Koh Chang

Time for a visa run

This is the life : 30 May 2004

We are still alive and well, and living it up for a few more days on this amazing tropical paradise island. If you ever want to see what all the fuss is about with Thailand, you must come to Koh Chang and see! Robin hard at work We haven't been doing too much. As we mentioned before, this was a bit of a recharge opportunity. Andrea has been reading and relaxing, and I've actually been working! Somehow, it's not so bad having a lot of work to do when you get to do it in a place like this. Not to say we have done nothing touristy at all. We've actually seen a lot of great stuff around the whole island. Last week we went out with Matt, Tara and Mooksidar to dinner at the island's best seafood place. It was a long journey all the way around to the other side of the island, to the far end of the road. The restaurant was built out on stilts on the water, a calm inlet from the sea surrounded by rainforest covered mountains. At the very end of the pier were these giant nets in the water. These, it turns out, are where dinner comes from. They catch the fish and bring them to live in these nets. Then, when you order, they go to the appropriate net and bring up a couple fresh fish and get cooking. Needless to say, the food was spectacular. Fresh snapper, crabs, scallops, and squid, a wonderful Tom Yum seafood soup that makes my mouth water even now just writing about it (though it was on the edge of being too spicy to eat!), and plenty of beer and wine made the evening an enjoyable experience for all of us. Long Beach, Koh Chang A few days later, Matt took us back to the "new road" out to Long Beach. The road has been open all of about a week, so this is a totally virgin part of the island. It was a great journey up and down the hills, through amazing rainforests, to these stunning beaches with crystal clear water and no bungalows anywhere! The coconut trees towered overhead, and we even picked up a fresh coconut and drank the juice straight out of it. We are being forced to leave Thailand because our visa is running out, but we'll certainly be back. Our current plan is to head back to Cambodia for a few days, so we can meet up with a friend we made last time, and help him out a bit. Then we're going to go back to Bangkok so we can reorganize and recheck our luggage and stuff, as well as restock on film and do some shipping. Then, because I've been so productive here, we're planning to come back here for a few more weeks so I can try to get as much work done as possible. Finally, it will be off to Vietnam from here. Obviously, we're a little over our original schedule. Though we have shifted our return date back a little bit so far, we're planning on making up time when we hit Europe, where we've already decided on large areas to skip. It's sad, but we'll just have to make a separate trip to Europe some other time. Hey, we already decided that we'd have to skip South America and Africa, so cutting back on Europe isn't that big a deal, anyway, right? Another spectacular sunset So we're sorry for the delay in updating everyone. There are a bunch of new pictures in the Thailand section, and we'll be a little better about posting updates for the next couple weeks, as we move around a bit. Hope everyone is well, and be sure to email either Andrea or myself from time to time if you feel neglected!

Replies: 1 Comment

Got your letter. That woman on the front really DID look alot like Amiee. Impressive. Hope all is well. Posted by Gary @ 06/04/2004 06:11 PM PST