I could Thai here

Ok, I know. I say I love everywhere. In fact, those of you following our blog can probably keep a count on how many times I say "I LOVE this place". I will at least try not to be redundant with the same reasons: 1) nice beach 2) nice people, blah, blah. I will try to be specific. So this is why Thailand is an awesome place to be...

We arrrived here after yet another long day of travel from Japan. The flight was hellish not for the distance/time (it was 6-1/2 hours) but because I was seated next to a guy who was convinced that nose picking is an Olympic sport and Bruce sat next to a guy who not only snored loud but snorted and grunted. (God knows what he was dreaming about!) Needless to say, we arrived in Bangkok and ended up having to do some minor dashing to catch our next flight. It could have been an fiasco if it were not for the excellent service that Asian airlines give you. Because our flight from Tokyo was a tad late, we were met at the gate by  uniformed agent for our next airlines who HAND DELIVERED us to the service desk to get our boarding passes and to get ushered thru immigration! I mean seriously?! Can you imgaine one of the pissed off gate agents in the US doing that for anyone? I"m really going to miss the service in Asia....ah well....
We arrived at our gate for our Phuket flight and noted that of course, it was delayed by 40min. Perfect!
A smooth 1 hr flight later, we arrived in Phuket. But this is not our final destination. We were headed to Khao Lak, a small Thai town 1-1/2 hours north of the party city of Phuket. We drove thru rubber plantations and tiny towns to get the beautiful area of Khao Lak. Pristine beaches, people few and far between and of course, excellent service. We were greeted by smiles and "Sawadee" (that means Hello/Welcome in Thai), cold washcloths and iced green tea! 

We chose to stay in such a remote place because Khao Lak is the closest area to get to our dream dive site, the Similan Islands. The Similan Islands are also the best sights in Thailand for seeing the gigantic manta rays and even larger, whale shark! 

Our first day in Khao Lak, Bruce wanted to do a elephant safari in the jungles near Khao Lak-Lam Ru  National Park. Like an idiot, I agreed. How often do you get to ride an elephant thru a jungle? We arrived to the park, met our guide who spoke little to no English and got on top of an elephant to ride off into the jungle.  My gut started telling me that it was a bad idea. It was hot as hell, Bruce was sweating so hard i'm sure he lost a gallon of water from his body. Then, our perch on top of the elephant was a bootleg, home made contraption made up of some kind of wood and rope. Our "safety belt" was a piece of rope covered with garden hose (for comfort)...Now i'm feeling more nervous.

We head out into the jungle and for whatever reason, i didnt realize how thick and scary jungle could be. Our guide, who sat on the elephants neck, would pull branches out of the way while we passed (so we would get smacked off the back). The trail was so narrow...i couldn't believe how close the branches were. It was starting to freak me out becuase I have only one major phobia...bug/spiders, etc. Yep, this from a chick who went on a little boat in South Africa to see great white sharks, went diving in the famed "Stingray City" so I could touch stingrays and let them swim over me, and even more dangerous, went to high school in Southwest Atlanta!!!  (I gotta death wish::)) Needless to say, i'm not scared of much but anything that has more eyes and legs than me. So here I am, on the back of an elephant, riding thru a jungle in Thailand with trees and branches surrounding me. I'm freaking out slowly because I'm imagining thousands of spiders and bugs watching me and waiting for their chance to get me...So our guide, in his best broken English sees a snake, curled up in a tree directly next to us about 8 feet off of the ground...

For me, the only reason why i'm concerned because i'm thinking "if the snake jumps, spooks the elephant, its going to veer into bushes and i'll be covered in spiders"...Honestly, i don't care about snakes...not really scared of them at all. Poor Bruce was less than a foot away. He's not that scared either but it was a crappy place to be!  We continued on top of our elephant and wouldn't you friggin know it...The guide stops the elephant and in his cute, broken English i hear the most hated of all words "See, spider?"...WTF!!!!????
For my medicine friends, my heart rate was thru the roof, i started breathing 30 times/minute and seriously considered dying...The crappy thing about it is I COULDN'T LOOK AWAY. On a gigantic 3-4 foot web, not more than 12 inches from us was the biggest damn spider I have ever seen!!! Can you find it in the picture??? Just to give you an idea, we cropped most of the web in the picture so you can see the spider in the middle of the picture! It was a huge web and a bigger frickin spider!!!

  So what do you think a college educated, mid aged, physician would do? I started whimpering like a friggin stupid baby... I dont know why i'm so freaked by spiders? I couldn't keep it together. Bruce was giggling his ass off (like it was funny) and the guide, even thought he could bearly speak English, laughed at me to. The whole time these idiots are laughing, WE ARE NOT MOVING!!! The damn spider is sitting there, chilling, probably looking at me...Right before I started a full on panic attack complete with a Indiana Jones style jump from the back of a elephant, we started moving. Oh now, its too late. I'm feeling that creepy crawly feeling like something is on me and I can't relax...Thank God we were almost to our destination which was a deserted waterfall/pool in the middle of the jungle. Unfortunately, the last portion of the journey was too steep for the elephant and we had to walk about a half a mile to the  waterfall. Wouldn't you know it? ANOTHER FRIGGIN SPIDER ON THE WAY! I seriously thought that that was the day i was going to die. But you know what? I talked my way thru the extrodinary fear and walked by the damn thing. Bruce estimted that the spider was probably 1 foot across! (and insisted on telling me every little thing about the stupid thing.Like how huge the web was, how juicy the body of the spider is, oh and my favorite..how big the fangs were...he was killing me!)
All the trauma of the day culminated in the beauty of a cool deserted waterfall and pool. It was so cool and refreshing! I couldn't believe how nice this place was! I enjoyed sitting there, relaxing and reflecting on how I almost died....:)

After all of the fear of the day, we made it back to camp safe and sound. I had to reward our elephant with her favorite treat! Bananas! Overall, it was a great fun day in Thailand. I didn't die, I faced a huge phobia and got the opportunity to do something i'll remember for the rest of my life...

Tomorrow, we head off to the Similan Islands to do some diving and hopefully see the famed manta rays!!!

Check out our pics from our trip in Thailand