I spent the past 5 days on the island of Koh Tao. This is the best diving spot in the Gulf of Thailand and a great place to get a diving course and a PADI license, which is a diving license accepted everywhere in the world. PADI licences come in different levels and the first level is "Open Water". In 3 or 4 days you get a few classes, a book, and you start to practice in the pool for 1 or 2 days before you go out into the ocean. You learn to breathe steadily, stay buoyant, undo and redo [View Full Entry]

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On day 3 we were greated by 3 elephants. Two adults and one baby. The adults would be carrying us on a winding and steep jungle path of 10km. The baby closely followed its mother. Our seats weren't that comfortable, so we really started hurting after a while, especially when going down at higher speeds! But the ride was a really cool experience, sitting high up with a nice view. Along the way, our guide caught a huge spider. Some sort of tarantula. He said it stays in a hole in the ground until a prey unluckily passes by. Humans can [View Full Entry]

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Day 2 started out spectacular. After a half hour walk from the camp site, it was suddenly there: Thilawsu falls, Thailand's biggest waterfall, and it seemed to come straight out of a Jurassic Park movie! Covering multiple levels, the water thunders down a total of 200m through several pools. Impressive. We climbed around for about an hour and a half and saw a lot of people jumping off the lowest level, despite the "no jumping" signs. While climbing down, I got myself a nasty cut in the foot as I stepped into a sharp branch; OUCH! After preparing a quick bandage [View Full Entry]

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On our first day of our adventure, we got up early after a rough night's (of hardly any) sleep on, what it seemed, a wooden mattress. After a good breakfast, we headed down to the river and boarded our raft. The river was rather quiet so we were able to take some pictures along the way. The best part of the river trip was the beginning, where we passed some beautiful cliffs with waterfalls like huge showers. Some had rainbows through them! Too bad I didn't take any pictures of those. The second part was also beautiful, but a bit more [View Full Entry]

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Last week I traveled to the North Western town of Mae Sot to do a 3-day jungle trek near Um Phang. Mae Sot is a town on the border with Burma (Myanmar) and has been an unstable area with skirmishes between Burma and Thailand in the recent past. It's rather peaceful now and Mae Sot is now a trading post, profiting from illegal trade with Burma. Many Burmese live in this part of Thailand that have fled the country for its notorious junta regime. There are a large number of refugee camps here (see picture), housing an estimated 150.000-200.000 refugees! After [View Full Entry]

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Things are going pretty well over here in Bangkok. On my second day, I went to one of the major shopping malls. On the top floor I ran into the opening of Bangkok's 7th World Film Festival. I didn't know what was going on while I was having a coffee at Starbucks, until a couple of good looking youngsters were attracting some attention while having a coffee there as well. Turned out that they are singers presenting an award at the festival. One of them was making peace signs at ME all the time, so I went up to her and [View Full Entry]

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The journey begins... Wednesday (Nov 4, the day of my departure) started off on a strange note though. In the morning, I attended the funeral of the father of a former classmate and husband of a good friend of my mother's. With the ceremony and impressions still in our heads, my parents and I headed to the airport. Checking in went smoothly, and after a good old Dutch apple pie we said goodbye as I went through customs. Here I am now in Bangkok and I'm just chilling out to adjust to the time difference, the lack of sleep on the [View Full Entry]

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