Saturday 25 April 2009

Day # 5 - Adios Amigos

Time to leave the Island, my family and my sister (now mrs lewendon-strutt)

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Time to leave the most amazing variety of crisps, this is double cheese pork burger, a favourite of liane's as a pre-bedtime snack attack!

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Back to Koh Samui Airport, which is pretty lush as airports come, tropical.

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Look out, Bangkok here we come!

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Day # 4 - Elephant Ride

What better way to cure a wedding hangover than to ride in the back of a van around the island and go have an elephant ride, pretty sweet!

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The driver only had me and Liane in the back of the truck, so he stopped to let us see the views from the highpoint on the south coast of Koh Samui, pretty spesh.

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When we got dropped off at the elephant sanctuary, we were sheparded up a 3 tier wooden structure whilst the 'driver' brought round our elephant for the day, Una. It was like a jungle version of a valet service. The seat had no bar so we were kinda free to fall off if we wanted, but Una was a good host and keep us from eating dirt.

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We made our way around the jungle paths with the elephant guy chatting to the elephant the whole time, she didn't talk back to him but she new what he was on about, she even stopped and posed for pictures when he asked her to. Some of the hills going up and down were freakily steep, and i had to hold tight to liane to make sure we both didnt fall off.

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We got to hang out and feed her some bananas after, which was rad, she can swallow 3 at once, pretty impressive! Thanks Una for the ride and for spraying us with water in the waterfall, i was getting pretty hot up there!

Monday 6 April 2009

Holiday - Day #3 'Nice Day For A White Wedding'

The day of the wedding, which was constantly threatened by rainstorms, but only rained for an hour, letting the wedding go ahead without a hitch! My brother was happy with the result ( and the breakfast).

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There is always the chance a beach wedding could look cheesy like the ones you sometimes see on bad late night uncovered programmes, but this was the most amazing set up i have ever seen, far away from the usual wedding, literally raising the bar for all future weddings, so fucking amazing.

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Rolf, my new brother in law, maintained a full suit and jacket through the brutality of the heat, and looked awesome walking down to the garden, with a procession of traditional dancing thai girls, and chanting thai warrior type dudes.

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I had to sit with my mother, Rolf and his best man in front of the wedding party whilst we watched the traditional thai dancing girls do their stuff. Thankfully it did not include any bangkok shenanigans but kinda went on forever. At least i got a seat, result.

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During the ceremony on the beach, it was pretty much perfection, with the two of them giggling at each other and it was miles away from the stiff english trad ceremony, well done mr and mrs strut-lewendon. My sister looked amazing, and i was lucky enough to walk her down the aisle, scary times!

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the happy couple, with champers galore!!

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And then to complete the day, we had 5 courses of the best food i've had in years, and we all lit these amazing lamps that fly off into the night sky, but the camera died before that point, or the free bar was taken advantage of! I fell in love with the screwdrivers that had grenadine in them. A few of them, some champagne and a load of tequilla sunrise's will always make for a good reception. And yes, ol' softy did well up more than once. I also cried once during home and away, but i'm not proud of that.

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My sister calls me matty moo, i call her stinky puff, you decide who comes off worse in a crowded environment.

Sunday 5 April 2009

Holiday - Day # 2 'Summer's Here Kids'

It was amazing to awake and see the island in its daylight splendour, all tropical beaches, palm trees and fruity cocktails served on the beach! It was mainly a pre-wedding catch up day with lots of sunbathing, swimming and eating good ol' thai curry! It has been years since i had a holiday that didn't include being in a van with stinky boys or sampling the delights of venue car parks and service stations around the world, so this was a much needed respite.

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I couldn't get enough of swimming in the water, but occasionally you would get tiny little stings as you swam. We discovered later that the crazy tropical storms a few days before we arrived had obliterated alot of the jellyfish population and their microscopic body parts were the stings. That one nasty bastard creature that will still give you a good pain even after its dead and in a million pieces!

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This guy later shouted 'Hey Black Flag (i was wearing, surprise surprise a black flag tee), you wanna buy some weed, real good!' He also loved posing for photos, happy dude was probably high on his own supply. Weed, machetes and motorbikes, good times.

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Our breakfast was free every morning and it was real nice, eggs / pancakes / toast / fruit / coffee / juice / tea. I discovered this amazing thai chilli sauce that goes perfectly with scrambled eggs, overnight weekend visitors will be able to sample as i bought back a nice bottle of this red liquid heaven!

Saturday 4 April 2009

Holiday - Day #1 'Leaving on a Jet Plane'

Said good bye to Mr Bob Harris, he is looking forward to a few weeks with the parents away and with Julia & Conan to look after him.

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We strapped on our matching backpacks (we forgot this looked stupid when we ordered them online) and headed off to Heathrow to meet my big sis Dionne and her hubby Matt.
This is us pre - tan/burnt on the 38 bus, fact.

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Luckily i got to squeeze in the last Cider before a veritable apple drought in the lovely fake irish pub in terminal 3, with a goodbye meal of scampi and chips, mmmmm!

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12 hours on a plane was ok, but still, for anyone over 5"5' it is pretty cramped. To counteract this i locked in to a film marathon on the night flight, managing to watch
- Twighlight (teen vamps who dont bite and hate sex, not so good)
- Four Christmas' (christmas with vince & reese, goodtimes)
- Burn After Reading (also very good, although no seasonal cheer)
- Day the Earth Stood Still (made me fall asleep, first 30 mins ok)

In flight Suduko helped, but made me sleepy.

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After landing in Bangkok, we had 6 hours to hang out before we flew to Koh Samui. First stop, cigarette smoking outside in the nice smoggy Bangkok air, nice. I blame this for my limpwristed pose.

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Inside the airport, we had our own lounge to hang out in which was strange but comfy. Bangkok Airways had obviously tried to westernise its complimentary food spread, but looks like it was chosen by a disturbed 13 year old sugar addict. The food groups covered for free consumption were:
- salty popcorn, with machine.
- triangles of chocolate brownies
- upside down pineapple cake
- very small croissants that looked like plastic
- ornage sugar water
- coffee

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weird, but stangely comforting.

Landing on Koh Samui was awesome, it looked like we had landed on Hawaii with cool straw huts and palm trees, tropical!

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The transport from plane to airport was these awesome universal studio style milk floats, hence stupid grins from the 2 matts.

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Jet lag hadn't kicked in yet so we went down to the beach and met up with my family for drinks before crashing in our amazingly well air conned room ( we realised the importance of this early on)with a friendly gecko hanging out on the wall. Sweet.