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Published: December 7th 2008
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Doug on a bike
Doug on his bike from bens guest house---somewhere on a main road after visiting the shopping centre Last entry we ended saying we were going to spend an extra day in chiang mai...We stayed at a different guest house, outside of the old city which was very nice as they gave us bicycles to use. We cycled around a 'bit' and got to know the area. Found a large shopping mall,carrefour, with an equivalent to our game shop, we did some grocery shopping then made our way home and to the night market. The market is really huge! lots of shirts and jerseys watches etc...but being on a tight budget we did not do too much shopping. For our last day in chiang mai we planned to visit the zoo before catching a bus to chumphon.
We walked to the bus terminal and bought tickets to bangkok, left our luggage in the bus companies offices and caught a local bus to the zoo. Entrance was 520baht, luckily it was buy one get one free. The zoo is huge and on the side of a mountain so its was very hilly!!! It was a nice way to end off our time in chiang mai.
We got on the bus to bangkok at 8pm and arrived in bangkok
Chiang mai zoo
Us outside the chiang mai zoo at about 7am. We then had to figure a way to get to chumpon as the busses to the south left from a different station. After much walking and confusion we found a mini bus to take us to the southern station. We had our first experience of a lady-boy sitting next to us in the taxi. By luck we managed to find a bus that was leaving in ten minutes, unfortunately we did not have enough local currency...but they gave us a discount 😊. We left pennyless and survived on a packet of oreos for the next 7 hours until we arrived in chumphon.
In chumphon we made our way to a guest house we had read about,run by a very helpful lady who sold tickets for the catamaran that would take us to ko tao, the island we wanted to see. We left for the island the next afternoon on the lomprayah express catamaran. The trip was...well to say the least bumpy! We arrived 2hours later both feeling a bit green and worse for wear. Now we had to find accomodation. After lots of calling around we walked to a nearby resort in Jam Son bay. We
koh tao-jamson bay
view from our first nights accomodation at jam son bay were the only guests so got a pretty good room for 400baht with a direct view of the ocean and about 15m to the 'beach', we had a good nights rest here.
We wanted to find a place with a decent stretch of beach so once again after phoning around we had a very...very long walk over various headlands until we came to Sai Tong resort where we found 'accomodation' for 150baht a night. It was a shack, with a sort of bed and a fan. This time less than 10metres from a beach 😊 Here we spent the next 5 days lying on the beach, making sand castles,snorkeling and reading our books. The snorkeling was really good as you could literally just walk out your door into the ocean and look down and see the fish at your feet. The main town was a 40min walk away so we tried to minimize our trips there...in other words ate a loaf of bread with fruit jam, mackeral or cheese for breakfast and lunch on most days. We had some nice prepared meals from the resorts restaurant and from town, one of which was a place where you got a
Our bungalow
This is where we stayed for the 5 nights. plate of meat and veggies and noodle and you got to cook everything yourself.
After 6 days on the island it was time to head back to the mainland. We got a ticket on the Seatrans boat, which we thought may be a little more stable. We arrived about 2.5hours later in chumphon feeling a little ill again.
This brings us up to date. We are staying at the same guest house (Suda guest house) and have decided to spend an extra day in chumphon before heading off to krabi.
Doug is feeling a little sick, blocked sinus' and what a mission to try get medication here, there are a milllion pharmacies but none know what to give you so we went to a hospital where they too could not really help...but we did find out that some of our common medication in south africa is illegal here (Sinutab) so had to settle on some alternatives.
Tomorrow we will leave to krabi in the afternoon and spend around a week in the area before heading back to bangkok for two days.
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