Life's a Trip: Chapter Five - Christmas in Patong
December 25, 2006
I wake up and look out the window. It's a sunny day with clear blue skies. A survey of the landscape pulls my attention from the peaks of foliage covered mountains to ocean as it laps at the beach. What a beautiful Christmas day.
I have nothing planned, so I simply relax. I casually make my way to the beach and sit for almost an hour at Starbucks sipping a coffee. As I sit on the beachfront patio, life unfolds around me and I have not a care in the world.
I make my way to the beach and soak up the sun for quite some time before resolving to find myself a bit of adventure. As my thoughts wander, I watch some locals launch a tourist into the air for a short parasailing trip around the bay. It looks like fun. Why not give that a try?
Within five minutes I'm attached to the back of a boat by a long cord and I've got a parachute in tow. As the rope attached to my harness pulls me forward, I take three bounding steps and I'm airbone. For the next five minutes I have a phenomenal view of the bay and the beachfront. It was worth every baht.
Later in the evening Katie, Dave and I get together for Christmas dinner and a night of Thai kickboxing at the Patong Arena. The kickboxing matches start from the youngest and work roughly in age order to the main event, an international match between a local thai boxer and an Australian kickboxer. The matches themselves are not nearly as intense as I had imagined them to be, but they're entertaining nonetheless. FYI: Evan, with a boxing ring and a bottle of whiskey, we could make alot of cash in Phuket.
After the matches finish, Katie, Dave and I make our way back to the beach to watch the locals light huge lanterns on the beach. The lanterns are large cylindrical paper tubes supported by wires. On the bottom side there is a fuel source which, when light, causes the air inside the lantern to become warmer than the ambient temperature, causing the lantern to float away. When a few hundred people are doing this at once, it makes for quite a beautiful sight. I'll leave you with some images of the Christmas Day lantern lighting.
I wake up and look out the window. It's a sunny day with clear blue skies. A survey of the landscape pulls my attention from the peaks of foliage covered mountains to ocean as it laps at the beach. What a beautiful Christmas day.
I have nothing planned, so I simply relax. I casually make my way to the beach and sit for almost an hour at Starbucks sipping a coffee. As I sit on the beachfront patio, life unfolds around me and I have not a care in the world.
I make my way to the beach and soak up the sun for quite some time before resolving to find myself a bit of adventure. As my thoughts wander, I watch some locals launch a tourist into the air for a short parasailing trip around the bay. It looks like fun. Why not give that a try?
Within five minutes I'm attached to the back of a boat by a long cord and I've got a parachute in tow. As the rope attached to my harness pulls me forward, I take three bounding steps and I'm airbone. For the next five minutes I have a phenomenal view of the bay and the beachfront. It was worth every baht.
Later in the evening Katie, Dave and I get together for Christmas dinner and a night of Thai kickboxing at the Patong Arena. The kickboxing matches start from the youngest and work roughly in age order to the main event, an international match between a local thai boxer and an Australian kickboxer. The matches themselves are not nearly as intense as I had imagined them to be, but they're entertaining nonetheless. FYI: Evan, with a boxing ring and a bottle of whiskey, we could make alot of cash in Phuket.
After the matches finish, Katie, Dave and I make our way back to the beach to watch the locals light huge lanterns on the beach. The lanterns are large cylindrical paper tubes supported by wires. On the bottom side there is a fuel source which, when light, causes the air inside the lantern to become warmer than the ambient temperature, causing the lantern to float away. When a few hundred people are doing this at once, it makes for quite a beautiful sight. I'll leave you with some images of the Christmas Day lantern lighting.
posted by Christopher Janca at 1:49 a.m.
1 Comments:
i just caught up on all your posts about the vacation. it sounds perfectly chaotic! i'm about to go to sleep...it'll be interesting to see what dreams may come.
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