Cliff View Resort Surat Thani

... islands to the fullest is from April to November.


History of Surat Thani


Surat Thani is a city with a long history. Archeologists believe that it was once a community of prehistoric tribes of indigenous people including the Saemang and original Malays who built their communities on the ...

... to the laum sala beach, we re-fuelled with an ice coffee and headed back through the national park. We stopped at a local market to buy a tradional thai flower garland which you put around the rear view mirror of the car... it's for good luck which we needed to help prevent us getting lost! So onto our final destination for day 2 and our next overnight stop - we headed for 'Pretchup Kiri Khan'. A lovely town, we stayed in a great seafront hotel with sea view ...

... a bit further along I spotted another monkey (it was too far away to make out its species) and Nick and Suzan caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared into the forest. That night me and Nick booked ourselves onto an overnight tour to stay in a raft house on ...

... tipped over that would have been it and we would have been that January ferry story on the news that everyone has forgot about by the end of the year news round up. Thankfully we survived, but it was hairy. The ferry we came in on has now stopped running due to the high seas and we are going back on a much larget catamaran. It was good to go through it and find out you could handle it. Many people couldn't. Koh Tao is a small island with less beach than Koh Pah Ngang. Even so we managed ...

... was to stay for 3 days...Wrong we thought our visa was good for 3 more days but really we were overdue by one day! HAHAH. our bad. We goto the visa place and they tell us we have to pay a huge late fee plus an additional fee for each day overstayed. I cannot remember the figures but it was ALOT OF $.... I casually said o ok and was sped walked out of there! Once we got to the Thai-Laos border we only had to pay the 2 days we overstayed! Thank god ... Were on our way to laos!

... from Bangkok. She wanted me to go to a nearby hotel room across the road but I politely thanked her . She was hugely disappointed and asked me if I was carrying some money. I told her that I did not. I came back and narrated the incident to my wife who laughed at this early morning encounter.Later in the day we visited, Noppharathara Beach was was about 2 km away. This is a long expanse of sand, strewn with shells along the coast.There are a number of islands ...

... seats grabbing items out of peoples' bags. (We had been told we could not use the overhead bins to store carry-ons and that they must be placed under our seats). The thief probably would have gone completely unnoticed had one traveler not decided to sleep on the isle floor and was awoken when the thief grabbed his leg. He yelled, loudly, the thief recessed to the lower level of the bus, and the rest of us were awoken and on alert the rest of ...

... of meats, fish, noodles, veg, sauces and fruit which you helped yourself to. Easier said than done when you have no instructions, all the foodstuff is labelled in Thai and you have no idea what most of the more exotic looking veg is! Its also worth pointing out that I cant cook English food never mind Thai so the results were guaranteed to be disasterous. We helped ourselves and sat back at our table where a waiter brought over this BBQ/Wok ...

... wanted. One thing that was very much stressed and obvious was that practicing a medatative life is very much up to the individual and that there was not going to be anyone chasing you around making sure you were doing what you were supposed to be doing. You could put as much or as little effort into your practice, but were told that the most effort shows the most positive results. (Side note: During chanting, there was this one Thai monk who would make us chant this one part ...

... lunches? Pastas, burgers, salads, and pies? Well here the kids don't get to choose; instead they're just served some form of meaty slop out of a giant stock pot onto a (very small) spoonful of rice or noodles. Not exactly what I'd call appetizing. So, there I am with no food and 180 kids to teach. To these kids I'm not even a novelty they chewed through four western teachers last year. Although, I do think they found my attempts to amuse then for ...