On Monday 1st December we checked out our swimming pool and beach having a really relaxing day. In the evening we walked along the beach in to town which was very busy with all the shops open until very late in to evening. We decided to have a fresh seafood platter for dinner, crab, king prawns, snapper, mussels, squid, oysters and clams a really memorable meal. On Tuesday we hired a car and toured the whole island. In the south we found a lovely beachside resta...

Today we travelled from Chiang Mai to Ko Sumai, it's just a 90 minute flight. Ko Sumai airport is so pretty. We arrived at the hotel at 3pm and were shown to our room, wow, it's massive!! larger than our lounge at Milby, the bathroom is just under half the size of the bedroom. The hotel is situated right on the beach, so our first job today was taking a swim in the ocean, it was like wading in to a warm bath. The temperature is slightly cooler than Bangkok jus...

What a fantastic day, we visited an elephant sanctuary, I rode on the back / neck of the largest elephant who was approximately 4 ton in weight, Jan got up behind me but felt uncomfortable being so high, so decided to make her way on foot. We rode the elephants to a lake where they swam with the passengers on their backs. We then brushed and washed them, a truly great experience. Tonight we had a great dinner at the Lemongrass restaurant followed by watching th...

On Thursday 27th we left Bridge over the river Kwai to travel to Bangkok to catch our flight to Chiang Mai. Due to the standard of driving on our trip from Bangkok to the bridge Jan insisted on travelling in a full sized coach. The coach left at 10am and by 12.20 we had arrived on the outskirts of Bangkok at a bus station, not quite where we expected to be but after a short taxi ride we were at the BRT in the city centre which enabled us to catch the train to th...

Today we decided to take the train from the Bridge over the river Kwai station to Nan Tock and then a taxi ride to Hellfire Pass memorial museum. Unfortunately one of the passengers, a lady, fell from the train and was killed about one hour in to the journey. The police and ambulance service attended the scene but it was clear nothing could be done to save the lady. The rest of the day was quite somber really as you can imagine. The museum was very good, you ...