Lamai, Lamai

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Dear Readers - We have decided to pull the plug on this adventure. We have never been on a trip of this duration and find it has been hard being away from our home and our friends, local news, cooler weather, and furthermore living out of a suitcase from day to day has been trying as well. We are ending this adventure knowing we can take off at the spur of the moment for anywhere in the world and may do just that. We did not get to see Australia, nor Burma but that may be good reason to take another trip. We plan on being home on June 11 and will be decompressing (jet lag adjusting) for about two weeks.

After Chiang Mai we took the train to Bangkok. We thought it would take 6 hours and it ended up taking 12. We arrived in Bangkok to a tremendous thunder storm which had flooded the streets and made driving very difficult. We spent two days in Bangkok deciding on our next phase and decided at that point to revisit Koh Samui and head home from there. The weather was cooperative for the rainy season and the water temperature was extremely warm. Probably a good 90 degrees. We stayed at the Samui Sense Hotel and enjoyed it a lot. If you like you can see the beach and street on front of the hotel by visiting the Samui web cam at samuicam.com. Click on Lamai Beach.

The attached picture of the red festival ballons is our farewell celebration to Samui. We dearly love Koh Samui even though it has grown a lot. For better or worse Samui will always hold a fond place in our hearts. These festival ballons went up approximately 2000 feet before burning out. It was a spectacular thing to watch.

We are now back in Bangkok doing last minute shopping. Jim found auto accessory heaven in an area called Worachuk. Worachuk is an area about 4 city blocks in size on the outskirts of China town. You can buy just about any auto accessory from turbo boost dump valves to fancy schrader valve caps. Ann now has a fine collection of caps.

This blog will probably be the last one from Asia. In a few weeks we may do a "decompression blog" (term stolen from another blogger we read). Thanks for following our trip. Hope you have been well informed as to our whereabouts and what we have been up too. Thanks also for you comments and snipits of news from home. You will never know how much it meant to us.

We would like to acknowledge Claire Hall (Soul Cultivator). Claire has been an inspiration whether she knows it or not and has lead to our creating and continuing with this blog. She has been influential in her grasp of world travel, her wit, her knowledge, her caring, and her story telling. (Claire - can you feel the love?) We were fortunate enough to have met Claire and Stu in Hanoi. Jim had been following Claire's blog for over a year but we had never met. Continue on Claire and may your force inspire the rest of the world.

Love to all,
Jim and Ann

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Comments

[chrisandbecky]

Thanks Again!
Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately you've been tricked by our slow blog posting...we were actually in northern Laos in June...we are just that far behind in our blog. Bex and I are now in Kuala Lumpur. We fly out for Borneo tomorrow for our last adventure. On August 11 we fly back home to Victoria. I see that you are home now. It sounds like you had a great trip. You'll be ready to go again before you know it. After all these months living out of our backpacks, we are also starting to look forward to the comforts of home. Thanks again for looking at our blog. Cheers, Chris