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Published: March 30th 2008
Since last time I wrote we've had the most awesome time in Koh Tao. Basically we ended up with an awesome gang of people namely Archie, Jonno, Ash (Teagues clone), Matt, Hanna, Lisa, Kate, Abi and Franky. The days have consisted of sitting floating in the shallow calm sea chatting and naming all the stray dogs with hilarious personalities. Namely Benson, a big black dog who is a complete brute and goes round attacking everyone and anything with a smile on his face and rabies who is a big flirt. They were great. The nights have consisted of complete jokes at Lotus bar which has cushy chairs on the sand, playing a few card and drinking games and generally having a total laugh. On the thursday me, Rob and the two geordie girls Kate and Lisa went on a snorkeling trip around the island. It involved a pretty painful early morning of 8am but we survived. The snorkeling was amazing and we swam with all sorts of multicoloured corals and fish and at shark bay we saw quite a few sharks swimming unbothered just beneath us. Really awesome. It was a whole day and we made our way around the island
stopping at different locations. At one spot with completely lush turquoise waters me and rob spent the whole time diving and bombing off the boat into schools of fish. It was amazing. At this point after taking action shots of each other I decided to test finally the boasted underwater capabilities of my camera. We got some cool pictures but then it decided to stop working. The seals hadnt held properly and water got into the battery case. After a quick salvage mission it still works but the flash doesnt, and a few photos on my card got corrupted. So if you're thinking of buying an Olympus 790SW because it works underwater, dont. It doesnt. It was still a fantastic trip though and you really got the sense of how deserted the island is away from the main beaches at Hat Mae and Sai Ree. Complete untouched beauty! Having a beer on the terrace of our house me and Rob came across a large Gecko about 30cm long which we named Gary. After he stared us down for literally half an hour without moving we decided hes that guy in the pub who drinks 7 pints alone before hitting you
with a bar stool. After another crazy night we spent the whole of friday floating in the sea swapping stories about the previous night of mischief. We booked our travel to Koh Phi Phi for saturday although it would be a shame to leave! Friday night ; our last night we started early at an awesome sports bar we'd grown to love called choppers and hit the happy hour before more lotus fun and games. The girls we were with managed to drag us to the lady boy cabaret show.. ok I lied we chose to go.. It was horrificly hilarious. There were crazy dresses, singing, a dude dressed as a woman on his left side and a bloke on the right and all sorts of other ridiculous shenanigans. Some were convincing. The rest were just damn scary. This hilarious bloke called Franky who's coming to Bristol too in October was dragged up, dressed as a woman and danced with all the lady boys. Me and Jonno caught the moment on video so we could completely rinse him at uni. Sorry Franky. Worse still, this guy chris we were with took a jokey bet of 50 baht each to kiss
one and went through with it. All in all a hilarious evening. On the saturday we checked out and all the lads checked in as they had fallen in love with our house too. It was handy as it meant we could leave all our stuff there before we left in the evening. We all had a huge breakfast on the beach and yet again sat in the sea all afternoon swapping embarrassing stories and generally chilling out.
After a few farewell drinks at Choppers with some of the guys we started carting all our stuff down to the travel agents on our scooters for our journey to begin at 8pm. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone but Koh Tao had been good to us and we'd had an awesome time! We got a taxi to the pier to catch our 8 hour night boat back to Surat Thani on the mainland. At first I was skeptical of the night boat but it turned out to be bloody good fun! We ended up staying up talking and having a few beers with these Danish, Canadian and Finish guys who were absolute jokers. Also some swedish girls we
knew from koh phangan and koh tao happened to be coming the same way as us so we got to see them too. It's hard to explain but sailing into these amazing lightning flashing clouds viewed out the open windows whilst knocking back a few beers with absolute lads was fantastic. We loved it. We arrived a little early though at 4.15am which was pretty brutal and walked down to another travel agent. This is where the trouble began. Basically everyone swapped their bus tickets for another transfer ticket and we didnt think anything of it. People started being taken away in taxis to a bus we assumed. When we got into our taxi it took us all the way, 3 hours, to Krabi where we'd catch the boat to Phi Phi which seemed a bit strange. We got dumped at another travel agents where we sat and assumed we were first and waited for the rest of the boat lot to arrive. There were about 10 of us in total. They never arrived and around 9 we got suspicious as the boat was supposed to leave at 10am. The travel agent seemed to have no clue why we had
been sat outside her office for the past 2-3 hours and told us our tickets weren't valid for anything. I was getting texts from Hanna the swedish girl who'd also been on the boat telling us what was going on at their end. They'd all been put on a big bus with space left and taken straight to the dock where they were all waiting. Deciding we were definitely getting scammed and were never going to get taken to the boat if we hung around here any longer, we grabbed a taxi to the pier, all 10 of us squeezing in and found our tickets still to be useless. The boat left in 5 minutes so we decided just to very grudgingly pay the extra 350baht for a boat ticket. When through and into the waiting area we bumped into all the people we knew and the story unfolded. Basically when people had been getting into taxis, everyone but us had been taken to another stop where their transfer ticket, identical to ours had been exchanged for a boat ticket and theyd all got a big bus down to Krabi pier. For some reason our taxi decided to miss this
bit and drive us the full 3 hours there and dump us 3km from the pier with a useless ticket. Clearly we were scammed and the frustrating thing is theres nothing you can do about it as theres noone to complain to! It is very confusing as to where the benefit for the scammer in the whole mix up is... but for anyone reading this whos doing the same journey just be careful! We were quite pleased to have caught the boat and figured it all out though as the next boat wasnt until 3pm. To make us feel better we all decided we'd beaten the scammer by still getting there and on the right boat even though the boat company made a little more off our backs! The journey took about an hour and a half and I read the whole way although there was stunning scenery. First impressions of Phi Phi were it's small size and lack of development on all but one small area of sandbank in the middle of the two large parts. Off the boat we got bombarded by touts trying to find us a room which made things nice and easy for us and
we got sorted with all the guys from the boat and scam at the same hotel with a passable rooms. There are no roads, only paths and hence theres no motorbikes or cars which is pretty cool. Walking around and especially taking a swim in the sea was a strange experience as Phi Phi took the full brunt of the Tsunami of 2004. Theres little evidence of the destruction but it was very strange sitting in the ridiculously calm waters imagining that awful day happening right where we were. There are now visible Tsunami warning towers and signposted evacuation routes which is good to see. Anyway after a few hours on the island I think we'll have another good time here. We'll be leaving Phi Phi and Thailand on the 4th for Malaysia which will be a shame but more good times to come I'm sure! Just need to find somewhere to watch the football tonight.... Pics of Phi Phi to come.
Keep in touch and happy birthday Gaz for tommorow man, have a good one! x
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Dad
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Welcome to Thailand's magical West Coast
So now you're on the western side of the peninsula - at last! Have a wonderful time in Phi Phi. Will you be going to Phuket while you're there? Can't want to hear what you think of Malaysia when you arrive and hope you get a chance to visit both Penang and KL. Miss you! Just watched the replay of the Tottenham-Newcastle match on Sky Sports :-) -Dad