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Published: December 16th 2007
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After overnight bus to Bangkok, we took a morning flight to Surat Thani and from there a boat to Ko Pha Ngan. Obviously, the first thing we did on arrival was sleep.
On the full moon day (24th) we did nothing to make sure we were properly prepared for the evening ahead.
Not much can be said about the actual full moon party, far too much alcohol was consumed to allow any particular memories to be kept. We all got lost and each person spent quite a few hours scouring the beach for each other with no luck. thankfully, we all arrived back at our guesthouse at various times the next morning (or afternoon for some of us).
After a days recovery we left Ko Pha Ngan heading for Krabi on the opposite coast, with the intention of doing some rock climbing, as Krabi is world famous as a place to do this, and maybe going to Ko Phi Phi where The Beach was filmed. Once we arrived we booked rock climbing for the following day, but decided against going to Phi Phi as it was far too expensive to stay there. Instead we went to Ko Lanta,
another island on the west coast.
On the 28th we arrived in Ko Lanta with the intention of completing our Advanced Dive courses, which we did do. Also on Ko Lanta we took a boat trip to Phi Phi and saw the place The Beach was filmed. It looked nice from afar, unfortunately our boat trip was cheap, so we just went near it. This was probably not a great loss as the beach was packed with other tours, much busier than we remember it from the film.
After Ko Lanta we booked a bus heading to Bangkok, we made the mistake of booking it in the same place as our boat trip the other day. At first all was going smoothly as we were taken to Krabi and told that our bus to Bangkok would pick us up soon. 30 minutes later a minibus picked us up and we were apparently on our way to the big coach that would take us north. After 3 hours heading west we got to where the coach was, all the way back on the east coast. Once there all was fine and we were on our way in the right
direction, finally.
Arrived in Bangkok early on the 2nd and went straight to the Chatuchac Market, a weekend only market with around 15000 stalls. Unfortunately most of these stalls catered to buyers of junk, so we didn't buy much. Later in the evening we went to the more normal market on Ko San Road and spent a small fortune.
The next day (3rd) we went to Kanchanaburi through which runs the river Kwai, and surprisingly enough, there is also a bridge over it. In the daytime we went to the Thailand-Burma Railway museum, which told us the story of how the railway and bridge were built, and how it was destroyed in WWII. After this we wandered up to see the bridge iteself and walked across it.
In the evening we returned to the bridge for the reenactment, sound and light show extravaganza type thing. Before the start we weren't expecting much as not many other people seemed to be there. However, it was amazing, there were rockets flying into the bridge, parts of the bridge fell down, people set on fire and fell off the bridge, the sun came up, the moon came up, and now we
aren't sure if the Sydney fireworks will be able to compete.
On the 5th we returned to Bangkok in time for the King's birthday, there were loads of things going on with parades and fireworks, and an air conditioning system installation competition!!! This was our sightseeing day, but all we managed to see was the giant reclining Buddha.
On the 6th we headed back to the airport for our flight to Macau
more soon
Neil, Rosie and Laura
xx
p.s. We forgot to mention on our first Thailand blog something which we had seen when crossing the border form Malaysia.
A sign at immigration said "Any alien displaying hippy characteristics will not be allowed into the country." The sign went on to list the charachteristics, including:
No wooden sandals unless they are part of a national dress.
No long dirty looking hair
No vest or singlet without a shirt underneath
No brightly coloured silk pants
and more of the same, we found this very funny at the time.
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