Tracy's Travel Adventures

Hello (from 2006)

2006-07-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

Hello, Hello!

I created this blog especially for you and hope you get as much enjoyment from my stories as I had while experiencing them.

Earlier this year, I basically high-tailed it to SE Asia for the month of May and kept track of my travel adventures through this site.

There's a bunch more stories and adventures, but these are the highlights and stories that touched me the most. I've been to 25 countries and have done everything from white water rafting in Brazil to camping out on a deserted island by myself in Mexico to getting mugged in Argentina to... you name it, I've probably done it.

Most recently I spent two weeks in Fiji learning how to kite surf... see adventures below :)

Make sure you watch the videos and, well, enjoy!

Much Health & Happiness,

Tracy Tanguay

Made it to Bangkok: VIDEO of cricket eating!

2006-07-26T22:42:00.000-07:00

Alright, this is going to be a short post because it's about 9 thousand degrees in this internet cafe and I'm totally jet-lagged.

Drinking red bull worked for a bit, but I'm fading fast and it's only 6p.

I met some cool people here in Bangkok and somehow we all convinced one another to chomp on a cricket or two. Here's a video of me checking it out. Crunchy!

My plan for the next week is to get my laser hair removal done... (no shame here in telling you that). I will probably head up north to Pai to go riding on elephants or something. Basically winging it for the next 5 wks.

moan I'm SOO sick today. Food Poisoning :(

2006-07-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Dude. I don't know what the frik I ate or drank yesterday but I think some aliens were giving birth in my stomach last night. I haven't yet gone through giving birth, but I imagine that the pains I was feeling all last night and today is what it might feel like.

Of all days to be sick, I get food poisoning when I'm staying in a $2.60 hut in the middle of nowhere with community bathrooms that you have to trek through knee high grass and massive spider webs only to find a mosquito infested toilet to squat over. Why don't I get sick when I'm in a luxurious place, huh?

I'll tell you what... having to climb down a ladder at 2 AM and then run through tall, wet grass to an outdoor toilet to get sick is NOT my idea of a good time. Let me give you an idea of what I was dealing with. Imagine an out house you'd use perhaps while camping. The walls are made of thatch, the roof is made of leaves, and there are a gazillion monster mosquitoes hovering over the bucket of water needed to flush the toilet. My legs currently look like I have small pox or some other random, rare disease. I'm sure my butt looks the same because those mosquitoes don't differentiate between legs and rear-end when sucking blood.

Needless to say, I didn't get any sleep last night and pretty much moaned throughout the night. Between the times where I was feeling like I was going to die, I'd get in a half hour of sleep - -finally got up around noon. I wanted to check out of my hut and into a real bedroom with air conditioning and my own bathroom... but it was torrentially pouring. The rain sounded lovely, but when you're doubled over in excruciating pain the last thing you want to do is walk a mile in rain. I finally checked out around 3 PM.

I made my way back over the thatch bridge (pictured here) with my huge back pack and stumbled to the nearest, nicest guest house I could find along the way. Luckily it was only on the other side of this bridge because I may have reverted to just curling up in a ball on the side of the river to die if I had to walk any further.

As I get closer to the front desk I have to stop to breath through more of these nearly crippling contractions and the lady asks me in Thai if I'm okay. The only thing I could mutter was "mai sabai, jep thong" - basically saying I'm about to die, can you contact my family? No, it means 'not well' and 'bad stomach'. Someone comes over and grabs my bags for me and once the pain subsided a bit, I was able to tell them I needed a room and needed it ASAP.

Talk about great service! The room is gorgeous - A/C, gorgeous decor, new bathroom, island-type shower... man, was I a happy camper for the time being! I went from paying $2.60 a night to paying $39.00 a night just to have my own bathroom and air conditioning...and it's WELL worth it!

As long as I don't move much, I'm kind of ok - haven't eaten yet today and frankly am too scared to try any food in fear of the army of aliens coming back to battle in my stomach.

I originally planned to get out of this town after a day or two, but since I feel like major crapola I'm kind of worried about getting on a bumpy 5 hour van ride back to any major town... if you catch my drift.

After being cooped up in my hotel room for a few days without leaving bed, I needed to get out. I ventured over to a Swedish restaurant to watch tv and I found out about some Reiki in town.

What is Reiki? Glad you asked, here's a link if you're interested, if not.. keep reading..

http://www.reiki.org/FAQ/WhatIsReiki.html

Since this town is new age-ish and there's a good amt of tree hugging people, I was looking to have a Reiki session. Come to find out, this woman in town is a master and I'm getting certified to become a Reiki Healer myself. Yep. 4 days of it. Did my first class tonight and have some homework to do for tomorrow's session.

Go ahead and shake your head at me and wonder what kind of freak I'm going to turn into... but once I'm certified you know you're gonna be kinda curious about what it is. That's my one invitation, if you're interested let me know.

Lots of new things on this trip: Reiki, thai cooking, kite boarding, scuba diving, and rock climbing, oh my.

I think I'm off to get a thai massage now and hope that this awful stomach thing goes away ASAP!

I loved this picture... this thatch bridge is the only way to get to my old hut where I suffered a few nights with no close-by toilet and no A/C .

LAOS: Monkey, Near Evacuation, Videos, Tree Houses

2006-07-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

Seriously, one of the best experiences I've had yet. We went gliding through the rain forest 500 feet off the ground, hanging in a harness on a wire cable and zipped from tree to tree... SOOOO fun and scary!

This is a super short video b/c it takes about an hour to upload clips and the internet cafe is closing in 15 mins.

Originally we started the trek with 9 people total and we had to break into two groups - basically like a Survivor situation. Someone makes him/herself leader and everyone follows. I'm usually a leader, but there were a LOT of strong/annoying personalities in the bunch so I casually sat back to observe.

There are two tree houses to choose from. Waterfall tree house and luxurious tree house. The guide said the group who goes to the waterfall tree house needs to be really fit and athletic because there will be a lot more hiking involved. I obviously wanted to hit that one first, but the problem is that 3 of the people who wanted to go to the waterfall for the first night, well, 1 was this RIDICULOUSLY annoying Canadian guy (who forced his way into my monkey video and most of my monkey pictures), who also yelled at everyone in the group for talking too loudly while we were hiking. Funny thing about this guy is that later in the day he was the one YELLING across the forest trying to get someone's attention in another tree. I laughed and said, hey Aaron, what happened to the silent, serene hiking you mentioned earlier? Everyone laughed, he told me to shut up.

So, one rule for picking a tree house was that I absolutely did NOT want to be with annoying Canadian guy. It would have been a tough situation for me and there's no doubt by the end of the first day I would have gone totally ape shit on him.

Since he made the announcement that he was definitely going to the waterfall tree house, I gave it a minute or two so it didn't look obvious that I didn't want to go with him and quietly said, ok, *sigh* I guess I'll go to the other tree house tonight. My other rule was that I didn't want to sleep with the snorers of the group and found out that Heinz and this other German guy apparently sounded like a freight train in a tunnel when they slept, so they went with the Canadian. Poor guys.

We break up into the groups and go on a grueling hike probably as challenging as Machu Picchu, but without the 15,000 ft altitude. Oh, and it was torrentially pouring out, which created insanely slippery mudslides and nothing for your feet to grip while climbing up or down. Needless to say we all ended up totally covered in mud, sweaty, wet, and getting eaten alive by monster bugs and leeches.

Here's a funny sequence of me trying to get a picture while crossing a little river... As I am standing shin deep in brown water I felt something on my ankle...

so I reach down to check it out.. and AHHH! It's a leech.. that won't come off!!

I couldn't get out of there fast enough!

We get to "Tree House 1" (there are 5 in all) and low and behold there is a BABY MONKEY! I LOOOOOVE MONKEYS! I pick her up and she lets me hold her like an infant and falls asleep. I'm in heaven about now. She then jumps up on my shoulder and starts GROOMING ME!!!!! I'm so excited while telling you this story! I think this is, hands down, the highlight of my trip. Here's a video. Please excuse the really annoying Canadian guy who decided to steal the spotlight from my monkey.

Anyhoo, as I was saying, the first night we slept in the luxurious tree house. Since we were in an open air tree house we had to sleep under really thick mosquito nets and it was insanely hot. I had a hard time sleeping and in the middle of the night wanted to get up to use the outdoor potty, but was afraid to go out alone. So I woke up Colin to chaperone me. I had my flashlight in hand, Colin close by, and dodging humongous spider webs to pee really, really fast. The toilet and shower were on a different level (oh, and basically the toilet is one of those squatter things and your 'waste' drops down into the forest. kind of funny to watch it fall 500 feet. lol)

Back to my story. I come out of the bathroom and happen to shine my flashlight at the thatch/leaf ceiling and something shines back at me like eyes of an animal.

