Day 15 - Travel day to Southern Thailand

Woke up the morning and headed straight to the beach to watch the sunrise with dad. His best little buddy is gone and I know we all knew this day would come, I don't think anyone was expecting it this quickly. Daisy was an amazing companion for dad .... She loved and protected him fiercely :-) even from his own daughters.  So I thought he'd like to watch the sunrise with me. The screen didn't do it justice but hopefully he could see that the sun continues to rise, despite all our pain. Time stops for nobody.... All we can do is keep breathing.  Isaac and I watched castaway today and those were his final 2 thoughts in the movie. Such a good movie. I think I even enjoyed it more this time around with Isaac.  

We were in the car with our driver, Tom, at 7am.  We hit some traffic on the way out ;-)

"Keep your windows rolled up" he says. We had such an interesting driver. Makes such a difference when they can speak even a little bit of English. He was wonderful and kind and told is such interesting stories about himself. 

We stopped at a mall half way down and we were the only white people. We had our pictures taken and had some lunch before we were on our way again. I think I am using the squatty toilets wrong. I think I may be doing it backwards. I should google it later.  

Arrived at the hotel that had good reviews - the woman reviewing obviously was a whack job (or drunk), because this place was the worst!!  It smelled so bad and was in such a rough part of town .... We had to let our driver leave because we knew what a long drive he had to get home to his family!  We walked down to the river to re-group and just breath. Chris and I started to panic and leeches were already descending.  Trying to get us to buy their tours. We felt so out in the open with nowhere to go and it wouldn't have been so bad without our kids I don't think. Kids change everything.  But it was fine. We found a tourist desk and told them where we were aiming to go. They said "go stand under that tree and a truck will come".  And that was pretty much it. So - we stood under a tree.  Few minutes later a white truck showed up and we said "Ao Nang" and he nodded and pointed for us to get in the back. So we did.  

1/2 hour of riding with students just out of school. They all have new iPhones and lovely uniforms. They were squished in with us and hanging off the back of the truck .... We got off at the end of his run and walked around looking for a hotel.  

Nice hostel had a quad room for us (4 bunks).....we dropped our stuff and headed out for dinner. 

This was our sky when we got out. Rain was coming!!

Dinner was Phad Thai and a pizza to take away (we sat next to wood fire oven and they looked so good!). We watched a huge downpour as we ate.  Ran back to the hotel in the rain and we were all pretty happy to fall into bed. 

Pizza was good at 10pm ;-)

Very happy kid