Khao Lak Green Beach Resort Phangnga

... with lots of candles in the bottom of a paper balloon. They get enough hot air and take off into the sky over the ocean. Apparently they are "wishes" but they look a lot like "litter" to me. These tourist should know better! There are big metal rings in the bottom and I just imagine birds eating them and fish getting stuck in that. There were thousands(!) of these floating around just in the town we were in! So bad!

... of tourists. After our late lunch we had to get back, as we had to travel to Phuket and find our hotel. Unforunately, by the time we got to Phuket it was already dark and finding the hotel was not very easy. We took a wrong way to Kata, via Patong and had to ask directions several times. In the end, we got to Kata and drove up and down the mainroad for a couple of times until we found one guy who knew where Boomerang was. Later, we saw there were ...

... ta ca 13 timmar köp** vi en egen sovkupé dessutom Vi känn** ingen större lust att dela med några andra. Som sagt - öv**slaf och und**slaf - samt ett handfat och en krok på väggen. Första klass! Vi har fått höra att det finns en restaurangvagn men att maten där inte är mycket att skriva hem om och har därför laddat upp med KFC på stationen innan vi steg på. Då vi valt en avgång klocka 20:45 är det inte mycket landskap att se i mörkret. Vi glid** in och ut ( jag pratar om tåget ...

... and I, traditionally, vomited aboard the choppy speed boat in the morning. It was bad. I had even taken Dramamine ahead of time, but the waves were so bad, the trip was over an hour, and we were going so fast. The morning got better after that, and we did see some beautiful sights, but it was sort of cloudy and I spent the last two hours of the day trip with my eyes shut, on the boat, enjoying the ...

... men hanging around...pretty much havoc. We have to move quickly to retrieve our luggage off the bus. It looks like we're holding up traffic since we stopped in what seems like the roadway of the construction zone. Immediately we're surrounded by men trying to get us to ride on their motorbike at large sums of rupiah. In situations like this, one has to stay cool, act like you're not over stimulated, but rather that you know exactly what you want ...

... of the buildings I'm convinced that they've just been abandoned post 2004, rather than closed for low season. I'm talking about broken windows, caved in roofs, upturned garden statues - seriously devasted properties that no decent operational Hotel Management would allow at any time of the tourist season. We reach the end of the path at the property furthest from the Merlin. Over the fence pops a head of a barking dog and then 10 more barking ...

... I don't do the same. So what have I found myself doing quite regularly? Yep you guessed it, washing the rain off my head, shoot me now eh? And as if to compound matters, after the session, I want to take a ride on my bike to the shop for a drink, but my bike seat is soaked, so I get a towel and dry it off. Only to look up and see about 10 Thai people standing round laughing and pointing, at me. Have a got my flies open or something? No ...

... the whole scene had the air of a human circus. I still had the problem of negotiating the long journey home but a jug of Sang som (Thia whisky) soon saw to that and I woke up in a hammock outside the room of two sisters from London I had met during the evening. I was totally bemused as to where I was and for some reason thought I was being held captive when I awoke with the sun this morning and I responded by climbing over the roof of ...

... afternoon sun, our legs began to tire with the strain of so much unaccustomed exercise. Walking had become a utilitarian action, not something to be practiced or worked on. The lack of any sort of formal exercise over the last few years had left me sadly unprepared for the hike that we found ourselves in the middle of. It was after another half a mile of this tiring march that we came across a girl of about twenty who was giving out ...

... and I was wondering what all the giggling was about while wearing a woven can beach mat as a jacket. The rain had literally come from nowhere. We'd been enjoying a day of island hopping, swimming and sightseeing when the sky suddenly got very black, oh the fun of living in a monsoonal country. We'd started out the day by jumping in our longtail boat and taking a very winding tour of an estuary before heading off to James Bond Island, so called because it was ...