New Year's Resolution: Never let the drunk french girl order the food.

After the night dive, a few more days passed w/o me doing much of note. More reading, more movies, more thinking. The next PADI course is Divemaster. Divemaster, sure sounds cool. Its the first level of professional scubering, and the course looks like a hell of a lot of fun judging by all the people at Budda View currently taking it. Its just a lot of money if you never want to teach scuba diving. And who would want to do that anyway? What's so exciting about living on a tropical island, diving everyday and drinking Carlsbergs every night? What a dreadful life... I mean, Carlsberg? Anyway, I am saved from an immediate decision by the fact that I must leave by the 2nd to be sure to get to Ranong and from there a visa-run to Myanmar.

Even after all the abuse she took Alli found it in her heart to tell me that most of the Budda View folk were headed to Venus Park for New Years. Ok, thanks... where on Koh Tao is that? So after hanging around all day, I shower up and head out to the BBQ for dinner. I've been here a month and I think I ate somewhere else for dinner maybe once. I run into this Dutch divemaster trainee named... oh well named something. Marlusa? For the purposes of this story that's what its gonna be. Well she and Delilah (from France so its pronounced DALI LA... kind of like Dali Llama but w/o the MA. She started the rescue diver course w/ me, but was too drunk Christmas night to finish the course with us on the 26th. oops.) were off to get some potato chips, but they stopped to ask me what I was doing for New Year's. Without a satisfactory reply they said I could join them and pointed me to a table in the restaurant w/ about 6 other girls I didn't as yet know. I worked on my marlin and the rest of them finished off the Sangsom and potato chips. It was running on to about 9-10pm and for some reason the rest of the group had not eaten. Didn't they realize there was delicious grilled marlin fish available earlier? Anyway, they thought it would be a good idea to go to some Spanish restaurant on the top of a hill. Bad idea. We ring the buzzer and wait a few minutes for the 4WD songtauew to hall us up the 45 degree road. Nice view and all, but they only have potatos and omlettes on the menu at 10pm on New Years eve.. both at inflated prices. This is my second experience at restaurants on hilltops on Koh Tao, and I have come to the conclusion that they have to charge extra for 2 reasons... 1) they have to haul all their supplies up the hill... and 2) most people arent going to hike 1km up a steep incline if they dont have to. Well somehow Delilah managed to order Paiella. Three heaping plates of it arrived just as we were preparing to leave. We declined 2 of them since we didnt order them. But truthfully, it could have happened. Who knows what Delilah said... she had already had too much Sangsom and her english isnt the best sober. So we split what was basically a plate of rice and then got the bill. 400 Baht! Thats $10 for a plate of rice. So we were naturally up in arms. And this led to an argument with the Thai lady in charge. She was not nice either. For the most part Thais do not get angry b/c to do so is considered a loss of face. But this lady was hot and very rude. However, in the you are bound to lose any argument... and as I mentioned... who knows what Delilah ordered. I am convinced we were charged for all 3 plates of rice. Anyway 6 of us left on not happy terms (I forked over more for my scoop of rice than for my marlin steak... something is wrong w/ that picture)... only Delilah was still on speaking terms since she was drunk and since she got swindled into paying for the rice again after the rest of us had already chipped in our 70 baht a piece.... so we sent her back in to get us a taxi down the hill.

Now we're all disgruntled and on a mission to get to Venus park to have "fun". Why do we work so hard.... I definitely think we'd have had a better time, w/ a lot fewer hassles, just sitting in the restaurant. But hey, that's my opinion. So since we have no idea where this Venus Park place is, we are relegated to relying on the 4wd taxis who've jacked up their prices for New Year's. The first taxi takes us barely a quarter of a mile...where we need to get out and take a 4wd up another steep hill. This time without even the benefit of any pavement. Off-roading! After much hassle and bahts and a cover charge we finally get into Venus Park. Turns out if any of us had known where it was we could have walked. So anyway the park is a completely open-air bar at the top of another hill. Apparently there is a great view of both Thian and Chalok bays, but I couldnt find the spot amidst the throngs of revelers.

I had the choice to "sit it out or dance"...and well since I had come all that way, put all that effort into getting there, and there really wasn't much else to do... I tried to do my ladies back home proud. Even if "house" is not much to my likely and extremely difficult to dance to besides.... I'll take "Take Me home, country roads" anytime. ;) Having recently tested the water resistance of my watch.... water resistant to ohh say 1m.... I have no idea how long I was there. But eventually my knees got tired and I had to sit down. Then I watched some people put on some kind of fire-dancing show. Little balls of flame on the end of a rope.... and because it was fire I just stared until they quit. Finally, I decided it was time to go back to my bungalow. Then I made the torturous journey back down the hill, and hit up the 7-11 before retiring for the night. (Too bad it wasn't a RoFo!) The New Year officially celebrated and begun... and my resolution firmly made: Never let the drunk french girl order the food.