Introducing our jeep

When we pick you up from the airport - you're sitting in the back!! :-)

Another pic

One of our favourite beaches - Cheong Mon! It's only 5 mins drive from the house. We're trying to swim here every day!

Over the last few years there's been a lot of development on this beach - you can see the sunbeds, beach umbrellas and jet-ski's in this photo... but it's still fairly quiet compared to the main touristy area 'Chaweng'.

Also, our favourite seafood restaurant, 'Crystal' is on this beach.

Some photo's

Where we spend most days - the terrace of the house we're currently living in...

September end

Apologies for the delay - amazing how the days can pass so quickly on the island - swimming, exploring,drinking etc...

We have been busy getting ourselves established as well, we are renting a humle two bedroom place near the plot from our friends Roger and Wendy on a month by month basis for now. Can't upload pictures at the moment so you'll have to imagine it...

We are also the proud owners (for 6 months anyway) of jeep, it has 100,000 on the clock and the speedo doesn't work (not a problem on the island - speeds rarely ever exceed 20mph anywhere!) , but it has 4 wheel drive and gets us from A to B in relative comfort.

I have also set up a local bank account, much easier than expected, the main challenge was selcting which of the 10 different funky ATM card styles on offer to choose!

In terms of the project we have been tinkering with our design after seeing some of the other houses on the hill in a completed state, and talking to a few builders. Luckily the recent oil price increases haven't had too much of an effect on building costs yet, there is also a greater chice of building materials and fixtures,fittings etc available than a few years ago - we now have a wide range of toilet seats to choose from!

Will try to update the blog on weekly(ish) basis from now on, cheers

Ian and Tammy

Saturday night in Samui

I've spent the last couple of days trying to remember my password (obviously I worked it out). We'll write a new post tomorrow with more details of our first week in Samui, more photo's and an update on why we're here... Tammy :-)

Day 1 - Koh Samui

Well, we arrived in Bangkok on Friday night, and spent 3 days unwinding from our London pace of life... eating yummy Thai food, drinking cold beer, and lazing by our hotel pool. Flew down to Samui last night - and now chilling out 'island style'...

We've only been in the country for 4 days, and already there's a possible 'coup' in Bangkok... which doesn't affect our personal safety (fyi, Koh Samui is 1050km south of Bangkok). We wanted to get away from it all ... and it seems we have, because we can't get transmission on any of the satelite news channels.. BBC, CNN and CNBC all have a black fuzzy screen tonight.

This is a picture of our sunset view from our friends' Wendy & Roger's place... where we are currently relaxing on the balcony - drinking cold beer and G&T's. There's been quite a lot of change since we were last here (9 months ago).. there's even a cinema complex on the island!

I'm really loving the value of the Baht... everything seems quite cheap compared to the Pound. We got 4 bags of groceries for around 8 pounds, and Thai food and beer is great value. More soon...