I am now sitting at one of the most relaxing places I have ever experienced. I am in a village called Maenam, north on an island called Koh Samui i the Gulf of Thailand. The sun is about to set, and there are no people here to ruin the silence. I am staying in a bungalow 10 meters from the water and it is really nice. I thought this place was going to be crowded with people, but there aren’t many out there. I have been travelling from south to north on this island the last few days and were going to leave this island today, but changed plans when a major rainstorm set in. It feels really nice to finally get to sleep in way past checkout time in the places I stay

I survived the 18 hour trip, but i got a bad sunburn. After 10 hours in a bus and 20 hours since the last application of sunscreen, my skin didn’t really like sitting in the sun, on the deck of the boat, from 8-10 o’clock in the morning. I am almost back to normal again, thanks to 30SPF, but I haven’t gotten much colour. I feel a bit like a geek walking around beeing red and not tanned.

People jugde me for the size of my package :-( Everyone looks at my 20l backpack and thinks “what an amateur”. And then they look at my “tan” and thinks “what an amateur”. But I keep I head up high and think “hah … size does NOT matter”. And I get the last laugh.

One thing I’ve learned is that down here, there is no time. I’ve beeing going for days not even knowing what date or day it is. It is very relaxing, and I wish I could stay for longer. 3 weeks here is definately not enough. You know how long a day is, but when you have conversations here, you talk about “in a couple of days” or “3 days ago”. I hope I’ll catch my plane back home.

After I finished the last letter, I had to follow a Thai guy from the hotel I was staying, through backalleys of the town. In poring rain (niagara falls rain), I suddenly had a Vietnam war feeling. He was a rebel trying to get me and my crew safe back home. When I finally got to my island I saw the jungle, and that strengthened my experience from the day before. After staying one night in my room, and realise that mosquito nets don’t just keep bugs out … they keep them inside them as well. I was lying on my back with my one arm under my head. I tried to move it and felt this tickeling feeling. I thought it just fell asleep. I shook my arm and got rid of the feeling. I thought it could have been some bug, but I tried to relax. It was when something crawled on my stomache, I got really worried. Sleeping in a bungalow with no light, inside a mosquitonet and feel something crawl on you, is not good. Especially when you have thought about the vietnam war one day ago. I thought of what the soldiers had to go through. Anyway … even if I got a bit chocked by this crawling I tried to go back to sleep. When something was crawling on my head, I started to get really worried. I jumped out of bed, turned on the lights, and found a 2 cm big cockroach crawling inside my mosquitonet. And and that point I could see it very clear. The Vietnamwar was just a huge cockroach extermination operation. The pictures I have seen from the war, when they throw granades into small holes with people, they were just trying to get rid of many roaches.

I was supposed to write a bit more, but the anti-mosquito incense in here makes it really hard to stay. My eyes are running. I need to write more later.