8 am on another beautiful sunny day, we have two small huts betweens us one beside the other , 30 foot from the sea edge.The gentle lapping of the sea against the sand is filling my recently slept head. No one else appears to be up but I thought after a week it was time I gathered my thoughts and let you all know how we are getting on…...a little mir cat like Thai squirrel has just decided to join me on the veranda and is staring at me with his tale aquiver….yesterday he stole our bananas , he’s scampered off now…..
This place is very beautiful and so quiet, the island itself is quite developed and has a seven/eleven store and offers diving courses and late night parties and resorts with infinity pools but where we are, there is only an cluster of small huts a 10 minute boat ride from the small village. There is a small restaurant and that’s it…
We have been here 3 nights now and are beginning to be seriously chilled. The coral and sea life is amazing and all the kids have learnt to snorkel. Louis has been filming with his underwater camera, yesterday Edie and I went snorkelling and saw a school of thousands of yellow and gold fish swim by with an enormous parrot fish swimming above them, we floated there just watching aghast, giving each other thrilled double thumbs up signs under the water! It must have taken at least 3 minutes for them all to swim past us…one of the most amazing things I have ever seen…
When you dive down to look at the coral close up it feels as if you are in your own film!!!
From day one Edie said she wanted to live here, Will said he never knew we were going to go to paradise, Louis is also very excited in a wonderful, very Louis way…..All three of them spent the whole day yesterday in the water playing games and snorkelling.
At night, we sit in the small restaurant and play dice or later back at the hut, we play charades…this gets them very over excited and hard to get to sleep but it’s great to have uninterrupted time together and wonderful to see them all so happy…in between bashing their feet on coral or arguing over snorkel masks etc
We took a long journey 6 hours by train (the kids were brilliant)and then 2 ½ hours by boat (Edie was sick and Rach looked miserable) but Louis, Will and I were out on deck in the sunshine, excitedly watching the changing horizon and amazing cloud shapes… But blissful as it undoubtedly is, life on the road is not without its stresses….
( Will has just woken up and come bounding up to me with a huge grin in one of Neddy‘s fabulous old Hawaiian shirts looking for the gecko that was stuck to our hut wall but has since run off, now he‘s swinging in the hammock)….
The kids are just as demanding as always or maybe more so, wanting water, food or not liking the food!! It was great with the pool at the hotel in Bangkok because there was a tourist office there and while the kids swam, we could plan our next few weeks ….we are going by night train to Laos on 21st Dec.
My cousin Ivan (who lives and runs a hotel in Laos) was staying in our hotel that first night in Bangkok which was great for us. He knows the city well having lived there for 4 years and took us out for a fab meal at a restaurant on the river. We went by Tuk tuk which we all loved very hair raising round the bends, a bit like being at the fair , not a seatbelt in sight !!
Edie couldn’t stop taking pictures, everyone was out in the street, on an incredibly hot night, whole families eating out in the pavements, all that sweet smelling delicious noodlefood, beautiful dingy half lit, incredibly atmospheric streets, honking horns, shrines and huge yellow ribbons wrapped round the palaces like birthday presents in celebration of the king’s birthday..
I loved Bangkok …so much more than I though I was going to…it was the perfect place to start…very easy to get around, boat, sky train, tuk tuk …no one hassles you, very friendly people, they kept ruffling Wills hair and helping us if we were lost …
The shopping centres are scary, so air-conditioned and huge with every brand name in store…and then at dusk to the old food market, fruit of all shapes and sizes, fish and frogs and eels in buckets, dark, smelly and very mysterious…It feels in as though we have only just skimmed the surface of this amazing country
What a dream. You are very lucky people. And an inspiration, too! I hope Ivan still owns that hotel in a couple of years. Thanks for the post. lots of love.
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