Thailand : Eyewitness Travel Guide
Koh Phangan is Thailand’s fifth biggest island and without doubt one of the Kingdom’s most beautiful. It was the favorite island of Thailand’s most beloved former King, Rama V and remains hugely popular today with both Thais and foreign nationals. The reason for this popularity is in large part down to the beauty of the unspoiled nature on the island.
Koh Phangan was first permanently settled by monks 600 years ago who realized the spiritual significance of the island. Since then the island has flourished – first from fishing and coconut plantations and second from tourism. Although the island has a small permanent population of just 14,000 the numbers of people on the island swells to over 20,000 when there is a full moon and tourists flock to Haad Rin for the world’s biggest regular beach party.
The hedonism and crowds of the Full Moon Party is in contrast to the normal mellow and relaxed pace of Koh Phangan. The island has just the right amount of roads: enough for convenience but not so many as to carve up nature. All but a few of the beaches have road access and mains electricity. The notable exceptions are Than Sadet, Haad Khom and Haad Yuan. These remote white sand beaches are backed by lush tropical forest and have become places for holistic centers and hippy enclaves.
Over 90% of Koh Phangan retains it tree cover. Much of the forest is protected by National Park status. The Land Office on Koh Phangan has been more sensible than on Koh Samui and has limited residential development. As a result valuable bio-diversity has been maintained and the island escapes the floods that blight Koh Samui every rainy season.
There is over 10 km of coral reef to explore along the west coast of Koh Phangan. Beaches like Haad Salad and Haad Yao have excellent snorkeling. The best spot to see marine life, however, is at Koh Ma. It is a small islet joined to the mainland by a sand bar. The area is Koh Phangan’s only marine park and is host to a variety of corals and fish.
Recently luxury hotels have been built on Koh Phangan; most notably Rasananda and Santhiya Resort on Thong Nai Pan Noi. The hotels are a big success because people are happier to pay a premium for luxury accommodation if they are surrounded by natural beauty not traffic, concrete and noisy bars. The nature on Koh Phangan remains the island’s greatest asset, and maintaining the integrity of nature on the island is the key to the continual prosperity of the place.
 Places Rated Almanac: The Classic Guide for Finding Your Best Places to Live in America It’s arrived! For year’s now I have subscribed to International Living Magazine and each year around this time they release the issue which presents their top picks for the Best Places to Live. It’s actually called, the International Living Quality of Life Index.
This year the list seemed to change quite a lot. In previous years I’ve seen trends and moderate movement up and down the list but this year 5 of the top ten weren’t in the top ten last year. That’s quite a change up. According to I.L. they cleaned up their old databases and added some new ones which probably accounts for the shift in results.
Anyhow, I know you are dying to know, What are the Best Places for Quality of Life according to I.L.?
Well, I won’t drag this out any longer – to my big surprise the United States jumped in the ranking from 7th and got top spot this year!
Second place went to New Zealand who moved up from 5th place. Australia was second last year but isn’t even in the top ten this year – they dropped to 13th. France was #1 in 2010 and dropped to fourth this year.
Anyhow, you can read all about online. One of the best analysis I’ve seen of the list takes place over at the blogspot blog titled, Cheapest Places to Live.
The author presents the list and then looks at each country individually over the coming weeks. He tries to add some new perspective and looks for the cheapest places to live within each country and also adds a twist by examining which are the Best Places to retire.
As it has in all years the International Living Index also looks at quality of life from a different perspective. They break down data into these major categories – Cost of Living; Culture; Economy; Environment; Freedom; Health; Infrastructure; Safety and Climate.
Then they rank hundreds of countries on a scale of 1 to 100 in each category. The final average score gives the overall ranking but you can still look at each individual category score which is quite revealing too.
For example, the U.S. got the highest overall score at 86.43 but on the environment only scored 51. Once again if you check out the, Cheapest Places to Live blog the author goes into the details and breaks it down over the coming weeks, country by country.
The Confidence Plan: How to Build a Stronger You
Confidence is the internal trait that is key to most success in life. If you believe in yourself, you’ll be more likely to meet your goals in you career, relationships, hobbies, and other domains.
