From Grads to Nomads

SO the past 36 hours has been absolute chaos!!! A terrible storm blew into Samui, the worst in about 10 years apparantly.....no one had seen one like it in ages, and it started to rain on thursday night, very heavy, as we took a taxi home from town the roads were already beginning to flood. Awaking on friday morning, I saw the heavy rain and realized that could only lead to no good. First problem, our laundry was down the road at the launders and when we went to retrieve it yesterday morning...we discovered that the road was flooded, now a river with up to chest deep water. We hiked back up the hill with our umbrellas, stranded at the resort, and spent much of the day with no power in the room. We had great worry about getting out of the country....and we had several problems, being
- we had to check out of the hotel
-our Thai visas were due to expire on sunday
-we had non refundable flights out of thailand
-with our laundry stuck behind a wall of water, 4 of us had virtually no clothes left
- if we did not get to KL by sunday, our big ticket would become null and void

So you can see we all had cause for concern, especially learning the storm could last a few days and trap us.....the rains stayed heavy all day, and then this morning at 5 am we awoke to the beautiful sight of stopped rainfall. Upon going to the lobby, it was a struggle to get a vehicle to the airport, as the hotel manager insisted it was no open yet. No surprise he was lying as he had lied to us in the past week several times. We finally got a hotel vehicle and arrived to a very full airport, due to it being closed for 2 days leaving many stranded. Another bit of good luck, on the way to the airport, passing the laundry place, there just happened to be a woman there by candlelight at 6am....so we are with clothing now!!

We caught our flight, albeit delayed, but we are in phuket awaiting flight to KL....it is now stormy here but i imagine it should be fine. Next stop, the Mandarin for a night then onto Auckland. Of course, we hope our good luck of today holds out!