Photo of the Day

Loving this one by Bebb Studios...

Honeymooners Part IV: James Bond Island

Back to the Honeymoon recaps! The day after the epic Phi Phi Island tour and snorkelling excursion, we needed to veg out a bit. We just hung around the hotel, swam in the fabulous pool, and went into town in the late afternoon to get some food and gifts for people. But the day after that, we were ready for some more sightseeing action! So we booked a tour to James Bond Island.

Despite growing up with a Bond-obsessed father, I'd never heard of James Bond Island. Its one of the many islands off the coast of mainland Thailand, made famous by its inclusion in the film The Man with the Golden Gun (one of the ones I haven't seen). As you can imagine, I spent most of the day singing under my breath, "He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot..." Yeah, it doesn't take much to get me singing! :-)

The set of islands we toured, of which James Bond Island is only one, are quite far north of where we'd been on the previous tour. We had to drive all the way up Phuket and cross over, by a narrow strip of land, into mainland Thailand (Note: we didn't drive ourselves, thank goodness. The tours organise minibuses for all the guests, and they pick you up right at your hotel).

This isn't the greatest map, but it's the best I could find!
The first trip took us to Phi Phi Islands, which you can see in the bottom right hand corner of the map. This tour took us north up Phuket to Phang Nga (top left), and we toured amongst those little islands off the east coast. Unfortunately James Bond and the other little islands we stopped at are not marked, but they're in there somewhere!

Before we left the mainland, though, we stopped in at a touristy temple cave. Just a cave filled with little statues, offerings and one or two huge Thai Buddhas, we never actually found out if it's somewhere where locals really worship, or if it's more for the tourists.

Our tour guide was nice and took some photos of Mr RS and me:
Me going up to the cave exit:

Unfortunately some of the cave shots were too dark, but what can you do without a good camera? Sigh.

Outside the cave there are monkeys. Scores of them. And you can buy bananas to feed them. How cute are these guys:
"C'mon, man, just one more, you know we're good for the money!"



Aaand...he's up! In two swift movements:
I love this little guy. The photo is blurry, but those little buggers move fast!
"It's my precioussssss...."

Mr Ruby Slippers shakes hands with the monkey leader after their agreement of peace:

And the couple shot:
"Awww, honey, he's like a litte baby..." (cue rabbit in headlights look from Mr Slippers)

By the way, I'm holding the packet of bananas over my head so the evil little sods don't come and grab it from me.

Then it was off to the islands! Here we are leaving the mainland:
As you can see, it was pretty overcast that day. We'd had bright sun up until then, so I couldn't be too annoyed. It was actually a relief to feel a little cooler, finally. It is pretty damn hot in Thailand!

Here we are approaching the main island from which you view James Bond Island. You see, the James Bond Island is more of a James Bond Rock, set in the bay of the bigger island. You can't land on it or anything.


So you go round to the right hand side of this island, land, walk up the beach, and see this:
I love it! It's such a cute little island. So then, of course, we had to take the obligatory "tourist shots":

Apparently I don't do a proper "gun-wielding pose". Mine just looks weird.
Oh yes we did!Then we walked up some stairs to get a better view:
And I did a Bond-wearing-sunglasses shot:
We walked down the stairs to the other side of the island, where some people were randomly filming a Bollywood movie:
And did some more touristy shots with a big rock:

Then back to the other side of the island again (it's a pretty small island!) where this wall...

...inspired me to get all wedding-photographer-like and lie down to take a shot from below. It was fun :-)
There was a cave nearby so Mr Ruby Slippers decided to do a caveman pose. Did I mention how totally adorable I think he is??

We left James Bond Island, roared off in our boat and...it started raining. Out in the middle of the sea in Asia...well, that was certainly a new experience! Fortunately it didn't bucket down, just a medium drizzle, but we had to draw up the plastic sheeting on the boat pretty fast. The girl in front of us is not picking her nose; I think she was trying to wipe the water off her face!
You can see the rain hitting the sea here, and falling diagonally in front of the cliff:

The unfortunate part was that at this point we were about to do some canoeing in and around the cavey cliffs. Well, I said "unfortunate", and Mr RS said "awesome experience". So we landed on a huge floating barge, where scores of canoes, piloted by young Thai teenagers, were waiting to take us on a mini-tour in the rain. We gave up our clothes as wet no matter what, and stepped aboard. This is our captain. I swear he looked about twelve years old:
And off in the rain. I love this picture; it looks like we're going through into a new world, or something:
And out the other side. Where an enterprising Thai businessman shows that you can sell soft drinks and coconut drinks anywhere, even off a canoe in the rain in the middle of the sea:
Gallivanting around the sea, and hiding from the rain:
There were all these gorgeous little coves and beaches hidden away around the island. Some you could only get to by going through gaps at the bottom of the cliffs....so really hidden and secret!


I love these trees that look like they're going to scuttle away at any moment:

And back through to our motorboat, anchored at the big floating barge:
We then stopped off for a late lunch at a Muslim fishing village. I hadn't realised that there were many Muslim people living in Thailand, but apparently there are. This whole village is built on stilts in the sea, against the edge of an island:


This lady at the market inside let me hold her monkey, and then asked for money for the privilege. We sort of expected this; most people in Thailand will expect you to give them at least 100 Baht for posing for a photo. (Not of course, if you take a photo of them as you go by, but if they have something special and you want it to be in the photo, that's when they get you)
Look how wet I am! All that damn canoeing in the rain! But how cute is the monkey? And yes, he is wearing a nappy. (Diaper to you American readers)

And here's a pic that shows off the village better. I took it from the internet, since the ones we took didn't show it well enough. We didn't get the mosque in, for one.

