hi friends,

it's been quite a while since my last entry ... ;)

koh pangan was great, i met there in the first evening some nice thai and french guys, with whom i had really fun the next 3 days ... i even had my personal tourist guide, her name was Kwan, but no unserious thinking please ... she was really friendly and helpful ... two of her friends were so called ladymen and two of her friends were gay ... was a quite strange mix, i have never been so close to 'such' guys ... but they were all really friendly and although they couldn't speak english well, we talked a lot (with hands and feet) ... on one day Kwan picked me up at my hotel (so i had free taxi service all the days) and she took me to an hairdresser afterwards to a shop (i had to buy some clothes) and in the afternoon i helped her preparing a BBQ for the evening ... i peeled a lot of garlic ;) ... the BBQ was nice, and afterwards we all went by motorbike to Haad Rin to make some party .. the way to got there was quite dangerous, because noboday really cares about traffic rules ... there is every day party in Haad Rin ...

the next day the ladymen, the 2 gay people and some more thai friends took me to a festival in the north of the island ... was great, i tried there some insects to eat .. they are a little tasteless, but with a sauce there are not bad ... but it won't become my favourite dish ;)) (next time i will upload fotos from these insects *g*) ... after the festivel, where we won a bottle of thai wiskey (i only tried very very little ... i don't like it) we went back to the "Diamond Star" bar (the main meeting point from my thai friends) ... played a lot pool these days, but lost in the most cases ;))

the next day i went to krabi by boat and bus ... it took me 8 hours to arrive there ... one of the ladymen gave me some self cooked fried rice with vegetables as lunch paket ;) when i arrived in krabi, i had to change my bungolow for the first night, because my hotel had a problem with my bungalow ... so they took me to a really nice place, a big room and a big bathroom, with many plants inside (looked like in the jungle) ... this was the best accommodation in thailand .. unfortunately only for one night ... in krabi i went to a rafting tour and atv tour (atv = quad-bike) ... in the bus i met a guy from Vienna, was really strange to talk in viennese dialect after more than 3 weeks ... rafting was cool, they had to open some dams, because in thailand it hasn't rained since several weeks ... after lunch (which was excellent, as always) the Vienna guy and me had a privat 2 hour atv-ride ... we even climbed up with this bike to a waterfall, but unfortunately i forgot my camera, so i have no photos :((( ... we also ride through a river and at the end of the ride we did some racing ... was really fun!!

after krabi i went to koh phi phi .. this island had to suffer most of the Tsunami in 2004 ... there are still some construction areas ... there are no cars on this island, everyone goes by bike on by foot ... there i decided to make a diving course ... it was one of the best decisions i made by now ... we were only three pupils (2 suiss girls and me) and we had a real nice german dive master ... the first day we had some lesson and then we went in the afternoon in the sea .. but only to 2-3 metres down .. there we had to do some excercises and on the next day we went to an little island ... there we had 2 dives, one in the morning and one in the early afternoon ... nwo went down to nearly 12 metres, i had some troubles with my pressure in the ear, but Tobi (the dive master) helped me with that problem ... we saw many fishes, even a sleeping shark ... the third day we also went to an other island and there we went down to nearly 18 metres ... there we also saw a sleeping shark, a giant turtle, a giant morene and other great creatures ... after the 3 days i'm now a "PADI open water diver" .. that means, i can dive nearly everywhere in the world with a so called buddy (when you dive, you never dive alone for security reasons) ... maybe i will dive in australia, too ... diving makes you very tired, so i went to bed very early every day, so i cannot tell anything about the night life in koh phiphi .. but it must be good, because there are a lot of young people there (most swedish) and the beaches are really good

today i arrived in phuket, didn't see much so far, because after the arrivel i slept a little bit (i'm still tired from diving) ... tuesday or wednesday i will leave thailand to fly to kuala lumpur ... i'm not going by bus because at the moment it's a little to dangerous to go to the south of thailand ...

photos will be uploaded next time

cu soon, christoph