Remarkably, this is our sixth pass through Thailand in the two years we’ve been on the road. In part that’s a function of Bangkok being a transportation hub, with Thai Airlines being pretty flexible for us to use our United miles on. Beyond that, though, we love the heat, the tropical feel, the beaches, and the food. Especially the food. And while often they tone the heat down for us Westerners, sometimes it comes piping hot like the Thais eat it. Turns out that’s great for my diet since I just can’t eat too much when it’s that hot!

At any rate, the second we stepped off the plane in Koh Samui we were struck by the intense midday heat and the heavy, humid tropical air. I’d sort of forgotten that since we got to Saigon in mid February, we’ve essentially been traveling through spring weather, sometimes a little warmer, sometimes cooler, but always pretty temperate. Not so here: there is no spring in the Gulf of Thailand. There’s sun and rain, and we had a fair amount of both. The rain, though, this time of year at least, comes in intense but relatively short bursts so even on a day with heavy rain you get plenty of sun.

We first came to Koh Samui in January 2014 and, as countless tourists before us, found it to be a spectacularly beautiful island. So, as we were looking for a place to lay back, rest Mark’s knee, and celebrate his 50th birthday, Koh Samui leapt to mind. And after nine days here we’re confident it was a good choice.

What do you do for nine days on Koh Samui? Not a lot, to be honest. The first four days we splurged at the W Resort on the north coast of the island, celebrating Mark’s birthday. It was a bit of a strange experience insofar as we weren’t really that crazy about the resort as a whole or the beach there, but we loved our villa with great views of the Gulf. So you rent scooters and go out for lunch at Fisherman’s Village, maybe go back there for dinner, but mostly just hang around the pool and read. Very luxurious.

Then we headed south down the island to Rocky’s, a beautiful but much more affordable resort near Lamai Beach. We found this just a lot more comfortable, friendlier, more accessible. The woman who did the design obviously has a great eye and great attention to detail; it was a place where you were always noticing another beautiful touch. And speaking of nice touches, once a week the management at Rocky’s sponsors a one-hour cocktail party, giving guests a chance to mingle and chat and, of course, drink. We met a bunch of fun Brits on the island for a wedding.

The only slight disadvantage to Rocky’s is that, like the W, it didn’t have a very nice beach. Or, more specifically, the beach was nice but the swimming was all but impossible; very shallow for a long time and lots and lots of rocks (thus the name of the resort!). There’s an easy solution to a problem like that, though: rent scooters and head to Chaweng Beach, just a little north. This was where the backpacker set “discovered” Samui back in the 1970s and while it’s grown up a lot since then – until 1970 there were no roads on the island at all – the beach itself is still spectacular. We’d spent lazy afternoons when we were here a year ago, and after trying some of the other places on the island we decided it really was perfect for us.

One of the great things about returning to a place like this, and having great records of where we ate and all that, is that we could go back to the same place on the beach with spectacular beach chairs that they rent out for about $6.25 a day, per person. It’s a beach restaurant called “Eat Sense,” which really doesn’t make sense but we loved their slogan: “A perfect combination of good and delicious.” (If “Eat Sense” sounds like an odd name, our favorite restaurant in Fisherman’s Village was called “Starfish & Coffee.” Weird.) At any rate, Eat Sense has big, comfy chairs and big umbrellas to sit under. So the last two days, finally, we were back in bliss.

And that’s pretty much it. Mark turned 50 and finished his massive Ken Follett trilogy. I worked through a history of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and did a lot of running. We had some great meals and watched a few great rainstorms. And we relearned a lesson we (should) know well: location, location, location. We’ve stayed at three different resorts on Koh Samui, now, all of them a bit distant from the best beach on the island because we liked the look of the resort. Next time we come here – and there will be a next time – we’ll probably stay in Chaweng, since it is one of the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever found.

Next stop, Bangkok, and then off to Bhutan!

