Day 79, Year 4: Less Than Five Hours ’til H, J, and S Arrive
Date: Friday, January 9, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand

It is 8:15 in the evening here and Heather, Jed, and Sam should arrive at 1 am. The excitement is building. We had a rental car starting at noon today and we did our food shopping in the afternoon. I think I have become a bit of a food shopping snob. The grocery stores here are modern, big, and beautiful, but the fresh fruit and vegetables are pitiful. I much prefer shopping in the local fruit and veggie stands. And after today, I won’t even think of buying fresh food in a supermarket in this
part of the world again. But regardless, we had a great afternoon and drove down to Ao Chalong to look for a really good flashlight. The marina manager here told us the only place on the island that we might find a really good flashlight (called a torch in this part of the world) would be in the dive shops in Ao Chalong. Well, we did find a really good waterproof LED flashlight, but it cost 23,000 Baht which is something like $700 US. No thanks! I guess we will continue our search and someday
find a really good flashlight at a more reasonable price. In the meantime we will continue exploring in the dark!

The weather is changing here. We have had almost ten days of gorgeous, sunny blue skies, but that came at the end of a few days of overcast, rainy weather. Well, the overcast rainy weather is returning. It is caused by an extreme high pressure system that moves down from China. The good thing is that Heather, Jed, and Sam will have a few days of relief from the intense sun when they first arrive, but the down side is that it will be windier and certainly not as beautiful as it is when the skies
are bright blue. But the beautiful weather will return while they are here and by the time it does, they should be used to the heat.

So in less than five hours we should be on our way from the airport to the marina. It will certainly be interesting to see Sam’s reaction to arriving at a boat. There’s a bit of wind tonight, so maybe it will rock him to sleep. We can only hope.