Chai Yen Yen, Chai Yen Yen..

aka, taking it easy!

something hard NOT to do on the island of Koh Chang! So after a couple days to recuperate from the graduation party, and Malin's overnight bus from Khao Lak we headed out at some ungodly hour of the day on separate buses as I would be doing the visa run to Cambodia to re-fuel my time in Thailand (ie, a money making scheme for the Thai government, and well, the Cambodian one).

Fortunately for me I met some pretty cool people - first a girl from Calgary who was, well SO not a girl from Calgary and quite a lot like myself and we exchanged stories at warp speed with tons of laughs. secondly was a visa run veteran from Singapore who has been waiting on a work permit in Bangkok for some months and knew the routine very well so I just tagged along with him. After we paid the Cambodian cops a sort of bribe to run our passports in (while one cop sat there talking to me, smiling, 'cambodian police take care you!'), and out of Cambodia it was all smooth sailing off to Ko Chang, where Malin had a room waiting for me. Had a lovely evening eating dinner overhanging the sea, before moving on to a beach bar with a fire show and shisha! For those in need of doing a visa run, the Cambodian visa costs 1200 baht, and the police bribe was 500. If you are closer to it, one might be better off going to Laos, where you need just spend one hour rather than 500 baht. Depends whether you've more time or money I suppose ;-)

***note added 25.02.2009 - I was misinformed - if doing this visa run, just ignore them and go straight on out and back in. this came from an English guy with 8 years in Bangkok behind him who knows the system, well, much better it seems. and that was what i was originally going to do. Guess like with anything, 1, live and learn, and 2, people who seem well sussed aren't always - thankfully I've only done it once, unlike that guy who must be paying the pensions of the dodgy Cambodian Police. again, DO NOT pay them any money just do it yourself. From now on I'll trust my own instincts more***

Next day we moved on to Lonely beach for a bit more peace and here I have remained, back to starting my day with yoga or swimming in the sea, breakfast on the beach and just relaxing, taking life at a slow pace and meeting some more interesting people. Perhaps its due to the name, but we've seen the highest concentration of solo travellers here. Creates a good vibe...speaking of which, the sunset once again awaits!