Goodbye to August 2010

Goodbye to August 2010

It's that time of the month again and a good time to wrap up this August and reflect a bit over this past 31 days.

Big Buddha watching over Koh Samui

Starting out with this month's weather, it was a bit up and down but overall a very enjoyable month with plenty of sunshine during the day time and plenty of rain during the evenings and nights. A great combination. The average daytime temperature was well over 30C.

This August seemed somehow quieter than previous Augusts that I experienced on Samui. I can only hope and cross my fingers that things will pick up again during September and October. This is an tropical holiday location and in order to keep that that status, we do need people that visit, simple as that! So folks, looking forward seeing you on Samui soon!

What did I do during this month?

First off I continued with a new series that I started on this, the Food on Wheels series, which has been received pretty well so far! It's an interesting and intriguing topic with plenty of opportunities to sample! Keep your eyes focused here for more.

Talking about food, I went to eat or had take away from my usual haunts; our neighbours at Clock Lana for inspiring Isaan food, Dcheed 2 for their delicious Muu Sateh and Catcantoo for their BBQ Spare ribs!

New kids on the block this month were The Shack in Fisherman's Village and Mitra in Chaweng.

Posts on my blog this month that went down well seemed to be a post about coconut monkeys at work on Koh Tao.

This post was actually inspired an interesting post of about a girl climbing into trees to pluck fruit by Mr. Soombong, a fellow blogger.

In turn, my post inspired Martyn at Beyond The Mango Juice to write a very insightful story about monkey training. Talking about a snowball effect!

Whilst writing this post a pick up truck just come up into our garden to collect our coconuts that my Father in law had plummeting out of the trees yesterday. No monkeys involved though!

This leads me into the trail of looking at my fellow bloggers in Thailand and what they came up with.

Rick at Behind the Noodle Curtain is getting ready to move to the Land of Smiles and writes about his plans of actions and how all this affects him, Interesting reads!

Andy has a highly interesting blog about the administrative subdivisions of Thailand - history, current news and facts hardly found in English of Changwat, Amphoe, Tambon found a site with New years Cards for 2010 of the Three National Thai symbols. There's plenty of more good posts there if you want to find out about the wheeling and dealing of the Thai administration, which is surprisingly interesting.

He also has a great blog named the Unseen Thailand where he travels the less beaten path. He found an interesting museum in Bangkok, the Museum Siam, just go and have a read at his blog and before you know it you find yourself stumbling around the Big Mango looking for this place!

On to my fellow weather geek Jamie in Phuket. He also has two blogs worthwhile mentioning. The first is obviously my own blogs Phuket twin, The Phuket weather blog. He visited the local Phuket football team and writes about this in one of his updates.

Jamies Phuket is his other blog and that's exactly what this blog offers, cool inside info about Phuket. Amongst others he writes about a street fair in Kathu, always giving great photo opportunities.

To my big delight, Monique is back in action with her photo blog, a fellow Limburger on Samui who takes breath taking pictures, in my humble opinion.

Tom Yam writes about his life in Takhli in the province of Nakon Sawan. He's the new blog kid on the block and had some good posts up this month, one about tails!

Entrance Paul on to the scene. He's a fairly new blog kid on the block but has some very interesting posts about the things you encounter when living in a different culture. Very interesting observations and his latest post touches on an great topic, how to interact with your Thai neighbours. Keep it up Paul!

Malcolm who is retired in Thailand had been sick and didn't post a lot throughout August but at last there were some posts appearing again and he seems to be recovering. All the best from Samui to you Malcolm and looking forward to some more of your posts.

Mike in Prachuap Kiri Khan has also a few blogs to boost. He's a long time blogger about Thailand and he wrote an interesting post on how you can cross Thailand by foot within a day. Have a look and be surprised.

His other blog is about Thai Temples or Wat, one of his latest posts was about Wat Thap Sakae in Prachuap.

The great Talen has finally made the move to Thailand and is staying in Pattaya for his first year in order to settle down. He and his girlfriend Pookie are staying in a brand new condo, which in Thailand brings in a whole set of unexpected surprises and he might start considering opening a water theme park soon. He seems to be enduring it all in good spirits though and I wish him all the best settling in!

Lawrence who resides in Phana shows us once more that there's no such thing as coincidence or how every Thai person somehow is related to the next!

Steve at Thailand Musings is also considering coming to Thailand in the near future and I wish him good luck with his plans. This month he was writing about various topics but one post that sticks out for me is about Haad Yao in Koh Phangan, for the simple reason that in early September I will be exactly on this beach for about two weeks teaching my first PADI IDC outside of Koh Samui. I'm really excited about that!

Ben, our very own Thai Pirate who lives in Suphanburi province gives us some excellent first hand information flying to/from Thailand with a cheap ticket, useful information indeed!

Catherine at the 'Women Learning Thai...and some men too' blog has come up with an interesting post about a new way of learning the Thai language, a method that seems to be on the rise; Learning Thai via Skype. Useful info if you're looking for on-line tuition.

A long read and I hope you made it all the way to here but it also shows that Thailand has some interesting bloggers posting about various Thai related topics. Another thing I really like is that all the Thai Bloggers mentioned here live throughout the Kingdom and can give valuable information about local areas!

See ya all next month!

Camille