TGIF

We've just past the 2/3 milestone in our year off. We've been in Thailand for 8 months now, with just 4 months left. Fortunately, everything is going to plan.

The villa is starting to look a lot like a house - all the walls are up, the roof is 99% complete, and we now have concrete stairs going to the ground floor (this means we don't have to hobble under scaffolding with the risk of wet concrete being thrown on our backs as the guys are busy plastering the exterior walls). It seems that the construction process isn't always as fast as we'd like... some days they achieve miracles and we can see changes very quickly. Other days (such as this week), things seem to go very slowly... and we're still waiting for the last 10 tiles to go on the roof !!

We're sorry there's no photos to share this week. Somehow managed to get sand in the lens when we were at Koh Phangnan (beautiful beach, but very fine sand), so we had to take our camera to the mainland for a sabbatical at the Sony Service Centre. There isn't anywhere on the island that repairs Sony cameras... so last Saturday we were up early, and on the ferry to the mainland and driving into Suratthani - the nearest big town. You can get most things on the island, but it's not till you have to make the 2.5 hour journey to Suratthani that you realise how remote we are.

We also took advantage of being on the mainland, and went to the Hash House Harriers run in a small coastal town called Khanom. It was an interesting walk/run through the jungle, finishing with beers alongside a creek. We stayed overnight in a very old bungalow on a very quiet beach (Nai Plao) and headed home the next day.

Just 2 days later, it was time for us to renew our Thai visas... so we were off on a day trip to the Malaysian border. This involved getting up at 3am for a 1.5 hour ferry ride and a 3.5 hour mini-bus ride to the Malaysian border. We walked into Malaysia, bought some duty free, and walked back into Thailand - an easy way to get your passport stamped for leaving the country (which we have to do every 90 days). The trip wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - and I think the four DVD's we watched on the mini-bus certainly helped. The guy who organises the trip runs it like a military operation - which means you get back to Samui in reasonable time.

Last night we went to our neighbours for dinner - and enjoyed some home cooked Thai food (pad krapow moo, tom kha gung and panang vege curry). Tammy had entirely different cuisine at the SOS Ladies Lunch on Wednesday at a restaurant called "Chez Andy"... parma ham, white asparagus & steak! Still equally yummy!

Tonight we're off for Italian with Wendy & Roger, and then on Saturday night we're going to a party where a British magician (Darryl Milward) will be performing. I read somewhere that he's a bit of an illusionist - similar to David Blaine!!