News from the Jungles

Short message for friends how lost us – we are OK.
Living in paradise island is something incredible, please forgive us for being quite for a while.
Since last post nothing outstanding happened, actually it did, but we are too lazy to write about it.

A week ago we made a day trip to Ko Samui for visa extension. Last time we been on Ko Samui island four years ago. Huge development, large number of tourist had change the island, and for now I can say that I do not like Ko Samui – hot, noise, traffic jams, etc. Ko Phangan is very, very, very quite to compare with Ko Samui, so we are very, very, very happy that we are here.

Visa extension process took about 20 minutes and cost regular 1900 baht. Assuming that Red Shirt Protests and street strikes are still happening in Bangkok, the price for one month in Thailand looks too expensive. I hope the Thai government will cancel the visas fee again, like it did after airport blockade in winter 2008. We was happy to use free of charge visas and will be happy to do this again.

It is a rainy season, but rain is not often. Sometimes it is very hot and dry, but sometimes huge rain happens. When it happens we do not have Internet connection and even electricity sometimes 🙂

After all we are doing very well, making some plans and enjoying the life. Pretty and simple.

Living on Ko Phangan, summary of the first month

What we have done.

So, we had spent on Ko Phangan a month. As I wrote before, we came to the island not for a rest, we had an idea to do some things, here is a result:
Dima wrote two application for mobile devices on Android OS. They are ZX Droid – ZX Spectrum emulator for Android – now everyone can use ZX Spectrum games and application on mobile phones with Android and made the port of well known ‘Tux Racer’ 3D game for Android.

If you would like to have this application and games you can easily go to Android Market and download them for free, if you have Android device, of course.

As for me, I`m doing weird but nice things, like paper lamp, oil paintings and teddy bear dolls. All of this hand made items you can see on my new web-blog Inspiration of Today by Kiseg where you are very welcome.

How much is the life in Paradise

A lot of people had been asking me How much is the cost of living in Thailand? So now I can answer the question “How much is the cost of living in Ko Phangan”, here is the list:
the rent (one bedroom house with large veranda and beautiful garden, so not the cheapest one) – 10,000 THB or ~310 USD
utilities (water, electricity and Internet ) – 2,872 THB ~ 88 USD
food and every day necessaries (healthy vegetable and fresh meat) – 8650 THB ~ 268 USD
motorbike rent – 2750 THB ~ 85 USD plus 10 for fuel.
extra (like beer, entertainment, cheese and other things that extra, and probably would not be nessecary if we would like keep our budget in a minimum) – 7500 THB ~232 USD
All together we spent about 993 dollars for a month for two people.
For somebody this amount can looks very small, for another it can be expensive. I do not want to say that this is cheap, but this price is for good style living in Paradise.

So, we a doing great! Ko Phangan is good place to leave, and we are really happy that we are here. Next posts I will write some stories about Ko Phangan.