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Today I headed for the island of Ko Samet with John and Abbie, it would be their last glimpse of paradise before heading back to England. Well dependant upon what your feelings are towards paradise anyway, your either a Hunstanton person or your not. Although to be fair a bag of Hunstanton fish and chips would go down a treat right now. Instead I've settled for a bag of green pea crisps...NICE!

We took a taxi to the fishing port of Ban Phe and then took a speed boat across to the island, it took no more than about 3 hours to reach from Bangkok. The island is about 6km across and is well tuned for tourism with it's bungalow style accomodation throughout the island, a wide selection of bars and resturants, and there are also motorbikes and quad bikes for rent.

In regards to accomodation I went seperate ways from John and Abbie as I had my travellers budget to contend with. They stayed in what seemed like the ritz of the island with their classy air con, TV, fridge and en suite bathroom. I'm not bitter though as I had my very own shanty hut with a cardboard like matress accompanied by two cats that were laying on it as I entered the room. They could have been up to anything in that room, gambling and all sorts. Thankfully when I asked them to leave they were quite reasonable and left in a very sound and cat like manor.

In the evening me and John hired a motorbike a piece, I wasn't to sure about the idea to start with but after about a 20 second crash course I learnt that riding one is a piece of piss. We explored the island for a bit and then went for a rather suave meal.

To get to the resturant in which we dined at you have to ring a bell and then a boat is sent out to collect you and take you out to a sort of rafthouse a couple of hundred metres out into the sea. When you sit down to eat you sit at a transparent table and dangle your legs freely over the ocean where you can see the fish swimming below. I found that I wasted quite a bit of my food feeding the fish as it was quite a lark watching them all scrap for it. Although prawn tails didn't seem to go down to well, they spat them out quite swiftly. The resturant also had a tank with a few sharks in it, but they were only baby ones so it was nothing to get to worked up over.

The following day I said my farewells to John and Abbie. it would be the last time I would see them until Christmas. The rest of the afternoon I spent tearing round the island in mostly dodgy terrain on my motorbike.

I stayed on the island a few more days mostly chilling at the beach and talking to internationaly random people and hanging out with beach dogs. If your not a fan of dogs then this definately isn't the place for you as there are swarms of them. All very docile and friendly towards humans though. One night a pack of 6 escorted me back to my shanty hut and a couple slept on my porch the night and followed me to breakfast the next day. A fed them a few scraps and I guess this how the majority of them get by out here.

One of the bizarest things I encounted on the island was a certain donut, this specific sugar coated donut I was to taste was no ordinary sugar coated donut, for internally it was riddled with garlic sauce...yup that's right ... GARLIC SAUCE!!! This came as quite a shock to me considering I was expecting something more along the lines of jam. The whole ordeal left me quite confused and my thoughts and feelings on the matter are still distorted at time of going to press.

Once again met a great bunch of people here, both locals and farang and leave feeling that one day a return trip will be in order.


***********CHECK OUT MY PREVIOUS LAOS BLOG, I'VE ADDED A VIDEO OF A LAOS BAND DOING A COVER OF PINK FLOYDS ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL***************

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