I shine my light again at the ceiling and pretty much freak the frik out and jump down to the 1st floor where Colin was waiting for me. I'm freaking out and now I've got the heebie jeebies and yell, TARANTULA! This spider is not the one in the ceiling... and actually is not even CLOSE to the size and hairy-ness of the ones in our tree house.

Colin and I are standing close (not because he was scared, but because he had no choice that I was suction cupped to his leg) while we shone the flash light at the ceiling to see about 20 sets of eyes on the biggest spiders I've ever seen in my life.

Remember the spider in one of my previous posts? (I re-posted it here). Huge, right? Well these spiders are double the size and thick and hairy. omg. I almost passed out. I so quickly scurried back to the mosquito netted bed, climbed in and did my best to forget about the mammoth sized creatures. (This picture was taken earlier in the day... right above our heads on the ceiling is where the huge-ass spiders were hanging out all night).

Ok - night 2:

We wake up to the sound of the zip line and our guide bringing in our home cooked breakfast of rice and vegetables and green tea. He says we better get going because we have a four hour hike ahead of us to the waterfall tree house.

Before heading out on the hike, we played on the zip lines a bit.. and every time, man your nerves and adrenaline kick in to make it a pretty exhilarating experience! The hike was similar to day 1 - really challenging, muddy, and wet.
It was actually pretty cold this day, so by the time we got to the tree house no one wanted to swim in the waterfall except me and Colin.

Whew, this is a long post! and I'm still not done.

We take our freezing little butts down a five minute hill and just before the water we spot some powdered detergent and shampoo. Score! We strip down to our swim trunks and are basically squatting on rocks scrubbing our muddy clothes in the water while it rains on our cold, almost bare bodies. It was very caveman like, so I decided to start talking gorilla to Colin. He cocks his head, gives me a funny look and responds in a monkey voice.

Maybe you had to be there, but we spent about 5 minutes washing our clothes doing the hooo hoo hoo hee hoo hoo noises like a monkey while laughing our asses off.

After hanging our newly clean clothes on tree branches, we (I) take the bamboo raft and swim over to the waterfall.. I wore my socks because I didn't want to know what was on the bottom of this waterhole. We make our way all the way over to the waterfall and climb up a couple tiers to where the water was rushing by. It was great. We brought the shampoo with us and while sitting on a rock, I jammed my feet into another rock on the other side of the rushing water and dunked my head to wash the shampoo out.

We didn't bring our cameras, but if you had some image of what Laos might look like... a rainforest, mist in the trees and a waterfall to boot, it was gorgeous. Even if I had my camera, the pictures wouldn't have done this spot justice because it was absolutely stunning and lush and green and wet and amazing.

After swimming, we make our way (nice and clean) back to the tree house. We're all absolutely exhausted from the hike that day and it's only 3p and we didn't want to nap because if we napped then we wouldn't be able to sleep once it got dark at 8p. We lounge around until dinner comes zipping in and shortly thereafter we all are out like a light.

The second night there was an AMAZING thunderstorm. If you like rain and thunder, imagine the best possible place to experience a storm. In a tree house in the middle of a rainforest with nothing but you and nature.

Incredible.

Huge cracks of thunder. Pounding rain coming down so hard you can barely hear yourself think.

I was so much at peace and so tranquil...

... until the Swedish girl in the other mosquito net, in a VERY concerned tone of voice, says, "I think we should put our harnesses on and get ready to evacuate." (Here's a picture of them.. all sweet and innocent looking by day.. by night, invoking terror in their fellow tree house mates)

EVACUATE??!?! No more peace and tranquility now.

When we first started the trek the guides said if there are any storms to count the time between lightening and thunder. If it was 10 seconds apart to put our harnesses on.. if it got any closer, we needed to evacuate in the rain and sleep on the ground under a thatch shelter. It never occurred to me that we might actually evacuate.. until the Swede started panicking.

Now everyone is awake and I'm no longer at peace or anything close to it. For the next 3 hours I was wide eyed, scared shitless, and counting the distance of the storm. It would go from 13 to 20 and I'd relax and then back down to 13, 12, 11, 10.. at which point I'd start getting nervous and sick to my stomach... but luckily the storm never came closer than 10 miles away.

Later we found out that the guys in the other tree house were counting the storm only 3 seconds away and had their harnesses on ready to evacuate. I guess the guide said if it gets any less than 6 seconds not to evacuate the tree house cause it'd be more dangerous on a metal zip line. I would have freaked out!

So the next day we wake up and finish our hiking in the jungle and end up in a little village that has been there for nearly fifty years. Check out how these people live and the children who live there. None of the little kids wore pants and all were so dirty, but amazingly they were all happy. ! I took some of these pictures and the portraits Colin from Switzerland took with his awesome camera.

I noticed the younger boys in the village playing what looked like a game of soccer/volleyball, but they were using a hard wicker ball instead of a real ball. I asked if I could play and even though they didn't speak any English, they warmly welcomed me to play. I played until my foot started bleeding and when the ball went out of bounds I decided to chase after it. Oh, by the way, we're all barefoot. Anyhoo, I run after the ball and it was pretty muddy and I saw what looked to be a dried mound of dirt to step on.

Boy was I wrong. Not only was it not dried, it was buffalo poop. Um, yea.. I thought the kids were all going to pee their pants from laughing so hard and for not knowing any English, they sure knew how to say "buffalo! funny! funny! buffalo!" This is me washing the poop out from between my toes.

It's amazing how the people live in this village. This trekking thing I did this weekend is an eco-tourism experience where the money we pay for the adventure goes directly back to rainforest. Our money goes to the salary of the men and women who cut the trees, clear hiking paths, run water lines to the tree houses, build the tree houses and anything else in order to keep the program running. The young, energetic, and most eager males to learn English are the ones who get to be the guides. Apparently being a guide is a pretty prestigious job in the tribe!

Anyhoo, if you ever get over to Laos... let me know because I can recommend you to one of the most exciting, exhilarating and eye opening adventures of your life!

I'm not exactly sure where I'm headed next.. all I know is that I'm gonna do my best to make it down to the island to do some scuba diving. woo hoo.

Diving in Ko Nangyan & Cow Dung Manager

2006-07-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to the southern islands... after a flight from Chang Rai at 3p, a 9 hour overnight bus and then a 2 hr boat ride in rough waters... (watching some Asian girl puking the entire trip)... I'm finally here.

It's a gorgeous island with only one resort (http://www.nangyuan.com/nangyuan.php), but I already want to leave.. and the only reason I'm not leaving immediately is b/c I signed up for a 3-day dive course.

The staff screwed up my reservation, which means I'd have to switch rooms after two nights and then again two nights later. The reason I came to this island was so I could chill out in one place for a week and not have to pack up and move around.... it kind of wears on me!

Anyhoo, the total A.H. manager who is no more than 5'3" (the manager is a guy) and who is also a complete jerk wouldn't make any kind of accommodations for me and any time I tried to speak, he interrupted me. I hadn't been able to get any sleep on the overnight bus... and as we all know what happens to Tracy when she's over tired ... she cries.

So here I am at the front counter in tears because all I wanted was a room with air conditioning so I could take a nap and then figure what I was doing once I was sane again. This manager is being a huge donkey and I decide to just take one really nice room for one night and then switch places the next morning. Right as I'm about to go to the room they hand me a piece of paper with hotel rules. One of them being no water or electricity from 10a-5p.

It is now 11 o'clock in the morning and already hot as hell. No sleeping for me. And now MUCH more pissy at this point. Bad Combo!

I put my bags in my room and decide to lounge on a chair on the beach... but then it starts torrentially down pouring. I figure I'll just get a massage instead and go to the front counter to set up a massage and they tell me they can't do any massages because the mat is wet b/c of the rain. I don't give a hoot about a wet mat, do it on the floor for all I care. And what hotel doesn't have a back up plan for rain!??!

I'm batting zero here.

I go back to my room to find easily a thousand tiny ants crawling ALL over my bed, under my covers and have basically taken my backpack hostage.

Lovely.

I spend the next 45 minutes emptying everything out of my bag, shaking it out, and then hanging it from the random nails in the walls. Oh, and the room is a piece of crap. For $80/night in Thailand I should be living in a mansion. But noooo... I've got ants in my bed, one of those shower/toilet/sink combos and no electricity during the day. C'mon. You've got to be kidding me.

