Sep 2005

Hi all, apologies for the lull and lack of info recently, I went to meet claire and liz at the pier the other day and we decided since none of us wanted to party we'd head for a quieter part of the island, the beautiful north east.
We had an adventurous ride up there through jungle covered hills with lots of steep dirt roads, at one stage our driver stopped to car to get a plant from the national park we were driving through, and he didn't put the brake on properly so we started inching our way forward, but it was all ok in the end, just a little nerve-wracking. The palce we were going to didn't have hot water for the price we'd been given and claire and liz really wanted hot water, so we had a saunter down hte beach and looked at a few places and eventually found this awesome place, 500B a night lovely interior and hot water anyway we had a good couple of days and have pretty much sorted our trip back to bangkok.
Sawasdee, Mike

Hey all, i was at the beach and decided it might be ok for skimboarding so eventually after lazing about i went to go and look to either buy or make one, well to cut a loooong story short, i found a boatbuilder named paul who works with plywood and fiberglass and will see about making one today a 2pm. missing you guys,
Mike

Ok so I arrived in Koh Phangan yesterday afternoon and spent about three hours walking around with my backpack ect. trying to find accomadation for myself and 8 girls, the four girls who were on my tour went on to Koh Samui to pick up their 4 friends then they are coming back to Koh Phangan, in the end i gave up and fopund some really ratty place that i'll stay in until they get here, and in the mean time I'll keep my eyes and ears open for good+cheap places to stay.

It's actually kinda nice here a bity of a mix f the other two Islands, not as scummy as Koh Samui and not as quite as Koh Tao.

It's weird with a bit more infastucture and singae this place would be soooo much better.

Ok more photos coming soon (I forgot to bring my CD with me to the internet)

BTW there are still board shorts and towels and stuff at my place that people have left behind, if you don't pick it up sue might go crazy and cut it into little pieces and then feed it to you. (she might not aswell but i'd stay on her good side if i were you)

Take Care all

So today the tour leaves Koh Tao for Bangkok, arriving at 7 the next morning. There were lots of Goodbyes, Michael and Miela are off to Koh Phangan, The brittish girls are staying o in Koh tao and everyone else is catching the train, oh almost forgot, I'm won't be catching the train, i'm staying here In Koh Tao, I might then take a ferry to Koh Phangan and see that Island. I didn't want to spend the rest of my thailand leauge in Bangkok seeing as i've done everything i want to do there bar some shopping and it's noisy and ugly, so I was planning to get out of bangkok anyway and this way i've only gotta pay for one train ride not two and it's less than NZ$20 for an overnight train ticket. So i'm in the deep-end at the moment, everything is up to me which is a bit scary after all the baby-sitting we got from yao and intrepid.

Ok i'm about to upload more photos, i'll probably only upload the photos I really like at the moment, to get to them I'm not sure of the best way, but I found if you click on the link under the photo in the main page, then click on The Thailand link and then find one of my photos it can take you to my profile and from there you can see my photos only, i'm sure there is a better way but that works.

Missing you all, and GO the AB's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hiya all, I had the greatest day today, I went on a snorkeling tour with Kate, Meila, Jyri and Michael and a quite a few strangers. We went around the whole island stopping at all the best snorkeling spots, it was so beautiful. The tiny electric blue fish, schooling around the brown mushrooms of coral. Rainbow fish flying through the water like a Da Vinci flying machine but coloured not in sepia but like the third guy in the Gay Parade; pink, blue, turquoise, purple, orange, carany yellow and flouresent everything. Other fish were a a dark brow with yellow bellies and two ultra violet stripes runiing along each cheek up on to their backs, the contrast was amazing. There were Big and little Zebra fish, some with yellow or blue taints near the dorsal fin while others were pure white and black, they would swim right up to me and look straight into my goggles as if to say, what the hell are you and why are you in my water. There were huge schools of what looked like slivers of mirror swimming with one mind collectively seeking food and avoiding danger, prowling around these schools near the surface were fish that looked as if they'd just eaten one of those huge funny pencils, they were atleast 15cm long and only 3cm diameter at the most. The firston I saw seemed to get a big a fright as I, I was marveling at the school offish when into my vision ploughs this bizzare fish welli almost jumped out of my skin and my reaction clearly startled it, the poor thing was so scared it didn't want to break eye contact, so it swam in circles while i rotated for a while, eventually breaking the eye contact and the fish was happy that I wasn't about to eat him. We hada great time I got a bit sun burnt but it was worth it.

I forgot to mention that on our last night in Koh Samui I had one of the best meals of my life (don't worry mom you're still number one ) I order the fried fish in a sweet and sour sauce, it was devine the fish was soft and perfect, the sweet and sour sauce with veg had the perfect balance, and there was a salad bar so I made my self many wonderful salads, Basically by the end of the meal I was completely satisfied, not over full and my tastebuds were singing praises to the cooks, definitely the best meal I've eaten in Thailand and definitely on my top ten meals ever.

ok Take care all,

Mike.
I have uploaded some photos more coming soon.