After I was awoken by a noisy gecko in our room, I went outside to explore the beautiful grounds at the Amertha Bali Villas. It was pretty dark when we'd checked in the previous night and getting to see the resort by daylight was breathtaking. This is the view of our bungalow...
Our plan was to stay at the Mati Hari Resort, which was highly recommended in our guide book. The Mati Hari was booked, so we ended up getting an ocean front bungalow at Amertha Bali Villas, the second most-highly recommended place. It didn't disappoint.
Pretty much the entire front of the hotel is a koi pond that has closely-placed stepping stones that allow you to transverse the koi pond to the elevator bank.
Around 10pm, we woke up after a super-long, jetlag-induced nap and decided to head downstairs for dinner. We were so tired we could barely chew our food and ended up back in bed before 11pm!
Our parents had found the hotel and made a reservation for us to spend our first two nights there while we made plans for the rest of our trip. It was really nice.
My conference ended at noon on Friday. After, we packed up, checked out and hopped in the car to drive 350 miles to Los Angeles to attend Emily & Tim's rehearsal dinner!
I actually think Hampton Inn is THE JAM. Check out the situation in the breakfast nook in the morning: They have a fridge filled with microwavable baggies with numbers on them.
The contents of the numbered bags correspond to the food items in these numbered pictures! Just throw a bag in the microwave, press the button on the microwave that corresponds to the number on the bag you selected and- SHAZAM - your breakfast is cooked perfectly a couple seconds later and all it took was the press of a single button. Whoever designed this for them is a genius. For seriously.
A little after 2am I arrived back at my hotel room and I was so tired I could barely walk! I hit the bed and hoped I wouldn't be too sick the next day to enjoy my last day in Egypt!
After I'd finished eating, I ended up getting a small room at a hostel that catered to (mostly) Australian divers called Auski Camp. This place was awesome! I had a great private room, comfy bed and shared toilet and shower for 30 EP (around $5.40 USD) a night! If you're looking for an clean, inexpensive place to stay in Dahab, I highly recommend them!
Five and half BUMPY hours later, I arrived in Hurghada and got a taxi to take me to one of the few hotels listed in my book that looked like it'd still be open - a place called Al Arosa. I checked in a little after 1am, got a decent room that was WAY overpriced (100 EP!). Here's my best "Get a load of THIS room" face. You can tell the room is totally embarrassed by me calling it out.
Check out the atmosphere in the hotel dining room! I felt like a character in a Mahfouz novel as I sat at my quaint, colonial table for one and tried to figure a plan for the next day or two.
I decided to hire a car for the day, and drive outside of Cairo to visit three different sites: Saqqara, home of the oldest stone monument in human history; Dahshur, home to Snofru's Red Pyramid and Snofru's Bent Pyramid (I swear I'm not even making guy's name up!) and (ancient Egyptian city of) Memphis, home to the Colossus of Ramses II!
Friday was our last day in Thailand! We packed up our bags, checked them into our hotel's storage closet, and set out to do some sightseeing before catching our plane home later that night!
..The Chaweng Garden Beach Resort where we ended up with an amazing private hut right next to the beach for only 1,000 Baht (~$24 USD) a night! Check out our huge king sized bed!
We woke up on Thursday morning to torrential rain. If you haven't ever been to Asia during the rainy season, there's really no way to describe just how hard it rains. If you were to step out in the rain and stand there for 2 or 3 seconds, you would be completely soaked and your shoes would even have some water in them!
When I got back to the dive shop, Mer had left a note that while I'd gone diving she'd moved us to a new hotel! (The place we'd stayed at our first night was expensive because all the cheap places had filled up!). I dropped my gear off at the dive shop and set off to find our new hotel! I got there a little after 2pm and Meredith out book shopping and exploring the shops! So I decided to take a lil' nap...
After getting our cake on, we walked around the Khao San area and did a little bit of shopping (new backpack and a bathing suit) before we moved on from Bangkok. After we were finished, we hit the roof of our hotel...
When we'd first checked in, they didn't have any rooms available that had windows! So the first thing we did when we woke up on Tuesday was head down to the front desk and get our room switched. Here's Meredith relaxing in the sunshine of our new room!
...and immediately went to bed! We'd hardly gotten any sleep the night before and figured a nice long nap might help get our bodies adjusted to local time.
Meredith and I had originally planned on driving back to my parents house, but then we got drunk and Stephie and Kent saved us from trying to get a taxi in suburban NJ at 3am and graciously invited us to take the other bed in their hotel room. Thanks, guys!
...your hotel! The very classy Hotel Carter. According to Jeff this is THE ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST hotel in all of Manhattan. Hahaha. (Man, he totally wasn't kidding either. Check out the amazing reviews that people have written about this place.)
Check out this one on the wall in the bathroom. I can almost hear the conversation between the two guys installing it. Guy number 1: "Hey, it almost fits here between these two mirrors." Guy number 2: "Works for me. Get the screw gun."
A little after 1pm, we decided to pack up and head back to NYC (it was Easter Sunday and we were worried about getting stuck in traffic if we waited until later).
After getting lost in the backstage labyrinth of hallways (shit was like Spinal Tap, no joke!), we finally emerged back into the hotel and made a beeline for the elevator.
We took the elevator up to one of the fancy floors and located Matt in his totally free fancy room! The place had arbitrarily-placed flatsreen TVs on pretty much every surface.
Around noon, the DayQuil kicked in and I was finally feeling well enough to leave my little air-conditioned cave and venture out into the Florida heat.
I was feeling cruddy all day and by the late afternoon I realized that I had a pretty nasty fever. (Prolly picked up a bug on the airplane). I spent the rest of the night laid up in my hotel room drinking lotsa juice and watching a fantastically awful Real World marathon on The MTV.
