Be very afraid

New beach

Running on the old beach

Night kite

Looking tough under the ruffled canopy of our solang

Ready to go

The Shining

Baller

My gal

My pretty shells

Now I don’t want to jinx it but Pran Buri is amazing and I love it here!!! I almost can’t believe we stayed on Koh Pha-ngan for as long as we did. What was is? Stockholm syndrome? Probably. I mean I almost bought Chris a pair of soft pants. But this place – this place is incredible. So chill without the artifice of chill. Smiling happy people – Ferang and locals alike. As a side – Ferang (foreigner) comes from the Thai word Farangsais meaning French.

In the bright light of morning our place became even better – again very few people and free breakfast of the buffet all the food you want kind of free breakfast. Eggs any which way – noodles – bacon – fruit and cappuccinos. Then Chris struck upon the amazing plan of renting a solang instead of a scooter. For one – the scooters are incredibly dangerous and for two – we don’t fit on a scooter and for three – I was not able to get over my fear and actually drive one other than in a straight line and four – there is kite gear. So we have a solang – basically a scooter with a side car but more like picnic table with bench seating in a u shape. It’s banana yellow and we cut quite a swath feranging around in it. But FREEDOM! It’s so great to just explore around – get into neighbourhoods and find out of the way food markets where actual Thai people go to buy things. Plus the wind in our hair and the bugs in our teeth keep the kids from fighting. Win win.

We have found the kiting beaches – and the kiting instructor and Chris has even Jerry rigged a contraption to hold the kites onto the back of our hilarious ride – might have to take Seester’s suggestion to name it Bananarama. For some reason the kids have been getting along very well – all leading me to believe that Pran Buri is magic. Even the sea shells are different – like small unicorn horns or ruffled like the skirts of flamenco dancers. The kids also found star fish on the beach and watched them dig themselves back into the sand.

Then we ended up at a snazzy French/thai place. It wasn’t our intention to take sandy barefoot children into a French style bistro….. but there you have it. Because everything is out doors it’s hard to tell how fancy a place is and really most are pretty casual. But here we are being seated at what we thought was the “pasta” place – the kids on a full revolt of rice and thai food. There is soft jazz playing and the waiters are wearing uniforms – and we realize we don’t have quite enough cash on hand. It’s busy and it looks like there are still tables left to order so Chris decides to buzz back to the hotel and get some cash. While watching for him to return I kept mistaking the food trucks for him. Finally he putt putted into view in our black and yellow striped clown buggy making me laugh out loud. The vision of him hunched over the little scooter under the frilled canopy looking like a satay vendor on a mission will remain one of my favourite memories. Right up there with anytime he tries charades to communicate with people. It had some success in Costa Rica and almost zero success in Thailand leading us to the conclusion that there is no game of charades in Thailand.