I decide I'll just go to a different island in the morning when I bump into people who have gone diving here. They all RAVED about it and the dive instructors were so cool that I decided to do a 3-day PADI certification course. I also decided to switch rooms to one of the cheaper ones (only $10/night) cause then I could care less if it's a piece of crap b/c I'm only spending ten bucks anyway.

So I'm all signed up for diving and go to use the internet (which is behind the front counter and totally non-private) and realize they have wireless. Things are looking up.

I grab my laptop and see that I need a Network Key (basically the password) and ask for the password and the son of a bitch manager in a snotty ass voice says, no, they don't have wireless.

I'm staring at the freaking wireless router. Don't lie and say you don't have wireless because my computer recognized the network and I also see the router sitting right in front of me.

I explain nicely that I know they have wireless and point to the router and then he interrupts me AGAIN and says, no, you cannot use it. Keep in mind that I haven't slept in over 36 hours and I'm hot... I'm cussing out this little shit of a manager in my head and decide I'm checking out of this place in the morning. I would have checked out then and there, but then I'd have no way to get to the other island because the ferry stopped running two hours ago.

Even though the island is gorgeous, I can't deal with the completely incompetent staff.

I leave the horrid front desk staff and walk over to the cool dive shop people and explain my situation and they offer for me to just hook my laptop up to their office after the front desk closes and just lock the office behind me. I probably won't do that, but how difficult was that?

LOOONG story short, I'm sticking around for the dive course only and b-lining the freaking cow dung of a manager while I'm here in order to make my stay more enjoyable.

Unless something insanely amazing happens in the next couple days I doubt I'll be online... cause when I'm online the stupid manager walks around and gives me the evil eye constantly.

I can't complain too much. I'm sitting in paradise. Where are you sitting? Yea, that's what I thought. I'll stop bitching now.

++ Update: Ten minutes after writing this post, I decided to do a little investigative work. I went into the network settings and figured out what the network key/password was. HA! Now I can get online in my bungalow. That'll teach the guy to be a jerk. Wee. ++

Diving ended up being AMAZING!

2006-07-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

WOW! Had I known how incredible scuba diving would be, I would have done it a long time ago. I don't really have any diving pictures cause I didn't bring my camera with me, but here are some pictures of the island where I stayed and one of the places I learned to dive.

There were two other people with me (Christian and Nikki from Canada) who were so much fun to hang around with. They have been travelling for the same amount of time as me and they were really nice people.

Since the two of them had one another as their buddy (you always dive with a buddy), I got paired up with the cute dive instructor. Oh woe is me, right? Neither of these are my instructor, but they were cute so I snapped a picture anyway.

We only spent about 4 hours in the classroom over 2 days and the rest of the time we were doing all the lessons in the most gorgeous, clear water ever! These pictures are of the island that I not only stayed on, but also the place that we got to do our first lessons in the water. It's called Japanese Gardens.
Since I had only snorkeled before, I wasn't sure how I'd fair way under water. I figured the part when we had to take off our masks is when I'd probably freak out.... but strangely enough I only freaked out once... We were on our 2nd dive down about 30 feet and I was fine up until we had to fill our masks half way and then clear the water while were were 30 feet under. I did it before, I knew how to do it... but this day I was having a hard time getting air and started to panic a bit. I looked at my cute instructor and gave him the signal that I needed to go up. He gave me the hand signals to relax and breathe... so I tried.

Wasn't working.

I tried again... and then I started to get teary eyed and more panicky... in turn making it really hard to breathe, so I gave him one last signal and high tailed it for the surface. I changed regulators b/c I was convinced it wasn't me... but a malfunction of the equipment instead. haha. Once I switched to a new breathing device I was fine and went back down to enjoy the dive.

I gotta say, diving with a buddy is kind of a special experience. When we went in for our first dive he told us to stick together until we got to this other area. I was a little bit nervous so I was pretty close to Camillo (my instructor), and then out of nowhere a trigger fish popped up and I was practically in his life jacket hoping to not get attacked by the fish.

The rest of the dive, I was still a little scared so he kept hold of my hand. So I'm holding my dive instructors hand going about my business and thought, hey, this is kind of cool. Unless you're dating or married, you don't ever really hold someone's hand. It was nice. I figured he does it all the time so I just brushed it off. ... until later in the day before our next dive he said, "Holding your hand earlier was really nice." Aww shucks.

Needless to say the rest of the dives we went along holding hands. Out of the water it was strictly instructor/student, but got to experience this new underwater world feeling very secure and confident in my new surroundings. I guess what made it so nice is that I felt very safe. I rarely put myself in situations that i don't feel comfortable or confident in some way. I feel that I always have to be in control... In this situation, I felt very out of control, out of my comfort zone, but knowing that I was 'safe' was really a nice feeling. It was kind of nice to be a follower. To sit back and let someone else take the lead. I really enjoy that. A lot.

Anyhoo, here's me after the dive. Gotta love the mask lined face :)

Also notice that I really don't have a tan... it's been raining almost the entire trip, no chance for sun :(

Here's a few last pictures of the island I was staying:

GORGEOUS Day at Bottle Beach!

2006-07-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Bottle Beach. A gorgeously pristine beach on the north of Koh Phangan. It takes about an hour to get there and can only be accessed by boat. Nicolas and I met a couple from England who joined us for the day, Alex and Hannah, and ended up getting stranded and missing our thai boxing lessons because our taxi driver didn't show up on time.

The weather was absolutely perfect - 90 degrees, slight breeze, refreshing water and partially cloudy to keep us from scourching our poor tourist skin.

Later in the day I asked Nicolas to take a picture of me in the water, but he instead decided to take a video. Earlier I hinted that I might splash him and in his little french accent told me that "he does not like to be splashed" .. so in this video when he starts splashing me and I start talking funny, now you know it's my impression of his accent.

Here's a view from the boat.

You can only get to Bottle Beach by boat cause there are no roads that lead here. Maybe this is why it's still pristine and gorgeous and for the most part pretty quiet.

A random coconut basking in the sun was begging for it's picture to be taken. :)

Having fun with my new shades and hat.

We switched sun glasses. Very stylish, eh?

God I love this beach!

Here's the infamous Bottle Beach dance... only be done after enjoying a day there and only if you have a six pack from thai boxing like Nicolas. lol.

On the walk back to the boat I had a hard time dragging my little butt off the beach, so I procrastinated by taking a gazillion pictures before getting on the boat. We were supposed to stay until 3:15p in order to make it back to thai boxing in time... but there was a mix up with our taxi, so we ended up staying on a different beach until about 8p.
This is my favorite beach so far.... The water was a refreshing, but inviting 85 degrees and the sand so smooth. Do I sound like a walking advertisement or what??

Once we got on the boat to leave Nicolas grabbed my camera and has a step by step photo of me climbing on to the boat.. many of which were unflattering - this one is the least unflattering of the bunch.

Here's the Sheesha Bar that we hung out at after Bottle Beach. At first, I was totally against this smoking flavored tobacco thing, but it was such a cozy bar right on the water... how could I resist??

As much as I hate smoking, this wasn't like smoking at all. It actually felt healthy, which is complete nonsense..... it tasted like a smooth breath of mango oxygen or something.

After we all went to that flavored tobacco bar, we watched the sunset from a pier and then had a quick dinner before our taxi came to pick us up.

Here's Alex and Hannah relaxing and awaiting their dinner.
For some reason I was addicted to the boats off shore today, so there's a lot of those pictures.

And finally, once it got dark I saw this little boy playing in the water....if you look closely you can see him exiting the water.

Boxing, Quick trip to Samui & Furniture

2006-07-25T17:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was kind of a crappy weather day, which means the power goes on and off throughout the island... which also means when there is no power there are no fans for our boxing workouts. Talk about sweating your pants off!

We started out our morning with a boxing workout and this particular day I got my hiney whooped. Most of you know how competitive I am and since I was the only girl in the class today there was no way I was going to let on how tired I was. I was paired up with Nico most of the time and he kept egging me on "is that as hard as you can kick?" "oh come on, you're punching like a girl" "you call that power?", etc, etc. Needless to say I can't walk today, everything is sore, and I'm sure I'm going to have some bruises from being kicked and kneed. (Is that how you spell that??)

Nicolas had to head over to Ko Samui to catch a flight to Bangkok (to go back to London) and Emile and Justine were also on their way over from a different island, so i decided last minute (20 mins beforehand) to join Nico on the ferry over to Samui. (takes about an hour). We needed to rent a motorbike to get us to the other side of the island to meet the girls and Nico convinced me we should only rent one. .... but he gets nervous if I had my arms wrapped around his waist, so I had to hang on for dear life to the back of the bike. sheesh.

