Well hello one and all and a very Happy New Year. Apologies for not keeping you all up to date with our goings on but over the Christmas period things have been rather busy!

We are still in Ko Chang but we are leaving tomorrow to go back to Bangkok to see a friend before he flys home and we will then be heading down towards Singapore. We were due to leave here a while ago but unfortunatly there have been storms in the South and so all the trains and Islands were shut off so we had to stay here, which hasn't exactly been hard to do!

Anywho, Christmas day in Ko Chang was very weird. After having a few too many Christmas eve drinks we all a little subdued to say the least, however it was nice to have Xmas in the sun. I can't remember if I wrote it in the last blog but the group of us here had requested for some turkey so that we could feel at home. To our delight Pong orderd us in a 8Kg turkey, (at this point only 4 were eating!!!). Anyway we drafted in some extras and Pong built a stone oven for it to be cooked in. Now as a lot of xmas dinners things never really go to plan, 1 thai people don't cook roasts, and 2 they never bring food out together so with this in mind it wasn't ideal for the spit roast in the oven to break. To cut a long story short we ended up with a BBQ turkey, Paxo stuffing and Bisto gravy ready to eat but nothing else. After doing the carving I also realised that I had not left enough Turkey for myself so in all honesty I was even less amused when we found out that our potatos had gone to the other table and they had eaten them!!! Needless to say after this disaster we were not full of christmas joy and a lot of drinking followed! However, we have to thank Pong etc for going out there way to make us feel as Christmasy as possible.

Since Christmas things have pretty much been the same, however we have adopted some new people into our group and they have something which we all lost a long time ago and this my friends is a sense of adventure! So instead of lazing around in a hammock all day we have been to different places, tried different foods, and even sat on the beach 5 days in a row! Now I know to all of you back home this may sound stupid but trust me after weeks of doing nothing it is nice to have someone kick youup the arse and get you to the beach.

Other highlights since Christmas have been me getting a tattoo. I have been on about it for ages but never plucked up the courage so after talking to Blue (that tattoo bloke) I decided that I would bite the bullet and do it. I decided on a star around my elbow as it is something I have wanted for a while. I then decided to go for a traditional thai way of tatooing, this is basically a piece of bamboo with a needle soldered on the end that is dipped in ink and then he stabs it into your arm. Then when he does the filling in bit it is 4 needles in 1, it doesn't hurt as much as a machine tattoo but it still hurts, however the results are good.

And so onto New Year. We spent new years eve in a place called Treehouse for the countdown. Lots of lantins in the sky some fire works, and very apptly they played James Brown at 12.00 as a tribute to the Legend.

So that in a nut shell has been Ko Chang, as I said we leave tomorrow and it will be very hard to go. We have made great friends here but they have also made us feel like we were at home. So I advise anyone coming to Ko Chang to visit Paradise Cottage on lonley beach to see what all the fuss is all about.

So for now I will say goodbye from Ko Chang and work on some more adventures to tell you all.

Happy New Year and ciao for now

Love Ash and Brainer x x