A Phi Phi Island Wedding

Beginning of February, 2013
Phi Phi Island, Thailand

At the start of our trip we had the chance to pass through Phi Phi Island for a few short hours and were determined to go back before we left Thailand because it was the most beautiful place we'd ever seen.  Luckily my friend Aimee from home decided to get married there at the end of January which gave us the perfect reason to go back!

Like usual, we didn't do much planning before heading to the island, so we weren't sure where the heck we were going to stay.  We got a tip from someone on the ferry ride over that the cheapest/coolest place to go was the Viking Resort, and if we wanted to save $3 each we could walk there instead of paying for a long tail boat over, like most people did.  He assured us it wouldn't take more than 15 minutes.  Also like usual, that was a lie.  About 45 minutes of hiking along the water on slippery rocks and up and down dirt hills through the jungle, WITH OUR BACKPACKS ON, we arrived at the Viking Resort.  2 very sweaty backpackers.

It always seems like a good idea at the beginning...

When we finally got to the resort we learned that they only had one room left.  A bungalow with one small bed and a shared bathroom that was about a 10 minute walk away.  Cool, we'll take it.

The front of our rustic bungalow

View from the back

Anyways, enough about our usual lodging and transportation mishaps.  Let's talk about the important stuff.  THE WEDDING!  There´s no way I could do their amazing ceremony and reception justice by trying to recap the whole thing here, so I´m just going to share some of my favorite pictures from the night, of which I took about a million:

Favorite thing #1:  While we were busy getting the bride ready for the ceremony a monkey came knocking on the door!  I'm not joking.  I'm pretty sure it was good luck.

There was a knock at the door, so we went to check it out...

Oh hello monkey!  

Favorite thing #2: The bride arrived by tuktuk

Bigger than a normal tuk tuk, it was like their limo version!

Favorite things #3 and #4 pictured here:  The AMAZINGLY gaudy hot pink and red asian-style wedding decor that the hotel staff put together....and the bride and groom drinking whiskey out of the "unity bucket" after their vows.

And favorite thing #4.5: Their hilarious friend Andy did the greatest job officiating

Favorite thing #5: They are the cutest couple ever!

AND they´re extremely attractive

Favorite thing #6: The bride, groom, and guests all sent off Thai lanterns together

Love this

My wedding date with our lantern

Favorite thing #7:  Still can´t believe I got to celebrate this girl´s wedding with her all the way across the world!  So happy.

Favorite thing #8: I had the hottest date in town!  

This lighting makes us look party animals even though we´re far from it

Thanks for letting us celebrate with you guys, Aimee and Mikey!  I think your thai wedding guests said it best.."the bride was very beautiful and the groom was very handsome". :)

Love,

Ashley

Rags to Riches

Some of the best memories of the trip have been the transportation adventures in Asia.... it is definitely cray. The best/worst travel trip was on a slave boat from Koh Tao to Phuket. It involved an eight hour overnight ferry that looked like this:

Super cozy, right?

Those are Asian sized mattresses, somewhere between a twin and a full, lined up side by side down the length of an old retired fishing boat. If you aren't traveling in an even numbered group then you are sharing a mattress with a stranger. Not that it matters because there is zero space between the mattresses anyway. Once the boat is loaded they give you about 15 minutes to exchange bewildered looks with your fellow inmates and pop some $1 Thai valium. Then it's lights out and everyone lays down like sardines and pretends to sleep under the flickering prison-style light bulbs for the next eight hours.

Don't we look so well rested?

You can imagine how tired we were when we got off the boat but the journey was only half over at this point. We were crammed into tuk tuks and taken to a NASTY looking convenience store, inappropriately named Holiday, with dead cockroaches on the floor, ants crawling all over the walls and an unclean squat toilet with no soap or toilet paper which the owner had the audacity to charge us to use. After two hours at this place, we were ushered to two more convenience stores to spend our money before we finally got to board a bus to Phuket.

Is this journey ever going to be over so Ashley will stop taking pictures of us??

The plus side of Thai transportation is that if your destination isn't too far off the normal route the driver will usually drop your off. So we were dropped off on the side of the highway and ran across to paradise- THE MARRIOTT!!

Getting ready to run across the highway.

pKimb graciously used her Marriott points to book us a night in a $600, two bedroom suite at the Phuket Marriott and ohhh did we take advantage of every minute there. First off, they greeted us with leis and fresh watermelon juice. And they didn't even seem to care we were dressed in dirty rags with disheveled hair.

Finally feeling human again.

Our honeymoon pic. We decided a three wives marriage might be pretty perfect.

Can you guess which side is mine and which is Ashley's?

Even though all we wanted to do was pass out for 24 hours, we couldn't waste any time sleeping. This place was FANCY and we didn't even have to sneak in. They have a baby elephant that plays by the pool! We spent most of the day playing with him, playing in the pool and taking veggie carving classes.

Ash and pKimb shooting some hoops after stealing the ball from a little Chinese kid.

We were able to communicate with this elephant thanks to our Mahout training.

Apparently the Marriott has a private beach because when we went to watch the sunset, there were only four other people on the entire beach. Heavenly.

Ashley swimming under the sunset.

pKimb, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! The trip has not been the same since you left :( We love you and miss you in the weird way.

Our third wife. 

-Kim

Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite!

After 2 awesome jet lagged days in Bangkok, Kyle and I were off to meet up with Kim in the South of Thailand in a beautiful coastal town called Krabi.  The second we arrived at our hotel, she ran up to us, gave us a great big hug and said "OMG so happy to see you, you're finally here!  Guess what?!  I think we have bedbugs!"  Well don't beat around the bush, friend.

So we went in the room to check things out.  She said she wasn't sure, but then she practically got out her magnifying glass and a chart showing all the different places bed bugs may hide, what they look like dead and alive, and well, I was pretty sure she was sure.  I snapped a couple of pictures of the nasty things that we found hiding on the side of the mattress and we headed to the front desk lady who barely spoke English to try to get our money back.  It took a lot of pleading and frowning and semi-angry hand gestures, but she finally gave us the cash back, then INSTANTLY RENTED THE ROOM TO SOME POOR SAPS WALKING IN AFTER US (they didn't speak English either and it's harder than you think to act out bed bugs, so there wasn't much we could do!)

Exhibits A and B

He's actually indifferent to Krabi

We then left Kyle with our backpacks and started running around in search of somewhere to stay for the night in a resort town, on the water, at 8pm, on a Friday night.  We tried I think 4 places that were all super fancy and about a million dollars a night- AND refused to haggle with us (more on this later- but I'll just say people aren't quite as interested in haggling as everyone leads you to believe!)  Finally we found a fairly empty fancy resort that was actually willing to negotiate and we were able to get a 3 person room with glorious AC, free wireless, AND AN INFINITY POOL (I know!!!!) for $33 each for the night.  It was approx $23 outside our budget each, but worth every penny.  We threw down our bags, jumped straight in the pool, and had an amazing bedbug-free nights sleep.   -Ashley

Reunited and it feels so good!

To infinity pool...and beyond!