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Published: June 16th 2006
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We got a morning flight down from Bangkok to Phuket with Air Asia as the flights were cheap and we're not quite ready for 10 hour bus journey's yet.
The flight was a mixture of Thia's and westeners but it was suprising to see the number of older western men with young Thai women on the flight. Even heard one guy say that he wasn't spending anymore money on this gal cause he had already spent enough on her by hiring her for the month!
The views down on the flight were beautiful, loads of green lush islands dotting the bays with emerald green water taking up the majority of the landscape.
Once we landed we got taxi to Shant Lodge Phuket just outside Chalong - really nice hostel with a relaxed atmosphere. The majority of people staying there were enrolled in a fight (Thia Boxing) school just down the road, some of the guys were in training to try to get entery into the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Every night they would come home and one of them had a new injury ranging from cut chins to broken bones. We were very careful not to piss anyone off
while we stayed there.
We hired a scooter and decided to go investigating the island visiting Chalong Bay where part of it was hit by the tsunami. There was still a bit a building work going on repairing the damage and we saw one derilict building along the way that reminded you of what actually happened here a few years ago. We than made our way to Kata Beach, Nai Harn Beach and then upto the bays view point, where the views were spoiled by the cloudy weather. However there was a pretty impressive lighthouse which was built to celebrate 50 years of the Kings reign. Whether the light house was actually needed we're not sure but it was built anyway.
We booked to do some diving along the way As it was low season not all the dive site were being used every day and most companies rotated the dive sites together and boat shared. This mean't we could not get to do the dive sites we planned on, however the dives we did (King Cruiser a passanger ferry that sank, Shark point famous for it's leopard sharks, and Koh Doc Mai a colourful but small reef
wall dive). Although we didn't see anything large and spectacular they were extremely colourful and interesting as we noramlly spend that much time looking at the big stuff, we never really notice the small little creatures that are there lurking about.
After a day of just relaxing by the pool we got the bus from Phuket to Surat Thani and then boat to Samui. As we were a bit late in the day setting off from Phuket we had to spend the night in Samui. On Koh Samui we stayed at Bhoput at the Fishermans village. This was a really nice small relaxed place and a nice holiday desination as there are only a few small hotels and a good choice of small restrantraunt's and bars along a pretty impressive beach.
We got the Catermeran to Koh Phangan, and after a coffee we got a taxi to Haad Yao and booked into our hut which was set on the cliff tops over looking the beach. The room was pretty basic with just a bed and fan and a bathroom but for just over 4 quid a night you can't complain too much. The next few days we spent
our time relaxing on the beach eating and drinking, Sue in usual form did a little bit too much of the drinking on the 1st night there and didn't surface out of bed till late that evening except for a couple of mad rushes to the bathroom.
We'd met up with two couples Scott and Jack's who were travelling and like us were coming to near the end of there travels and Billy and Celina their friends from back home who had come out to see them for their holiday.
However our main reason for going to Koh Phangan was to sample the worlds most famous Full Moon Party which is held at Haad Rin beach. The setting was pretty impressive several bars with huge sound systems pounding out trance, R and B, hard house and chart music, along the beach entertainers were fire breathing, and other carrying out other dangerous stunts with fire (sorry no pictures as Sue was scared of losing here camera we took a disposable). All this filled in with food vendours bars and about 6,000 party goer's dancing on the beach. The night seemed to go through with no trouble. The police are
Our Hostel in Phukett II
Traveling is so stressfull really on the ball constantly going round checking up on anyone who looks like they're up to no good. The only down side like all events like this is the rubbish left behind, the organisiers were really trying to do their best having people walking round clollecting ruubish, but people just seemed to think throwing glass bottles into the sea was an acceptable method of disposing of there rubbish. This along with amount of men who thought the sea was also a toilet didn't make me want to come back to the beach for swim the following day.
The last couple of days were just spent again recovering, relaxing and snorkling on the beach, before we head off back to the over crowded, busy and smelly but interesting Bangkok, before we finally decide upon a route to take trhrough South East Asia.
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mum kelly
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Lovely to be getting your regular blogs again and hearing about the places you visit. Even the places that are smelly and not too clean still sound interesting. You keep saying you are nearly at the end of your travels but you still have two and a half months most of us only get two weeks a year so its still a long time. Keep enjoying yourselves. Miss you lots. xxx