Fr. Tony Update...

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Thai Bound: Island Time

Fr. Tony Update:

Tony continues to have a rough time of it this week. Although we were assured he would be "feeling much better in a few days", the middle of last week! Hrumph! Got a call into the doctor this morning, and they're prescribing two more pills.... a pain killer and a diuretic. *sigh* I'm sure I can here him rattling as he shuffles along, with all the pills he has to consume!

This week's aches and pains: Pain in his legs, arms and hands. Pain/burning in his mouth and esophogus. Overall feeling of crud! Poor guy. On a good note, he does seem to be sleeping a weee bit better, when the pain is managed, and he's eating.

Thai Bound: Island Time

Click on image to see larger version of map.

2am last night I awoke to find Tony sitting in the living room. After tending to him, I went to the basement to check my email. Low and behold, the girls were on line! I had a brief chat with Megan and then Abbey. Gotta love technology!!! They were in an internet cafe sending out email, waiting for their ferry ride to Koh Phi Phi Island. It was so grand to have such a surprise in the middle of the night. Below is the text of Abbey's latest update.

Hello all! So we've just rolled into Krabi, down in the islands off of the Andaman coast and what can I say? Beautiful! We're killing some time right now until our ferry leaves for Koh Phi Phi islands in an hour, so we'll see even more than this port town...but already it's absolutely breathtaking! Everything is so lush and tropical, there's palm trees and orchids everywhere, huge rugged mountains and forest. *Ahhhhh* But
this did take some effort to get here!

Yesterday after spending the day going over to Burma and checking out Myawaddy(the border town), the Burma-Thai friendship bridge, and the surrounding markets, we headed back to the house to pack up. After we got our backpacks together, we biked over to a cute little restaurant (yes, we were biking with our 40 lb. backpacks and daypacks on!)and had yet another wonderful Thai dinner. After that, we headed over to the bus station to buy our overnight bus ticket, but alas the response was, "don't have". Meaning, this bus is sold out!

Soooo, we tried to approach people in the bus station to buy their tickets off of them, but not speaking any thai or burmese created a major obstacle. We sat around the bus station long enough, and looking pathetic enough, that they let us onto the bus to connect to another bus which took us to Bangkok. Confused yet? Yeah, try all of this in Burmese. :-) So long story short and a 7 hour bus ride later, we rolled back into Bangkok at 4.30 am and took a cab over to the airport. (Oh yeah, we tried to book our flights online but since we don't live in Malaysia, it didn't recognize our zip code and the credit card was denied. Dang!)

We got our tickets, killed some time and got a fantastic western breakfast (Waffles, Eggs, Bacon!), hopped on our plane from Bangkok to Krabi for a 1.5 hour flight and VOILA! We are here! The reward is in the journey, right?! Right??

We'll be on Koh Phi Phi for 2 nights then take another ferry over to Koh Lanta for 2 nights before heading back to Krabi to fly back into Bangkok. There should be some internet cafes on the islands, and when we come up for air from snorkeling and laising about on the beach, we'll shoot you another line. :-)

All in all, we're having a fantastic (albeit SWEATY) time and really enjoying everyone's company. It's been so amazing to see Bangkok, then northern Thailand and now southern Thailand. I have taken over 500 pictures in the 4 days we've been here...YIKES. Good thing the day's of slide shows are long gone...but I will be prepared to share with anyone whose willing to sit through!

Alright, it's ferry time.
Love you all! Abbey & Lee