The girls told us where they were staying... but, unfortunately... or fortunately because it was rather funny if you want to look at it in a positive light... we must have driven around for well over an hour trying to find Emile and Justine's hotel.

We rented the scooter and since Koh Samui is pretty big and populated we decided to wear helmets. I'm kind of glad I did to go with the oh-so-attractive helmet look because I don't think Nico had ever driven a motorbike before. hehe (sorry Nic!) I think we drove in 2nd gear until 30 mph and didn't switch until the motorbike was about to blow up. haha. It wasn't that bad. Nic was actually a very safe driver and we only crashed once. No, no, just kidding we didn't crash at all.

But seriously, how ridiculous do we look in these helmets??!!!!

Luckily we all had our mobile phones so we FINALLY found one another and reunited on the beach to watch the sunset.

The first couple nights all of us hung out we seemed to find ourselves in random chairs lined up facing the water.. so we decided to do the same on our final night together. You can see the sand is darker at the bottom of the picture because that's where the tide was and that's where I was standing to take the picture.

To refresh your memory, I met the three of these guys on the curb, they were tired and couldn't find a place to go... and since I had just gone through the same thing an hour prior I dragged 'em along to my hotel. Then Em & Just went off diving to the same place I went and Nico joined me on Bottle Beach one day... anyhoo, they call me their travel agent. The next time they travel I should be waiting on a random sidewalk ready with their next adventure in hand. too funny. I hope I see all these guys again - they were exceptionally good people.

Anyhoo, we all part ways (girls to one beach, Nico and I on motorbike back to our beach) and before hitting the hotel Nico says, hey let's grab a drink at one of the dodgy bars. I'm thinking dodgy as in... kind of crappy looking, run down, etc.

We end up at "Jade's: An Intimate Experience". umm... It wasn't until we were sitting down and several of these Thai girls started eyeing us and smiling that i realized what kind of "dodgy" he meant. Needless to say, we only had one beer and hit the road. Nico went off to airport and I back to my temporary hotel room on Koh Samui for the night (the ferry doesn't run past 6p to get me back to Koh Phangan).

The next morning I took the motorbike and drove around Samui. I happened to find this great handmade furniture shop and bought a teak wood table and matching chairs that I absolutely LOVE. I love Thai decor! It's going by boat and won't get it for a few months, but that's probably a good thing since I have nowhere to live anyway!

I just finished another two hour session of thai boxing session. holy frikkin cow.

I just want to give you guys an idea of what hell I am putting myself through. There is an intense warm up that consists of way too many jumps, kicks, hops and whatever else you can think of. We then spar with one another or kick, knee, elbow, or punch the shield that our partner is holding. Just because there is a shield doesn't mean you don't get hurt. My right upper leg is nicely bruised from Nic yesterday kneeing me quite hard (I don't want the guys to take it easy on me because then they wouldn't get a good workout).

Today the little shit I had for a partner was not trained in thai boxing and basically instead of sparring, he was street fighting me. He was only a wee bit taller than me, but punched and kicked like he was trying to beat up a guy who stole his girlfriend. After a while I made the instructor be his partner cause I was starting to get hurt. I got punched in the nose three times, surprisingly no blood.. but I had had enough of that guy.

At one hour and 45 mins of non-stop boxing, we then have push ups on our knuckles, sit ups, and power squats (frog jumps waaay off the ground)... we do those for about ten minutes. Today I did jump rope for about ten minutes while the guys were all sparring with one another because i was so whooped.

I think I'm going to try and find some thai boxing in Chicago cause it's such a good workout!

Here's a short video clip of me giving the instructor a bunch of knees.. the battery ran out before we could get any good vids or pictures.

A Touching Letter

2006-07-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

I've been at the same hotel on Koh Phangan for a week now and I've been fortunate enough to find a place that is family run and the entire staff is incredibly helpful (unlike that other hotel I stayed in last week).

Anyhoo, the owner and I have chat quite a few times and she's given me free internet access for the week (everyone else has to pay, yay for me). There's this one particular waiter who talks to me at breakfast every day who is learning English and is very charming.

Tonight my phone rings and it's him, Zo, he says he has a letter for me. I asked if I could pick it up in the morning at breakfast and he said, no, it'd be too late... so he delivered it personally to my door step and walked away.

This is what it said,

"Hi, Ms. Tracy,
How is everything staying here with you. I hope you are well and happy. As for me I'm usually busy with my work and thinking on my weakness in English.
Now, I'm so lucky to meet you. Because you are always active and very clever, and you encouraged me kindly. I really tell you that your eyes are kind, your words are as sweet as honey.
There is one thing I'd like to demand you in my mind. Please stay again for two more days in our resort. I want to learn from you about English and there are many things that I would like to tell you. In fact, you are a person who has influenced me and the kind of person I admire.
If I had a lot of money, I will visit to America with you and I want to do something for my life in your country.
Ms. Tracy, would you mind telling me about your life. I want to listen and try to imitate you.
Take care of yourself.
Yours Lovingly, Boy Zo."

I sat on my step with the note in my hand for about five minutes and got tears in my eyes.

The note totally touched me and among the many other reasons that I'm happy I took this trip, this letter made the entire trip completely worth while.

Bang Sue... Thattaway

2006-07-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

Alright, t minus 6 hours before my flight leaves and I'm gonna do my best to stay awake until then so I can start adjusting back to US time. Thank goodness for this wireless connection that I'm um, stealing, from another hotel around the corner. It'll make the next few hours fly by. (This post alone has taken me like 3 hrs because of the retarded internet connection that i'm so fortunate to have). I still haven't packed and frankly I have no idea how all of this stuff (pictured left) is going to fit into my suitcase... especially considering I have a big bag of stuff at left luggage in the airport...

Last night after my pseudo-date (which was nice and low key and fun) I came back to the hotel and stayed awake til 5a and didn't wake back up till 2p for my hair appointment. I get to my appointment and my little lady, Marisa, doesn't speak English.. which makes it slightly difficult for me to ask questions about the process by which she'll be straightening my hair. From start to finish, it took about 4 hours (!) and my hair, I'll have to admit... is pretty luxurious looking.

Basically what she did was take about ten strands of hair at a time and comb it straight a hundred times per chunk all while putting a special solution on it. She had the entire back of my hair done and I needed to adjust in my seat... so I nonchalantly adjusted. I thought she was going into epileptic shoc because she freaked out!!!! .. Yelling at me in Thai and then out of nowhere shouts, "NO! Body Stop!" (lol, basically saying.. keep yer ass still!) I guess my hair needed to hang straight for an hour and if it had any kinks while the solution was in, it'd stay that way. Needless to say I "body-stopped" and didn't move an inch for the next 3 hours.

After the hair appt I ventured back to the night bazaar to finish a little shopping and decided to be a little adventurous and take public transportation. I will admit, I have a rather juvenile sense of humor - so when I saw this sign I started laughing my butt off... and had to snap a picture without anyone looking.

Then, as I was on my way out of the subway I saw another sign... even funnier -- If you're interested in banging Sue, just follow the signs to platform 2.

I guess you had to be there.

In order to stay awake til my taxi arrives at 5am, I've chugged some red bull.. it was working earlier, as you can see by my crazy expression in the picture... but now I'm starting to fade.

The rest of this post is just going to be rambles and thoughts about these past 5 wks. If you don't like random bunches of thoughts, stop here.

One of the reasons I love this country is the people. I learned enough of the language that the people, especially Thai women, were exceptionally helpful and fun to converse with.

Tonight at the bazaar I went back to a couple of the shops that I bought some stuff the previous nights and ended up buying more. I bought some dried fruit from this lady, who was, oh my god, so, so friendly and cute. They had me sit down, gave me some tea and gave me a bunch of samples of the fruit. Some good, some not so good. I bought some dried mango, pumpkin and jack fruit (my favorite).

I'm pretty happy to be a girl. Like I mentioned earlier, the Thai women are incredibly helpful and I think because I'm a single girl traveling solo that they tend to take me under their wing. Tonight it was raining pretty hard at the bazaar so people were closing shop early because so many customers left when the rain made an appearance. I got some pretty good deals and all the people I bought from tonight looked me in the eyes and said "good luck" so genuinely it made me absolutely beam with happiness.

