Author: Philippa

Matt made me drag out my bikini that he bought me for christmas. It is great after four years of marriage that he still wants to see me in a bikini! Out came the sunscreen and the spatula to apply it thickly over my poor white skin!

The beach was great fun, little fish darting everywhere, it was shallow for about 100m, which created a great playground for kids, even us big kids, and it was soooo warm (I smiled as I thought about running into the freezing water of Wilsons Prom in Spring)! Matt and I decided earlier that playing in swimming pools is just no fun unless you have a game to play or people their to entertain you – but playing down the beach was a entirely different experience! We jumped out of the ocean into the hotel pool and then back to the ocean!

That night I had the beer bottles wrapped in wet towels tending to my sunburn…the sunburn marks suggested that I had been burnt before we went swimming (as they followed my T-shirt line). I had been in the sun for about 10 minutes earlier that day getting lunch…there is not justice for the pale skinned!

I have finished my second book for the holiday – it is great having so much time! Today I spent 30 minutes eating a calipo (the Thai equivalent) – and was remembering as a kid how such basic things once entertained me for the same length of time. I think that Matt and I have entirely wound down and are enjoying the pace of life at the moment!

We hired a motor scooter (120cc) yeasterday, as we are sick of negotiating our fair home late at night which seems to attract about a 500% premium. The cost of the motor scooter was $8 for 24hours – the same fair we paid to a taxi driver three nights ago to get us home at 11:30pm! We filled the tank of our scooter for $1! Matt was a bit white after our first trip, first time that he has taken a passenger and apparently I wriggle around a bit. He is cruising along now though – I feel a bit dorky with my closed toe shoes, jean jacket and helmet compared to others that get around in shorts and thongs! But hey, I’ve got a little more travelling that I want to survive!

Matt and I are being a little bit more adventerous and are trying to eat more local food – the food here is very tastey! We have a few select street vendours that we feel have pretty good hygiene standards and we watch them prepare their food. Don’t think that there is any chance of us loosing weight in Thailand, we have fallen in love with Banana, Coconut and Choclate rotti! We watch as the chef calves up the fresh ingredients, grating the coconut for us to see. Fresh mango juice, pad thai and assorted stir fry curries are all prepared on the street for the customer to see. The fresh seafood in Koh Samui is a real treat, though we are treading carefully (not past the king prawns though).

Few more days here before we head off too Koh Panang on Friday. I have a few post cards to write – to those who haven’t received one yet I am working on it!

The beats of the street bars are floating in as I type this message in sync. We are currently in Liaim – one of the night life centres on Koh Samui. As I look out the window I see a number of open air bars with holiday makers (from families with young children, to middle aged men looking for partners) enjoying local beer and the cool of the evening.

Well Koh Samui is everything that you would hope a holiday resort would be plenty of blond haired, big breasted women with great tans accompanied by their six foot companions who get around in tank tops (if your lucky) and stubbies. Matt seems to have a finally tuned radar for the topless bathers (lucky for him) and his half blind wife has to wait until she trips over them to get a thrill. Unfortunately Matt and I haven’t gotten into the topless bathing scene because our fair skin seems to be repelled by the sun.

Not much to report really…it is exactly as the postcard depict it…coconut trees everywhere silhouetted against the sparkling blue ocean and white sand beaches. The rolling mountains in the center of the island are quite picturesque and the view of the surrounding eighty islands makes you realise why so many people come here for holidays. Prices are a little more expensive, but if you shop around you can still get “Thai prices”. Matt and I are relaxing and trying to recover from our spending spree in Chiang Mai – we loved the markets!

…gee life is tough…

I think that we will wonder out and get a cool beer and some corn off the barbie, followed by banana and chocolate rotti!

Wish you were here…really…but not spending too much energy worrying about it 😛

Don’t want to bore you with any more boring details of this place…until next time…

Well it seems that we have a bit of catching up to do!

So Matt and I collapsed on the beds at the hotel when we arrived in Chang Mai, recovering from the hotel California and the sleeper train trip with the horrible, abnoxious, drunk English men!

We didn’t have much time to rest because the next day we jumped on a mini bus and weaved through the streets of Chang Mai picking up guests for our day trip. Our gorgeous (not looking) tour guide was Kon, who was jovial and seemed to know a bit about the places we visited. Our first stop was a hilltribe the Mao people, from Lao I think. It was a forty minute walk up hill. Matt got to the point where he dug in his heals and said “I am not going any further” and we happened to be 10 meters away from the tourist sign welcoming us to the village. From what we could tell, nobody actually lived there it was purely set up for the tourists! So why not 10 meters from the road 🙂 It was an old village that they had preserved, which made us feel a little more comfortable rather than it being a “Human Zoo” experience. We both had turns at shooting a cross bow. Matt shot a bulls eye, through target on the mellon that was hanging.

We then set off to go elephant riding. It is hard not to fall in love with the elephants. I was a big skeptic, but when you have two little cubs following beside you and then go walking and playing in the river your heart melts! There is something about the way that there trunks grab the bananas and manovour it into there mouths that gets you!

After our traditional Thai lunch we went bambo rafting, which isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. Though it seems to take more skill that you would think from observing. Matt ended up in the drink after having a go, it was the rapids that caught him out. We all got wet, which is always fun.

We visited the Karen tribe (one of the versions as you will read later), and purchased some weaving – a piece that took three days to weave. When we paid the lady 140Baht ($5), she looked at us as though we were gullible for paying so much. We did pay alot because at the market the next day we saw similar pieces for 65Baht ($2.20), but as Matt said “I’m not going to pay someone 3 dollars for 3 days work!”.

Somehow I persuaded Matt to walk down to the waterfall that we visited. You couldn’t see the waterfall for all the tourists swimming in the water! I think that Matt was pleased with the view (*Matt elbows Phil*). That night we went out to the night markets – the markets are soooooo much fun here in Chang Mai and had Burger King for dinner – too much culture for one day 😛

The next day Matt couldn’t get out of bed for our 7am start to visit the Golden Triangle and more hill tribes. From his lips I could make out “No more walking” in a faint wisper. God love him he was exhausted and the Burger King was playing havock with his tummy – figures. I spent the day on the mini bus, over 7 hours of driving (lucky Matt didn’t come). The golden triangle is nicely set up for tourists, I caught a speed boat over to an enclave in Lao that you do not have to go though imigration in order to go shopping. It was a bit of a joke. The speed boat also took us to see the Paradise Casino set up at the norther tip of Myanmar.

A lot of tourist take this day trip in order to get their passports extended. I met some young Aussies that had run out of money and time, waiting for money to clear from their parents at home.

The rest of the day was filled with visiting hilltribes. We visited another two versions of the Karen tribe, affectionately known as the long necks and the big ears. This felt a bit more like a human zoo, but the village have a cover charge for visitors and plenty of sovineer shops. There where another two tribes living by there side, one which only washed twice a month because they believe that the spirits recognised them by their sent. The hilltribes are all refugees from countries such as Tibet, Myanmar, China and Lao, some have been here for only a couple of years, others have been here for hundreds of years.

Since then….hmmm…we have been relaxing, marketing, enjoying Chang Mai. We love it up here and could easily stay another week however we are catching a train tomorrow and heading south to Koh Samui, two overnight sleepers. Please pray for no drunk English men 😛

Thank you for all your emails and comments. I am trying to get through them and answer them individually, because we really appreciate the news from home. It is good to hear that the water catchments are filling up – I just feel sad for all the little kids that have just started back at school. That is enough ranting from me.