Hi, Seasons greetings to everyone! Wow, can you believe its Christmas already!! Is it just me or does everyone think this year has been the quickest year ever? Well Mike and I have been here in Thailand now for over 7 months! That’s crazy! And again, everything is still great. We have just had the biggest group of friends visit us EVER. At least once a year, the group of people we went to Uni with, try to get together for a bit of a catch up and this year it was our first ‘international’ reunion. We had 11 people stay overnight at our house at one stage. They started arriving on the 14th of November and tonight will be the first day that Mike and I have the house back to ourselves! The group had been spread out all over the world and did so well to have them all converge on us at the same time – although Thailand is thanking us! With the first group of arrivals, a few days was spent in Bangkok doing the usual markets, sight seeing, eating, drinking type of activities! I unfortunately was still working during these days and had to hold back on some of the late night antics. These few days resulted in a few broken chairs, a few sore heads and an overworked maid! Mike headed away with the first group of people for a long weekend getaway to Phi Phi Island, in south-east Thailand. I managed to get a few days off and I took the next group down the following day. Phi Phi is where the movie ‘The Beach’ was filmed and I have to say, I was really surprised at how nice the island was. It was pretty much wiped out by the tsunami and even though the hordes of tourists have returned, the island is still absolutely gorgeous, with white sand, blue water and it really is a tropical paradise – along with hundreds of other foreigners tropical paradise! We had a great time for the next 4 days. A pool with a pool bar, a dive trip (not so successful for me) and a few late nights was just what we all needed to catch up with each other. After the trip to Phi Phi, I headed off to the US again for work. I was there for some meetings and the trip was just over a week, but in true nothing-ever-goes-right-for-Tara style, I had drama after drama with the planes/airports. I arrived in Chicago after 20-something hours flying already to find that it had just started snowing. Snowing! I don’t have a lot of experience and I was wondering if planes can fly in snow…and as I was about to find out, apparently not. I got to Chicago at 11:00am. My 1:30pm flight was cancelled and I had been re-booked onto a 7:30pm flight. I waited all that time, with absolutely nothing to do at Chicago airport. No shops even to waste my money in! At 7:30 the flight had been delayed an hour, and then they finally loaded us on. We were all settled, the plane was de-iced (?) and we headed out to take off. There were planes everywhere trying to take off, and after about an hour of driving around, we were told we had to go back to de-ice the wings again. So we headed back and sat at the gate for another hour or so. They then told us that the airport had been closed and we had to get off the plane! This is at 10:30 at night, 11 bloody hours after I arrived, they kicked us off. So I had to go and get a hotel to sleep in for the night until my flight the next morning at 8am. Argh. They wouldn’t give us our bags back, so I had been in my clothes for literally, days and I had no toiletries or clean clothes! I finally arrived in Lexington, Kentucky the next day over 24 hours late. My work there was fun and I even managed to go to the Christmas party. Alltech give away a car every year! I didn’t win but maybe next year! I flew out a few days later but not without a little bit more drama. I got the shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport and about 4 minutes after leaving the hotel, we were driving on this bridge and the driver was playing with the stereo and ran off the road….he crashed the van!!!!!!!!!! Neither of us was hurt, but the gutter was really high and the van was not looking good. The tyre had gone flat and the whole side of the van was smashed up. This resulted in me being late to the airport, but luckily (or unluckily) that flight was delayed. Then it was un-delayed, then delayed and then we boarded. Then un-boarded and then delayed and then un-delayed and then we finally took off. This caused a little bit of chaos for the rest of my trip home. Just another day in the life of a high flyer I guess!!! Mike’s job is going great .He has hired a Thai girl to do some engineering with him. So I guess he is now a boss of someone – other than me of course! However, in true Mike style, the Monday that she started working with Diab, he was on holidays with all the uni crowd for the entire week! He has just spent a week in Australia, eating meat pies and fish ‘n’ chips. Drinking red wine and going to music festivals! This was a work trip of course! We were wishing that we were heading home for Christmas, but we are really excited about heading to Ireland next week. A little nervous about the cold weather, but looking forward to sitting in front of a real fire. We will back in Bangkok on the 30th for Mary and Gina’s arrival. There are people planned in and out of our place from next Thursday right through to the end of January. I really cant believe that we are as far from home as we have ever been, we have the biggest house we have ever had, more spare beds than we have ever had and yet we have so many visitors that we cant find a place for them all to sleep! We are not getting lonely that’s for sure! The next few months are busy for both of us. I’m heading to Vietnam in early January for a work trip and Ill also be heading to China and India in the coming weeks. I’m also heading back to the US in April. Mike has travel planned to of course. I’m trying to organise some training in Australia so I can come home for a visit. Lots more visitors and a proper trip home in April for us both. Never a dull moment over here! Alright, Ill pop some photos up for you to check out! Merry Christmas and even if we don’t get to chat to you all over the holiday, you will all be in our thoughts. Love us x
