From Brisbane to Cayman

So it has been a while since I posted anything. It has been a few very busy months. As I write this post I am sitting in The Courtyard Marriot Hotel on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean waiting for a response to a job interview. The previous post was submitted from our apartment in Brisbane.

Having left Brisbane on 10 June (Tobias birthday) we made our way to Thailand. Here we spent three weeks doing pretty much nothing. The majority of time we were at the Holiday Inn Resort on Koh Phi Phi Don (about 8 x 2.5 km and the shape of an H), a fantastic island paradise off the southern coast of Thailand.

The resort had all the essentials for the making of a relaxing vacation. Staying within the bounds of the resort you could be forgiven for thinking that this was an island of perfection. However, just outside the resort was the island’s sea gypsy population and other less exclusive resorts giving a more realistic picture of the status of the island. In addition, every morning from around 6 an army of workers would clean the beach allocated to the Holiday Inn resort visitors. Upstream from the resort various rubbish would drift downstream during the night littering the otherwise beautiful beach. Litter in the water seems to be a general problem in the island region. According to Majken who visited the area 11 years ago, it was also problem back then. No matter where you are in the island region you find rubbish. The tsunami may have played a role, but it is unfortunate that locals (and tourists) are not more concerned with this development and have been educated in environmental protection.

During our stay we also managed to visit Phi Phi Don’s sister island Phi Phi Lei. Lei is uninhabited except for the Viking Cave which is guarded to protect the nests of the cave swift.

They are renowned for building nests with a unique chemical mix needed to produce the Chinese delicacy - Bird's Nest Soup. It is also on this island you find the world famous beaches Loh Samah and Maya Bay. The Beach was filmed here.

While the beaches in Thailand are fantastic the main Beach here on Cayman, seven mile beach, is just as impressive and impeccably clean. Despite its name it is only about 5.5 miles long. The stretch of land making up seven mile beach is the most developed and expensive area of Cayman and houses most of the island's luxury resorts and hotels.

I think the job interview went well. Cayman Island could prove to be a good place to live.