From Pattaya to Koh Chang

As promised, we return from our new home in Koh Chang. But first things first!!! Thank You Lui for introducing us to Alan who took the BEST care of us in Pattaya. He treated us like his family, let us stay in his beautiful home (which has a pool, a driver, and a fool time chef) took us to the best restaurants and bars in Pattaya (all expenses paid). It was really nice to meet his immediate and extended family some of whom speak only Thai. His little girl Ciarie is a little princess. She speaks Thai and English (with an Irish accent) shes five years old, but is very mature for her age. She gave up her pink room to us but kept checking to make sure we were fully enjoying our stay. Alan took us to a seafood restaurant known and visited mostly by the locals and his wife Joy ordered a meal fit for kings. It was delicious and very eye opening. Apparently, thus far have been sticking to western thai foods equivalent to ribs and french fries. At the dinner we tried many new dishes, some we liked and some not so much. Marc was spoon fed by one of the uncles a traditional thai dessert. Their desserts use a lot of sugar and by looking at Marcs face i knew that the dessert was not agreeing with his taste buds. Marc was a champ and managed to swallow, the uncle was so happy that he fed him another dessert immediately after the first. At that point i intervened and said that we would like to have some ice cream instead and that we ate too much already. The uncle seemed disappointed by our reluctance to be further spoon fed dessert.

Pattaya is a very modern and beautiful city. It reminds me slightly of San Francisco's harbour minus the bridges. There are over ten shopping malls and a very popular place with the Russian tourists, who are rumored to be not the nicest visitors they had in their city. Who would have known? Pattaya is also very popular with the old white man who visit primarily for the younger Thai women. Even the brochures for the city shows an older white male spoon feeding a much younger and prettier thai woman. While out in the town, i noticed a lady was carrying around in her arms a beautiful little creature that instantaneously caught my eye. I didn't know what or who it was (I thought it was a toy at first) but immediately ran towards it. It was love at first sight, on my part for sure. At first I thought she was a monkey because of her fur and hand like paws. Turns out she was a Lemar (if you have facebook look at the pictures), she was adorable and I couldn't part ways for over half an hour. I wanted to bring her home to Canada but the handler told me that it was illegal to export endangered animals from Thailand. Marc had to pay 100 baht to take a picture (which will last a lifetime i told him) and i almost cried when we said our goodbyes. I'm sure that the Lemar would prefer to go home with me.

On Tuesday we arrived in Koh Chang (Elephant Island). It is Thailand's second biggest island and it is the closest to our next destination, Cambodia. We are staying on a beach called white sand, recommended by one of Alan's friends. Our hotel is far away from the strip and it takes about 30 minutes to get to the beach. However, the hotel is very quiet, and high up in the mountains. It has a restaurant that overlooks the ocean from about 200m from the ground. It has beautiful gardens, exotic frogs that make strange sounds at night, no snakes and operated by Thor, a glorified lady man. It took us ten minutes to hike down the cliff to the water and we watched yet another sun set. At night we went to an ocean beach bar party and watched a serious fire show. There were about 20 little thai guys throwing fire sticks in the air. They were twisting them, swallowing them and getting in pyramid like formations, while having very heavy set thai women did the hoola dance around them. It was a very interesting scene to say the least, but quite entertaining. Maybe Marc's blog will have a different description of the event. Tomorrow we will rent a scooter and explore the island. There are about five waterfalls here and many elephant farms. Who knows maybe by next blog I will fall in love with an elephant and want to take one home???

Please keep the emails coming and let us know how everything is going back home. We miss you.