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Published: October 28th 2006
Koh Samui
View from the island's main beach, with James observing a fast moving crab!Shortly after posting our last entry and becoming master divers Joanna was struck down with toothache following a 'tooth squeeze' diving and we delayed our journey to Krabi on Thailand's west coast, in order to visit the International Hospital on Koh Samui - the next place along that had any sort of medical care deemed 'western'. Not looking too chirpy Joanna put up with several days of pain and liquid intakes only - these included the numbing genious of strong white russians - "vodka good for pain, milk good for teeth" - was the theory here and it worked... but only temporarily, and after a nice dentist, five appointments and a nasty root canal on an absess, joanna was fixed more or less. A word of warning to all future divers out there - make sure your fillings are in good nick before you dive, cos presssure does crazy things and it's not very funny!
Despite Joanna's pain we managed to do some exploring on Koh Samui, and despite overhearing two other backpackers saying 'We may as well have gone to Falariki' it wasn't as bad as peole make out. After saying that, I don't think we would have called
Sand Castles
James destroying a sand pyramid after loosing a free-style sand castle-building competition with Joanna in, if it weren't for their dental hospital. The 50m walk from the dental hospital to the beach made for a welcome recouperation area and as you can see from the photos basically most of the day was spent on the main beach doing just this - poor James getting bored out of his mind (and having to deal with Joanna going through a pain 'similar to childbirth' apparently).
Samui was so unlike any of the islands we just walked around in a sort of daze - after walking past Boots, Pizza Hut and McDonalds you have the strange feeling of not really being in Thailand but perhaps some strange version of England! Oh, that's except for the lady-boys... James had to be dragged down the street at this point as he just kept staring at them and I think it was freaking them out. He seemed a bit confused. Not as confused as some unlucky guy the next morning though...
The awful thing was that the beach was covered with posh resorts '5-star' apparently, but the beach was probably the worst out of any we have seen in Thailand, yet thousands were flying in daily. Lots of
Sizzling Stir-fry
There were some great restaurants on Koh Samui, this was our favorite - mainly because of the flaming hot plates of fish and seafood FRRRR! Please excuse the photography, it was quite smokey! families, which was strange as backpackers don't often run into western children, so we treated them like wierd alien things, and they acted like them. We have decided after a short deliberation that we much prefer Thai children who are cute and wave at you lots, instead of being obnoxious.
Saying that though, we are glad that we went to Samui as it is quite a spectacle, and we now know that we went to the right islands at the start of our adventures - we just wished that we could have gone back!!! But alas all good things have to end, and yesterday we arrived in Krabi, back safe and sound on mainland Thailand for the final four days of our visa.
Krabi is quite an exciting place, they seem to have a parade everyday through the last week of October to celebrate the vegitarian festival, and as we speak there are explosions of Chinese fire crackers behind us! Tomorrow we're hoping to take a boat to see the islands of Koh Phi Phi, made famous by the novel 'The Beach' and the landscapes featured in the James Bond film 'The Man With The Golden Gun'.
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Rowell Dad
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Poor Tooth
You poor thing !! Glad it is getting better though. Hope it is now sorted for the rest of the trip. Leeds 2 - Other team 0 Hull 0 - SUNDERLAND 1 Goal in last minute, then scorer sent off for celebrating in the crowd. Mam finished her marathon in 5hrs 10 mins , even with a gammy knee in last 4 miles.