I wish people in America could learn how to smile more often and lead a more upbeat lifestyle. Way too many people allow the stress of their jobs, relationships, and environment that they live in to overpower what really matters in life. Being happy, in my opinion, is what really matters. I know you might say it's easier said than done... but is it really? Are you happy? I'm serious. If you're not happy, make the changes necessary to find happiness.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity I've had to get away for 5 weeks and I appreciate all the support you've given me while I was away. Thanks to my clients and colleagues who so graciously allowed me 5 weeks in hiatus. To my friends who helped me pack up and move into storage so effortlessly. To my family who always believes in me and trusts that the crazy things I do are for good reason in the end. And to all of you guys who shared my adventures with me, THANK YOU!

Half the fun of my travel adventures is being able to share it with you!

Love you lots and can't wait to see you in a few days!

This sunset is from a few days ago on Ko Samui while I was with Emile, Justine, and Nicolas.

Surfing vs. Kite Surfing

2006-07-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

My friend Jon has been bugging me for about 3 yrs to get into kite surfing because he thinks I'd love it. I finally succumbed to his constant invites and decided to give it a whirl.

I took the day off on Monday only to wake up at 4:00 AM and sit in the car for 3 hours. That doesn't sound like the beginning of a fun day off now does it?

What I didn't realize is that kite surfing is nothing like, say, surfing.

Surfing you can get out in small waves on your first day and do your best to paddle like hell in hopes to actually catch a wave. You can usually get half way decent at that in a day and if you have a little coordination, balance, and balls you might even be able to stand up. Here's me in Puerto Rico on a smaller board than usual and bigger waves than I was used to - just barely standing up:

...and this is me about 5 minutes after crashing into those rocks you can see at the bottom of that picture. I thought I might actually drown or seriously injure myself, so in this picture I was doing my best to hide the fact that I had just cried and wanted to bawl my eyes out b/c I was embarrassed and in a ton of pain.

Sea urchins in my foot, bloody arms and legs and a totally wrecked board:

I believe that the things most regretted in life are the risks not taken... so I took the risk of riding bigger waves and crashed... so kite boarding can't be much worse, can it?

... oh, it can, but I wasn't allowed to even try.

We drove all the way up to Little Sable Point in Michigan and I learned the basics - the parts of a kite, how to launch and land a kite and what not to do.

Like I mentioned above, the one thing I didn't realize is that kiting isn't a sport you pick up in a day. You need to take lessons and progress little by little before you're even ready to get on the water at all. My friend did a great job of showing me the basic things, but I'll need much more work to get me up and running. One of the first things you need to know is how to fly a kite... not just any ordinary kite either. The kind of kite that will drag you on the beach and through parking lots if you're not careful.

Luckily someone had a trainer kite (about 5 times smaller than a real kite), so I spent the day trying to become a pro at that. Here's a pic of me playing with it in the wind for a bit.
After you understand how a kite works and how to control it, you then learn how to get enough wind power to get you from sitting or lying down to standing up. Here's a short video of me getting a little toooo much wind and taking a quick face plant into the sand. You can see I take the kite over to the right and then figure 8 it down to the left and it launches me off the ground, into the sand and then my kite crashes hard in the far left corner of the screen. The more you watch it, the funnier it gets.

That's about as far as I got today because these guys didn't a) have enough equipment to get me to the next level and b) none of them felt comfortable letting me try "body dragging" with a big kite and with the wind as strong as it was.

So, I'm heading off to Fiji to learn :) As long as there is some sort of internet connection, I'll be blogging the entire trip.

Will keep you posted!

Pre-Fiji

2006-07-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Fiji isn't just one island, but a whole boat load of islands ... 330 islands to be exact and only ~100 that are actually inhabitable. go figure!

It's Tuesday night and I've been researching my trip for all of 2 days now and have one more to go before I'm on the plane.

I have an 8, (yes EIGHT) hour lay over in LAX and I just found out about an hour ago that I get to hang out with my great childhood friend, Paige for those hours.

My plan right now is to stay on an island called Nananu I Ra, (which is off the big island Veti Levu where my favorite FIJI water is bottled!!!) and where my plane flies in on Saturday at 6am. Here's a picture of the island where I'll be taking my kite surfing lessons. I guess it's possible to kite all the way around islands and then the boat picks you up wherever you drift off to!

I am also hoping to get a little surfing in ... my friend Patrick has surfed off the Fijian islands before and recommended a few places, specifically off Tavarua.. (here's the surfline map he sent me) he said the waves can get "gnarly" so hopefully they're small the day I head out there! This huge wave picture to the right is someone who lives and works out there. I am in absolutely NO condition whatsoever to surf waves like that, so I'll be staying away from that massive, gnarly water.

I should have access to internet the entire time, but plan to turn my phone off for once in my life. Feel free to email me at tracy@travelin-trainers.com if you wanna get in touch with me!

Updates to follow!

Holy slow dial up

2006-07-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my hopes of having a kick ass blog while in Fiji has come to a screeching halt because I'm currently working on a 26.4 kbps connection. That being said, all the cool video clips will have to wait until I get back to DSL in Chicago... and there will only be a few pictures, unfortunately.

Oh and the electricity is turned off for most of the day and my laptop only has 23 more minutes of life in it's battery.

Alrighty on to my vacation -- I had a fantastic 9 hour lay over in LAX... under most circumstances, 9 hours in a metropolitan airport might be frustrating and frankly down right annoying.... but luckily my amazing friend Paige lives there with her husband, Paul. She picked me up, we shopped for reef booties (Chicago only has one shop and no booties) and had sushi and then I made my way to the airport.

On the plane they served... you guessed it... fiji water! my favorite! It was a 10.5 hr plane ride that went by in the blink of an eye! As most of you know I'm not one of those people who take medicine for anything ... but on a ten hour plane ride I am more than happy to pop a sleeping pill to knock me the heck out. Luckily there was no one in the middle seat, but there was some very friendly, talkative Australian guy who was interested in chatting about everything. Apparently he didn't get the hint once I put my eye mask on and retainer in. Yes, I still wear my retainer. Here I am speaking with a lisp, peeking out from under my eye thingy and he just kept on talking.

I figured he'd just shut up once I put my mp3 player on and cuddled up against the window. In the middle of the night I felt my feet get really cold and wet... His glass of water was on the middle seat's tray and I guess it somehow dumped itself over... (those who know me know not to wake me up in the middle of a deep slumber... bad idea.) Even worse to dump cold water on my feet and apologize that ... "oh, it's only a little water." Yea, maybe "only a little water" for you, but now my feet are freezing. The only thing that came out of my mouth was "it's not a little water... my feet are soaking wet. thanks for waking me." haha.

Anyhoo, thanks to the sleeping pill I quickly went back to sleep and woke up ten minutes before landing. Here's the guy who picked me up at the airport at 5am:

WHY is he wearing a ski jacket and winter hat???? We're in FIJI darnit! I didn't check the weather before leaving because I assumed since it was a tropical location that the weather would be piping hot. um, no, I was freaking FREEEEZING.

We drove about two hours through sugar cane fields and came across a cane train -- check this out... tons of sugar cane getting pulled by a little engine that could.

(I have to interject for a moment.... I'm sitting in the little lodge and mosquitos are eating the crap out of my legs. I already have one bite on my forhead, one on each cheek (my face, gutter minds), 27-50 on my legs and arms. seriously... I didn't even think to bring bug repellant. Some traveller I am!)

Okay, back to my story..... After the 2 hr bumpy van ride, where I slept in the back-back for about an hour.. we made it to a wharf where I got a private boat ride to my island, Nananu-I-Ra. The translation is "a place to remember", cool, huh?

Here's the boat that took me to the island:

Within an hour of arriving on the island I was on a boat heading out to "kite point" to get some kite lessons.

None of the pictures I have will do this site justice, so I'll do my best to describe the area. A small yellow wooden boat took us out ten minutes from our beach to an area between two islands with a long sandbar. The end. love the detail, huh? No, just kidding. The water is crystal clear.. kind of turqouisey-blueish and since the wind is blowing about 25 knots, there are little white caps forming. Palm trees swaying in the wind and a ton of other very tropical, lush, green plants and trees lining the beach we launched off of. Definitely paradise and what you'd imagine Fiji to look like.

shooot... the boat is going out in 5 minutes and I have to untangle my lines so I can do some more kite surfing lessons..............

will finish later.

Water up my nose, in my ears, shorts getting pulled off...

2006-07-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Alright, so we get out to this gorgeous sand bar and the other kiters get their gear together and head out.

