1st week in Thailand

1st week in Thailand completed; a wonderful laid back country full of smiles and friendly people despite what you may be seeing on the TV in the streets of Bangkok. Here in the south the people are mainly muslim and come from a real mix of cultures including Khemer, Sea Gypsy and mainland Thai. There are a few biggish tourist resorts on the Indian Ocean side, mainly Ko Lipe and Ko Lanta. But each of the small inhabited islands tends to have beach bungalows, tents or stilted huts you can stay in.  Koh Bulon Lae is only 30 minutes from the mainland by speedboat and with a small population of around 400 people has a number of sandy beaches, remote bays and 3 very small villages.  One restaurant has internet on the island, so we visit there every few days to catch up on the outside world.

The weather has been very wet for this time of year, raining almost every day and is very overcast most of the day. But at 26C its still a very pleasant place to be. The island is covered in jungle, full of monitor lizards, at least 3 different species of snake (all poisonous), scorpions, spiders and beautiful birds and butterflies. 

We've met some great people already, some holiday makers and some fellow travellers.  Jane and David are spending 5 months travelling around south east asia and are now on their way to north Thailand and Laos. Markus is travelling around Thailand for 3 weeks and has given us some fantastic tips for the north of the country. Kristina and Andreas from Sweden are on their hols too and proved to be excellent companions during the very wet days!! We had so much in common and were delighted to spend 24 hours with them over a 36 hour period!!

A clouded monitor lizard on the way to the beach

Our friendly bathroom spider keeping the real bugs away

A beautiful indigenous butterfly of unpronounceable name

Kristina and Andreas helping us keep our spirits up during the wet weather

 You have to be careful ordering dishes where the meat isn't defined! Luckily these 6 week old kittens weren't on the menu but were happy to clean up our leftovers.

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