Do it like a Thai

Kuala Lumpur was a 48-hour stopover between Borneo and Thailand. We decided to take it easy and just walk around in the city, shop and of course visit the icon of Malaysia, the Petronas towers. The city was a real pleasant experience with its combination of modern metropolitan life, good shopping and Asian hospitality. It has definitely been added to the list of potential places to live.

After another weight argument at the airport with a guy from Air Asia (again ending up with us taking stuff out of checked in luggage and bringing it on board as hand luggage :-)) we arrived in Thailand, ready for new adventures. The first weeks in Thailand, we were going to stay at the east coast in the small fishing village of Khanom. We have both been in Thailand before at some of the more popular places and this time it was really nice to experience an area of Thailand with almost no tourists. On the daily two hour morning walk on the beach, we often only ran into 2-3 other tourists plus a couple of local fishermen, cows and dogs.

The best way to experience a country is always to do like the locals, so we soon found ourselves on a scooter driving through small villages and rice fields in the search for a secluded beach or a good local restaurant. It has been a wonderful week with plenty of good local food, book-reading and swimming in the pool.

One of the best experiences of the week was arranged by a local guide and included a day where we ‘did it like a Thai’. This included catching crabs and shellfish in the mangroves, harvesting coconuts, palm oil seeds and various fruits from a plantation and at the end cooking a dinner at a local Thai familys house with the ingredients we gathered during the day. So now we make the best tom kha gai! We ended up eating dinner, talking and drinking good Chang beer for four hours at their house before we returned to our hotel. A really good experience with genuine Thai hospitality.

It is now the day before Christmas and we are travelling to the west coast of Thailand to meet up with Carstens family in order to celebrate Christmas together tomorrow. It doesnt really feel like Christmas when it is 30 degrees outside, but with a pool in the backyard it seems like a good trade-off.

Merry Christmas everyone,

Danielle and Carsten