Blogs from South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia

We filled our guns and left the cafe behind as we made our way into town to look for Amber. We plowed our way through the crowd and made our way up to Patong's main street, Bangla Road. Bangla was cut off to vehicles for Songkran so it was just jammed with people, all soaking wet and having 5 second water battles with people as they walked past. Every shop, bar and restaurant on the street was filed with people defending themselves, shooting out into the crowd - the whole thing was a real sight to behold and was incredible fun. About every 100 feet or so enterprising people set up garbage cans to fill your tank at for a fee; 10 baht for normal water, 20 for ice water. Ice water is absolutely the way ... read more

The next day Amber mentioned she had a couple days off before she had to catch an overnight bus back up to Bangkok. Niki and I had initially planned to stay in Phuket for just one night but since Niki rarely gets to see Amber I opted to head back to Phi Phi and make sure our room there was paid for and give Niki and Amber a day together to party and catch up. We grabbed some breakfast and I hopped on a motorcyle taxi to take me back to the harbor on the other side of the island. If you ever get a chance to take a motorcycle taxi in Thailand I highly recommend it, it was possibly one of the funnest 20 minute cab rides I ever took as he sped through the ... read more

Niki returned the next day and we had a fairly relaxed last couple of days on Phi Phi, enjoying beers on the beach, walking up the viewpoint and laying in hammocks arouund the island. Niki got in a couple more fun dives and we decided for our last night in Phi Phi we would do an overnight camping trip to Maya Bay on Phi Phi Ley, the smaller neighboring island. Maya bay is made popular by the Leonardo DiCaprio film "The Beach". Its an amazingly busy beach during the day, with hundreds of tourists catching longtails over or taking chartered boats to the beach for the afternoon to swim, snorkel and lay in the sun. I'd been warned by a lot of people that it was a huge tourist trap in the day and that you'd ... read more

After a very relaxing sleep (in which we werent swept out to sea) we met up with Ricky and his two new friends Samantha and Scarlet for breakfast and some time on the beach (somthing we were all slightly hesitant to do). We had discussed getting a longtail boat to take us to various snorkel sites around the island but after the previous day, we all decided it was just a little too soon and settled on sitting in the water and drinking a few beers. Niki busted out a hoop session for us, drawing a round of applause from all in view on the beach. After a litte more sunshine we walked up into the streets and hit one of the better restaurants on the island called Cosmic for some pizzas and a few more ... read more

We got up relatively early and packed a day bag to head over to Phuket for Songkran. Since we were just going for the night we cleverly took our dry bags as overnight packs. We were headed down to the bakery to grab some breakfast snacks for the boat ride and as we were coming around the corner we saw that the artists who work at the local art shop had set up a road block, stopping everyone who tried to pass and politely dousing them with water. It was somewhat comical to see as they were really trying to be polite about it; just wetting the hands of an elderly couple that went by or the arms of those that really didnt want to get wet. Niki and I approached hoping to get by with ... read more

In the movie, ''the Beach'', Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an American college student in Thailand for the summer. A guy who is in Southeast Asia with the intention of experiencing something radically different from his familiar life. Eventually he finds ''the Beach''. Oh well .... :-) And now we are here at Maya Beach. Koh Phi Phi Ley is the second largest island of the archipelago, the largest one being Ko Phi Phi Don. The island consists of a ring of steep limestone hills surrounding 2 shallow bays, the Maya Bay and Loh Samah.... read more

Fringed with a pristine white sandy beach and surrounded by a spectacular, shallow reef Koh Khai is one of these out of this world kind of islands. Crystal clear emerald green water - and if you are lucky - a chance to see a group of dolphins swimming near the island - supposedly this IS a paradise island.... read more

Hello everyone, My experience over the last two weeks of being in Phuket has made me a more confident, achier, a little less flabby person. I am getting used to the heat and the training. It appears I’m not as strong as I thought I was. My wrist hurt from all the punches, my hips hurt from all the kicks and foot still hurts from a bad kick. I am covered in extremely itchy and large mosquito bites and find it very hard to sleep at night. Being here is great fun and you feel so good after a workout but dread going to sleep and waking up with more annoying bites. I have been blessed by being able to change rooms which should help with the mosquitos and for sleeping at night for it has ... read more