Khaolak Palm Hill Resort & Spa Phangnga

... and the coral and fish were really good, extremely colourful. <br><br>The 3rd night on the island we moved to the party beach...where at night all the bars set up on the beach, there where fire animateurs, a foam party and drinks as opposed to being served in glasses where served in buckets, with the little bottles of alchohol and juices so you could make your own concoction...so well I don't think I need to say much more...other than it was a great night and I leave the ...

... What is with all this rain?? Anyway that night was New Years Eve so we ended up partying at a place called Happy Snapper. It was a bunch of bands all night and a great crowd. We planted ourselves on a couple of barstools and never got up the whole night! One thing that really annoys me about new years eve, and actually many people did this on x-mas eve and day, was light off these giant lanterns. They are small hot air ...

July 1 As I write this we are on the 'high speed ferry' (and that's debatable) heading to Penang, Malaysia. Our Indonesian visas expire tomorrow...US citizens get one month to be here...which is hardly enough to fully explore this extensive chain of islands. But we'll go to Malaysia for a week and then fly out of Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo and after a week there, it's good ole New York!! But let me tell you about our wild transition between idyllic ...

... point and hold out my handful of coins from which they help themselves. We come across a banana pancake stall and order 2 for THB30 each. The man is making the pancake in the same fashion as a roti chanai - wafer thin and fried in ghee. TRES YUM. We take a photo and Henry even manages a smile. It is soooooo delicious. Even Mum and Dad look as though they are enjoying themselves and Dad's like a demon on his durian mission. He just darts ...

... of Casa Bonita when we walked through the Temples serpent tunnel, whose belly is a large limestone cave. The beauty of the region was revealed when we took a boat trip to spend the night at Panyee Village, a muslim village built entirely on stilts in the delta. From our beds, we could see through our floor boards that tide was rising and the water ...

So this morning, we headed off on our very own longtail boat that collected us from the beach right in front of our bungalow. It was just us and our guide Bee and the driver of the boat. So we headed north into Phang Nga Bay to Coconut Island which is full of caves and hongs. Hongs are tall circular openings in the middle of these islands, which are usually only accessible by kayak and by going through very very dark caves. It didn't help ...

Another beach vacation day. A little blog updating and the rest is swimming in water precisely cool enough to refresh without provoking so much as a wrinkled nose of chill to the submerge-y. Relaxing with a book is finally in the agenda so Julie reads the absurd, if environmentally conscience, "Organ Grinder" by Bill Fitzhugh and Steve digs into a find he made at 'Our Jungle House.' Turning in (un-finished) Tim Dorcey's strained attempt at Carl Hiassening, he replaces ...

... jumped on the canoes and made our way into the bat cave. Role the Batman theme tune! Although we couldn't see anything (even with the torch!) we pointed the cameras up and began snapping. You can see the results on our photos, they are apparently bats. The best way to confirm this though was the smell. It was horrendous! We emerged from the cave and it was beautiful! In amongst the mangrove was hundreds of boxer crabs and mud skippers (the little ...

... off a barbequed fresh red Snapper each, and are now full and tired. Having an amazing time, now we're on the beach and out of Phuket, and it's starting to sink in that we have a long road ahead of us, which is going to be a lot of fun travelling, if only we could make a decision between us without resorting to the flip of a coin or the roll of the dice. And as Shelley has just reminded me, she's, shall we say, found her skills slightly quicker than me in the ...

... Joe, Clive, crazy Honolulan travel-writer Jason and Kiwi/Oz couple Amanda and Russell amongst others i have no doubt neglected to mention. We could be found lounging on the beach or playing in the sea in the sun on good days, or lounging in the restaurants on massive cushions watching pirate movies and drinking mars bar shakes on bad ones. It was a place of new tattoos and piercings, Turkish shisha pipes, mellow mountain, the "ko ...