden

Just booked a Novotel 4* in Hong Kong for $54/night, normally priced $130. I LOVE MY JOB!

Ele-pants!

Here's a bunch of pictures of our elephant 'safari' in Phuket last year:

From Elephant ride in Phuket

The elephant sanctuary was about a 30-minute drive inland, and besides about 6 elephants (and a baby!) they also had rescue monkeys, exotic birds, a scary-huge boa constrictor, and the Phuket standard-issue 645,284,32194032409 stray dogs... except these were mostly super-adorable puppies that actually wanted to play with us (as opposed to most of the strays, which completely ignored us even when we had food and only wanted to nap under our beach chairs). I played with the puppies until the tour guide told me they kept the dogs around to feed to the snake (the tour guides did a LOT of pointing and laughing at me specifically during this adventure).

Maybe it's because I kept making crack-eyes at the baby elephant:

Or because I screamed like a freak when our mahout (elephant handler) decided to tell our elephant to climb atop a steep pile of very precarious-looking rocks. This was actually a pretty awesome experience-- we learned that elephants are surprisingly agile (and will do almost anything for sliced mango). Although during this adventure the saddle/bench thingy came way loose. Our mahout tried to tell us (he didn't speak much English and I had the worst time understanding Thai accents on the entire trip) to climb off the seat onto the elephants' head so he could re-adjust the seat.

Mahout: "Please come down here" (points to elephant's head)
Me: "Oh dear God no thank you"
Mahout: "Please Miss, right here"
Me: "No really" (grips extremely wobbly, slippery vinyl bench-thing) "I'm fine! I like it here"
Ben (who knows how to follow instructions): "You are going to fall off and die right now if you don't move"
Me: *whimper*
In the end I was able to move my worthless carcass, but only with a lot of audible fear-squeaking. It should be worth noting that the rest of the mahouts (about six of them) including ours were pointing and laughing uproariously during this fiasco. By the end of the day all of them were saying "Oh my God!" in high-pitched American accents in tribute to my performance (sadly, I am not joking). Fortunately I don't have a lot of dignity (or shame) to begin with.


That's our mahout above reading manga while his coworker chats on his cell. Just a regular day at the office. Our dude was awesome-- he gave me the elephant prodder-thing (bamboo rod with an unsharpened hook attached which also hung conveniently from the elephant's ear-- no WAY was I going to use that thing), hopped off the elephant, and made Ben climb off the bench again onto the elephant's head. He spent the rest of the ride (over an hour) walking casually ahead of us through the jungle, taking pictures with my camera and telling us which commands to give the elephant in Thai. He also pointed out a spider the size of a dinner plate sitting in a web that was taller than a person, (prompting another "Oh my God!"* from me, which was then echoed by every mahout down the line).


*Note to my mother, who hates it when I take the Lord's name in vain: I was not taking it in vain; I was begging God for help

Islomania

We toured 3 islands this day by speedboat and spent a few hours at each snorkeling and exploring. The first island was Monkey Island, with actual monkeys on the freaking beach. Monkeys! On the beach!

Despite my warnings (Sharks! Eels! Flesh-eating coral!) Ben went snorkeling while I cowered in the boat and took pictures.


The next stop was the inhabited island of Ko Phi Phi Don. This is the only place in the park with hotels, and the only way to the island is via boat or chartered seaplane. We saw little speedboats and even smaller longboats dropping tourists off right on the beach, luggage and all. It was extremely surreal to see piles of suitcases just sitting on the (otherwise deserted) beach, and watching elderly Dutch tourists trying to navigate their wheeled carryons through the mangroves to their hotels. There are no cars, only little dirt paths, and electricity is supplied by generators. I didn't take any pictures here because I spent the whole time in the water getting outrageously sunburned.

Then we drove by dozens of amazing teeny islands like this:

We saw bats by the hundreds nesting in the trees over one of the lagoons (the screeching was deafening).

It was about a 40 minute boat ride from Phuket to the parks, and the waves were so huge our captain/tour guide had to arrange our group in the back of the boat by weight to keep the little speedboat from tipping over. I knew we were in for it when he offered everyone Dramamine to the passengers (fortunately I never ever go anywhere without Dramamine. Ben's nickname for me is 'Pukey' for a reason).

Our group consisted of 4 super jovial elderly Belgians (who spoke only French, spent the entire day telling dirty jokes about each other, and blithely ignored all safety instructions... loved these guys!), an Aussie couple (who were so pretty we named them Boone and Shannon), and assorted Frenchmen/Frenchwomen. I spent the entire boat ride attempting to understand/participate in the rapid French conversations around me, but of course after a year of French classes I only remember the dirty words and the phrase 'Je me brossez le dents' ('I am brushing my teeth').

The last island we visited was Egg Island, so named because (as our guide explained) "it is small, like an egg".
You can walk around the entire island in under 4 minutes. It was perfect.