Our ferry sat quietly in the middle of the ocean. With nothing but green-blue sea all around and a jungle-clad island in the distance, we’d reached our stop. The silence was broken by the sound of old, unmuffled diesel engines as the long tail boat sent by our hotel, Ting Rai Bay Resort, pulled up alongside and attached itself to our boat.
Burma (or Myanmar) is one of the least visited countries in Southeast Asia and has been ruled by a military dictatorship for fifty years. Many campaign groups urged a tourist boycott of the country until 2010 when democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was finally released from house arrest and changes slowly began to take place in the country.
The sunsets on the Thai islands have been spectacular and this one on Koh Jum was particularly special as we watched it from Magic Beach which we had entirely to ourselves.
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So we finally left Chiang Mai! We were sad to say goodbye to our lovely apartment, the amazing vegetarian food, the beautiful wats, and our new friends but it was time to move on.
We might have mentioned that we much prefer apartment rentals to staying in hotels. We don’t have our own house any more so each apartment we rent becomes a temporary home and there is something about having a couch to lounge on and a kitchen to cook in that makes us feel at ease wherever we happen to be (even if that ‘wherever’ happens to be hectic Bangkok…).