All Thai'd Up

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Rob Writes

Day 10

We decided that the day following the scuba dive would be a day off. We had as long of a lie-in as we could without missing breakfast and then just hung around the hotel and watched a bit of TV until mid-afternoon. Apart from the stroll up and down the beach front I don't think we left the hotel all day actually, as we ended up in the hotel's restaurant for dinner too. The dinner was memorable because it was the most expensive meal we've had since we left, a couple of drinks, a beef massaman and a pad thai came to about £40. Ouch.

Day 11

The following day (now Wednesday) was a great day. We hired the motorbike again and rode all the way around to the other side of the island. It's tough going nearly an hour, two up, on a moped, really makes your arse sore. It shouldn't have taken an hour but we got lost a couple of times on the way.

We were heading to the southernmost point of the island and planned on hiring a kayak to cross over to Ko Ngam Beach.

Once we arrived we weren't entirely sure what to do, or even if we were in the right place. We could see the island where we needed to be, and there were a few kayaks dotted around but there was nothing particularly obvious that this was the place where you rented the kayaks. There weren't any other tourists either. Just a few kayaks, rubbish everywhere and a bloke sat cross-legged fixing a fishing net, but otherwise ignoring us completely. We took a walk around the coast-line to see if there was somewhere a little more telling but no, this must be the place,

We spoke to the man fixing the net and yea, this was the place. 200Bhat and you can rent the kayak to paddle over to Koh Ngam.

Now, I was a little worried about this. Last time I was on a kayak with Tina in Halong Bay (Vietnam) her arms stopped working almost immediately and I was paddling for two. Not only that but she was always steering the wrong way. We didn't have that far to go this time, but the water looked a bit choppy.

So in the kayak we get. Tina is up front. The backpack with all our stuff in, in the middle and me in the back, with the motorbike keys still in my pocket.

As soon as we pushed off shore and started paddling we hear the man shouting out to us. Something was wrong....Tina was holding her paddle the wrong way around. Of course she was.

The crossing took us about ten minutes. My arms were knackered, my abs were wondering what the fuck was going on. The backpack was soaked, although fortunately nothing important, and so were the keyless electronic motorbike keys that were still in my pocket and spent half the journey submerged in water. Fantastic. More on that later. Tina was still alive and kicking though, bonus.

We moored up (lol) and put all our clothes out to dry in the sun. There was a 200baht (foreigner price) national park fee we had to pay on arriving on the island.

There's no one here... Well, apart from a small family and a monkey.

Amazing, absolutely amazing. The family left about thirty minutes after we arrived at which point we had the island to ourselves

We spent the next hour or so in the sea swimming about. The water was very calm. It was a shame we didn't bring a snorkel really.

Just as we were about to leave Tina let out an almighty shriek. I was spinning around in circles wondering what the fuck was going on, thinking Tina was maybe getting eaten by a shark or something, but it turned out the monkey was trying to rob us. It had pulled our backpack off the bench we had left it on, and it was trying to get in! We swam/ran as fast as we could to try and scare it but it didn't really care. It casually walked away when we got within ten meters or so. It has taken our umbrella out of the bag and left it on the ground, but that was all. Cheeky monkey.

At that point we thought we had better leave. It was getting to 4pm now and we still had a kayak mission and motorbike ride back to the hotel, hopefully before it got dark.

The kayaking was a success, but again quite sore.

We got changed for the motorbike ride home and attempted to start the bike... nothing. Great. There were two potential problems here. The first being the keys got absolutely soaked, and the second? Well, I seemed to have left the ignition on. A flat battery maybe? We didn't know what to do, so we tried texting my brother who is a motorbike expert but he didn't reply in time as per usual. We were in the middle of nowhere and the only person near us was fishing net guy, who during the entire commotion of us trying to start the bike never raised his head from his net work.

Panic was setting in.

I sat on the bike. Tina, by coincidence tried to turn the ignition on again, and it worked!

Turns out, it wasn't the soaked keys or me being a twat leaving the ignition on, it was the seat mechanism. Me sitting on it made the seat squash down, which in turn allowed the bike to start. Must have been some kind of safety feature.

