Week 1 - June 23rd, 2008

Hello all,

I have arrived safely. Bkk (Bangkok) is still very much the same though I am seeing Thailand with different eyes indeed.

Life here with my host family (extended) is easy with little to do during the days and much to do at night, which makes sense with the heat. Oh, and yes I have developed the Bkk-scratch, where by which you'd think I had started smoking (but I haven't)...

To begin with, I landed @ 9pm on the 19th and @10am on the 20th I was already on the road to Koh Samet 2hrs due east of Bkk. Now this is not normally how I travel but Khun Maee (my host mother) had limited time and we decided to make it happen. So we hopped in a taxi and we were off...

Khun Maee, Khun Maee Khun Maee... I'm supposed to be jet lagged... On the way to Koh Samet Khun Maee catches some z's...

The luxury cruise option... heck it was $0.75...

Chicken bones in the bay.

I've gotten some flack for this photo... people say I look fat... I happily concur.

Boats in the bay on the way to Samet... a friendly sight...

After arriving at the Bang Phe Pier (on the mainland) we hopped on an old converted fishing boat to Samet. The weather was less than ideal. And actually very much like my first trip last time. I certainly had some feelings of De-ja-vu (See In the Nick of Thailand).

Having paid for a boat trip/hotel combination 'special' (Once again not how I normally do things) we got on the boat and soon found ourselves cutting the waves.

It didn't end up raining on us so we decided to rent a motorbike (~$7 a day) and do the rest ourselves. We traveled to the southern tip of the island stopping off at the bays and beaches along the way. The further south you travel the more deserted the beaches and the worse the roads. I am quite sure that we arrived after a rain because at one point I couldn't tell where there was road or just mud-puddles... This is kind of scary. The muddy roads got so thick that they seemed to be expanding upwards like thick foam. But we made it without falling once...

'Ahh... I'm back...'

Soul-searching on Koh Samet.

Isaan Food... Now I had forgotten that I am still a farang(westerner) and committed the sin of ordering food to spicy to eat. But darn... It was good.

After a Chang (elephant) beer (anywhere between 4-11% alc.) fire shows are a real trip. The next morning we stopped off at a nearby beach to enjoy the scenery... and the traditional 'sala'. This one was a truly beautiful piece. The tables that you sit at tend to be made as one piece of a really big tree - some are worth thousands of dollars.

This was not our hotel but its a nice one...

The tides having gone out, the crabs who filter this sand for micro organisms go to work. when the tides come back their beautiful design work will be washed away.

I think these mounds are also made by sand filtering crabs. But clearly they are farther towards the water and of a very different consistency.

Idillic eh?

The boats which took us back home... Koh Samet - a nice getaway trip...

I will be posting more photos of a beautiful Bkk temple (worth 2.4 billion baht - ~73 million dollars) and a few nights out on the town, of course. Soon I will be headed back to the south and more photos and stories will follow!