Thailand

Our time in Thailand is nearly up. We have been on the island of Koh Phangan for nearly a month now, in the north at Chaloklum Bay, at a place called Rose Villa. It is a small community of the Thai Marffa, with a small handfull of great restaurants. (Restaurants - North Beach Bungalows, The Hammock Bar and the Thai owned one next door). It has just had a Typhoon - the scuba divers had been watching it over the last couple of weeks, as it hovered over the Philippines for a while. American CNN apparently had it as their lead story, a day or two beforehand. We were very lucky to have only had winds and rain. It was anticipated that we would get 6 metres waves. An area on the mainland was evacuated, which is where the centre of the typhoon went through. We have a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne on the 15th Dec., arriving on the 16th Dec. 8.10am. I must say that I am getting very excited! We are then around for a month before taking a flight from Melb. to Perth on the 16th Jan. and we will spend just under 4 months traveling the west coast, the north and then the east coast down to Sydney. Our next flight on the 1st of May will be to NZ - Christchurch, 3 weeks there, and three weeks on the north island. Auckland return to Fiji for three weeks and then to Sth America. Ian has been doing his Scuba Dive Master training. He unfortunately won't get all his dives done, but will complete the theory. This means that he will only need to complete his dives somewhere else around the world. There is a good bunch of guys at Chaloklum Diving - Nick (and his Thai family Lec, Louise and Lucy) and Mike who are the owners and been around for 15 years, Elliott from the UK who is a Dive Master and Greg from the USA who has been doing his Dive Master training with Ian. We have also met some great people from Amsterdam who went diving with Ian, and Magda from the USA who is living and working here. Many a night we have spent having dinner with some of these guys. I've been going to a Yoga Retreat and doing Pilates for the last 11 days which is supposed to give me a new body. I don't know about that! They actually come and collect you and bring you home which is great. Otherwise we would have had to hire a motorbike for the whole time. Although this would have been handy we have managed without one, apart from day trips, or into Tong Sala (10 mins) for two litre bottles of red and brie. For the rest of my days I'm in charge of bungalow maintenance, i.e. tidying up, hand washing and soaking, sweeping, I'm updating the website, if you hadn't already noticed, (but need to wait though for a faster computer before putting on extra photos), and of course there is much eating, hammock action and reading. Big travel tip:

• Do not stay at Chaloklum Bay Resort!
• Don't pay two weeks rent in advance - because if you change you mind you will not get anything back!!
• Don't argue too much with the owners about how they run their business, as a handgun will appear behind the counter, they have been known to threaten others before, and are rumoured to be apart of the islands Marffa!!!
• Subsequently we have not been back, we took our room key and didn't pay for our food bill!!!! And have been telling ourselves to "just let it go".