Think about the reasoning for this: if you believe, deep down, that you are great and worthy person, you won’t give up easily when the inevitable downswings and roadblocks appear.
If you are down on yourself, however, you will give up at the slightest sign of adversity, causing you to never maximize your potential.
If you are low in confidence, you need to improve this trait. Here are some brief ways to improve self esteem and confidence that may help:
1) Use positive affirmations and kill negativity.
Your unconscious mind takes what you feed it, so if you cram it with garbage, it will let that diffuse through your mind. Focus on the positive – you don’t want to become ignorant, so focus on ‘realistic optimism.’ In other words, be somewhat pessimistic short term, but optimistic in the long term. This is the best balance in your approach.
2) Fix your external appearance
Change anything that bothers you about yourself. Lose weight, work out, get better clothes, get a better haircut – do whatever you can to make you feel good on the outside and inside.
3) Gain some sort of skill.
Having the ability to do something very well can be your ‘magic bullet’ in the world. If you can sing, you’ll have something to fall back on when you’re down on yourself, for instance.
4) Find positive friends.
Don’t surround yourself with negativity in the external world, just as you want to purge it from your internal world.
5) Eat right and exercise.
A lot of depression can be rooted back to poor habits of taking care of yourself, so make sure you keep those positive chemicals flowing by taking care of your body and mind.
Epoxy Shield garage floor coating
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The garage floor is perhaps the hardest part of the home to keep clean. Unless you have changed your garage into a living space then you will either be using it for storage, your cars or as a workshop.
Regardless of what you use your garage for the floor is going to take quite a bit of abuse. The garage floor is subjected to a lot of heavy wear and tear, and a range of spills from oil or grease, to gasoline and coffee, or the sandwich you had for lunch.
Because a garage floor is normally made from a porous concrete any thing that falls onto an untreated surface will no doubt turn in to a permanent stain.
Some of the stains that appear can be dealt with using a special stain remover for concrete, and also, oil spills and such like can be collected with sand or even cat litter. In a lot of cases this is not possible and the best solution is to install a good garage floor coating before the stains come.
The best garage floor coatings are normally made from latex, epoxy or polyurethane, which is basically a liquid plastic.
The best one out of these choices though, is epoxy garage floor coating because of its resistance to heat. However latex and polyurethane are good alternatives. Latex is really cheap, and polyurethane gives off a really glossy finish that a lot of people like.
If you want to try and kill two birds with one stone you could mix epoxy with polyurethane to get that nice look, but also have the heat resistance at the same time.
To get the best garage floor coating when using latex you have to to apply a primer before the latex then put a floor sealer on top of it to get complete protection.
The job of painting the floor is not harder than painting an average wall, if you do what the instruction say on the tin then you wont have any problems and your garage floor will be protected.
 Overcome Fear of Driving
CLICK IMAGE FOR DETAILS One of the most common phobias in the western world but surprisingly not so much talked about is the fear of driving.
Millions of people even those on the road right now suffer or have suffered from this condition to some degree.
The condition ranges from mere unpleasant feeling about driving to very serious phobia where the sufferer can barely get into the car.
A driving phobia can be very debilitating and embarrassing, it can and has ruined social lives, careers and families of people suffering from it.
People fail to overcome their driving fear mainly because they are too embarrassed to seek help and choose to find ways to live with it rather than treat it.
Unfortunately, this is a condition that will worsen with time and unless it is addressed in good time, it becomes such a big problem.
You can turn your life around by overcoming this form of fear once and for all, you should not be ashamed to seek help on this issue. There are several self-help strategies you can use to overcome the fear of driving, the most common and effective being those that are used to deal with stress as well. They include visualization, meditation and relaxation techniques.
Once you understand more about the fear of driving, you will stand a better chance of dealing with it and treating it once and for all.
Different people get scared of driving under different places and circumstances.
The most common include the fear of driving over high bridges, in tunnels, intersections, freeways and highways, busy streets, traffic, hills and cliffs, at night, in the rain and in mist and fog to name but a few.
Despite this, the remedies used to overcome one form of fear often works with another. This means that you can overcome any form of fear of driving, no matter how or where you suffer it.