Thank the Lord.

So off we went back to the hotel to get showered and ready for dinner.

We were very hungry as we hadn't had any lunch. We found a restaurant on the internet which looked reasonably nice and set off for it on the motorbike. I don't know what we were thinking looking back, but we ordered four meals and a dessert. We might have been hungry, and Thailand is quite cheap, but that was daft. I don't think we ate half of it. In fact, we had to leave quite abruptly because Tina thought she was going to be sick. That might have been the warm sweet egg dessert thing we ordered though.

What a day.

Day 12

Thursday was another quiet one. Lie in, destroyed the breakfast buffet, watched TV until we felt better and then got our arses together early afternoon.

Tina went for a massage and I went out on the bike to tear up the Koh Chang countryside. It was quite good fun actually. The bike was significantly faster without Tina on the back. It had no problem going up the hills or anything. I stopped off at a few places on my travels, a Makro and then a hardware store (because man, tools, fire etc) and that was about it. I picked Tina up on the motorbike and whisked he away to dinner. We had to abandon dinner quite promptly again actually. A large family turned up who decided that they owned the restaurant, so fuck that.

And I think that was that for the day.

Day 13

Friday was a belter. Another motorbike fuelled adventure. This time we headed off to find a waterfall, the only free entry waterfall on the island. It's weird the things we decide we don't want to pay for, and waterfalls is one of them.

We did find it and fortunately for us there was no one there. Unfortunately though, probably because there was no fee to visit it, the place was in a little disrepair. It kind of looked like it was once a place that collected a fee, but no more. As such, we had to do a bit of climbing over some rocks to get to where we wanted to be, but fortunately it turned out to be pretty great, and again, we were the only people there!

That night was our last night so we properly splashed out. We found a £300 a night hotel and decided to eat in the restaurant there. The place was brand new, and the food was excellent. The bill was £65 though. Double ouch.

Day 14

(Additions by Tina)

Our last day was mixture of travel and sight seeing. Our flight back to Bangkok was at 1pm but our pick up to get to Tratt airport was at 9am! minibus, ferry and minibus again and we were there.

Once in Bangkok again, we had five hours to kill so we dropped our bags at a bag storage place for 200 bhat each and got the train into the centre. We had intended on going up the King Power tower during our Bangkok stay but never made it, so we decided we'd do this with our little amount of time we had. It took an hour to get to the centre and the tower cost us over £20 each to go to the top. The building is impressive and sticks out on the skyline as it has a very distinct look. It looks pixilated, or like something out of Minecraft. The sheer height of it from below was daunting. The lift to take you to the top was made up of screens that played a very weird cartoon that was of no interest. We assumed it would be a projection of the outside or something but no. We took a look around the floor that neared the top with floor to ceiling windows wrapped all the way around. The 360 view of Bangkok was amazing. Its so high, it makes you feel a bit queasy to go too near the window. But the best was still to come, the rooftop terrace was the star of the show and the 'Skywalk' . A whole section of the roof floor juts out over the edge of the building and is made entirely of glass. You are given special covers for your shoes and are free to walk, lie, jump on the glass for as long as you like. I went first as you aren't allowed to take cameras or phones or anything like that onto the glass, so Tina would take photos of me from the side. I managed it with a fair amount of ease. Looking down wasn't the easiest thing to do but I walked and kneeled on it. Tina was up next and she did not do well at all. She couldn't look down at all and freaked out when she tried.

We then had a cocktail each at something stupid like £8 each and sat on the roof terrace seats and looked out over the city before we had to sadly get the train back to the airport for what would be two very tiring and shitty flights!

And that's that.

I'm writing this on the plane home. I've been up for twenty hours and already I've been on a bus, boat, plane, another plane and I've still to catch a third. Only 12 more hours to go until we're home.

It’s been an amazing holiday. We have had such a good time and our love of Thailand continues. Will we manage to tear ourselves away next year, or will we be like those people that go to Benidorm every year (but Thailand). Who knows but we can’t wait for whichever it is!

The end.

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