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Published: January 11th 2007
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Ko Lanta
Our first night together on the islands It has been a we while since we last wrote. As I am sure is the case is with most of you Xmas and New Year have been pretty festive. We hope that 2007 brings all you hope for.
Since our last blog, we met up with English friends of ours Tristan and Shelley (who are also now based in Sydney). After picking them up from the airport, we headed accross to Koh Lanta island. It is a rather large island off the west coast. It is pretty undeveloped (relative to the rest of the islands) with many long sandy beaches and a few more remote areas
Tristan, Shelley and I (Craig) managed to schedule a dive. Being Shelley and my first dives after our courses, we were a little apprehensive. Everything was going really well on the first of the 2 dives and we were seeing plenty of stunning sealife when suddenly Tristan's regulator basically exploded, and all his air escaped..... leaving him in just a little of a bind at 18 m under the ocean.... Fortunately he kept his head and "buddied" up with the divemaster, and they shared air until he could get to the surface.
Christmas Eve!
Santa's little helpers We were later told that this was an extremely rare occurance (and were only charged half price at the end of the day after having had to abort the 1st dive). I can just say that thankfully it was not me...... The second dive of the day went by without drama and we got to see plenty of really colourful and interesting sealife, including a stringray (harmless little creatures....)
We hired bikes and zoomed around exploring some of the further reaches of the large island as well as some of the many resturants and bars. Tristan seemed to have a death wish on this holiday, leaving his bike stand down on a number of occasions but again he was unsuccessful.
Xmas was not the traditional fair, with many cocktails on the sunny beaches and a rather more exotic Xmas dinner of mussles, honey-glazed barracudda and mojitos!
The resort where we stayed ("a Time for Lime"), ran thai cooking courses. All 4 of us participated with great gusto and there were a number of challenges banded about for Thai cooking contests when we get to Sydney...
We then made our way over to Ko Phi Phi (with
Thai cooking class
Our Coconut chicken soup, tada! a little apprehension, considering that it was this time of year only 2 years ago that this island bore the full front of the tsunami - although it was unlikely to happen again, there were plenty of signs showing the designated evacuation routes.... all rather late for these). Accomodation was a bit difficult to come by as it turns out that the islands have become very much a family holiday desitination for many Europeans and the prices were boosted for the Xmas season. Tristan, nevertheless, managed to find us a really great spot perched on the hill over looking the turquoise blue waters of the bay, with a great cocktail bar and infinity pool.
We spent many great evenings sampling the freshly braaied (BBQed) seafood and taking in the fire-performers on the beaches in front of the bars, including new years eve where we watched the Thailand fire festival at Carpe Diem bar, drinking a few too many thai whiskey buckets and dancing on the crowded beach till the early hours of the morning!
We spent the remaining days in phi phi relaxing, soaking up the cheap massages and great food and finally got ourselves out to visit the
nearby island where they filmed 'the beach' on a sunset cruise..some pretty good coral reefs for snorkelling.
The last of our beach destinations was Railey beach, near Krabi, situated among incredible lime kasts, it really is a stunning location and totally killed our budget! More fine dining and exploring of beaches during the days (we're really getting into some bad habits here) followed by a LOT of pool in the evenings as the girls took on the guys... i think they won in the end but who's counting 😊
We have now gone our seperate ways (probably better on the liver) with plans to meet up in Sydney shortly and Ruth and I are enjoying our last few days up north in Chiang Mai - albeit most of it has been spent in bed with some bug or another - we head to Bangkok tomorrow for the last weekend of fun and shopping before we fly to Sydney on Monday 15th!
Hard to believe the time has come but we're very ready for it now and are looking forward to all that Sydney has to offer.
Take care & we'll be in touch shortly from Sydney
New Years eve, ko phi phi
a thai whiskey bucket, evil stuff! Lv the Marshinns
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Odie
non-member comment
Enough now!!!
I have had enough of these blog entries, it makes me sick that you are ***still*** on holiday! and you rub it in by sending all these awesome photos while I am at work. Get to Sydney and start working!