 Crazy Time: Surviving Divorce and Building a New Life Has your quality of life been impacted by a divorce? If so, it is very likely that feelings of low self-esteem have surfaced from the divorce. Many who have suffered from a divorce will need to deal with overcoming low self esteem. If this describes you, then actively pursue ways to boost your self esteem.
You need to embed within your thought process the given truth that you are a person of worth and your life has value. Consider these tips to help you meet the challenge of overcoming low self esteem.
Open up to your family and friends
You feel like closing yourself off from the world. This is perhaps one of the worse things you can do. The support, comfort and love of your family and friends can have a huge impact on helping you to deal with this issue.
Don’t feel you need to be perfect
If you feel like you need to live up to the expectations of others, essentially be perfect, then you need to squash these feelings. You need to repeatedly tell yourself that you do not need to be perfect. It is impossible to be perfect and feeling as though you need to be will certainly have an impact on your ability to move forward in your life.
Have positive thoughts about yourself
If you cannot perceive yourself as a person who has great value and worth, then you definitely need to work on boosting your self-esteem. Unless you can identify with this concept, then your self-esteem has been impacted. Practice looking into a mirror and then repeatedly say things of encouragement regarding the person you are. Having a good positive view of yourself is vitally important.
Focus on the future
Although many of us wish we could change things in our past, this is not possible. The past is what it is. Put your energy into focusing on the direction you would like your life to move in the future. Should the desire to get your ex back arise, do not attempt to purse this desire until your self esteem is good.
 Drive Without Fear: The Insecure Driver's Guide to Independence (Click Image for Details) Unwillingness to drive because of fear is a common condition that affects many people.
This fear can be as a result of different things including memories of past experiences of near misses and accidents especially from childhood. In most people, this fear does not end when driving stops, the stress often extends to a person’s family and professional life.
Research shows that anxiety driving is a mental disorder that bears a number of symptoms including psychological and physical symptoms. These symptoms are dizziness, the feeling of losing control, difficulty in breathing, chest and stomach pains, light headedness, shaking, high blood pressure, breathing difficulties and blurry vision among others.
Although this is a condition that affects many people, young females and the elderly are the most likely to suffer from it.
The severity of the condition is determined by the causes of the fear and the period which the person has been suffering from it. It often starts as a harmless worry but with time manifests itself to fear and eventually anxiety with full-blown panic attacks.
It is best to deal with this problem as soon as the first signs show in order to get rid of it at manageable levels. There are several ways to get rid of fear of driving that involve natural self-help techniques and hypnosis.
However, before embarking on any form of remedy, it is wise to consult a doctor to determine whether there are any underlying medical conditions that may cause these symptoms.
A good remedy should not use medications but should aim at training the mind to deal with the fear and emotions from the mind and make the patient believe that nothing bad will come out of these fears.
Eventually, it is possible to get rid of this problem through relaxation or visualization techniques. The most important thing is to be confident and believe that this is a problem that can be overcome.
 A thank you note is always appreciated The self improvement world has long waxed lyrical about the benefits of gratitude. Thinking about what is good about your life rather than dwelling on the negative has been assigned with all sorts of magical powers from attracting better things into your life to getting more done.
There’s probably some truth in that somewhere.
But why stop there?
Instead of just thinking about how grateful you are for the good things in your life why not let those who help make your life good know how much you appreciate them.
You don’t have to go over the top if that’s not your style but a little thank you here and there will not go amiss – and you’ll be surprised how much that makes a difference to those you are thanking.
Examples of what you could do…
- a handwritten note to thank a friend for lunch
- a small gift to thank someone for a referral
- letting an email contact know how much you appreciated them passing on a resource you needed
- giving your family a hug
- adding a comment to a blog or a forum for a post you’ve found useful
- thanking your partner for a good meal or for picking up the dry cleaning
- letting your kids know you’re pleased when they are helpful
- adding a little note when you pay your bills “Thank you for the electricity. Much appreciated” (Well, don’t you think that would make whoever deals with your account at the other end smile for a moment?)
Take a little time to think about who and what you are taking too much for granted and start weaving a bit more thanks and appreciation into your day.
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