After a long travel day (flying from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh to Bangkok to Koh Samui, then a ferry to Koh Phangan) we finally arrived at beautiful Haad Yao beach. We found a little bungalow with a sea view and were able to unpack for the first time.

I left Cambodia with some pretty gruesome bug bites (payback for killing all the little fishes with my bug dope?) and was stuck wearing my only pair of long pants to try to cover them. They were so bad that I had to go to a clinic where I was given an antihistamine injection and a bunch of other drugs, but nothing really helped. I had to just wait it out and try not to scratch.

Greg wanted to get his open water diving certification, so he checked out the scuba companies but the one that he liked the best, after hearing about his heart surgery last year, wanted a letter from his doctor. That, combined with a sore throat, put the kibosh on scuba for this trip. It was very sad. The poor guy was stuck lying around on the beautiful beach or snorkeling or kayaking. Life is tough.

We changed hotels a few times for a variety of reasons, finally ending up at the Haad Yao Bayview Resort which was really nice.

There are a bunch of restaurants on the beach and each one had their fresh catches of the day displayed on ice at the water’s edge. It's a great feeling to have a wonderful meal while sitting at a table with your toes in the sand just a couple of meters from the water.

As beautiful as the island was, we found it a bit boring, mainly because the other tourists were French, German, Czech or some other non-English speaking nationality and most of them were travelling in groups so we felt a bit isolated. Also, the Thai people were not as welcoming as we had expected. This is likely due to their experiences with the crowd that attends the monthly Full Moon Parties that are a fixture on Koh Phangan. My guess is that the attendees are not on their best behaviour and that the Thais are just sick of full mooners in particular and tourists in general.

Regardless, it was a great place to relax and soak up the sun and play in the water. Our plan to schedule some downtime at the end of the vacation was a good one.