THE PHI PHI ISLANDS

Dearest Friends,

One day during our vacation in Phuket, we took a side trip to the Phi Phi Islands. Years later I wrote this little story about our adventures there, which was published in the Wish You Were Here column of the Austin American Statesman:

OBSERVING NATURE TAKES NEW MEANING 

AT ISLAND

We lived in Indonesia when our children were young, and one of our first vacations from there was to Phuket, Thailand. It included a day trip to the Phi Phi Islands (pronounced Pee Pee, much to the delight of our kids). A water bus took us to the main island, where a tropical buffet had been set up beneath the palm trees.

Next we were loaded onto several small boats, and paddled out to an uninhabited island. They first took us to the Viking Cave, where bamboo scaffolding was set up for the harvesting of birds' nests (a valuable delicacy destined for bird's nest soup). We were then dropped off at a private beach.

As we picked out a spot to spread our towels, the kids ran off to try out their new snorkels. Once we were settled, we scanned the water for them. "Uh, dear? Notice anything unusual?" asked my husband. As a matter of fact, I did. At least half the women weren't wearing tops. He then pointed to a few of them who were standing in a circle, chest deep in the water, and had been tossing a volleyball back and forth to one another. "What's that ruckus?"

It appeared that the women had been distracted from their game by the sight of a snorkel that kept circling around them, like a shark around his supper. Several times they called out "Hey, you! What are you doing?" When they got no response, one of them finally reached out and put her thumb over the top of the snorkel, forcing the swimmer up for air. Who popped up, gasping and choking? Our 7-year-old son, Austin!

To this day, he still claims he was merely studying the fish.

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).