Well the wind changed today - it’s now coming from the south, and people are scurrying around to put up rain protection for their bungalows and the like (generally these things aren’t weathertight).

We’re definitely planning to stick it out here for another 7ish days - untill our time at the guesthouse is up, but we’re currently rethinking the stay at White Sands Beach, we might head back to Bangkok early, and explore more there or something.. It’s certainly great to have that flexibility right now.

It hasn’t gotten cold however - it’s still a nice 27 or so degrees celcius here, and very little wind.

This is a bit of a catch-up post, as I’ve been a little lazy of late. The other night we went to Pu-Talay seafood restaurant (Pu means “swimming”, and Talay means “seafood”, funny that). To get to this restaurant you normally drive, or call them and they send a boat. We decided that taking a canoe was a far better plan. We pulled up at the restaurant, much to the amusement of the staff, and found a seat right out over the river. The food was awesome - Marie had deep-fried sea bass (unmutated, but looking angry - eyes on and all) and I had a good sized plate of prawns in garlic and pepper - yum!

The highlight of the evening however was the thai couple sitting behind us, Goong and Ya (I hope that’s spelt right). They were out for dinner together, as couples do, and had bought their own bottle of Johnny Walker black label with them, and were making good headway through it. We ended up being the only people left at the restaurant - and got talking, which led to Goong offering us a drink. Given I have such a rubber arm, it was difficult to say no, especially given the mixers that he had on the table - I was keen to try this strange mix of liquids. Turns out that Whisky, Soda water, and a dash of lemonade in a tall glass is very very drinkable, and I’ll be keen to try it again sometime.

As these things happen, the conversation continued, with Marie and I learning some more thai words, and drinking more and more of this lovely concoction - right up until the bottle was empty. Goong and Ya took off on Goong’s scooter, and we leapt fearlessly into our canoe for the trip back across the river. After some interesting drunken paddling, we managed to get back to our wharf, and get out without getting too wet Definitely a very fun night, and cool to spend some time with Thai people.

Coming soon… the $4 lunch - including beer and maybe a few photos if the internet here doesn’t keep dying when I try to upload them.

Well I thought I had better post - this is meant to be a shared blog afterall.

We have had a lovely quiet day, the Aussies and the Hong Kong couple went off to do a snorkel trip somewhere and we have had the place to ourselves. Got an awesome breakfast this morning, the guy we are staying with knows the German owner of a bakery nearby, so we got fantastic croissants and rye bread for breakfast along with excellent coffee - both of which are usually shite here.

Braved the canoes for the first time today as well to go get lunch - Simon is quite the paddle pilot
Klong Prao has not changed all that much - I really need to find a good secondhand bookstore - I am ripping through the ones I have here way too fast.

Well, another beer is calling - and later on we are going to see if we can acquire ourselves a large seafood platter - will take pictures if we do.

It’s a hard life really, a few beers from the beer fridge, a good view, and it really doesn’t get too much worse from there. We’re now installed at the guest house, and it’s fabulous. I’m sitting with an Australian couple, they’re pretty random, and quite fun. Their idea of a "cheap night" out in thailand is somewhere near NZ$40 for the whole meal… We took them to a random backbackers restaraunt, and we ate an entire meal (four mains, rice and beers) for under NZ$16. They were so entertained by this that they paid for it The bus trip here was stunningly cool.. It seems I’m ranting about prices.. but it’s hard not to. $10 each got us 360ish kms from Bangkok to Trat, on a very smooth and straight road, and in a really nice bus where even I had enough legroom to enjoy it. It was also entertaining as the bus made great time, and was overtaking most cars - very unlike NZ heh Watching suburbian and countryside Thailand go by was an eye opener, which was what we wanted by taking the bus. Seeing the difference between affluence, and poverty was very interesting. Right.. more beer and talking shit - it’s hard not to here, it’s great

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Hurrah! we’re in Bangkok.. Nicely holed up at the Classic Place hotel, using the 400bht/day wi-fi internerds. Just to back up a bit, Chemistry turned out to be a heap of fun, and we managed to catch up with a whole heap of people we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. Many thanks to Claire for her hospitality in the morning as well. Impressively we managed to make it out of bed, through the shower and breakfast ourselves, and still make it to the airport on time.

This is probably also a damm good time to thank Rob and Rochelle very much for their wonderful hospitality over the last three days, and making sure we were well pampered for our last time in Auckland.

Anyway.. all that aside.. we’re in Thailand! Classic Place is same as it always was.. slightly wierd but very servicable, with a huge superking bed and fabulous cotton sheets. Cans of pepsi featuring Christina Agulera in the minibar are just a bonus. Marie is sadly unwell, maybe a combination of fun weekend plus crazy flight, unsure - hopefully she gets better soon so we can go and ride the trains.

Plan for today is a nice quiet wander to the bus station to try and sort out how in hell we get the 350 odd km to Koh Chang tomorrow, and also to go and have some fabulous gelato at Central World Plaza (and possibly even a McRice burger at MacDonalds).

Uploading photos is turning out to be a bit more of a chore than expected, damm this 3rd world internet (300kbps), I might need to revert to resizing things, however I’m not all that keen yet.