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Published: February 27th 2008
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Feb 14 - 21, 2008
Flew on our early afternoon flight from Bangkok to Koh Samui, an island off the south coast of Thailand in the Gulf of Thailand, and checked in for a week of doing nothing but relaxing at the beach.
We did take a ½ day tour that included a short ride on elephants up a mountain trail, and an interesting walk up the mountain to a very nice waterfall on Koh Samui and a kayak ride up a lagoon of the gulf. Nice half day with some good exercise.
I took ½ day to play golf at the spectacular Sanburi Resort Golf Club. Very tough course ( too tough for me ) that is used as a regular stop on the Asian Golf Tour. This is a beautiful golf course cut out of the mountain on Koh Samui. Golfed with a couple of young guys from Sweden and had a great time ( even though I didn’t golf well )
We spent a lot of time laying around the pool, took a few walks to the downtown and walked a few kilometers down the beach.
Koh Samui has some very beautiful beaches
and is getting very developed. ( maybe too much so as it may be losing some of its character). I was disappointed to find that the closest decent diving is about a 2 hour boat ride to the north so you pretty much blow a whole day for a 2 dive trip. Some snorkeling is possible a few hundred meters from the beach but the water clarity was not very good.
We were pleased to see that the attitude of the Thai people is still as we expected and this makes it still one of the best countries in the world to visit. Prices are up from our first visits a few years ago but good deals can still be found. Good deals available on tailored products and we bought a couple of things.
Food is great and varied with everything you can imagine, particularly seafood of course. We ate a couple of times a very good restaurant called C-Front that is part of the Chaba Resort near the end of Chweng Beach. We would highly recommend this restaurant with very good food and exceptional service at fair prices.
We enjoyed our stay at Koh Samui and
returned to Bangkok for a couple of days before heading to India.
Feb 22, 2008
Two days in Bangkok. There is still lots of good shopping here, if you’re into that, with the usual “knock off” products and clothes. I am now the proud owner of a “very expensive” Rolex bought at the night market that was a short walk from our hotel.
The night market also encompasses a very famous couple of streets in Bangkok known for their, shall we say, "Barefoot Ballet". !! This is an adventure in itself as it’s quite a spectacle with the shows all having on the street “ salespeople” explaining what you might expect to see . It is really quite sad as the girls ( and “Lady Boys” ) all appear to be very young. A sleazy, but very interesting, part of town to say the least. We didn’t feel unsafe or threatened and it is something to write home about.
We never got too adventuresome in Bangkok as we have been here a couple of times previously, but enjoyed our short visit here.
Everyone should visit Bangkok at least once in their lives. It’s
an experience !! There is lots of interesting things to see and do here for the first time visitor.
Off to Mumbai tomorrow to continue our adventures.
Feb 23, 2008
Spent a quiet morning getting up to date with emails and went to the airport for our 4 hour flight on Cathay Pacific, to Mumbai, India. This was a very interesting flight as for 2 ½ hours we literally chased a spectacular sunset over the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. WOW !
Another adventure in a new country starts tomorrow !
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