Ciao Cinque (or the literal translation of "Hi Five")

I have always been a fan of the high five. Long before Barney made it cool I was "verbal high fiving" for things that were only mildly cool, and big-up-in-the-air high fiving for things that were out of control exciting.

Now, thanks to How I Met Your Mother, I also "virtual high five" on the computer and "hypothetical high five" for those those exciting what-if moments.

This is the story of the best high five of my life.

When I lived in Rome I was surrounded by lots of other expats - Irish, English, Scottish, Canadian, Americans, French, Belgians... But it was my UK friends who constantly made fun of those of us Americans that enjoyed a good old fashioned high five. (They also made fun of flip flops and visors, but that is another story.) My English roommate in particular would grimmace everytime I tried to high five her. When we got our apartment - high five? no. When we got jobs? No. When we met nice boys? No. I tried calling it "Ciao Cinque" to see if that would make a high five cooler and more acceptable, but no. No matter how good things got, I never got a high five.

Then after we left Rome, we both lived in England. Did I get a high five for moving to her country? Unequivocally, no. Now, not only could I not get a high five, but because I was on the queens land, I wasn't even allowed to ask.

After moving back to the states, we stilled traveled every 6 months together. She was in England, I was in the US and we would meet in fun places around the world (Croatia and Morocco to name a couple). It became my mission to get her to high five me. Throughout every trip we would joke and laugh about it, but it never happened.

Then came Thailand. Thailand was a trip filled with trouble from the very beginning. My passport was taken away (I'll save that for a future blog). We had to change all of our travel plans in about 18 hours, and it was the rainy season (if you have never traveled in rain, it can tell you A LOT about a person).

First we went to an island on the east side of the Gulf of Thailand - it took us an 8-hour bus trip, a rocky ferry trip (where we were swindled out of money), and a bumpy truck ride in pelting rain. We finally get to a hotel and there was so much mold that you could actually see it growing on the ceiling. And in order to shower you had to stand in odd Yoga positions.

The next day, my lovely English friend said that we had to move. She wanted to go to the west side of the Gulf of Thailand. This involved another rainy trip on the back of a truck, another rocky ferry, another 8-hours on the bus back to Bangkok, THEN a 5-hour wait in the Bangkok train station, a 6-hour train ride in a sleeping train (next to a monk who talked on his cell phone), another lay over at a train terminal, and another ferry ride that left land at 4 am.

Once on the boat, she and I managed to wind our way up to the front of the boat. The boat operators let us sneak up front to lay down on the bow of the boat and took a little snooze. When we finally woke up we saw clear blue skies, gorgeous waters, warm (dry!) weather without a cloud in the sky, and tiny islands ahead of us. As we pulled into the stunning Koh Tao we saw beaches that were sugar white, huts built right into the rocks, clear blue water that you can see to the bottom of the sea, and blue skies as far as the eye can see.

As we got off the boat and walked up the dock to find our new hotel, we both commented on how glad we were that we switched islands and that we were already in love with Koh Tao. My friend turned very slowly to me, looked me in the eye and said, "Now this deserves a High Five!" And she gave me an epic high five.

In retrospect I am glad she waited all those years, because it made the one in Thailand that much sweeter. Our trip to Thailand was 2 years ago and I still haven't received a high five half as sweet.

Thank you, my dear, for all of the great travel memories!