Koh Tao

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So 3 weeks in Koh Tao turned into nearly a month. The island is incredible and so were all the people that i met. I arrived with an Austrian girl that i had met on the ferry frojm Chumphon and we decided to stay in a bungalow together until she left four days later. We stayed at O'Chai bungalows and they were lovely. After a few days i had met lots and lots of people from all over the world and it's true what everyone said to me, you will meet lots of people and never be on your own. I met a group of guys who had been on a diving course together and we hired an ATV (quad bike) between us to explore the island. It only took 15 mins to drive from one side to the other so it really is a tiny island. We saw some great beaches and even saw a monkey that was on a fishing boat with it's owner. we were lucky enough to see him come ashore and got to be really close to it. I also met a welsh guy and we decided to share a bungalow when the Austrian, Lizzie, moved on.

So i moved to a bungalow for 350 TBH which is about 7 pounds between us at the Blue Wind resort. I cannot reccommend this place highly enough and this is where i stayed for the rest of my time on the island. There's not much more to report about my time on the island except that i shared my time equally between lounging in my hammock and sitting on the beach. I got to know my neighbours who were cousins from Belgium called Suze and Guus. I spent most of my time with them and perfected the art of juggling with coconuts and beach tennis!

Unfortunately my delicate stomach took a bit of a battering from one of the restaurants we went to. I managed to get gastoenteritis and as a result spent 5 hours in hospital on a drip. It turns out it was some dodgy food that i have eaten due to the massive powercut we had and the food not being stored properly. So from now on i will be going veggie just to be on the safe side! But all is well now and i'm feeling hungry all the time which is definitely a good sign as i didn't eat anything for about five days. In future i will definitely be able to recognise the symptoms and fix the problem before it escalates.

So finally it was time to leave paradise and some amazing friends. I knew that leaving the UK would be hard with all the good-byes but i had never anticipate3d that there would be some equally as tough ones along the route of my travels. I got really close to the Belgians and i really do hope to meet up with them again in the future. Life long friends? I hope so! So i finally booked my ticket to leave the island at 9.15am on the 22nd August. After a bit of a mild panic attack when the taxi was 20 mins late i finally boarded to catamaran and waved goodbye to what was the most beautiful place i have seen in the world (so far anyway). After an arduous 11 1/2 hour journey i was finally back in Bangkok. I decided not to book any accommodation for the night as my flight to Jordan was at 9.40am the next day so i thought i'd mooch around for a few hours and then make my way to the airport. That didn't quite go to plan as mooching was the last thing i wanted to do after a rather exhausting days travelling so i hopped in a taxi to the airport at 11.30pm. The next few hours were quite an experience. I had huge paranoia about falling asleep and missing my flight so i consumed about 7 coffees and spent 5 hours doing laps around the airport, painting my nails, repainting my nails, reading, writing my journal, repacking my bag and generally doing anything that would keep me awake. At 5.30am i was finally able to check in and had a priority pass through security, all in all i would have been better without it as i still had so much time to kill! So i made it through by 5.40am and had breakfast consisting of doughnuts and more coffee! By this point i had been awake for 26 hours and was fairly delirious. By the time i got to the departure lounge my body had given up and i feel asleep. Luckily i was woken up and boarded the flight to Jordan. Within less than a minute of being on the plane i was fast asleep!



So that's Thailand Round 1 complete. It was everything i could have dreamed off and a whole lot more.

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