So, I'm in a foreign land and even though that makes it a holiday, sleeping in is not really an option while in a foreign land.

After spending a couple hours swimming and playing around in the hotel pool, it was bed time.

Woke up the next morning, bright and early, went for breakfast and was on the beach by 8 am. Getting to the beach that early was just awesome. There is an odd sense of serenity as you watch an empty beach slowly come to life. Some beach hawkers were already set up and waiting for customers while others were only just beginning to set up. There was a slow and easy pace to everything that made for a very relaxing atmosphere. I guess that in the early morning, they know there is no point in rushing as there aren't many people anyway.

Hour-long Thai massages for 200 Baht, jet ski rentals for 1000 Baht per half hour, floats for rent for 100 Baht, hair braiding for (I don't know how much) Baht, fresh coconuts for 30 Baht. Everything beach-worthy was for sale. Even the beach chairs had to be rented.

So I spent the morning swimming around in the Andaman Sea (sometimes floating around) with 3 of my cousins. Later, we even decided to split the cost of renting a jet ski between the four of us (2 people at a time for 15 minutes each). Jet skis are fun.

Unfortunately, our check out time was at noon so we only had the morning to spend on the beach. After check out, we hopped into our minivans, went for lunch and made our way north towards Surat Thani and the Khao Sok National Park.

It was quite a long drive up and I slept much of it away - or dozed, rather. By the time we got to our accommodations, it was late afternoon. I was actually rather looking forward to our accommodations for the night. 'Tree Top River Huts'. Doesn't that name just scream cool and tropically exotic to you? It was kind of a let down as to how 'modern' the rooms were in reality. I was really looking forward to mildly roughing it out. Many of the rooms had air conditioning, heated showers and such. My room, however - we had a fan, no furniture except for the bed and mosquito netting and a water heater that wasn't working... so I guess I did get the roughest of all the luxuries in the family. But it was fun. And the cold water shower was absolutely delightful once over the initial temperature shock.

After the shower, I went for an oil massage. It only cost 250 Baht for an hour-long massage and it was wonderfully relaxing - except when she was massaging my feet... that tickled a bit.

Once the massage was done, I went back to my room and spent a couple hours just chilling on the balcony, reading. Oh, and there were (amazingly) no mosquitoes in the entire place! The tour guide had said something about the cities being so hot and humid with so many people that mosquitoes just migrate there but the tour guide is a cheeky prankster so I'm not sure I'm going to believe him in that. Whatever the case was, there were no mosquitoes and that's just incredible considering that we were completely surrounded by rain forest and right beside a stream.

But yeah, it was an extremely relaxing night for me and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Even my sleep was super-deep. Didn't even hear the alarm clock go off.