Day 28- Saturday It was hard to imagine yesterday at lunch on Koh Samui that by this morning at 6.30am we would be on another continent (and that our baggage checked in there would also have arrived safely too). All went well except for the 5 hour wait till midnight in Bangkok airport, which is even less interesting than Sydney airport ....not even internet for those with long transits. However, the flight was great. Only half full so everyone who wanted got three seats to sleep on. In any case Thai seem to use airbus, not jumbos and there is much [View Full Entry]

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Day 27- Friday We are filling in a quiet afternoon prior to our flight at 6pm to Bangkok connectiong with our midnight flight to Athens. There have been a number of challenges over the last few days to prevent any updates to this blog. Wednesday 23rd/ Day 25 We enrolled in a cooking school with some misgiving as the staff at the guest house/ restaurant in the town where we were staying were rather vague about the details. However the ad in the brochure about the island sounded impressive so we each paid our $30 and waited. In due course we [View Full Entry]

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This morning we took the ferry from Koh Samui to Koh Pha Ngan, about half an hour away. We are no longer in our idyllic beach cabin but back in a town very much on the travellers circuit. Lots of surf shops and dive shops as well as tatoo parlours and every kind of restaurant. The place we are in seems to be owned by a Dane with a Thai wife. We had a great time on Koh Samui. The particular "resort" we were at seemed to be popular with all kinds of Europeans. Most of the books in the recycled [View Full Entry]

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This will be our third night at the Home Bay beach resort. A really lovely quiet place to take a break after all our energetic travelling and sightseeing. $10 each per night. This morning it was raining gently most of the time so we were glad to sit on the porch of our hut and read. The water is nice and warm for a swim nevertheless. We met a group of mainly English travellers who are on their way to Sydney by bus. There are 40 of them, ranging in age from 18 (gap year kids) to 60 or so. They [View Full Entry]

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Friday we were collected from te beautiful guest house where we had stayed and taken to the bus station read for our trip to Ko Samui. While we were waiting , Rosemary and I set out in search of a perfect photo without the intrusion of electric wires. (These you have to see to believe , both to believe that tere is an effective power supply and that many have not been killed! Some hang right down low over the footpath. Everywhere! ) We followed various lanes to the edge of town, cursing the intense heat at 9am. We lined up [View Full Entry]

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I rejoined Connie and Rosemary yesterday afternoon at Karon, one of the beaches on the west coast of Phuket Island, down in the south where the tsunami had a great impact. Adrian and I used to travel there each day from Phuket city 30 years ago when we were teaching at the university here. We stayed in the town in a fine old Chinese hotel which is still going . In those days there wasn't really anywhere to stay at the beaches. Now!!! I am sorry to report that the various beach villages are something of a cross between Surfers Paradise [View Full Entry]

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It's great to have an ongoing project to maintain. Here I am in Bangkok airport for the third time. This time more than two hours early and I'm checked in for my flight to Phuket. Having had to wait until close of business yesterday to clarify Eva's problems with her lost Visa card, I could not book till last night. The nearby travel agent tried various airlines and declared that all were booked out due to a "long weekend" (I thought today was Wednesday!). So, against my instincts I googled a few options and was connected to Expedia USA. They seemed [View Full Entry]

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This morning I set out early to walk to the National museum and Grand Palace. They are quite close to where we are staying on the riverside on the north western side of Bangkok. Unfortunately rhe museum is closed on Tuesdays as well as Mondays. The palace complex is quite magnificent. Whilst I was sitting reading my guide book a few young students approached and asked if they could interview me. They are nursing students and had a sheet with about 10 simple questions to ask including which did I think about global warming. I told them that I wished the [View Full Entry]

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Starting to feel a little tired and needing some down time. Connie and Rosemary went off today to Phuket, searching for somewhere nice to stay with a hammock swung between two coconut palms near a quiet beach. I fear their search will prove challenging. Lots of the old simple hangouts have been developed by Korean and Japanese resorts. Eva lost her only Visa card in an ATM (beware...they operate according to a different sequence and instead of returning your card before you access the cash they keep the card concealed until the cash is removed...very easy to pocket the cash and [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 13th Today we travelled in a minibus to the river Kwai. First of all we visited the war cemetry where many Australian, New Zealand and British servicemen are buried as well as a lot of Dutch civilians. We walked on the reconstructed bridge, built under the Japanese by the prisoners of war and destroyed by allied bombing. There was a "museum", vaguely reminiscent of countless rural museums in Australia. The hotch potch assemblage mover Eva to say ( as an earnest student of the World wars) that she, when she retire!!! will volunteer to go round and help improve such [View Full Entry]

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