A funny thing about Bangkok. It’s a huge, intense, sometimes overwhelming Asian city. Eight million people crammed into a city with streets that could probably handle two million people. Lots to like about it and lots of reasons to think you’ll never come back. But it’s such a transportation hub for Southeast Asia, and we love Southeast Asia, so we keep ending up back here.

Our goal for this part of the winter is to explore Vietnam, but the best flight to the region was into Bangkok. When Mark’s brother Pat and his wife Jenny found out we were going to be spending a few days in Bangkok they said “Hey, why don’t we come over and join you?” So we spent five days re-discovering everything we like about Bangkok.

Had Mark & I been there on our own we probably would have been pretty boring, but Pat & Jenny got us out being tourists again and we had a great time. We stayed at a hotel right on the Chao Phraya River – a main thoroughfare through the city – so we spent a lot of time up and down the river. We toured the temples and other buildings that make up the Royal Palace, or at least the parts we could get to through the crowds. We hired a long bow boat to take us through the locks and up some of the canals that run through the city. And we ate lots of great Thai food. The breakfast buffet at the hotel, on an outdoor patio along the river, was a special treat. Most people ate inside and while we were grateful they left us room outside to eat we couldn’t remotely imagine why they would eat inside; it’s not as though it was cold or anything in Bangkok.

We arrived in Thailand back on October 10 – spent some time in Bangkok and then headed southeast to Koh Samet on the Gulf of Thailand. We discovered it was still rainy season so instead of spending more Thai beach time went through Cambodia and Laos for a couple months. Then it was back to Bangkok to get our visas for Myanmar. After biking in Myanmar for two weeks it was back to Bangkok again for a couple days of errands before heading southeast first along the Gulf and then across the peninsula to the Andaman Sea where we spent the last week in Ao Nang, just outside of Krabi.

Part of what’s so crazy about all that is that, while we spent nearly six weeks in Thailand, I still feel as though we just scratched the surface. Lots of beaches and islands we didn’t get to, and we didn’t travel north at all (we’d already been to both Chang Mai and Chang Rai on an earlier trip, but as usual when on vacation we didn’t have enough time to see them properly). That’s another good data point for answering the question of whether we’re going to get bored or tired of traveling like this, or if we think we’re going to run out of places to go.

Hardly. We’ve just firmed up plans to visit with our old Cambridge neighbors Bart & Ann & Wil in Bali for a week in April, meaning that we’ll spend a full six months in Southeast Asia before we head back to Europe for the spring and summer. And there will be enormous pieces that we won’t have seen, like most of Indonesia (where I could easily spend four months island hopping), Vietnam, the rest of Thailand, the Philippines, East Timor. To say nothing of New Guinea and the islands of the South Pacific that we’re missing. How we’re ever going to have time for Africa or Australia or Central Asia remains a mystery.

A few words about our last week in Thailand. We took a boat from Koh Samui to the mainland and then a bus to Krabi and a tuk-tuk to Ao Nang. Ao Nang makes no pretense of being a real Thai town – it’s a place for tourists who want to be on the beach. Unfortunately our first experience there wasn’t very good; our first morning we took the 20-minute walk from our resort to the beach and it was ugly. The tide was w-a-y out and it just looked bad. It definitely improved over time, though, and eventually we got into the swing of things. There are some beautiful karst outcroppings in the area and of course the beautiful, warm sea. It makes you wonder why anyone lives north of maybe the Rio Grande… And then there was some great Indian food, so we ended up pretty happy.

But now we’re done with Thailand. We’ve discovered Air Asia, a super-discount carrier here – there’s almost no legroom whatsoever, and they don’t give you so much as water, but the fares are cheap – so yesterday we caught a flight down to Singapore. We’ll spend three days here and then join up with Mark’s father and brother to spend 10 days moving up the Malaysian peninsula. We’ll probably spend more time in peninsular Malaysia after they leave and then head over to Borneo where, since we’re retired, we hope to avoid the headhunters.