Sawadee Ka!!

❆ 'What is your country of residence?' the immigration official asked me at Stockholm Arlanda airport. 'Well, I've been living in Sweden the last year'. 'Yes but your visa is now expired so where is your country of residence?'....
'Well.. I'm from Australia, but after Thailand I'm moving to London, so.. well.. I don't really have a residence.' With a skeptical look, he waved me ahead through customs.

On the plane Jerry popped a few sleeping pills but woke up after 2 hours, raving like a lunatic. 'I want to go to the toilet but I dont fit in with these people.'

It took longer to get to the resort in Surat Thani than we expected...after two flights, the 4 hour layover and a 1.5 hour taxi ride, we were nearly dead from exhaustion but it was 9am local time so we hit the beach. The resort was pretty cool in a rough bohemian way and there were no other tourists there at all which was nice, but none of the staff, including the manager, spoke a single word of English. The only thing the waitress could say in English was ' i no speak english'. She brought jerry a delicious lemon chili chicken dish and me a plate of sliced cucumber and a plate of peanuts. I had a quiet food rage tantrum and started feeling like this place really wasn't clicking with me.

We met our friend Toto after breakfast and he took us on a fishing boat to visit his beach close by. The beach is super nice and totally untouched except for a half finished toilet hut and a small clearance where he wants to build bungalows one day. By 7pm Jerry and I just couldn't keep our eyes open any more and had to hit the sack.

In the middle of the night I was woken by Jerry screaming as he jumped naked from his bed to mine. A 10 cm cockroach had crawled onto his chest and soon
afterwards I saw it crawling towards my pillow. Like two little sissies we jumped outside onto our porch and wondered what we were gonna do! Jerry was so freaked out he wanted to leave directly but what he couldn't understand was why i was freaked out too. 'You're Australian- arent you used to killing bugs? ' 'No, I always got my dad to deal with them...'

Luckily, some young Thai guys randomly walked past our bungalow at 1.30am and we dragged one inside to get rid of it. In the space of 3 seconds he found the horrid thing, picked it up with his bare fingers, threw it outside and
walked off.. Jerry tried to give him 100 baht for his kindness but he wouldn't accept it.

The next day toto took us to his families house out in the forest, to meet his uncles, aunts and cousins. The group of houses were surrounded by coconut palms, with a plastic recycling plant at the back, a hairdressers at the front, and an outdoor massage parlour at the side, with chickens, dogs, cats, and kids running wild! I entrusted my hair to Toto's aunt who's a hairresser and was very impressed, especially at the price- $4 for a cut and blow wave! Jerry and I both got awesome massages from Totos uncle and we spent the rest of the day
on the beach drinking beer with Toto. He wanted us to stay the night and go to Chang Mai with him, but after living in Åre so long we were both really craving to be around lots of people, so we moved on to Koh Samui...

I was excited about visiting 'Charlie's Huts' again, where I stayed last time I came to Koh Samui, but sadly they're gone and like most of Chaweng beach, have been replaced by big concrete resorts.This place does have a certain magic to it though. After a delicious Thai dinner we just walked along the main street, filled with all the stalls, the people hassling us to buy things, the motorbikes whizzing past, the katoys in their sexy costumes, the smells of Thailand mixed with exhaust and occasionally sewridge, and of course the heat surrounding us and all of a sudden we felt happy, like we were truly on vacation!