Goodbye to July 2010

Goodbye to July 2010

It's that time of the month again, July 2010 is about to leave us, welcome to August 2010.

Before we completely wrap up this July however, a few remarks;

The weather was good this month, for a July. We had the usual July rain showers but they were mainly during the evenings or nights and Koh Samui was and is in dire needs for rain. There was also some strong wind again but this is also pretty standard for a July and we even had a mini storm. All in all, if you were on Samui for a holiday during this 2010 version of July, you should've had plenty of sunshine. The 2009 and 2008 versions were slightly wetter, it seems when I'm looking back at the archives.

It was also a busy month on a personal note with my sister and her family and a very good friend visiting during this month. There are also a few blog readers that visited the island during this month, a big thanks goes out to all of you who regularly visit my blog, it's appreciated.

My sister stayed at the Chaweng Cove Resotel for a second year in a row with the second year in a row being satisfied with the price/waht's on offer ratio. The food is unfortunately nothing to write home about but that left us with plenty of choices to eat outdoors and this month saw visits to plenty of my fave restaurants on the island; Le Café des Arts, Il Duomo and Prego for some great pizza and Italian food, Catcantoo for it's famous spare ribs, SITCA after their cooking attempts, MK Suki in Chaweng (oops, Catcantoo is in Bang Rak!), Sabeinglae in Lamai, Angela's in Maenam and plenty of other places where I go each month, the small Thai eateries like the Dcheed 2 with it's great Saté muu, Clock Lana and the Kao Man Gai place in Lamai.

Lots of outdoors eating this month and good times were had by all of us.

This month saw also two highly popular posts, one with pictures of one of the speedboats involved in last months Full Moon Party collision, I must admit, the pix do look intimidating and interestingly enough, two people who were on the boats involved found my blog and commented and spoke about their experiences.

The other popular post was about pictures of the damage done after we had a real storm roaring over our island for a couple of hours, although the damage was rather marginal.

On to another topic, posts from bloggers around Thailand that I found worth reading this month and who I can highly recommend to you, have a read through their respective posts and visit their blogs, there's some interesting stuff out there;

For starters Rick's blog about Thailand and a post in which he sees the countries tourism on the mend again.

Martyn always looks beyond the Mango juice and is a regular in Isaarn, this time with a post of Udon Thani's night market, well worth checking out, first of all I love (night) markets in the LOS and Udon is a great city on top of that as well.

Boonsong, the new kid on the bloggers block likes screamers and thinks that males make the most noise.

Andy has two great blogs, one about all provincial and legal news, a most interesting blog and he writes about a frustrating mission impossible of finding museum brochures and his other blog is about a lesser or unseen Thailand and he really knows how to find those unseen spots, like this museum in Yannawa.

Jamie in Phuket has the real inside info on Thailand's biggest island (is it still really an island if it's connected by a bridge to the mainland?) where he just did a photo walk with his daughter and he also has one of the other few weather blogs in Thailand, the Phuket version! A true brother in weather crime ;-)

Monique is a Limburger, just like me and is residing on Samui just like me, she's a great photographer however, unlike me. Here's a cool shot of a monk taking care of a dog.

Jungle Girl on Koh Phangan has a touching story about a small and young Burmese girl trying to make a living on Phangan's beaches.

Malcolm is retired in Thailand and claims to love it! Can you believe that! Here's a great post how their little home transformed into their castle in the boonies near Kanchanaburi and the lessons he learned about the local customs. The boonies are called Whang Pho by the way.

Talen has a fantastic blog about Thailand and in this post he talks about the news over one week with interesting stuff about a Thai good looking violinist turning Olympic athlete to the shooting of a new movie in Thailand; the Hangover part 2.

Lawrence lives in the Isaarn metropole of Phana and gives us a recipe of the most important Nam Prik Thai relish, something each Thai should know how to make and now you can try it as well.

Mike of formerly My Thai Friend now blogs under the name of Thailand blogs and has a great post about a fascinating aspect of Thai culture, Thailand's obsession with uniforms; everybody who's got a job probably has a uniform to go with it!

Steve of Thailand Musings fame has an interesting read about Songthaews, the red pick up cabs with the open but covered (DUH?) rears you see all over Thailand. Click on the link to see a picture so it all makes sense again. My father in law on Samui used to have one of these Songthaews.

Ben, our own Thai pirate talks about the harsh realities in Thailand of owning pets and how they can get bitten by poisonous snakes.

Well, I wonder if you made it all the way down here, usually my posts are not so big or long but thanks for dropping by and I hope to be seeing you all again next month.

Camille