On the beach

Everything worked out well with our Chinese visas and we were able to pick them up on our last day in Bangkok. Unfortunately, we received an email from our travel agency saying that our flight home from China had (again) been delayed one day due to plane cancellations. This would mean that instead of the 19th (or the 18th as originally planned) we would be arriving on the evening of the 20th. However, as our flight from Sweden to Austria leaves earlier that day this is not an option for us. We're now searching for a new flight back, either to Sweden or Austria.

Meanwhile we checked out and took a bus from Bangkok to Ban Phe where we caught the last ferry to Ko Samet, a small tourist island about 30 min away from the coast by ferry. We stayed there one night and then headed on to a place called Laem Mae Phim which is located east of Ban Phe, just before Klaeng. However, due to all the river branches leading out to the ocean, no large highway goes through the region so we first had to stay one night in Ban Phe and on the next day take one of the modified pickup trucks/buses to LMP. The inaccessibility of LMP has its advantages as tourists are very scarce but the fact that the coastline from just a couple of kilometres after Ban Phe, all the way to Klaeng is filled with kilometre after kilometre of beautiful beaches (one of which I am lying on while writing this) makes it a popular destination for Thai people on vacation.

Nevertheless, Swedish people have a talent of finding each other and so we found a hotel run by a Swedish man and his Thai wife who had been living in Sweden for 20 years but moved out here and started a hotel just last year. Yesterday, as we were going out for dinner we happened to meet the owner of the restaurant who was also Swedish and had been living here for five years, running a bar. The restaurant itself opened less then a week ago and they had hired a german chef (which left its traces on the menu, yesterday for example was schnitzel-night) but the Swede was very enthusiastic about everything, inviting us back for drinks on friday (tomorrow) to help him review a band he was trying out.

We're following the news about the floods in the north of Thailand and Cambodia (as well as a small part of Bangkok) but luckily we've seen nothing of it. The weather here is getting better and better as the monsoon season is coming to its end and they say that in one or two weeks the high season for LMP will start. So far there are many more locals than visitors around which you can tell by the fact that there are many more pickup trucks than people around. For example while I was writing this a funeral cortege passed by, starting off with a police pickup, followed by some pickups with flowers, followed by the coffin pickup, followed by a pickup with an eight-man band playing in the back followed by some normal pickup trucks.

Another update will follow when we find a keyboard but as we're currently writing everything on my phone this will be it for now, read and cherish the words
knowing the time it took us to write them!

Pia&Erik