a month on one beach - are we nuts?

Bye bye Koh Phangan, we're back in the Cactus Bungalows on Koh Samui where there's an immigration office and we can extend our visas. We're still undecided on our next stop, however, as we continue to watch the Thai political situation. We are extraordinarily cautious and could just go back to Koh Phangan if there's a safety concern. We sure did love Than Sadet beach. It's the first time in our life that we've stayed in one place for a whole month. We weren't bored, although we did very little except read and eat and play in the waves. Even Karen played in the waves. We spent a lot of our time reading in the hammock so we're not as tannned as those who lay on the beach all day. We met millions of Germans. It was weird - 90 per cent of the tourists were German. It got so we could tell the Swiss Germans from the regular Germans and our own English picked up a bit of German phrasing as we spent so much time talking with them. Going to Thailand to learn German, who would have thought? All the Germans were remarkably friendly and welcomed us into their social circles. In smaller groups, they would all talk English to include us. Even when they had a big birthday party, we were invited and although they talked German among themselves, there were always a few talking English with us, late into the night. We exchanged emails with dozens of them and have even thought that we might go west through Germany to return to Canada instead of going east - it's about the same distance. Drinking beer in the ocean was fun and seemed to be the spark that got the Germans interested in socializing with us. The jungle wildlife freaked us out occasionally. We had our own gecko in our room so it's a bit surprising how many insects we had as well. The gecko was the big kind, a foot long, with a head bigger than a golf ball and he was a bright baby blue with orange spots. The thunk, thunk, thunk as he ran across the wall from one corner cranny to another was always worth a smile in the early morning hours. Still, there was other wildlife in our room. Cockroaches, of course, and Bob screamed like a girl when he found a huge millipede when he picked up a Tshirt from the floor. Then there was the hairy spider the size of a hand that kept us on alert when we entered our bathroom. He was actually only there for a few days but our spidey senses were on alert for weeks. Karen had a succession of small health issues, including both kinds of tummy troubles (too fast, then too slow), a wicked fever in between, and a bruised toe that she smashed between the dinghy and the ferry when she was boarding the ferry in high waves. She's all better now, but that was a bit of a bad end to her four-day solo visit to a yoga retreat at a beach a few kilometres down the coast. She went to yoga classes twice a day and ate lots of healthy vegan food, but despite a mostly positive experience, still wanted to reunite with Bob after four days. See, we're still getting along well after all this togetherness. Sorry our last picture is still from Christmas. Soon, soon, we swear.