Quick (ish) Catch-up!

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I think I shall skip any apologies for not really keeping this up to date. It's quicker that way...
Haven't written for some time, so there's a lot to catch up on - I'll just outline a few things we've done...

When we arrived in Phuket on New Year's eve, we were picked up from the airport by the hotel minibus and taken to the Pearl Hotel, where we met Mr Somsak - the single most helpful and lovely man on the planet - and he invited us to the sister hotel of the Pearl, the Indigo Pearl on the coast, for the New Year celebrations and we gratefully accepted.

Having checked out the room and made use of a shower that was infinitely nicer than the one in Bangkok, we met Khun Somsak back in the lobby and were introduced to Eric and Lily, a slightly eccentric old couple who have been coming out to Thailand for six months every year for 30 years, and are full to the brim with anecdotes and advice...

The Indigo Pearl was as amazing as you would expect a huge and luxurious 5-star complex to be, and the food was amazing (we later found out that people had been paying around 5000 baht to attend - that's about 75 pounds!). We approached the buffet with a certain cautiousness, but quickly found that it was all delicious, including the slightly bizarre bright red sticks of chilli chocolate.

We went out onto the beach after eating and watched people releasing laterns which floated up like little hot air balloons and then hung in the sky like decorative ufos. There were also, slightly worryingly, very small children holding large amounts of fireworks and aiming them in all sorts of directions - a little unnerving but great fun when they weren't pointed at you...

We saw in the new year with champagne and a slightly more organized fireworks display and a great time was had by all.

The next day we visited the Indigo Pearl again in order to take advantage of the 3 huge pools. We had lunch in a sweet little local restaurant recommended to us by Eric and Lily who were also there, greeting everyone who walked past and playing with the kids who lived by the restaurant.

That evening we were taken to dinner again by Khun Somsak - to the hotel's chinese style restaurant on the top floor. Again everything we tried was pretty tasty (excluding a strangely gelatinous mushroom (possibly!) soup...)

We took a tour of Phang Nga (having found a reasonably priced one that didn't include hundreds of pictures of water buffalo) and after a slightly worrying start (the tour HQ appeared to be a petrol station...) it was actually very enjoyable. We visited Wat Suwankuha - the Monkey Cave, which was a temple in a cave full of monkeys, and toured around the smaller islands in a long tail boat, wearing v fetching purple and green lifejackets. Khao Ping Gun is a stop along the way - also known as James Bond island because of it's appearance in 'The Man with the Golden Gun'. Pretty, but so full of tourists you can hardly move and packed with people trying to sell pearl necklacees and sarongs. Still a worthwhile visit though,as we got a picture or two of us and a huge rock which is apparently important to the storyline of the film. Neither of us can distinguish one Bond film from another though, so it is somewhat lost on us...

Our last day in Phuket is essentially a whole dayful of shopping (although most of it was just looking admittedly) and I bought a camera so as to better document the trip (at least there will be pictorial evidence, if a slight lack of blog updates) Seems to be pretty good but obviously it's not really my area of expertise so I can't tell for sure...

We flew back to Bangkok from Phuket in order to start a 'Treasures of the North' trip, which has been fantastic despite a few drawbacks (ie the cost!!). We have made our way from BKK to Chiangmai via smaller cities - Sukhothai and Lampang as well as a little village slightly outside of Lampang - stopping along the way to visit elephant sanctuaries and hot springs as well as plenty of markets. The elephant santuary was fantastic, and we had ride through the jungle with a mahout (elephant handler) who kept singing to either himself or the elephant (or us! we weren't really sure...)

A stay in a village home for a night has been one of the best days so far - we were treated to traditional music and dances by the local school children, and even a bit of a music lesson (although to be honest we were somewhat wanting in that area...) We went to their school the next day to teach a little bit of english and had a lot of fun, although the kids tended to lose interest in anything more complex than 'what is your name?'. In the end we resorted to Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes which was far better received...

After many hours of buses and songtaews (which apparently means two bench because that's what it is really - a truck with two benches in...) we are in Chiang mai and having a great time at the famous night markets.

We're planning on having a look at some of the many temples later today and then we take an overnight train back to bkk.

This entry is already pretty long - congrats if you haven't lost interest yet - so I'll just finish here...

izzy x

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