Greetings from Phuket Island, Thailand!

I'm in a restaurant, and they have like free internet for customers so I'm taking this opportunity (the one aboard the cruise ship is really lame, costs money and only lets you access Yahoo and Hotmail.)

This keyboard is funky, it has Thai characters on it.

Man. Thailand is awesome lol it's funny as hell. Lookswise it's really similar to malaysia, tropically and sort of run-downish for the most part but man, this place is so touristy it's not funny :P Haggler's paradise...you walk through the back alleys and this happens:

Hi! How are you! Where you from? *shake hand* *idle conversation* Come look at my (tailor suit place/t-shirts/stuff)

Haggling is really fun here lol. bought two pairs of pants so far, like, some of the shopkeepers don't speak english; even then the haggling thingy is like this, they own calculators, you ask how much something is and they key it in. You look, and EVERYTHING here is overpriced ridiculously so you key in what price you're willing to pay, then they key their next offer in, etc. It's fun and crazy lol. Cut down some ridiculous $1300 baht pants down to 700, which I reckon is still way overpriced but its funny.

Ahaha. And they're all so friendly and they just leap at the opportunity just to even try sell you stuff.

Thailand's been more fun than the cruise ship, which gets old after a while; there's only so much to do and other than the cool shows they have at their theatre there isn't much else to do. Internet sucks as mentioned, their advertised library has less books than my dad probably has, and i dunno. It's still impressive though. It's amazing the boat floats, considering how damn massive it is. And the foyer is very impressive. Marble. Lighted steps, etc. And, there is a lift. A lift inside a boat (lift/elevator).

Yeah.

In Thailand Stop signs say STOP in Thai. It's funny. I'll try get a photo but I might not be able to. Also, there's shopkeepers trying to cash in on the tsunami it's rather sad, they're selling like videos and photos of the tsunamis and personal encounter stories etc. Post-tsunami, there's also like actual signage that leads you to a "tsunami-safe place".

...Anyway hope everyone in NZ is having a good time.

I also hope it's freezing cause it's nice and tropical here with a sea breeze :D