I'm with the instructor with the 2 meter training kite and luckily this time my kite didn't crash in the water and luckily I didn't take any face plants. I graduated quickly to the next level, which is called body dragging. I only have shots of this on my video camera that for some reason isn't allowing me to connect to right now... boo. Here's a picture of the guys pumping my 5 meter kite:

Body dragging is where you use a bigger kite powerful enough to actually drag a person.. or two in my case. I went out with my instructor, Warren, who connected himself to the kite and I connected myself to him. There's a handle on the back of the harnesses we use so I basically got dragged along for a while until it was my turn.

To give you a better idea what this dragging is like... imagine yourself water skiing behind a boat. You're hanging on to the rope with a handle that pulls you while you ski. Now, imagine you lost your skis.. and you're still hanging on to the rope... getting dragged. water going into every crevice possible... you can't see... water in the eyes, nose, mouth.. very salty water at that... so in between dry heaving from all the salt you just swallowed and trying to wipe your eyes so you can actually see.. you have to control a kite in the air so it doesn't crash or drag you into the coral reef or something.

Oh yea, and you also have to hold your pants on. luckily I had strong ties on my board shorts otherwise I surely would have come up commando and while that may have been amusing for everyone else, I wasn't looking forward to flashing the people I was staying with for a week.

Quick little side note - here's a picture of me standing in the doorway of my bure, prounounced like puree. They "upgraded" me to the only private hut with an outdoor, but connected bathroom. It's pitch dark at night and i can see and hear the waves crashing outside my porch. so freaking awesome.

Okay, back to kiting. After a 2 1/2 hr session in the morning, we came back for lunch, did some "extreme hammocking" (pictures to come later) and then went back out for a sunset session in the late afternoon.

Here's a picture of Nat, one of the Australian gals launching her kite:

Okay, now we're officially heading out for our first morning session where I might actually body drag by myself for the first time!!! a wee bit scary since I basically drag myself out in the middle of nowhere about a mile from the beach. That's a long swim and also far enough away that if I was screaming no one could hear me. lol.

Wish me luck!

Woo! First Body Drag!

2006-07-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

Alright, I have a few minutes to quickly update this.... having a super slow connection and only one phone line makes this blog pretty difficult to keep up.

Yesterday I did my first body drag and also my first solo kite launch... which you can see in this video. The wind caught my kite and I had it positioned wrong and whew... it pulled me and made my little feet run fast like a cartoon character. I didn't know they had it on video until later in the day when everyone was laughing hysterically while watching it over and over again.

Here's a picture of the place I'm staying:

And this is my pumping my kite with Warren, my instructor

This is earlier in the day on Sunday when I attempted my first body drag. I've got a couple other video clips, but they take forever to upload... so you're just gonna have to wait until I get back to Chicago.

another day of kiting

2006-07-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Alright, it's 3:30 on Monday Fiji time and I'm hanging out on a couch in this bungalow, island style living room with the doors and windows open allowing a nice refreshing breeze to keep me cool. The weather is about 80 degrees and in the sun it's really hot, but since we're in a windy area as the sun starts going down it's actually kind of cold.

The morning kite sessions I wear my long sleeve rash guard that you see pictured here. The evening sessions, which are from about 330-730p I wear Nat's wet suit.... but it's seriously not attractive at all so that's why you won't see ANY pictures of me wearing it.

Nat is probably 5'10 and maybe 130 and well, I'm a lot shorter... and ... well, the wet suit is whew - practically suction cupped to my ass. Peeling it off is loads of fun. Every time I peel it off I have to turn away from the rest of the group because I'm afraid it'll peel off my suit, too. lol.

Okay, I'm sure there will be two posts today because I have to update you on the past couple days. The days pretty much go like this:

Wake up to the sun rise in my private little bure while listening to the waves crashing in the distance and the wind rushing through the palm trees. Look outside to see that no one is awake yet, so I go back to bed until about 730a.

About ten people, mostly Aussies, one German and one Canadian (all guys, except Natalie from Melbourne and me, the only American... who, I might add constantly takes the brunt of all the American and President Bush jokes)... we all gather for breakfast and then about 5 of us head out on the boat to do some kiting for a few hours.

Around 130p we come in for lunch... some of the wind surfers (aka pole dancers) go out until about 3 something and then the "tea baggers" go back out for an evening session and watch the sun set.

We come in, take hot showers (mine isn't hot though.. so I have to use someone else's so I don't freeze my tush off, and then all meet for dinner.

Pretty much as soon as dinner is done, we all crash for the night.

Rough life, eh?

Crap... it's almost time for the afternoon session.... there wasn't enough wind this morning to get me up on a board, so it's happening now.... pictures to follow in next posting.

Kite surfing suddenly got much more challenging

2006-07-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

Uh... as my friend Jon has said over and over... kite boarding is NOT easy and you don't just pick it up in a day (or 3 in my case).

Well, Jon, I suddenly have a new appreciation for you kite folk. It's hard as heck!!!! This one picture where it looks like we're walking on water is our first official "how to stand on the board" lesson.

This next one is me putting on my "impact" vest -- you know what happens when you're water skiing and you hit the water.. it feels like concrete, so this vest helps to keep you getting the wind knocked outta ya...and also to keep me floating when I crash.

So, back to kiting... You basically have to master one thing before even thinking about the next step. I got the whole flying a kite thing down. Got the whole body dragging thing down. Got the launching thing down... now I just need to learn how to get up on the board.

I tried to get up on the board last night, but I ate so much water it's not even funny. I'd get enough power from the kite to stand up for a split second and then would go flying forward and take a serious face plant. I'd try again and then come flat down on my butt. I got water in places I didn't even know was possible... and as much as I love Fiji water, I'm not sure I like it as an enema... holy crap. well, I guess not holy crap.. after an enema, no crap at all. hahaha. i crack myself up.

This morning's session our instructor had to take care of some business on the mainland, so we were on our own... I did surprisingly well without him. I launched my kite, got in the water, put my board on myself in the water and even managed to get up on the board for a good 15 feet. Only problem is that I didn't know what to do once I was up... and then I crashed again. My board went flying, my kite crashed and then the boat had to come rescue me because the kite started to deflate and my board drifted away from me.

This here is me helping Ian, a fellow newbie put his board on before attempting to stand up on the board.

Us newbies work as a team because trying to launch a kite without getting dragged like I did the other day and also grab your board and then put it on without accidentally launching yourself... well, it's challenging.

More pictures to come later... they aren't uploading right at the moment.

Cat Woman

2006-07-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

we're going out kiting now.... so i don't have time to write the stories that accompany these pictures.

I'll let you wonder why I'm in a cat suit with someone else's sunglasses on. ha. how hideously hilarious is this picture?!

Cava Party, Our Mascot & random pictures

2006-07-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

Bula! (good morning/good evening/hello in Fijian)

So, I've officially decided to stick around here for another week. I just have to make sure that the airline can get me back next weekend. Depending on the wind, I'll probably come back on Saturday.

Here's some pictures of the cava party last night and some of the girls/boys, and the one in the pink shirt.. i'm not sure if it's a boy or girl! LOL

The cava kind of numbs your mouth and apparently asking "is anyone else's tongue and throat numb?" made everyone laugh their butts off for a good ten minutes and someone caught me mid laugh in this picture:

The owner has a little 2 year old girl named Aleeci who runs around this place and keeps everyone on their toes. I frikkin love munchkin babies and luckily she's taken a liking to me. This is Aleeci playing in the laundry basket and then the other picture is this morning we had a quick morning swim.

She's still occasionally nursing her mother, so everytime I am wearing a bikini and holding her, she grabs at my boob and tries to pull it out. Everyone thinks it's a hoot and one time she grabbed my top before I could do anything. Luckily she's the only one who got a sneak peek.

My Aussie friends left early this morning so now it's a little quiet... only two kite surfers, so hopefully that means I'll get a little more one on one with the instructor or at least not have to share my kite with someone else.

I think that's all for now...... OH, the diving pictures were all lost because Natalie's camera got water in it and stopped working. boo.

I did my first dives in Thailand and thought that was gorgeous -- the 2nd Fiji dive was like what you'd see in a National Geographic magazine. Hundreds of colors, amazingly bright fish, sun, crystal clear water... absolutely stunning.

I think it's my new "favorite place" to drift off to.

Alright i have to figure out how to get ahold of American Airlines to see if I can switch my flight. Hope you all had a fabulous week and enjoy your weekends!!!!

Much love from Fiji,

Tracy

guess who FINALLY can get up on the board??? ... and guess who may stay another week in Fiji?

2006-07-15T04:05:00.000-07:00

You got it. MEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Took me long enough, but today I finally did it - I was able to stand up and go for a decent distance without going flying off my board or crashing my kite.

