We had a long day of travel to get over the border into Thailand – firstly a bus that took us to the border in Cambodia (and averaged 30km an hour over 6 hours…extremely bumpy roads!) then a mini van to Trat, and then another mini van to Rayong.  There, our day’s travel was rewarded with a happy reunion with our awesome friends Claire and Doug and their daughter Olivia, as well as Reuben’s sister Sacha. This merry gang had come down from where they live in Chiang Mai to play on the beach for a week with us, which we were very happy about!

We stayed at a lovely apartment half an hour’s drive outside of Rayong and spent a wonderful week relaxing there.  We ate a lot of food, played Settlers of Catan, swam in the big swimming pool, visited the rather sleazy town of Pattaya for an afternoon, went on a crazy sea biscuit ride at the beach and took a day trip to the nearby island of Koh Samet.  This was a lot of fun – we went on a one hour boat ride from Rayong, jumped on a Songthaew and got off at a beautiful beach where we swam, ate lunch, got massages and relaxed – lots of fun for a day out!  From Rayong we drove back to Chiang Mai – a long day’s drive with the highlight being our midmorning stop at IKEA Bangkok, where Reuben finally got to try his Swedish meatballs!  (the last two times we had visited an IKEA it has been at the wrong time of day and they weren’t serving them, so this was an exciting find!)