PHUKET

Dearest Friends,

Up to this point, we had only taken the kids to Singapore and Penang -- both places were we never strayed too far from our hotel or resort, and where we seemed mostly to be surrounded by other expats. During the fall school break of our second year, however, we decided to be a little more adventurous. We took the kids to Thailand! Our destination was Phuket (no, that's not an F sound, it's poo-ket').

Of course, we were still in a nice hotel filled with tourists (we had to ease them into the real world gradually) but Thailand as a whole was much more, well, raw, than anywhere else we had ever been. The poverty was less hidden, the disparity between cultures more obvious, and the people weren't nearly as happy and easy-going as the Indonesians -- or maybe they just weren't nearly as adept at hiding their dislike of all these foreign intruders.

On the other hand, there was magnificent beauty to behold, and so much history to be absorbed. I'll share a bit of that with you tomorrow, along with a funny story that somehow made it into the newspaper here in the states, when we head over to Phi Phi Island (again, not an F sound).