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Published: June 18th 2010
Chaing mai the first time
Evenings of drinking and fun!Having assured you all in my last blog that there was absolutely nothing to worry about in Thailand as it didn't really appear to be affecting tourists when we arrived we quickly discovered we were wrong!
Not that i personally saw any trouble at all, other travelers in our hostel had come into occasional contact with violent riots with people throwing rocks and fires being lit, but the main inconvenience was the curfew imposed a couple of days after we got there.
Chiang Mai was the best place i visited in Thailand, the people didn't try to rip you off too much and were generally really friendly, it was cheap and we met some great people. Luckily we visited the night market before the 8 o'clock curfew was put in place, which held a wonderful array of all the stuff you never really needed but can convince yourself otherwise long enough to buy it.
Our first full day in Chiang Mai we headed out on a cooking course where we were first led round a market and shown the various ingredients (i now know why they don't wash eggs before selling them here and why
Lead Chef
I did that :) just didn't get a good picture of it the small ones are the best), before heading back to cook a variety of dishes, it was an awful lot to take in so I'm not making any promises but hopefully I'll still be able to cook a good red Thai curry when i get back along with sweet and sour chicken and coconut soup. It was a really good day and we returned stuffed having eaten all the food we cooked.
The next day the curfew was put in place which destroyed our plan to go to the infamous reggae bar but nonetheless we had a brilliant night getting drunk with our new friends from the hostel Sam, Joe, mode (Belgium), Joelle(dutch) and Emily (french) joined later by Georgina and her boyfriend we stayed up till the early hours of the morning, much to the annoyance of the night guard, playing wolf and drinking. It was a great night and we made plans to meet again at Julies in a few days when they returned from a trek and we returned from Pai, yes we definitely took the easy option!
Pai Pai was another extremely chilled place, very quiet due to it being low season, it soon felt as
Pai
Not as lively as this sign makes it out to be but great fun nonetheless if we had met every traveler in the entire town!
When we arrived after a stomach turning journey of 762 bends (not a miss type really 762 in three and a half hours) we tagged along with Omri, Jack and Bart who'd been recommended a hostel. What we didn't realize was that it was on the opposite side of town, about a twenty minute walk and then up a rather long hill so by the end us girls were dwindling behind wondering if we really needed those extra shoes and clothes that made our bags so heavy, the conclusion, yes!
One annoying point was that after months of hearing 'Lady you want tuk tuk' so often that it becomes background noise, where was the bloody tuk tuk's when i wanted a lift up that hill!
With not a lot to do in Pai we rented bikes (mainly to avoid doing the hill any more times) and went to various bars in the evenings (not on the bikes) being promised that this bar would get busy at around 12 that one at 1 and finally bamboo bar at around 3. You can therefore imagine the situation where those bars only got
Hells angels two
Riding around pai busy because at roughly those times us 6 and the hilariously funny Irish crowd rocked up at those bars making it busy.
Then when recovering from a Sangsom Whiskey hangover the next day we all headed over to 'fluid' pool the only other thing to do in the town!
After a couple of days of this we were ready to head back to Chaing Mai where we met up with everyone including a friend from Vietnam, drunk some more, visited some temples, a waterfall, a small village and popped to the cinema to see iron man 2! I also went to have a Thai massage, but didn't expect it to be quite as violent as it was, already a little bruised from clumsily falling over, having a small lady stand on me pull me around and pummel me left me feeling like I'd been through a round with Mike Tison.
Southern Thailand; Beauty and the thief's We got a flight to Phuket on the 26th, it killed two birds avoiding Bangkok where the majority of the trouble was happening and avoiding 30 odd hours of bus and train journeys.
Arriving in Phuket we were dropped of at Patong, nasty!
Our beach hut
We were so close to the sea it was amazing and this is what we woke up to The entire place was full of prostitutes they were everywhere you looked with sleazy men walking round with one on either arm, it was also overpriced and a little trashy not helped by it's empty appearance.
After one day here we got the bus and boat to Koh Samui, unfortunately almost all of the peoples bags on the second mini bus got rummaged through and stuff stolen from, mine even had locks on which they picked in order to get into the bag. Luckily i didn't have anything of huge importance in my bag but they still stole a camera of one guy, a travel clock of another, some jeans of the french man and the day bag with my broken ipod in it from mine. I only found out later that it's actually a fairly common scam in the area and the drivers sometimes have kids hidden with torches in the vehicle who go through your stuff.
As you can imagine it was a little disillusioned that we finally arrived at Koh Phangan a couple of days before full moon but Anni Owen and Allison soon arrived to cheer us up, the craziest people around we ended up going
Private bay in 5 star resort
This was the most amazing place on koh tao i arrived here needing recuperation after a couple hour walk and just used their bay the fish were so tame they just swam around your occasionally nibbling your feet. to pool parties getting fluorescent paint to decorate white t-shirts and generally having a good time.
I'm not entirely sure whether full moon lived up to the hype, we had a great time took our own saucepans rather than using the traditional buckets and that got us more attention than any ridiculous outfit could have! People tried to steal them, buy them and the locals just laughed at them. We spent a lot of the evening dancing on coolers behind one of the makeshift bars on the beach wielding the saucepans and fielding off undesirables.
We also made a trip to mushroom mountain but didn't do any this time 😞, most probably for the best when i consider the state of the people we met that had done them! Full moon was crazy with it's fire skipping rope, fire slide, trance music and designated passing out zone but due to the low season and the political climate putting a lot of people of coming it wasn't as busy as it could have been.
After full moon things quickly quietened down on the island with the tension that had been building evaporating in a sea of hangovers and lost memories. Just
Koh tao
Taken on the way back from the private bay like everyone else we left our luxurious resort with it's beach side bungalow and two pools, more luxury than we've had for the rest of the entire trip, and headed to Koh Tao.
Koh Tao Our original plan had been to do a padi open water dive course here after full moon but the party was put back a day due to a Buddhist festival and as a result we didn't have time, however I'm still glad we got to enjoy the islands beauty as it's by far the nicest island. A day spent sneaking into a five star resort, having the most amazing aromatherapy massage and taking a pleasant stroll back along the beach stopping only to listen to live music and lay staring at the stars or watch a movie was most probably my favorite day of the entire week.
After only a few days on this amazing island it was off back to Phuket to catch our flight to Malaysia!
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