Ringing In The New Year
We left Baan Suay on New Years Eve and headed a wee bit south to the much cheaper digs at Fantasy Hill in Kata Beach. While it was indeed on a hill, I wouldn't exactly call it a fantasy. I'd probably been spoiled a bit by Baan Suay and it's ultra friendly staff, awesome menu of food, hella nice pool and beautiful rooms...at this place, on the other hand, we got a fan, a super stiff ass bed, and a bathroom that reminded me a lot like the one back home in Okinawa only not as nice...but then I shouldn't have expected much more than that for the 500 baht a night we were paying.
After we dropped our stuff off and changed into our bathing suits, we took a stroll down to the beach and set up shop near some half nekkid Europeans. I think I saw at least six titties that day of varying quality. MaryAnn seemed to love this beach the best out of all of the ones we had been too since the water was a lot clearer and bluer than either Karon or Kamala...which is amusing since Kata is literally a five minute drive from Karon. Ah the near perfect beach...it was so close and we had no clue.
The original plan was to go to Patong for New Years and spend the night drinking with a bunch of stupid people, but then we came to our sense and realized it'd be better to spend New Years in Kata...especially since we wound up signing up for a trip to Ko Phi Phi and other surrounding islands for the next day that left butt early in the morning. So instead we had a really nice dinner at this restaurant by Fantasy Hill; then we took a late night stroll down the beach in our barefeet. In Thailand (or maybe just where we were), on New Years Eve they shoot off fireworks and launch these hot air balloon type things into the air. They look like floating candles or something. We had a ton of near death experiences with those things, having to avoid low flying fireballs of death and even one thing that was spewing fireworks underneath it that almost landed on our heads. But in the end it was probably the greatest New Years I've ever had...a good sign of things to come in 2009 perhaps?