Happy Chinese New Year

In most Asian countries, they celebrate Chinese New Year and Ko Lanta has been no exception. CNY runs for three days, 2nd, 3rd and 4th of February. Lek and Malay started off by making a shrine to their parents. Lek's parents passed away some time ago, and out of respect, buddhists make offerings of food and drink and pray to their relatives. In the early afternoon Malay took us and a few other guests to a local fish market to buy some food for our BBQ that evening. It was pretty fun jumping in the back of his Toyota Hi-Lux, which is obviously totally illegal in England, but in Thailand is a common sight. Lek and Malay have been really generous buying plenty of fish to feed all 20 or so guests and spending a few hours preparing and cooking for us. My favourite was definitely the Barracuda!

Yesterday we went back to the welfare centre to walk Pepsi and Lanta II and so I could take some more photos for them to use for advertising in a local magazine. I think I have uploaded enough photos of dogs here in Ko Lanta for now! Yesterday Lek and Malay took a few of us to Saladan, the main town in Ko Lanta, again we jumped in the back of the truck. There wasn't much there really, so it only took us minutes to see the market and shops, although while we waited for Valerie and Jean to collect some paintings they had bought an entertaining little Thai boy was pretending to shoot us with his plastic gun!

Here's some other cool photos I've taken over the last few days... yes they are real!