Kokochi

Hotel Utah

Having lunch with Dav. Just a few steps from work. A welcome change from San Mateo where we were so isolated. Dav didn't lose time in getting connected...

Dav's pictures of the trip are up!

Here.

Chilly day, eh?

It's only my second day working in our new office. I'm still adjusting to the beauty and space. I walked into the kitchen today and bumped into a bunch of Six Aparters happily eating pizza together. I marveled at the site because we never had a kitchen before, let alone space to eat together!

But the heating still needs some adjustment. I'm serious when I say I don't like being cold. Sippey caught me decked out at a meeting in a particularly cold area of the office...

Comments are open!!

Thanks to Dav, Kokochi has comments again! Yay! Also, thank you for your patience to all those who emailed me instead while comments were down. And especially during the tsunami scare, thanks for checking in with me. : )

Last night in Chiang Mai

At a beautiful riverside restaurant in Chiang Mai for our last night. Fancy. We were already full from a gigantic lunch that was fantastic. So we had wine and dessert (although the pic shows the magnificent bottle of water we had). Actually called "Riverside" and I highly recommend for a romantic evening.

Minty: you should go there since you're still in the area. We miss you! And on our last evening, we wondered aloud, "What's Minty doing now?" Go Minty!!

Various scenes from lovely Pai

Driving there.

Dav getting a 3 hour spa/massage.

Dav with a spoon on his nose (a game sponsored by Mellow Yellow, a cool and fun bar).

Views from a walk to the hills up behind the hot springs (that were hot enough to satisfy the Onsen-loving me).

Views from our bungalow.

Driving to Shark River Restaurant.

Shark River Restaurant: our favorite bar/restaurant that was so chill we ate and napped for a few hours. When we woke to get going, the owner came by to say, "you leave us so soon?"

Sittin' at Mellow Yellow yet again. And Ari with the colorful healthy shakes they served.

Various scenes from Ko Samui

The most relaxed cat I've seen at the Seabreeze Bungalow that came up to Dav, plopped down in his arms, and napped.

Beautiful nature up in the hills.

A cute alter with tiny statues of a cute old couple. Just how I wanna be when I'm 80 years old.

Ahhh. The beach.

A chicken family walking around. I've actually never seen a whole family; mom, dad, chicks all hanging out together. I saw them several times, always together.

The perfect facial

One afternoon in Ko Samui, Sapna and I ventured out on our own to get a facial. We went to a beautiful hotel only to find their services were totally booked. So we enjoyed their garden and drank coconut cocktails on their beach. But we later went to Four Seasons and splurged on the best facial I've ever had.

Omatase! お待たせ！

Finally, I'm uploading pics that I took with my faithful phone while in Thailand. It's weird cuz even though I couldn't moblog, my phone is my camera so that's what I used. Dav has a super duper digital camera so I left it to him to get the nice pics. My pics are more of my snapping what caught my eye or moved me.

These pics here are of my first night alone in Bangkok before I met up with everyone. I was fascinated by all the food stalls and ate more than a normal dinner's worth of food. It was delicious...although now I suspect that I got my tummy bout from here (??). Anyhow, it was fun poking around, pointing at dishes, and tasting all of them.

Airport emotions

Just came back from picking up Dav at the airport. It took a while for him to come out as he apparently had his luggage searched - no doubt due to his very suspicious looking passport photo - and as I waited, I was struck at how many different emotions and experiences airports hold: there were 2 Japanese camera crews waiting for a famous baseball player to burst through the doors; a woman arrived from Thailand on a medical stretcher was greeted by reporters and her family (I can only assume she was at the tsunami scene); many family members waiting for loved ones; shrieks from a girl meeting her long lost friend...so many individual memories.

I remember my mom used to tell me how airports always made her sad since she used to send off my brother every year to boarding school to the US from Japan. And then she had to learn to part with me when I went to college in the US. Me too, I used to get a lump in my stomach at SFO and Narita when either Dav was leaving Tokyo or I was leaving SFO after being able to spend time together during our long-distance relationship.

I bet there are a million amazing airport emotion-filled stories.