My Birthday, the best and most important day of the year!

Cosmo o'clock!

Birthday meal Thai style

Check the technique! Out of sync baby!

Nic made friends with the locals

That is an evil that even I couldn't manage

I didn't spit on myself!

Crab city, Thailand

Of all the people to be excited about my birthday it should have been Nicola, to whom I had been treating to a birthday countdown everyday, but suprise suprise it was moi who was up at the crack of dawn getting ready for the big day! Shockingly, Nicola did NOT I repeat NOT get me a birthday present, but she did treat me to a Burger King breakfast in bed including tea, bliss! We had to be up early anyway because we had booked a trip to go kayaking in some nearby mangroves. We got a lift in yet another backless van/truck and were greeted by many other wannabe kayak...ers! We were in a small group of our guides, some middle ageing Brummie couple, a fearsome duo of two Thai ladies and us (with me at the front of course). The first stretch of water was troublesome particularly as Nicola seemed to refuse to cooperate with her paddling skills, and pretty much every other minute we were veering off to the right. Of course this was all her fault. It wasn't long though before we saw some of the 'wildlife' in the form of millions of tiny crabs on this one bit of beach, there were so many you couldnt tell what they were and just coated the whole beach! Then we really hit the jackpot and we saw monkeys! They were so cool and our bad boy tour guide fed them pineapple so they were like putty in our hands (and our boat, ah!). We went around all morning and then headed back only to get our game faces on against all the other couples and it was a show down against Mr and Mrs Brummie. Nicola finally saw sense and decided to syncronise her rowing with me, and we won and made it back to camp first, woop! After that we had a cold beer back at the hotel where the sly thais duped Nicola out of a cake for my birthday, nevermind, it was the thought that counts! We will learn one day that we will never defeat those wily thais. I then treated myself to a Thai massage, that involved yet more bending and breaking and clicking and yelping, and finished with a ginger tea, phew! We then went to a cocktail 'bar' (a term used loosely to describe the roof of someone's garage boasting a cocktail menu) which was the only place in Thailand so far to make Cosmopolitans! So we had our fill of those, then went out for a meal, yum yum! A good day in all.... for a 24year old!