SOOOOOOOO COOL.

I also decided to wear SPF 8 today instead of 30 and now my arms and face are kinda red. I don't have any pictures of me getting up on the board today, but hopefully I'll be able to drag a photographer along on the boat tomorrow to snap a few.

Oh and I'm seriously considering sticking around here for another week just to perfect my kiting abilities. Still trying to decide, but it's more than 50%. I'm trying to work out a deal with the owner of this place so that I don't go broke before coming home.

Crap, I just realized that I never talked about my dive trip. Will do that soon when I have a little more free time.

Tonight is a "cava ceremony" - it's actually going on right now while I am writing this blog. Cava is a kind of root that has anesthetic properties.. in fact, my lips are currently a bit numb. It is a safe root, non-narcotic and is used in lots of herbal remedies in the states. I'll upload those pictures in the morning (your Friday late afternoon) so you can see what we were doing and so I can describe it better.

uh..... I think that's all for now.

highlights: got up on kite board, am sun burned and may stay another week.

No wind today, but first time wake-boarding

2006-07-14T00:18:00.000-07:00

Since there was no wind today we had to find an alternate way to keep ourselves busy. Some people went snorkeling out at a reef and I decided skip that and took a nap and kayaked around a private island instead.

In the evening, Warren arranged for a boat to take us out wake boarding. Holy cow! My new favorite sport. SOOOOO much fun. I have some videos of me on my first run, which totally stunk... but for some reason I'm having a hard time uploading them from my camera.

Since I had never wake boarded before I was coached to stay crouched for as long as possible and let the boat pull me up.... first two times I crashed. I was determined to get up on the 3rd try because the guy who went before me couldn't get up in 5 tries and as you all know, my ridiculous competitiveness got the best of me.

more to come.... i'm going scuba diving tomorrow...... going to bed.

near drowning experience...

2006-07-13T03:39:00.000-07:00

It's nearly 1045p here and usually we're all sleeping by 9, so this is going to have to be a "highlights" only blog entry.

Last night since there was no wind, Warren arranged for a boat to take us wake boarding...which was sooo much fun.

Here's a quick video of me trying to show off and use one hand... and then crashing

and here's me blaming the crash on the boat driver:

While we were all waiting for our turns, I of course, was starting trouble and tossing sand on people.

It's like summer camp here - a ton of adults, mainly in their late 30s (Nat is helping me write this and wrestled the keyboard out off my lap for me to say "early" 30s). Back to what I was saying... it's half couples, half singles all playing like it's summer again. (well, we are on vacation, right?)

Anyhoo, because I was throwing wet sand on everyone, they egged Warren on to drag me under the water and try to give me a wedgie ... but what he didn't know is that I freak out if I can't breathe for more than 2 seconds. (Natalie just added that "most" people freak out if they can't breathe for 2 seconds... something Warren should have taken that into account).

Ok, I have to give you guys a quick little visual. I'm sitting on a couch that is made for probably two to three people... Warren to my right, Nat to my left and her husband to the far left. Everyone is reading the screen and adding their comments and laughing about this dramatic near drowning experience.

Okay, so Warren lifts me up in the air and my head goes under water before I was able to grab a full breathe of air. So I spent the next 30 seconds trying to gasp for a half way decent breathe of air. Problem is, the more I struggled, the more everyone laughed and the harder he held me under water because he thought I was still just playing around.

Oh yeah, this is all hilarious for all the people watching... laughing.. laughing.. me starting to panic... more laughing, more struggling.... i'm trying to scream while I gasp for air.. inhaling water.. coughing and finallllly I screamed "seriously, i'm not flipping kidding"

I think it fell dead silent at that point as I tried to elbow Warren in the whatever he's got going on there... i get up, panic stricken.. gasping for air (while I'm writing, everyone again is adding their bits... I won't add the specific bits that they are saying because they are inappropriate for Grandma to read... not that there was anything inappropriate about the situation, i'm just hanging with a bunch of pervs. lol).

I fit right in.

Anyhoo, I need to finish this story!

I get up, ticked off... heart beating.. coughing... and scurried off to my room so I could secretly bawl my eyes out because I was scared shitless that I might have drown. After a few minutes I heard knocking on my door - it was Warren with his tail between his legs, feeling very humbled and full of apologies. It took a good 5 minutes before I could get my normal breathing back. I inhaled a bit of salt water, which, as you know.. even if you swallow a teaspoon full you want to gag your brains out for a good five minutes. It took a while to calm back down and you know when a little kid cries and later on you have those... after cry stutter breathing... yeah, had those for a while.

Okay, so that was one highlight of that day, I think it was Thursday... losing track of them here...

Going to post the diving story in a new blog.

Just pictures

2006-07-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

Shooting Stars & Alarms in the Middle of the Night

2006-07-11T02:20:00.000-07:00

It's about 10p on Sunday night and everyone is watching the movie, Troy, and since I had zero interest in a Brad Pitt flick I decided to upload some pictures and tell you about my last day or so.

After dinner the crew rallied and decided to head over to another island for some drinks. The fabulous owner, Warren, put on his best shirt and shorts and gave us a personal lift over in his boat for a couple frozen drinks. (Warren is commentating in the background, "you should use brackets to say that Warren lives on an island and doesn't need to dress up").

On the way there I saw two awesome shooting stars and since it was a full moon (or close to it), the water was lit up so brightly it looked like someone had flood lights out over the water. So pretty.
We came back around midnight (3 hours later than our usual bed time) and I totally zonked out until about 4am when I was alarmedly awoken by my stupid security alarm that is motion sensitive. When I travel I usually put it on my bags with my laptop, cameras and other electronics while I'm away for the day or whatever. But, since I'm on an island in the middle of nowhere I don't even lock my doors so I have had no use for the alarm whatsoever... nor did I set the alarm.

So, imagine being totally sound asleep when this high pitched piercing alarm starts going off.. I flew out of bed in a panick to find what the heck was making that noise. Once I figured out what it was I climbed back in bed and shoved it under my pillow to muffle the noise.

You know when you're half asleep your brain works in slow motion... or not at all? Well, I must have sit there for a good 5 minutes holding the eardrum piercing alarm under my pillow. The only way to turn it off is to turn the numbers to the correct combination.

I now had a dilemma.

I have no idea what the combo is.

At 4am even if I did know what the combo was I surely wasn't going to be able to remember it. I then thought for another good 2-3 minutes while muffling the noise about how I was going to figure out the combo. A-HA! I took a picture of the combo with my cell phone camera so all I had to do was turn on my cell phone, which also doubles as my flashlight and get the combo to turn off the deafening noise.

Another problem arose.

My cell phone was dead...... and the generator had been turned off for the night.

I thought about trying to guess the combo, but without power, without a flashlight and without my cell phone working I was pretty much screwed.

Then my mind starting playing tricks on me. Maybe the alarm went off mysteriously because someone was trying to break into my room. Maybe it went off because I was supposed to wake up to see something. I started peering out my windows to see if I could see anything or anyone and started freaking myself out. A coconut happened to fall from the tree just at the same time I was looking out on to my balcony and scared the ever living crap out of me.

I finally figured out that I wasn't going to turn the alarm off that night, so I shoved it under my pillow underneath the mattress. It's the kind of alarm that goes silent if there's no movement for about ten minutes... so if I laid still in my bed it was quiet.. if I turned or twisted in the slightest, the alarm went off again.

Didn't get much sleep that night!

Shopping & random pictures

2006-07-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

The past few days, the wind has been blowing only about 5-10 knots... which is totally crap wind to kite surf in so it's been pretty low key around here.

We went into "town" and as you can see pictured here... it isn't much of a town at all. It's more like a flea market with a bunch of dollar stores centered around a square where the police station is.

I was running out of stuff like conditioner and sunblock and since there wasn't any wind I decided to join the staff on a shopping trip. As soon as I got out of the van to start shopping.... i felt something warm and runny on my wrist. The picture is out of focus, but that black and white stuff on my black hair elastic is bird crap! DISGUSTING!

After shopping we came back and went out on a snorkeling trip to an outer reef and saw some ridiculously gorgeous coral and fish. It's amazing how colorful everything is out here and how clear the water is!

Here's a couple random pictures - the cool water picture is from the dive boat last week, the water was so flat and smooth first thing in the morning.

This other picture is Charles, his wife Sabine and Warren sitting in the low tide water between kiting sessions.

Today there's a little bit more wind so we're gonna head out and hope there's enough to do a little tea-bagging (dipping in the water, then getting lifted up out of the water by the gusts of wind and repeating that action over and over). Not an ideal way to kite, but definitely makes me learn how to maneuver the kite better.

