Around The World Gaby and Gu 2006-2007

This specific cooking school was recommended to us before starting our trip for being different than the usual cooking schools in downtown Chiang-Mai. This one is outside of Chiang-Mai in a farm where all the ingredients for cooking are grown! Well, let's say it, we really had a blast cooking our own meal under the supervision of our very dynamic teacher. An experience not to be missed if you're visiting the area !!

Apart from the Royal Flora festival, there are many activities organized to celebrate and honour King Bhumibol for his 60th Birthday. One of them was to lit a candle and send it in a paper bag to the sky. Each of those candles represented a wish so that by the end of the evening the sky seemed to be full of stars. And again, Happy Birthday to the King !

We had heard about it but we would never have thought that we'd like Chiang Mai as much ! We decided to spend our Sunday like average Thai people by going to the Ratchaphruek Royal Flora festival, which honours the king's sixtieth anniversary. We were quite impressed to see very little tourists, if almost none. It was really great to see all those family spending their sunday in this beautiful flower exhibition. On our second day, we decided to rent a moped and wander around Chiang-Mai...there's only one thing to say : We really had so much fun doing this !! It really was a cool experience even with the pretty heavy traffic we encountered in certain parts of the city.Visiting Chiang-Mai's zoo and the Doi-Suthep temple with our moped are the highlights of day !!

The beach, white sand, water jet skies, snorkling, romantic moments to enjoy being newly weds, this is Koh-Samui !!! We are so much enjoying our time in this island ! It's just great to take a well-deserved break after all the stress of our daily swiss life. But everything didn't start as foreseen, since the hotel we were first recommended (New LaPaz Villa...DON'T EVER GO THERE) was such a disappointment. At least for us, we expected much much better for our honeymoon! After spending only 3 hours in that place, we decided to find a new hotel and cancel our stay there. Lucky us, the Impiana in Chaweng Beach definitely met our expectations by far ! We also met our new friends from Hong-Kong, Marco and Wini...Guys we had such a great time with you !! We're gonna miss you and all the activities we did together. As promised, see you in Hong-Kong in January !!!!!

For our last day in Bangkok we decided to go to a famous Floating Market near Bangkok. Despite being a very touristic place, which we quite didn't expect it to be, we had fun travelling onboard a riverboat within the canals and have a look at the many souvenirs that were proposed at the market itself...next stop...Koh Samui !!!

No more Scams, no more rip-offs on our second day ! Here we are at the Golden Mount to take advantage of a nice view of Bangkok and to get to know a bit more about Buddhism. Wat Arun, located on the other side of the river we visited yesterday, is a series of towers with mosaics that we visited before having a nice and relaxing dinner at the Tawandang German Brewery...(Good beers, Good Thai Food ! :O)

For our first day in Bangkok we decided to follow an itinerary along the Chao Phraya river which basically leaves you at the entrance of the most interesting temples and holy places. Wat Pho (with its giant reclining Buddha), Wat Phra and Wat Arun, only to name these, are some of the places we visited and that really impressed us. Also impressive is the fact that we were victims of a scam that is described in the first pages of our lonely planet... :O) See the guy on the 3rd Picture, Mr TUK TUK driver :O), well...that guy took us all over the place promising us to see a unique and exclusive Buddha that is only available to tourists on the day we were there...what a coincidence...and what a Buddha ! (5th picture). We still have a lot to learn ! :O)

After a very long flight, we feel very tired but totally excited about our new environment and eager to start our journey in Thailand but not before a nice dinner at Mango Tree...our first contact with the local cuisine, mmmhhh...