Shut down Bangkok Restart Thailand

We arrive in Khao San Road exactly at 5.30am as advertised. There are the usual tuk tuk drivers jostling for position. It's only a mile or so walk and we've been on a bus for 10 hours so an early morning walk suits.

We are once again at the Tavee Guest House, known and loved, it has been a parenthesis around our holiday and feels good. As we're early we do have to wait for a room to become available and be cleaned but we're in one of the nicest rooms and it's great. Even the little dog is pleased to see us and sits quite happily on my knee for half an hour. I miss my Lexie dog.

Shopping calls today so we head off to the MBK Shopping Centre, it's Meadow Hell on speed. Several roads are closed with sandbags, the army are camped out in little camouflaged bivouacs on street corners and there's a sense of the trouble in the city we didn't experience 7 weeks ago. After a 5 km walk, avoiding the protest areas as best we can we head straight to McDonalds for a McFlurry. Seven floors of retail nightmare and we're done, as we head out we see the clean up process starting at the end of the protest that happened right outside the shopping centre. The elections have ended today in the provinces that were disrupted at the beginning of February and we missed it.

At the airport we spend our last baht on a bag of crisps and two sweets. We leave with nothing... Nothing that is except lots of lovely memories and very special experiences. Now where next.......

Koh Samui

The boat journey from Don Sak to Koh Samui is simply beautiful, the sun is shining, the sea is blue, little silver fishes are jumping in the boat's wake, you couldn't ask for more. The reliable song thaew gets us from the dock to our 'resort'.

Our bungalow is not quite as pictured on the internet, which I was sort of ready for, you know a little bit of wear and tear, but in fact it looked nothing like it. On a positive note there are actually two nice pools and beach for us to use. We even get taken to our bungalow in a little golf cart. Then the cake is iced as a Bowing 737 comes over so low you can wave to the pilot. Thirty minutes later another one, thirty minutes later etc. etc. I'm a little despondent and Adrian tries to rally me with beer, crisps and backgammon. At the reception I ask if there's an alternative bungalow a bit further away from the runway. Apparently not. She asks how long we plan to stay and I respond it depends on how many planes a day there are. An hour later she turns up in the golf cart to move us. We're now bang next to the pool and life looks a little better, we're not immediately under the flight path so possibly out of danger. Thankfully we are able to laugh about it, even more thankfully the flights stop at 10pm.

We are staying in Bo phut, home of the original fishermans village. The town is stretched out along the coast and the fishermans village is some 3.5 Kim's from where we are. It's a nice walk and we go in search of a Thai breakfast, which proves elusive as everywhere serves western breakfast, we do finally find somewhere before setting off to find Villa Mango, the home of the people we met in Cambodia a few years ago. We're somewhat unsure if it's a good idea but are saved any embarrassment when they are out when we get there. So it's a long walk back but a welcome dip in the pool awaits.

We manage two days of the proposed three doing 'resort', decide we've had enough and then head off on the boat and an overnight bus back to Bangkok. How rubbish are we?

Krabi

Virtually everyone we've spoken to about Southern Thailand has said go to Krabi, so go to Krabi we have. It's a good kicking off point for the islands. Off Krabi is an archipelago of some 130 Islands in crystal clear blue water with white sand beaches, it could be paradise. Krabi is a plain in amongst some very weird limestone crags, almost mountain-like and is one of 'the' premier climbing destinations of the world.

That aside, or probably because of that, Krabi is on the verge of losing its Thai soul. It's main purpose now seems to be tourism. Every other building is a bar and/or hotel and the ones in between are gift shops. We do manage to find local eats in the market at lunch time and on the night market in an evening. It must be coming close to going home as we are now talking about food, "what shall our first meal at home be....?" That kind of thing.

Our island plans change here and we book to go to Koh Samui. We met some people in Cambodia a few years ago who lived in Samui and Adrian has been keen to go ever since as they described a quiet, idyllic, tropical island. I'm straight on the internet and book us into a resort - cheap one of course but it does at least have two pools. Island life, here I come.