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Published: December 29th 2008
Arrival in thailand, Phuket, Ko samui and Ko Phangan
Well, what can I say. If australia was relaxed and a nice way to travel with a few crazy parties inbetween, thailand is like being shot out of a cannon (with no health and safety forms to sign) into a tropical climate, sold a fake watch , nearly ran over by some thai lunatic on a scooter and all on a beach with thumping hardhouse. Its absolutely insane to say the least.....and then some.
My opinions and experiences so far have been based around the backpacking and tourist areas and as such mostly involve stories of danger at cheap prices and unbelievable practices.Im perfectly sure there are many places in thailand for families to go to but i have skipped all of them.
The first place i landed was in phuket and from the beggining i can happily say it was an experience. As soon as you walk out of the airport you are swamped by people asking if you want a taxi, and by asking i mean they surround you at once nd all shout taxi, which is then followed by the obvious language barrier! Luckily my hostel was
well known to the taxi drivers and i managed a fare of 400 baht to the street. But it wasnt that simple, I was given a ticket stating which taxi i was to go in and told to go and find it. Now if you can imagine a tescos car park on a saturday with all the cars the same model, colour and decals, only with a small number on the side (about 3 inches across) denoting your cab, including people running around shouting in thai and tourists nearly breaking down in tears with confusion you are somewhere near what its like trying to find your taxi. Its complete chaos. Thankfully after near 20 minutes and alot of swearing, I found my cab and was introduced to the sheer horror that is the roads in thailand. By comparison phuket is fairly tame but still, mopeds flying on the wrong side of the road, overtaking, undertaking all on blind corners, cars that can barely reach 20kmh going uphill being overtaken on blind hill corners by coaches thundering at 100kmh, its truly insane and the roadsigns leave a hell of a lot to be desired, (infact one english translation read “Drive Fast
Drive Safe Careful Drink”)
Upon reaching my hostel i was pleasantly surprised to find it still open. Now generally, hostels in Australia and other countries have a room with maybe 3 bunk beds or less and shared bathrooms, the hostel in thailand seemed to have a series of cubicles all seperated by partitions with some people even having to sleep in the corridor, but no-one minded, it was cheap, simple and the staff were incredibly helpful. The toilets though were the first culture shock to me, they wernt the hole in the ground type but infact, the entire cubicle doubled as a shower, which to me was brilliant as i could go to the toilet and have a shower at the same time. But interestingly, no toilet roll was present, this is due to the pipes in thailand not being big enough to cope with toilet paper, so any toilet paper has to go into the bin next to the toilet, or you can opt for the hose. Now.....that was an interesting experience, somewhat like using a pressure washer on your arse. But still.....it did the job!
Upon my first day in thailand i discovered the sheer value
of the country, in the tourist areas, taxis or tuk tuks were expensive by thai standards (400 baht for a 1 hour ride from phuket town to patong beach) but incredibly cheap by uk standards!! Other items such as a simple bottle of water costs only 7 baht, which equates to about 15p. Now the real kicker, is thai red bull, the stuff is almost syrup like, and comes in a medicine type bottle, and only costs 10 baht! I would also say its 2-3 times stronger than british red bull, and makes you bounce off the walls like you wouldnt believe!
Seeing as i only had one day, i intended to spend it as cheaply as possible to i took the local bus (30baht) down to Patong Beach. Now this is the main hub for tourists in phuket and it definitely looks like it! Sadly it has a very seedy undertone with many go go bars and fat old white men with stunning thai women on their arm. Also the beach can best be described as more deck chairs than sand, it has been said to me this has been done so theres literally no space to put
your towels and you have to rent a deck chair, sad but probably true.
While in Patong i managed to find a stall selling near fake watches, upon asking if they had any rolex's, the scene quickly turned into something similar to a movie, i was taken to a market, through a cafe, through a locked door and into a backroom where i can quite honestly say i have never seen so many high quality replicas, if he hadnt told me they were fake i wouldve said they were stolen, so i promptly brought 5.
Sadly I had to leave Phuket which is a shame as i would have liked to have seen phi phi island and james bond island, but i should be returning to meet some swedish friends again!
My flight to Koh Samui took off around 9.30 (in what can only be described as a toy plane!) and landed around 10.30, at which point i was greeted by one of the most tropical looking airports ever. The airport consisted of a runway, leading onto essentially a hut, with a baggage reclaim in it. It actually reminded more of something id see in Barbados with all
the palm trees but i was quickly reminded it was thailand by the shouts of Taxi!!! I managed to buy an all in bus and ferry trip to koh phangan for only 260 baht. The bus was loaded with people and then the aisle was loaded with luggage to the point you couldnt stand up out of your chair, which just had most of us laughing apart from the package holiday tourists who claimed it “An outrage!”
Once we arrived at the pier i started chatting to a few other backpackers who had been to the island and my excitement only grew more, to be frank, it was my kind of island!!!
Once on the island (after a 2 hour wait on the beach for the ferry....couldve been a worse place to wait! Lol) i took a cab to my resort, and what a place, cheap as chips at 350 baht, and even though i got a bungalow at the back of the resort i was only 30 feet from the beach, I promptly put my feet up and had a beer Chang put onto my room bill (beer chang is 6.4% and comes in a 640ml bottle and
costs roughly 70p....the brew of gods)
After this, i rented a scooter for the week and dropped in on the 2 swedes (andreas and mikael) for a beer or two before we went out to had rin beach for christmas eve, sadly it was a bit of a letdown as once we tried to go to another party, we had to pay and as we were all far too drunk we called it a night and went home.
Christmas day though was far more interesting. Me and the swedes hopped onto our bikes and did a motorcycle tour of the island (80kmh over potholed roads on a scooter is not fun) where we found several impressive beaches and nearly got run over a few times too. This was also the time i got to phone my parents for christmas day and it all got a bit emotional! This was quickly subsided by nearly getting run over several more times.
The christmas eve full moon party for me was utterly insane. Its a massive party on the beach but instead of buying beers you buy buckets, these buckets can contain anything from 500ml of whisky and coke to 500ml
of vodka and 2 redbulls, All i can remember is having 4 buckets. I later woke up floating in the sea with a black eye, bruised face, destroyed camera, and no money. Apparently there had been a large fight and it looked like i had been involved.
Never to dwell on the past, i popped to the pharmacy to ask for some ibuprofen, and as this is thailand i was given both valium, tramadol and an inflammatory gel that smelt like petrol.....all for a black eye. So generally for the past several days i have been heavily sedated lying on the beach...but very happy!
Luckily last night we went out to had rin again, and decided to try one of the infamous mushroom shakes you can buy for 500 baht, we intended to have a third each, and then go and watch some muay thai kickboxing but we ended up having one each and well....it went a bit weird from there. I managed to get lost at sea, even though i was on the beach and the other guys ended up attempting to play scrabble for several hours. Overall....an interesting time!
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Granny
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After this A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
What a read your 'Thailand' entry was!!!!! This is definately the script for the next James Bond film! What is impressive is that you are conscious long enough to write such a brilliant script!!! It sounds a huge experience BUT we missed you at Christmas and will be thinking of you as the year takes a turn into 2009 - off to play 'World monopoly' now with Alex and grandad - much safer than actually doing it!!??? HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!