Rik's place is located just inside the Ghost Road, which in fact is a short cut to Chaweng when coming from Bang Rak. If you drive almost out of Bang Rak, direction Bophud, there's a T-crossing with a 7-11 on the corner, if you turn left here you're on the Ghost Road. Rik's place is after about 150 meters at your left hand.
Chaweng hills near the ring road were covered in low hanging clouds and it looked like the rain could start again any moment.
Bang Rak bay is filled up to the rafters with fishing boats and loads of other boats looking for shelter for the wind and waves. The amount of fishing boats lining up in the bay gives you a good indication how rough it is out there. The ferries to Koh Phangan and Koh Tao should be no pleasure ride.
Yesterday afternoon I signed up at the the Ibis hotel and there were a few merchants selling running and biking gear.
The bikes of the Adventure run participants. In a team you somehow need to overcome a 500 meter swim, a 10 km run, a 30 km bicycle ride and a 5 km kayak! They figure you can do this within 3.30 hrs! Ouch!
Allrighty, my second participants medal within two weeks! After the quarter marathon about two weeks ago now a new one! They're racking up rather quickly.
Many roads had all kind of debris on the surface, mainly coconut leaves that fell of the trees. A lot of cleaning up on the various was in progress or had already finished.
A couple of up rooted trees were to be admired as well. Too bad this one managed to miss the jet skis in the back ground.
Here's an older but still or there for up rooted tree. Plenty of ugly commercial road signs were blown over here as well.
In Bang Rak this boat has sunk and it's a fairly big one. Most boats took shelter in a different bay, guess some never learn. No boats were beached this time around though, like last year when La Fortune and a few speedboats stranded, almost to the day!
This small boat was sitting just in the middle of the surf and was popping up and down like mad, it just needed a few meters to go in front of the surf to be fine. Phone calls were being made when I took the picture to sort it out.
Currently I'm teaching a PADI Open Water diver course to my sisters kids, today we're on the boat for the last dives of this course and above is Bang Rak bay pictured as it looked like yesterday morning, with Koh Phangan in the background.
Yesterday was a fantastic and lovely day with plenty of sunshine, up until around 4pm when it started to seriously hose down for a good hour and kept drizzling on for a while. Around 20mm of water came down in a short time span and flash flooding happened all over the place. The good news is that the flash flooding only lasts for an hour or so with the new drainage system in place instead of a couple of days before this drainage system was in place.
After having conducted an EFR Instructor course next door at the local hyperbaric chamber, me and my student had lunch at Paul's and I had the always lovely Chicken and Mushroom pie with mash and veggies and a good old English gravy.
Ania, my student had this massive and juicy chicken burger with french fries. The food is as good as always!
After 9 years in business, Paul has had enough of being in the shop 7 days a week, from early in the morning starting to shop and finishing early in the evening. A combination of working too much and not enjoying the work any more made him decide about 5 weeks ago to call it a day and put his Picnic Basket up for sale.
We started the day in a very traditional way with a visit to my wife's Grandma, the only one still alive. My wife prepared this bowl of water and she put some flowers from our garden in it and we added some baby powder and this is the original mix that is used over centuries to celebrate the Thai New year or Songkran. Oh, and you don't drown somebody in or with it but you scoop a little bit of the mix in your hand and gently put some water on somebody's shirt or such.
Sunset over Bang Rak a few days ago
Catcantoo is located opposite the Bang Rak Seatran pier and is an offshoot from the Catcando bar opposite Sweet & Soul in Soi Green Mango in Chaweng's night life area.
The location is easy to find and they have a nice menu. During the daytime you can find many retirees sipping on heir first beers of the day even before noon. Don't let that stop you to visit, they're a friendly bunch or rather, they keep to themselves and don't bite!
The restaurant is simple in lay out and it can be warm and dusty, since it's located directly next to a very busy junction and traffic from the Seatran pier can be thick plus the fact that the very busy Plai Laem market is just about a 100 meters away.
What Catcantoo is really famous for are the spare ribs as displayed above. They must be the best on the island since the meat literally will fall off the bones and it's absolutely delicious! You can get a half rack for 290,-THB, a full rack for 360,-THB and pig out on two full racks for just 460,-THB, they come with beans and coleslaw and potaters. This is a real must! 
Silly enough we thought that the full rack wouldn't fill two people so we ordered a side dish as well, these 'super nachos with chicken' and we struggled to finish everything.
Fishing boats at Bang Rak bay in hiding for the waves and wind.