Tomorrow we're expecting up to 20 knots, which is going to be the strongest yet for me.. and should hopefully be easier and more fun to ride up and down wind.

More to come later.

I'm SOOO fired up about kite surfing!

2006-07-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

Finally! I had a camera crew on the boat today to get some videos and pictures so I can finally prove that I am up and kiting. yea baby!

The wind is still pretty low, but I finally figured out how to maneuver the kite to get more power and to quit tea-bagging.

I am SOOOOOO FIRED UP about kite surfing, it's not even funny.

We just got off from 3 or so hours of kiting and I'm ready to go again. I think I've talked everyone's ear off a little too much, lol. I am constantly saying -- holy cow, kiting is so cool... or looking at a picture and outloud, excitedly saying... hey! that's me! holy cow! I'm up! Wow, I'm kiting.

I'm sitting next to Warren as I say this and I think he's now counted me saying "wow, this is so cool! I'm kiting" about 12 times now.

I'm sending you some excitement... hopefully reading this post will give you a little more energy and happiness to your day, because I am FULL of energy today. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

(For all you hard core kiters... I know, I know.. I have to work on my form a little bit... but I'm no longer a kite-wannabe!!!)

Thar She Blows.. 1st downwinder in 18 knots

2006-07-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hardy Har-Har -- Crap yesterday was a long day! Woke up, had a quick breakfast and then hit the water all day and didn't come back till night fall!

This is me being a retard before launching my kite yesterday:

Just below is a quick "interview" with Warren and I right before doing my first boat launch and first down-winder in ridiculously rough seas (for a beginner) and very gusty winds. Oh, for those of you who don't know what a down-winder is... when you're good at kiting you should be able to go back and forth and pretty much end off in the same spot that you started on the beach. If you're still learning... like me, you just get pulled in the direction of the wind until a boat comes to pick you up. A down-winder is a planned trip where you start in one spot (over a coral reef in the middle of nowhere) and end up 3 1/2 miles down on an island.

I have the concepts of kiting down... I'm now just practicing things like... um, turning. Going to the left for me is really easy - I have good form, can control the kite, etc.. if I have to go right, now that's another story. I feel like a complete retard with my right food leading forward, so here's a video of me practicing:

I think this picture was taken after the down-winder - though, I'm smiling, so it may not be. I was scared in the rough seas and the wind was WAY stronger than I was used to, so I was just getting pulled around like a rag doll on the water.

Yea, now that I think about it... if I'm smiling, this must have been later in the day when I was actually performing well for my standards. :)

I think this picture of Warren and Jan (super nice German guy) was taken by Robert... while I was still on my board getting yanked UP off the water about 2 feet by the gusty wind. There's actually a way to get yourself off the water purposely, but I haven't figured that out yet. Robert must have thought it was amusing to snap a picture of them watching me do stupid stuff.

This crazy picture is my friend, Jon, the one who got me into kiting. In July I went up to Michigan with him and here's a demonstration of how you "purposely" lift yourself off the water to do tricks. I'm getting there.. I'm getting there ;)

Alright, someone needs to use the phone and I'm on the only dial up line here.....

Have a great night!

A Cool Story About a Family

2006-07-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

On pretty much all my adventures I have been lucky enough to meet some incredible people with really amazing stories.

Among the great people I've met on this trip, this one particular family stood out as having without a doubt the most interesting and coolest stories of how they've come to traveling.

This is the Abbiss Family, from left to right: Hary, Lucy, Karen & Simon. They're originally from England, but now are looking for a new place to settle down. For the past year or so they've been planning on traveling around the world as a family, so they sold their house, their cars... pretty much everything and have been on the road for the past 6 months.

How cool is that? If I can remember correctly, so far they've been to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and next stop is America. I think this is one of the greatest things someone could ever do with their family!! The kids were taken out of school for a year and while exploring the world and experiencing different cultures first hand, Simon and Karen have also have educational books to teach their kids the things they'd miss in school this year.

They're pretty much going to travel around until they find a place that suits them. They're thinking about purchasing property in Slovenia, living there for 6 months to fix it up and then use the properties as rentals. Here's a quick video clip before they left the island:

Some yoga, 30 knot wind gusts and kiting

2006-07-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

After kiting the other day, one of the guests Dr. Krishna from Australia was super sore... so we pulled out the yoga mat and did some poses to help stretch the poor guy out. Aleeci, the little 2 yr old on staff usually gets in there with us and does a few moves.. it's so cute.

To give you an idea of what kind of wind charts we've been reading I'm attaching one from yesterday. As you can see, they're HAND drawn!!! How funny is that? They come out at 6a, 3p and midnight... but some times they are posted a few hours late.... which means they're probably looking out their window and drawing what they see :)

Here's a couple pictures of where I'm staying and how relaxing and gorgeous it is here. If you look closely between the palm trees you can see the hammock farm where we all get a good amount of "extreme hammocking" in. It's "extreme" for several reasons.
1) it takes a lot of energy to sit in a hammock all day... you're exhausted after a full 6 hr day! 2) There are coconuts that hang from the trees above and if you're lucky enough you might even witness one dropping ... but hopefully not on you. 3) Occasionally someone will come by and be your 'on-demand hammock pusher' -- sometimes a hammock pusher will get slightly aggressive and see if he/she can push you fast enough to flip over. You need some serious skill to wedge your feet in the ropes to hang on! 4) Finally, getting in and out of the hammocks is the most dangerous part of it all. If you're really advanced you can get in and out of one while holding a full mug of tea, but only those who have gone pro have been able to do that.

This next picture is our gorgeous mile and a half beach that some energetic people actually walk every day. I tried running it yesterday and some wild horses surprised me out of the mangroves and I decided to call it quits after they snuck up on me. I wasn't sure who they belonged to or where they were headed and decided to let them have the beach to themselves. Maybe the Indians that belonged to them were hiding in the bush and had a plan to jump out and attack me. Ya never know!

There's also a funny story about the green canoe pictured here. It seems that this canoe has an aphrodisiac effect on those who take it out for a whirl. Last week one couple was spotted after dusk just... drifting... says one witness. The guilty party arrived back on the beach whilst grinning ear to ear.

It's pretty much all couples here, so I've decided to manage the scheduling and start charging for appointments in the infamous green canoe. We're booked for days. One guy showed up solo and we all wondered what he might do by himself in the canoe, so he got banned and was given the yellow single sit-on-top kayak instead. We don't need any "solo" drifting near our island, now do we?? :) :)

Since yesterday was a light wind day and the 13 meter kite had a blown bladder, we kept ourselves busy by performing an operation. (A blown bladder basically means there's a hole in the plastic balloon inside the kite.) Luckily we had a surgeon, Krishna, on hand to do the repair. He said it's the biggest bladder he's ever had to fix! Here's Warren working the air through the newly repaired bladder... is there some wishful thinking going on here or what?? In case you wondered why I stayed an extra week, this picture pretty much sums it up. lol. Just kidding. (He didn't realize how he was holding the bladder so I snapped a picture before he figured it out).

And here's our gorgeous and thirsty little Safari Lodge mascot, Aleeci. How freaking cute is she?? In the past two weeks I've taught her how to give a high five, to say "see ya, Trace", and when she sees me wearing my crazy round glasses.. she says, WOW, in a really high pitched adorable baby voice.

I was supposed to be heading home tonight, Saturday here in Fiji... but the wind is supposd to be nice and smooth and 15-20 knots, calm seas and sunny .. ideal conditions for kiting.... so now I'm coming home late Sunday night instead. Nothing like pushing my flights back to the absolute last minute, eh?

Here's a few last random pictures - some retarded, some nice... always good fun having photos to look at, right? ;) The coral ones were from yesterday's snorkel trip to an outer reef. It only takes about ten minutes to get there from the island I'm staying on... super colorful coral, fish and marine life. It's amazing how colorful these live reefs are!

Sand, Sunset & Sea

2006-07-05T00:02:00.000-07:00

You know me... always getting in odd, uncomfortable and compromising positions in order to snap a photo. I was getting some pictures of the water rushing up onto the sand and in order to get an upclose and personal look of the lacey water, I had to lie in the sand.

After doing so I had a natural exfoliation of sand going on... so someone snapped a picture before I rinsed off in the water.

This is the little yacht/sailboat that we passed every night after our sunset kite session. Gorgeous, isn't it??

And here are a few pictures of the gorgeous coral reefs that I was lucky enough to swim over several times over the past two weeks. Thousnds of little colorful fish... the pictures don't do these justice.