New Year's Eve in Phuket!

After a 1o hour layover in Brisbane (six of which I slept not-so-soundly on a fake leather couch) and a slight visa glitch that involved me having to buy a non-refundable ticket to Singapore, I have arrived just in time to celebrate New Year's Eve in Phuket. Without my luggage. And since it is New Year's Eve, there appears to be very few staff at the airport. And of the staff that is here, very few speak English, and those that do, do not speak very much. Or very well. And my Thai is worse.

After a two-hour goose chase, I am finally directed back to the same desk I started out at to fill out a form for my lost luggage. With the same woman who started me on the two-hour goose chase. (If this were a novel, this would be called foreshadowing and in the next few weeks to come I will become very familiar with a phrase called "T.I.T," short for "This Is Thailand.")

But this is not a novel, this is a journal, and though I don't have my luggage and I stink to high heaven, everything is grand. Because I have filled out my lost luggage form, it is New Year's Eve and I am in Thailand. It is hot here and everyone is sweaty so the fact that I have showered in 36 hours does not make me stand out. Plus I always pack at least one change of clothing in my carry on. And did I mention I'm in Thailand, on New Year's Eve? ROCK ON!!!

Sharing a ride into town with a Kiwi girl I will get to know very well over the next month, our taxi weaves its around jungle, run-down slums and modern looking city scapes as our driver practices his broken English with us. I walk down to a pool with a couple of girls I meet at the school I will be attending in a few days time, and a Thai family feeds us some chicken from their barbecue.

And the sun sets on 2010, the skies fill with little dots of light as thousands of paper lanterns take flight all over the island.

Happy New Year Thailand! Thank you for ringing in a magical 2011. I cannot imagine being anywhere else right now.