Friday, June 22, 2007

All I've done all week was basically work, work, and work! I so need a personal masseur right now... to soothe my aching back :( I suppose the only (but quite a huge) consolation is that there are a few of us in this together; and having a great team of people to work with makes such a huge difference. I've become pretty cosy with my behind, diagonally behind and next-door neighbor all cos of one huge paper we have to write. Even joked about knocking down the partitions, so that I don't have to climb onto my table numerous times a day to pop my head over to talk... ;) Come to think of it... my behind neighbor and I prob top the climb-onto-table-to-talk list in our unit hehe. There's also another mystery I have yet to unravel.... how come we're all exhausted by 10pm whereas boss, who easily stays up till 11pm nightly to clear our work appears even more energetic than any of us??? I even got briefly suaned for complaining about a backache at a 'young' age... I suppose there are really supermen in this world. ;)

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Krabi (3) - Monkey encounters

Finally! My collection is complete. :)
Our half day outing to Ao Thalane was somewhat of a blessing in disguise. We all woke up late; and thus missed the morning kayaking tours; also couldn't really go to the kayaking site further away. Ended up going to this place some 1/2 hr lorry ride away... and according to our guide (featured below) the tide was so low
in the morning that it wasn't really possible for tourists to kayak anyways (the mangrove area can be really shallow at certain spots). And turns out that... cos almost no one goes kayaking at like 2pm in the afternoon, we had the entire area to ourselves! So it felt really peaceful and exclusive :)

I went in the same kayak as the guide... and hehe I get to tou1 lan3 from time to time!
Shu and Joyce in the other kayak....

Ah, one of my many cosying-up-to-monkeys experience. Well, when we first rowed out, there weren't any monkeys though our guide kept making noises to attract their attention. Then it all started when he found his 'pet' monkey. She swam across (enticed by the basket of pineapples) from the mangrove plants and then sat quite tamely just beside me/ on the basket/ all over our kayak. I've never had a monkey sit so close to me so it was kinda cool. Imagine its tail thumping on your leg :P Well, I don't have much affinity for monkeys to be honest, but when it was so close-up, I somehow couldn't help feeling a little awww.... Shu and Joyce too got their fare share of cosying-up-to-monkey experiences, though sometimes it came in the form of monkey scrambling-over-your-limbs to pick up pieces of pineapples thrown onto the kayak from the adjacent kayak (by our guide) :P

Our guide knows this wild monkey so well that they could even get 'intimate'... haha. Well, the picture is a little misleading, but our dear lil monkey here is actually more hungry than over-affectionate (trying to eat a piece of fruit that our guide has put in btwn his lips...) One of the things that keeps our guide in this area is the ability to remain close to nature. I think I can see why, even though I can't really imagine doing this for a job. It was an enjoyable back-to-nature kinda outing :)After the first monkey leaped onto our kayak, another one followed suit as we kayaked on... and what shocked me was the lil monkey clinging on to the mother.... its hair was all wet. And mother and baby monkey sat right next to my thigh and stole my water bottle...! Our guide says monkeys dun like saltwater very much either; and thus he fed it bottled water ;) The next pic was taken by my friends when we were kayaking through the limestone cliffs.... it was awesome kayaking through the towering structures.