3 July

3 July - "A blue eyed girl met a brown eyed boy . . " Holiday romance is alive and well on Koh Chang . . . at least that's what Santa thought, but after a few nights of wining, dining and serious petting by Lizzie, she was gone, back to England and straight into the paws of a young Lab/Golden mongrel. Leaving a tearful Santa with only this photo to remind them of their time together.

Today's Nation has includes this story 'Mudslide wrecks homes on Koh Chang'. Turns out no homes were wrecked, only four resort bungalows. The article doesn't mention one of the contributing factors to the mudslide may have been the owner of the resort digging away the side of the mountain in order to build the bungalows and not giving any thought to shoring up the resulting rock face.

We went to try 'Paddy's Palms' the new Irish pub on Whitesands. Irish in so much as the exterior is green, interior mustard yellow & cream with dark wood furnishings, leather sofas, obligatory prints of the old country on the walls and sells decent pints of Guinness and Kilkenny draught. Although I don't think Mam was expecting a pint of Guinness to arrive when she ordered a Pina Colada but, feeling sorry for the waiter, she drank it anyway. Happy hour prices, 4-7pm, are 140/150 baht/pint for real men's beers and 100 baht for draught Heineken & Singha. No food yet, which has a plus side as the food available comes from a Thai restaurant nearby and pretty good it is too. It's a bit lifeless at the moment, but so is everywhere on KC. The one difference between Paddy's Palms and other large Irish theme pubs was this . . . every Irish pub I've been into always has loads of small things that catch your eye, bric-a-brac, interesting touches to the decor, humourous touches etc. You notice new stuff every time you go in. P.P. doesn't have any of this, it should. Maybe it's on the way. However, come the high season I'm sure it'll become a regular meeting place for visitors & expats alike.

The new Bangkok Airport a.k.a. Suvarnabhumi Airport (which I guarantee you won't be able to pronounce correctly but 'Suwanapoom' is a good attempt.) will be conducting test flights on 29 July. Why is this important? Because Bangkok Airway's flight PG311, Trat - Bangkok is one of the lucky 13 test flights on that day. In addition to landing well over an hour's drive from the current airport, passengers will get a certificate 'I survived the test landing', a free lift into town plus the chance to see first hand if all the stories about cracks in the runway and leaking roofs are true.

Also, as of July 1, Bangkok Airways has raised the price for transfers from Trat airport to any resort on Koh Chang to 300 baht per person.

Not everyone likes this site as this brief email, from someone who gave his name as Klaus, but unfortunately didn't include a real email address shows: "Be careful what you say, people get hurt for less!"