CHRISTMAS AROUND THE PALM TREE

Not another Christmas without snow! We'd rather have palm trees and a beach. So we went to Thailand for three weeks around Christmas and New Year's 2000-2001. Island hopping on the west coast was quite a pleasant way to spend the major holidays. On Christmas Eve we were at Ko Hai with no regular connections and there was not a Santa Claus in sight, but they had mustered up a couple of plastic Christmas trees.

Starting off in pre-season Ko Lanta was very relaxing: just taking it very easy, walking on an almost deserted beach, snorkelling a bit and one dive day at Ko Ha. And of course lots of excellent food. We actually returned to Ko Lanta after a not so successful attempt to reach Kuala Lumpur. After Christmas it was not so deserted anymore, and the prices had gone up. Another diving trips to Hin Mueng and Hin Daeng with their spectaular drop offs made it worth while though.

We spent a few days in Krabi mainly swimming and snorkelling with the climbing rocks as a beautiful setting. Here we also had some new clothes sewn.

New Year's we went on a quite fantastic live-aboard diving trip around the Similan Islands. 3 days diving from early morning until late evening was probably as good as it gets. From now on it will only be live-aboards for us!

One of our last days in Phuket town we took a cooking class in a thai home. Preparing four dishes with preofessional supervision was great fun and now we know a few secrets of the superb thai cuisine!

Read the travel letters! Unfortunately only in Swedish without dots. I went to Thailand in 1996-97 too!

Click pictures for slide show.

/lisa