And that's it for the rainy island tour! We had only one day left in Phuket after this...more on that next time!

Photo of the Day

I just discovered Fuller Edge Photography! How frikkin awesome is this:

Down the Yellow Brick Road Part II: Salon, supermarket and Judy Garland

Previously - Part I : The night before.

When I woke up annoyingly early on the morning of my wedding, I was still surprisingly calm. I did have butterflies, but only tiny ones...not even as bad as the ones I used to get when I had swimming class at school (I was scared of the teacher, and scared that I'd be pushed under by someone because I never mastered how to be underwater without holding my nose). I got up, posted my blog, took a photo of the fantastically blue sky, ate breakfast - yes, I did, I was HUNGRY - and woke up BFF Ruby Slippers. I stuck on some Beach Boys to perk us up (mostly because we'd done ABBA to death over the past few weeks) and we bopped around packing last-minute stuff to the strains of "I Get Around" and "Good Vibrations". Man, I love those Beach Boys. Then Sister Slippers arrived. Photo op!

It was very bright, hence my eyes being closed. That, and I'm notorious for closing my eyes in photos. Either way, I should have gone the sunglasses route like sister RS.

Sister RS also presented her dog-bitten cheek for inspection. Three days before the wedding she was saying hello to one of her dogs through her gate, and someone walked past. The dog leaped forward to bark, and snapped her cheek in the process. Great. Now I had a wounded bridesmaid! I thought about expelling her from the bridal party for her carelessness...but that would have made the numbers uneven. I can't believe this would happen to me on MY DAAAAYYY!!

Just kidding. I do love those crazy brides who make it all about themselves, though. Anyway, my fabtastic makeup friendor, Mel, was able to cover the cut almost entirely. I don't think it'll show
in any of the photos. It certainly doesn't in the family/friend ones.

Then it was off to the salon! Megan, my hairstylist, already had a picture of how I wanted my hair done, from my mini-semi-trial the week before. I mentioned it before here. Anyway, to recap, suffice it to say my hair does not hold curls. Megan tried curling tongs and one of her colleagues tried something else (hot rollers, I think) on the other side of my head. Both looked beautiful when they came out, and both fell flat five minutes later. By the time I got home (five minute drive) you'd swear that nothing had ever been done to my hair. So at least we had that vague trial (which she didn't charge me for, since it was only supposed to be a discussion of what I wanted. Very sweet of her) in which to find out that my hair sucks, and to come up with a new plan.

Here we all are in the salon, eagerly awaiting our beautifying.

Whoa, cleavage!


It looked to me like they had somehow "lost" BFF RS' appointment, which is weird since I confirmed them the week before when I was there, but they called someone over - the same guy who did my make-up for my e-shoot, actually - and said it was all fine. I'm sure they lost it, though! Anyway, it all worked out well, so I let it wash over me. Zen bride over here.

Here they are partway through my hair. I must admit I do enjoy getting my hair done (ie, played with).
You may remember that Megan offered to come out to the venue later to finish off my hair then, so that it could have every possible moment in curlers. Our appointment was at 9am, and we were all done by 10:25, so we trotted across the parking lot to the supermarket and stocked up on water, yoghurt and fizzy drinks (for the others). We were also a bit excited to see some Jaffa Cake equivalents for sale, because these are impossible to find here. Both Sister RS and BFF RS ADORE Jaffa Cakes, as does Mr RS! I like them but I'm not in love with them like those other three are. So we stocked up on a few boxes of those. I wish I'd got photos! And pictures of the odd looks I got in my curlers, too. I didn't care, though! I was getting MARRIED today!

Then it was home to pick up the dresses, overnight bags, general wedding paraphernalia and coolerbox. Because Mr RS was coming on his own later on and we were staying overnight, I wouldn't need to take my car. But BFF and Sister Slippers would each need their own so they could leave when they wanted to. I decided to travel with BFF because she said she had something on her iPod she wanted me to hear.

I have to say, that was one of the most fun car rides I have ever had. The thing BFF RS wanted me to listen to was Judy Garland and Ethel Merman doing the duet from Call me Madam "I hear singing and there's no one there/You don't need analyzing". I was totally excited, because I'm in love with Judy; and Ethel, while brash and brassy, is just such an icon that I can't help but enjoy her. In the movie, she does the duet with Donald O'Connor (love him!), but it was so much more fun to hear two of the great belters doing it together! I just tried to find this on youtube and failed, so goodness knows where BFF RS got the audio clip from.

After hearing that song, we were completely in Judy mode, so I lined up some of her most fun, perker-upper numbers, and we sang all the way to The Moon & Sixpence (my favourite is Judy's version of Purple People Eater - what a scream!). It was the best thing we could have done. I had more fun than I'd had in weeks on that drive (Judy plus singing; a winning combination, and it was so much fun to sing with someone who knows all the words too!). I arrived feeling happy, bouncy and not nervous at all. We got our key and opened up the honeymoon suite, which is where we girls were to get ready. Here are BFF and Sister Slippers in the room when we arrived:
BFF had a partial updo, and Sister RS, whose recently-cut hair was too short for anything like that, just had a poofy blow wave.

And here I am, still in curlers, hanging my dress on the bedpost! Don't you love that the hangings look like veils? Mmmm.

I was playing around with photoshop to try and crisp up some of these images (you should see what they looked like before!) and I thought this one looked nice in a soft black & white.

Next up: Decor!