Blogs from South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 881

Hi There It is two days after full moon. Been sleeping heaps. Full Moon was on the 16th and we got a taxi with 12 other people from our resort down to haad rin, the location for full moon. Got there about midnight and the place was packed with touros. Couldnt get down to the beach area so we when to a quite club for drinks till about 5am. By that stage the crowd had sufficiently cleared so we could get onto the beach. There's like 20 clubs right on the beach all pumping out all sorts of music, loved the cheesy house and progressive music myself but the others wanted more psy. We hung out with a german couple from our resort, Itza and Ricky. I could only remember her name by thinking of ... read more

I'm feeling a lot better this afternoon. The hangover is gone and I've spent a good hour at the beach followed by a lunch of chicken with cashew, spicy Thai salad with beef, sweet & sour chicken, and basil beef. The dishes are smaller and much cheaper here allowing us to try a number of different things for lunch rather than one huge dish like in the USA. The travel agent refunded our entire cost of the unused Full Moon Party tickets and apologized over and over for the failure of the minibus/speedboat service. We found out that hundreds of people suffered the same fate we did. That would explain why there were still so many young people hanging out in the bars on Chaweng Beach with us last night. We bought our full day tours ... read more

Despite November being the rainy monsoon month in Ko Samui, we awoke to another very sunny and beautiful morning on the island. Today is Loy Krathong, one of the most important holidays in the kingdom. This evening at dusk, Colin and I will travel to Big Buddha Beach at the northeast end of the island to watch as Thais and tourists launch krathongs into the ocean. Krathongs are small floating objects built of banana leaves, paper, or even bread and contain offerings, incense and always candles. The idea is to float away your difficulties in life and wish for great times ahead. I haven't seen krathongs for sale and I'm not artistic enough to build my own, so we will probably just watch. We went to bed early last night. We were both drained and needed ... read more

Timed out. Here are some more.... read more

There's no way to write about all we have experienced in the past day. Ko Samui is paradise on Earth; certainly the most beautiful place I have ever visited. Imagine the photos of a Caribbean beach and multiply that by 10. Our flight arrived safely and on time yesterday. The trip was very fast, lasting only about 40 minutes, yet it is certainly a whole world away from Bangkok. We came in over the islands from the north and as we got lower the mountains rose up to meet us. Ko Samui, the southern most and largest island is a set of mountains rising out of the Gulf of Siam covered 98% with Coconut Palm trees. The weather here is mercifully cooler than Bangkok (about 85F) thanks to the ocean breeze. However, it's still very humid. ... read more