Sun, Sea and Moped Mayhem

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Time for a bit of a round up of life here on the beaches of beautiful Ko Samet in Thailand. We were originally due to leave yesterday but like it here so much that we have extended our stay until Tuesday when we'll head back to Bangkok again.

Since our first day we've been chilling out big time. We roll down to the beach for breakfast every morning, then have a dip in the sea until we go all wrinkly and come back to shore to dry out in the sun. It's hot every day and the sun is exceptionally strong here as we found out to our cost on Wednesday. Despite applying copious amounts of suncream and only spending about 2 hours out of the shade, we both got pretty sunburnt. It was hardly surprising though as we are both finally getting a chance to expose some of our whiter bits. Topless, Glynn looks like he's still wearing a t-shirt because of the dark tan on his arms, face and neck! I look like I'm wearing white shorts when I've got my swimming costume on because my tan only goes up to the knee! We do look quite funny, although after the sunburn, we're more pink than white :-(

Thursday was a write-off as I wasn't feeling too well. By 2pm, I still couldn't get out of bed so poor Glynn went to the beach to play all on his own and ended up going to dinner later on alone too. It wasn't until about 10pm that I started to feel better at which point my lovely hubby came home with some supplies from the 7-eleven shop as I hadn't eaten all day. Bless.

On Friday, it was Glynn's turn to take some time out in bed. With my sunburn still smarting a bit, I decided not to risk any more exposure to the strong sun for the time being and kept him company instead. We have an English movie channel on the cable tv in our rooms, so we spent much of the day watching really naff films - Glynn even watched One Fine Day, a romantic flick with Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney that even I couldn't stomach watching! We made it out of our room for dinner but Glynn was complaining about his left ear being sore, so it wasn't long before we were back again.

Yesterday, we were both feeling better so we took the bull by the horns and rented a couple of mopeds for the day in the hope of exploring the island in more depth. Glynn got the hang of the controls pretty quickly but I was less confident on my bike (I recalled my time as a holiday rep when so many of the holidaymakers injured or killed themselves on these things - eek). I was determined to have an adventure though, so off we went int search of the unkown. Unfortunately, the roads here are barely roads and the going was really hard. At one point I saw a truck coming the other way on a steep, rocky slope that I needed to go up. I don't know why but I panicked, hit the throttle instead of the brake and went careering off into a ditch at the side of the road. I hit a dirt wall and bushes and the bike skidded over, taking me with it. Thankfully I came away relatively unscathed with just a few small scratches and bruises on my lower legs and a broken watch. Scary shit! Glynn was brilliant, rushing to my rescue, getting the moped upright again and riding it to the top of the slope for me so I didn't have to face that stretch of road again.

After the shock had passed, we mounted our steeds again and kept on exploring. Alas all the dirt tracks seemd to lead to little beaches similar to the rest of the island and there didn't seem to be anything worth discovering. I guess on an island 7km by 2km at its longest and widest, there's not much exploring to do! We drove back to the hotel, parked up and spent the afternoon bumming around on the beach and in the sea, careful to stay covered up in the sun as much as possible this time.

In the evening we joined a French couple for dinner whom we have briefly chatted to a couple of times, Sandra and Regis. They've been travelling for 15 months but go back to Paris in a couple of days, so we spent time swapping travel stories and enjoying the warm night air. It was a lovely evening and a pity we didn't take the oppotunity to get to know them better earlier on in our stay here.

Our last couple of days here will no doubt be spent enjoying the sun, sea and sand again so chances are, I won't blog again until we are back in Bangkok. In the mean time though, I do hope to get a stack more photos uploaded onto the blog so keep your eyes peeled!

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Comments

[mom and]

bikes
hi jude i hope you are ok not hurt to much please be carefull the both of you love the pics of the temples jish looks like he his having fun lots of love mom dad and lee x x x x x x love from buster and diezel x x x x