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Published: February 24th 2007
Crystal clear water on Bamboo island
No need for a snorkel here to admire the colorful life under water.After nearly 3 months of discovering the Asian culture, it was time for us to kick back and relax. Luckily we arrived at one of the best places on earth to do this: the south of Thailand.
As people adviced us not to waste too much time on the mainland, we decided to head for the islands at once. The corals in the south of Thailand are amongst the most beautiful in the world, so the first thing we had to do was obtaining a scuba diving license. Therefore, Koh Tao was our first stop. Here we were immediately amazed by the beauty of the beaches in the area: perfect white sand, a clear blue sea, palm trees, cocktails... In between training to become the real kings of beach ball, we struggled through the diving class without any real problems. The sharks were impressed, Nemo was waving at us from his anemone, Trevor the triggerfish bit our fins and jellyfish are obviously less slimy than many Australians on the island.
Anyway, after a short week at this island, it was time for the biggest party of our trip: the full moon party at Koh Pagnan. At this island, we
were lucky to find a perfect little bungalow at a perfect little private beach. While having high expectations of the famous event, we were mainly laying on our asses and reading books, playing with the local dogs and further improving our beach ball skills. The party itself was quite impressive: music pounding from everywhere on a big beach loaded with guys who can't keep their t-shirt on, ditsy girls who are crazy about guys who can't keep their t-shirt on and girls who also turn out to be guys after all (the famous Thai ladyboys).
The third and last island of the Gulf of Thailand we visited was the famous Koh Samui. As we are low budget travellers, we chose a location that was not entirely in the touristic center. However, it did seem to be the center of some special sort of tourism, so maybe it was not the best choice after all. Beaches were nice and the local girls were more then nice if you would pay them. Reason enough for us to get out of there pretty quickly.
The next stop on our trip, Phuket, is by far the most visited place in Thailand. The
Koh Tao
Studying for the open water diving course. popular beaches have become places of mass tourism and thus were filled with Germans in tight pants, red fried English tourists, often flavoured with scents of midlife crisis and long gone beauty. However, when you move a bit out of these areas, Phuket still proves to be really impressive: a rocky landscape surrounded by a cristal clear sea.
As you go more to the south, the landscape gets more and more rough and untouched. The producers of 'James Bond - The man with the golden gun' and 'The Beach' have created a true mekka for western tourists in this area. So who are we to stay behind? First we made a little stop at Phang-nga to have a look at James Bond island (Khao Tapu). Next, we moved to Krabi and to Koh Phi Phi, the place where all sixteen year old girls fell in love with Leonardo di Caprio in 'The Beach'.
After these compulsary highlights we jumped on a boat to Koh Lipe: a small, remote and deserted island near the Malaysian border which is not yet discoverd by the big mass of tourists. For us, this was the perfect place to round up our stay
Koh Phangan
Our bungalow at the beach in Koh Pangan. in the south of Thailand. We figured a couple of days in peace at this place would be a good idea before jumping back into western life after 3.5 months of noodles, buddhas and tuk tuks.
Our next stop is Malaysia. From there on we will move further down south to Singapore and catch our flight to Australia.
Nick & Steven
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ruben
non-member comment
ha thony
ha thony, cava maat, da ziet er echt wel knap uit daar! en die full moon party moet wel bangelijk geweest zijn. hopelijk kan je een beetje wennen aan het decadente westerse leven in australia. amuseer u,en ik hoop snel nog iets van ulle te horen. groeten