No. 3

After rather a lot of chilling in the last few days we started a 2-day tour around the island on Tuesday. We hired a car and ventured out to the further parts and also we went on a snorkeling trip to a nearby small island. It honestly was Amazing.
A few photos of the chilling period:

Good food

Thaibox match. It was good

Jump up taxi/bus trip

So then. We started the 2-days trip with some local exotics:

It was awesome. Some guys in the workshop at the back made these and a lot more from scrap metal and random bits (motor chain, cogs mainly). They were massive. You could buy these and similar in the shop, but no photos were allowed inside unfortunately.

Next stop croc farm. We watched a crocodile show and a snake show. I found it unbelievable that people would do it as a job, putting their lives at risk for some money.

The guy was bitten on the lip by a copperhead racer, luckily non-poisonous...

After that had a look at two temples, both famous for their massive statues. In the second one the kids thoroughly enjoyed banging on the bells, which was allowed to the visitors.

Bell- whacking. It was beautiful..

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, errr...Wednesday night,

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. What??

So that was yesterday. Today we had the excursion to the small island of Koh Tan, we took a ride on a fishing boat, mind you they hardly do fishing at all as all of them are now specialised in taking the tourist snorkeling. The sea trip was interesting, there was quite a bit of wind and sizeable waves as a result. The guy who took us was obviously very good with the boat and it was great to watch him navigate the waves. The snorkeling and the island itself was brilliant, great place to see marine life.

Admiral Daniel is inspecting the flottilla

The island is in sight

Unfortunately most underwater shots were videos, so for now..a fish

Hot sun, blue sea.

After this experience we decided that we are going to spend the next week on this island. There are some inhabitants (I mean people) and relatively safe to camp here. So possibly our first wild life days await. Will try and make more underwater still shots, seriously, there were a lot more fish than this picture suggests.

Cheers

Early days

Back again. The first few days very busy and fruitful. We settled in well in Lamai and had a sunburn (typical) and a nice long excursion to see some stuff. On Tuesday we had our longest day so far, we did an 8 mile walking trek to see the famous mummified monk and ride elephants.

Our house. It's pink and it's called Samui Pink House...

Nice dindin...

Guess why the rock behind us is called Grandpa...

...and Grandma?

The mummified monk. Obviously.

Emma and Victoria. They looove bananas.

The biggest waterfall on the island is 80 m tall.

And all this in one day! The kids were handling it very well, luckily a helpful local drove us almost home at the end. I think we would have joined the mummified monk , dying on the roadside if he didn't. The last couple of days were spent chilling out, splashing in the house's pool and trying out real local food. Also, we met some amazing creatures. Kati tried to take a picture of a huge spider too but it ran away. Honestly I have never seen such quick movement from a spider before. I shat myself...

Indigenous life forms

Kids are keeping up with the curriculum

Our lunch is being prepared.

So far so good. We had only one rainy day with torrential rainfall, but nice and dry weather in general, although a bit humid. Loving it here.

There and back by Bilbo Baggins

Our time has finally come. First stop Thailand. The pre-journey six weeks were really busy, we almost managed to arrange everything.  Sold most of our stuff, including furniture, etc, and got the visas, tried to let the house, hopefully nothing dangerous got missed.

Some photos of the last days at home:

We rented a car to get to Heathrow on Thursday, the roads were nice and clear, got there in 4 hours.  With plenty of time left (my newborn inner control freak kicked in, so left over 10 hours before scheduled flight), we hung around a bit and finally got on the plane. It was so huge! Daniel briefed me the day before about technical data, so I knew all about it. The flight was really pleasant, I would recommend Quantas to anybody. Good food, watching movies (Source code), some sleep and landing in Bangkok the next day. It was 31 C degrees!

No Gizmo allowed as the Gremlins will destroy the plane if it gets wet!

As we are really travelling on a budget we took the cheap transport from the airport, I had all the details off the net.  There were no other tourists on the buses at all! Everybody was looking at us like in a zoo but they were really helpful.  They really love kids and people were touching Aaron which we were a bit worried about to start with but they were genuinely kind. Daniel  was paranoid as usual and was convinced that they want to kidnap us.

We missed the last bus from the Southern Bus terminal to Koh Samui in the evening and wanted to spend the night there but were kindly kicked out by the guards. They found a guy who was happy to arrange a room for the night for us though. The man guided our taxi on a motorcycle into a shady alley with no road surface. Even they Bangkok taxi driver was laughing nervously about it. We shat ourselves but the house turned out to be rather nice after all and really cheap indeed. For 400 baht (£8) we got a room with shower and was clean and acceptable. It wasn’t far from the terminal either so the next morning we walked back there. On the way we had our first interaction with the local street dogs. They are lovely, calm, well fed and love kids.

Aaron's note when seeing the old and scruffy ferry: 'Let's face it: garbage' (Remy from Ratatouille)

The bus journey to the ferry was 10 hours and the driver almost left us at a resting area! I am sure if Kati doesn’t stand in the door he would have just closed up and left. I think people here, especially the ones wearing uniforms (busdrivers, policemen, etc) generally look down on foreigners.

The ferry trip was uneventful and after a half an hour taxi run we got to the guest house. It is bootiful!

The weather is perfect, no rain so far and more importantly and surprisingly: no mosquitoes! :) More to come shortly.