Songkran Festival

The Street Wet From the Water War

Gramma to Grandkids

"Sawadee pe Mai" or Happy New Year in Thai. Today is the official start of the traditional Thai New Year, but that didn't stop most people here from getting an early start yesterday.  We rented a motorbike for the day and had been out looking at island and doing a little real estate checking.  On the way home we got attacked!!!  We were peacefully riding down the street enjoying the heat of the day when out of no where we were bombarded by water, soaked by massive water guns and pails of water thrown upon us... Songkran had arrived early!  From that point on all the way back to our hotel a few miles away we were under constant attack... it was a lot of fun.






 Later in the evening we went out for supper and it was more of the same resulting in us going into the restaurant soaking wet!  We saw a few tourists that didn't have a clue what was going on and they seemed more than shocked by it all.  People were on their balconies with pails of water, motorbikes with "armed" riders rode up and down the streets looking for victims.. to top it all off, once you are soaked with water they attack you with chalk and talcum powder.  Best of all, everyone was having the time of their lives.

The beaches here are probably among the best anywhere in the world.  We've had  nice days walking the beach and taking in the sights.  Today started out with quite the storm.

It was really windy and it rained quite a bit.. all that quieted things down on the beach, but out in the streets the water wars were still going on.  We haven't been doing much of the tourist type stuff this trip. Instead, we have been spending more time exploring and getting a feel for the everyday life here.  All in all, it has been very relaxing for the two of us.














The changing of hotels was traumatic for us, leaving the beautiful hotel that we stayed when we first arrived on Koh Samui and moving to a more 'standard' styled place.

Our current hotel is OK, just not quite up to what it was three years ago when we were here.  Still, the people are nice, it is close to the beach and not to far from the night action, so not that much to complain about.

Tomorrow we are headed off to Krabi, a town on the Andaman Sea.  We are looking forward to going there to see how it looks to us ten years later.  We visited here on our first trip but only spent a day.  It will be our first visit back to one of the places that had been struck by the huge tsunami of 2004 and it will be interesting to see if it changed much and to what extent they have recovered.  Once again we will get some pictures and post them here for you.  Until then, take care and talk to you soon.