5/19 - Op Thailand meets Godzilla

It’s 9pm on Thursday, and we are in our usual spot across the path from Hippies Bar and Grill. While others are winding it up at this point, we tend to wind down and get up with the sun. Oh yeah, just a point of notice, the blog posts have been a joint project by us. Two more days have passed since the last post. We definitely have a routine going around here and are recognized by many as familiar faces. It has been nice to be greeted with a knowing smile, whether it’s from “Slim” our bungalow manager, “Chop” the grillman at Hippies, “Jack” the jack-of-all-trades at one of our restaurants stops, “Sean” the boatman, many of the regulars on our work team, and a number of the other travelers. Yesterday morning we set out to take a break from the work and enjoy what the island has to offer. We rented a two-person kayak and snorkel gear from “Sean” for 2.5 hours for just under $9 US. We had a blast. We set out toward the west end of Ton Sai Bay. We found a cove and decided to beach the kayak and get in the water. As we approached the backyard-sized beach (with nearly sheer walls straight up a few hundred feet), a 4+ foot lizard scurries up the wall to a higher perch. Wow! We went into the water and found schools of incredibly colorful fish, indescribable really – see link for one example: http://www.pbase.com/ravenoaks/image/37498060. Everything we did up to that point was pretty tame, so we decided to take the kayak around the bend onto the open sea. It was great! We will be heading out on the kayak again, so there will be more adventure stories coming soon. We spent yesterday afternoon finishing our work on Monkey Beach (have we mentioned that we actually saw some monkeys!?) with some tree and brush clearing and burning (fire! fire! fire!). Today we tackled a new project. A number of the “roads” around here are made of brick pavers, and one section by the water reservoir needed repair. We worked with a team of guys from Colorado who were really cool. The project was nice because our progress was very tangible. However, it was unclear why this road repair needed to be done, and we continue to question much of the work being done on the island (priority, importance, value, efficiency, strategic planning, project leadership). One thing is for sure, it is amazing to see HiPhiPhi draw people of all different nationalities and traveling intentions together to work collaboratively despite tough conditions. Here is a list of random items to close out today’s post: - We enjoy a custom, off-the-menu peanut butter, nutella, and banana sandwich at least once a day. - There are few children on the island. We have seen less than a dozen. - The majority of travelers here smoke. - There are lots of cats. - Internet access is the best island business going…

Cool Cats