Thailand

Back to Italy

Mon, 05 Mar 2001, Koh Samui, Thailand

We are surviving and it really is very different from anywhere else that we have visited this trip!

I was a little nervous about the traffic here but it does not seem any worse than 20 years ago but the air is foul. In fact it is very similar to Lima in that we can't see the sun properly and many, many people wear facemasks. It's a bit of a worry, isn't it? We have not visited one country with clean air yet so look forward to Darwin in that respect.

I guess Sydney will go the same way as some days the smog can be quite bad there already.

Thailand is very different - had forgotten the smells, the humidity, the traffic, the busy streets with nowhere for pedestrians to walk, storm water channels, lush growth and WE CAN AFFORD IT HERE WITH our Australian money (it is cheap to eat and stay in a clean and reasonable hotel).

We arrived here at 0700 in the morning, organised a hotel, rushed there and fell into bed for a few hours. We were expecting to catch up with an old Darwin friend of Moira's, Alison Smith. She had not turned up at the hotel in the expected time so we went off in search - almost ran straight back to our airconditioned bunker after the first five minutes out there in the jungle of Bangkok.

Alison had booked out of her hotel so we decided to window shop and excite ourselves with the prospective buys!

Interesting the number of African people in Bangkok these days. When I asked someone about them I was told that there are many people from South Africa and Mauritius doing business with Thailand.

There always were a lot of Indians, and there still is a large presence, along with all the European tourists. T

This place isn't quite as full of tourists as Venice was (which had snow the day after we left!!) but they are a very obvious presence. Whilst in the window shopping mode we were incredibly stupid and bought ourselves a rather nice sapphire ring each (I think because we were still quite stunned from our lack of sleep and flight)!!! The trouble is we have been left wondering whether we were conned in an expensive manner!!!! Time will tell.

On our return to the hotel we found Alison waiting for us and the talking has not stopped!!

We decided that we would fly to Koh Samui the next day to escape Bangkok in the hope of finding a beautiful island spot!! Well, along with thousands of other tourists, we are here and managing to make our stay pleasant.

We had our breakfast overlooking the ocean and went kayaking around some islands that are part of a marine park yesterday (and devoid of other tourists).

We have all indulged ourselves with therapeutic foot massages and today I had a Thai massage. This involved taking most of my clothes off on the beach!! I think the Thais are so appalled by the way tourists wander around with very little on, and particularly topless females, that they just assume that PJD won't mind stripping on the beach with all these local men ambling around.

Meanwhile they beat and bend my body into the most amazing contortions!!

Alison leaves tomorrow and Moira and I return to Bangkok on Thursday.

Have decided that my first meal back will no longer be Asian Gateway, but a nice BSE free juicy Australian fillet steak!!!

We have just looked at our flight, we land in Darwin at 0400 on the 15th, a Thursday, not Friday as I thought.

Love to all Jane

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