Jaques Cousteau and the Thai Travis Bickle

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Greetings from Vientiane!

Its been a little while since my last post so I may not remember the events of the past 12 days in their entirity :-)

I ended up heading for Koh Tao from Bangkok, its a smallish Island above Koh Samui and Koh Pangyan and is very famous for its scuba diving. I signed up for a three day course right away and was buddied up with a kiwi bloke and we had a mental dutch woman as our instructor.

In true daft Emmott style I pulled an all night session before my first dive and arrived without sleep! The evening had followed what became a very regular pattern! A couple of quiet beers at the Buddha View bar on the beach in Chalock Ban Khao then on the back of an Aussies moped to Sairee Beach and the Lotus bar. This place is a cool little gaffe on the beach and is mainly open air with fire dancers, great music and a highly international clientele.

However this place shuts at 02:00 so its a walk down the beach for 5 or 6 minutes to the AC bar, much the same kind of place but open till 05.00. When thats all done and dusted its a moped back to Chalok Ban Khao and Fishy's Burger Island. A place that nobody seems to know is open all night except me and the 2 Aussies ( Both top blokes and really funny too) For a dirty burger and a JD and Coke as the sun comes up. Every morning as he saw us coming over the hill he started pouring the drinks and put on the Arctic Monkeys CD (as opposed to the Robbie Williams he was playing that first night until I took inventory of his CD collection!) And I would eventually make it to my bungalow at about 09.00 - 10.00.

The diving was great, as soon as you get the hang of the breathing with the tank (very quick) then you are laughing. On the first day we did 2 dives to 12 metres and saw Moray eels, angel fish, butterfly fish, one of those little Nemo fellas and all sorts of other ones. I was lucky that I had my eyes peeled as at one stage the instructer signalled for me to kneel on the bottom to do an exercise but I spotted a little spiney creature. Turned out to be an Indian Ocean walkman and would have put me in some severe discomfort!

The only fish you really need to worry about are called Trigger fish. They are fiercly territorial and will attack you by charging you with a spear like spine the have on their heads. Fortunately we had no problems there but one of the other instructers showed me a nasty big scar on his head from when he got nailed by one.

The next day we did two more dives at 18 metres, the first of which was a bit crap as the instructor got confused and insisted on giving me 8 kilos of weights as opposed to six. After that dive she apologised and gave me the correct weights and the last dive was cracking, we saw a manta ray as well as about a million other technicolour fellas. Alarmingly I am now a qualified open water scuba diver!

Other than the diving there were two or three other things of note on the island. Rain.... I mean biblical rain here, most of the roads were under 6 inches of water for 2 or 3 days. The incessent drinking, which takes on new dimensions when you introduce the notorious 'bucket' ! Now, I'm not George Best but as you all know, I can handle a drink or two and thought that by this time in life I had a fair idea about whats what when it comes to booze. These buckets are something new! A whole half bottle of whiskey, a can of coke and a bottle of concentrated red bull.... in a fishbowl kind of bucket. The redbull blinds you to the strength of the whisky but also sends you a little hyper! Now drink 6 of them and you end up pretty sozzled!

And the other was the immense dissapointment of the World Cup final. There is a bar called Choppers in Sairee beach that shows all the sport and it was rammed full. Unfortunately a bunch of Saffa's came out of the woodwork too but they were all pretty good humoured. Is it just me or was that Ref a south African!?

Anyways, Koh Tao was a good laugh, I got my obligatory Koh Tao tatoo's ( a burn mark from a motorbike exhaust and a coral scratch from larking about pissed in the sea) I met some cool people, the two Aussie's and a good Spanish lad and had the unique situation of a pissed woman in a bikini kicking my door in and demanding satisfaction (whcih I politely declined). I took on the bucket and won (ok we'll call that one a draw) and got by Scuba certificate, all in all a good week :-)

Since then I have made my way via Bangkok to the Laos Capital of Vientian but will save that for my next update. What I will tell you about is the dodgy (psycho) taxi driver I got in Bangkok to the bus station. I only wanted to go 2km but he insisted on driving all round the houses thinking I was a dummy. In the end.... 18km later I snapped and told him if he didn't stop the cab immeadiately I would introduce him to his gear stick in a very intimate fashion. I got out and when he still asked for his money I invited him to make all attempts at 'having relations' with himself and to 'please leave kind sir' .... or words to that effect. Nutty little fella goes to his boot and threatens me with a tyre Iron! I was not in a good mood and basically suggested that I would take the Iron of him and see if it made a pretty hat on him and he stormed off screaming..... Very bizzare for Thailand!

Anyways, the Thai leg now over its time for its scoring on the Chunk Tetley travel index. Due to many requests from the subscribers of this blog I am adding a new heading 'Bloke stuff' as the requests I have had are 4 for 'women' 2 for 'nightlife' and one for steak!

As It was out of 80 before, I'm going to round things up by marking 'Bloke stuff' out of 20 so the mark takes an even hundred, I'll judge it by the three things requested and add in sport availability :-)

Transport: 8 - Plentyful, comfortable and fairly cheap.... My last night bus even had a hostess serving drinks!

Food: 6 - Controversial this one as Thai food is my favourite but the quality of an awful lot of what you find is shite. You do still get some belting stuff and the street food is excellent

Cost: 7 - Everything is pretty cheap here but not a patch on India, plus the fact that it is so easy to end up on the lash here you end up getting through a lot of cash.

Sights & Activities: 8 - There is a lot to do here and some of the natural scenery is beautiful. If you like ornate temples and beutiful beaches then this is the place for you.

People (tourist facing): 5 - Better than India but not as good as Nepal, Tuk Tuk drivers are all bent and I think a lot of people that work in the tourist game just have Westerner fatigue so are sullen and sometimes just rude... Oh there was my taxi driving mate as well :-)

Accomodation: 6 - Plentiful but not as good value as it is in India or Nepal. If you want hot water or AC then you need to be looking at close on 10GBP a night in a lot of places.

Hygene: 6 - Pretty good in most places, there is much more pride in Thailand about these things than in say India. That said I did get a cockroach climbing up my back in a bar in Bangkok and a rat sniffing my toes in a beach bar in Koh Tao so each of those lose Thailand a mark.

Safety: 7 - No real problems with safety in Thailand as such but there is certainly a touch more aggression in a lot of the people and I heard a few mugging story's. My only problem was taxi boy.

Bloke stuff: 18 - Ok, you can't get steak but for a party, Thailand is pretty unbeatable, you can watch just about any sporting event, there are pool tables everywhere. For the perverts I would say that Koh Tao smells of sex, the amount of pissed up woman on a beach holiday slurping their buckets means it would not be hard. I personally did not partake but could quite easily have 'got lucky' if I chose to. And for the real munters or people that don't have a problem paying for such things I guess this place must be Nirvana!

Total score Thailand: 71

Bloke stuff India: 3 - No party spots, Only cricket on TV (good for me though) No Steak - at all and no women either, All the good looking girls are at home I think.... gets 3 points for having a near 24 hour cricket channel

Bloke stuff Score Nepal: 13 - Steak heaven! quite easy to find most sports although the Rugby was nowhere to be found. You can definately have a good night out in Nepal, plenty of pool tables and late(ish) places if you know where to look. As for the woman thing, Nepali woman are very pretty but not for touching so its tourists only and not that many of them about (compared to Thailand)

Leader Board

Thailand: 71
Nepal: 67
India: 43

Thailand wins on bloke stuff basically.... Nepal is still cooler unless you want a party :-)

See you soon :-)

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