My last day in Thailand was a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of of day in that I had no plan except catching a cab to the airport in the late evening for my midnight flight to Tokyo. I slept in until 8:00 which was great, ate my usual complimentary breakfast at the guest house, and then spent the next hour in my room sorting and weighing my two pieces of luggage. It was 11:30 by the time I checked out of my hotel. They kindly stored my luggage in a locked ro...

Set the clock so I could be at the Grand Palace for 9:00 AM. Bought an all day ferry pass which allows you to get on an off the ferry system until 9:30 PM. It was 150 BHT (less than $5 Cdn). Unfortunately, I didn't realize the Tourist Ferry doesn't even start running until 9:00 AM so by the time I got to the Palace it was around 9:30 and there were already thousands and thousands of people wandering around as it opened at 8:30 AM and closes at 3:30. Entrance f...

When you buy a ticket on Bangkok Airways to Koh Chang the airline provides a shuttle van to pick you up at your guest house and delivers you the airport in Trat (which involves a 30 minute ferry ride). There are three flights a day out of Trat and Bangkok Airways built the airport specifically to get people to the surrounding islands. The ferry was jam-packed and it was standing room only. I'd never ridden a ferry where so many people were standing. It kinda ...

January 5 proved to be a lay-on-the-beach kinda day. I got a lot of reading done of Nelson Mandela's autobiography. Am really trying to finish this monolith of a book so that I don't have to carry the weight back home. Getting close, only another 200 pages to go. I walk into town for dinner and decide on a place that had chickens roasting on a spit. I order 1/2 a chicken and stir fried vegetables. Seven Russians come in for dinner. They bring their own bo...

I guess it's been 4 days now since I was at the other end of the Island around the Bai Lan Bay Area. New Year's Eve was quite a raucous affair in the area and fireworks were being let off starting around 9:0 PM carrying on until 2014 came into being. My guest house, Lazy Republique got into the party spirit and I was awakened before midnight by Madonna's "Holiday". The music continued loudly until 1:30 AM... it was all good as the owner's musical tastes were r...