Heading down to southern Thailand, I stayed on one of the beautiful West Coast beaches. However, don’t prepare for any pretty pictures – I spent two days in marvellous sunshine without a camera, and my final two days in a tropical storm with one. Couldn’t be better .
I rented a small bungalow for 100 baht a night. In the end, I did spend up sharing it with two non-paying palls, which I baptized JJ and Liam, after my Australian housemates. You can see them pictured above. They made for great conversation.
View from the little bungalow, both straight out (onto the ocean) and sidewards (where you can see the water all the way down the hill).
Generally, Thai houses have a “spirit house” which is built closely to the actual house, and is fairly similar in buildup. These are always built outside of the shadow of the main building, and harbor the wandering guardian spirits. On a daily basis, inhabitants of the main house place flowers, food and incense to make sure the spirits look upon the residents positively.
Just the day before I left, a tropical storm hit our little island. Normally the beach is virtually waveless, but it changed into the above scene quite quickly. Unfortunately, the boat I was supposed to take from the island got cancelled… Departing about twenty hours late, this left me about 20 hours to get from Surat Thani in Southern Thailand to Kuala Lumpur for my flight out to Europe.
After bus’ing for hours in a row I did arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 5 o’clock in the morning – just in time for my flight that departed at 11. Did have lots of bad luck along the way – ticket taken by a bus driver and not returned; which cost me another one – bus breaking down on the main highway just outside of KL. All good fun 🙂
Finally getting to Heathrow airport in London, I was on the very last flight from London to Brussels that actually departed. Landing in Heathrow at 16h25 in the afternoon, the weather was marvelous. This did not last long. By the time my flight to Brussels was supposed to leave, the entire airport was fogged down. Left with about four and a half hours delay and touched down in Brussels at 2 AM.
I’m back.