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Published: October 20th 2010
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Here's a brief account of what we've been up to over the last few weeks!
We eventually left Koh Samui and headed for Khao Lak. We were promised so much from the travel agent-oh, the dream of a bus that would take us directly there from the boat, but, alas, it was not meant to be!! It ended up being pretty much the typical Asian journey with at least 3 bus changes for little apparent reason! Whenever we asked one driver if this was the direct bus, he would just say 'yes'. Two minutes later we'd change again-hmmm, were seeing a bit of a pattern here!
Regardless, we eventually arrived in Khao Lak after a rainy few hours over jungle land and luckily saw a sign for our hotel right away-the Suwan Palm resort! The taxi driver didn't offer to take us so we thought we must be close. Bad news for us-a torrential downpour (that pretty much lasted two days) and about a 20 minute walk with out backpacks-fun, fun fun!
The good news was that the resort was great. We were paying about $22 a night and the standard was great. Normally they charge for internet
but we got it free. Seeing as we seemed to be the only guests, we think they took pity on us! Despite the rain, we had a good couple of days swimming in the lovely pool and downloading Masterchef and X Factor til our heart's content-well, you gotta have something to do when it rains! We also had the bext breakfast buffet here-sausages, bacon and fried rice so we were pretty happy. Just bad that it was so wet that we didn't get to explore more of the area. It must be great in the sunshine. We still managed a swim in the big waves on the beach-scary to think though how hard this place was hit by the tsunami. Some people told us it hasn't properly recovered.
After our washout, we went south hoping for sunnier skies. We headed for Phuket and towards Karon beach to meet up with our old travelling buds, Kyle and Hui. The rain stayed for a few days but we managed to pass the time well, with Kyle and Darren racking up a few (just a few) games of pool while me and Hui sunbathed with the umbrella handy!
On our last
day we headed out on the scooter to see the Big Buddha-still covered in scaffolding (this might be a pemanent feature) and failed to find Mum's tiles :-(. We did enjoy the scenery though, and were over the moon when we found a great wee beach at Kata Noi-the kind of beach you imagine-almost. Hardly any trash and beautiful sand. We were tempted to stay but Koh Phi Phi was calling.
We got the boat the next morning and made it to the island for about 10.30. Kyle and Hui had went on ahead and had found some gorgeous little beach bungalows on Long beach-white white sands and turquoise waters. We would have been even happier if this island was supporting us poor old backpackers on the budget front, but regardless we were happy to find this paradise!
You can see why the blogging has tailed off. The frequency of beaches and not doing a lot has grown-what can we say? We are enjoying the beach life and learning to take it easy (like we need to learn!). Sometimes that's hard, but as long as there's a good book to read and at least a couple of hours
sunshine a day we can manage rightly!
We had to say bye bye to Kyle and Hui for the last time (on this trip anyway) on Koh Phi Phi as they headed south to Kuala Lumpur and back towards Vancouver. We stayed on for a couple more days and went into town on the last day to explore a bit more. The trouble with Long Beach (i have to find trouble in paradise) is that the Long boats didn't always travel to Long Beach, which meant that it was a 30 minute trek into town through the jungle. Plus being tight-arses, when they were about normally we didn't want to pay!! So we stayed in town for the last night and found a cheapie place to stay. It seemed great until we were going to bed and realised we had no sheets!! Ended up sleeping with a hoodie over the top of us!
The next day we left for Krabi, not really knowing what to expect. It was sunny and hot that day and we settled on top of the deck with a beer for a nice 2 hour trip. Problem was that after about 10 minutes, the
weather changed for the worse! We were drenched by the waves and scared to walk back inside along the rocky deck. Eventually we made it inside and shivered and counted the minutes for the next hour as the boat rocked a little too much over the huge waves. Never were we happier to see dry land!
We had booked a hotel in Ao Nang and arrived to find a really great hotel (White Sands) and plenty of places to eat and drink. After the expense of Koh Phi Phi, it was great to see lots of cheap food stalls and great deals on the booze!! One other thing we noticed is that the people are so so friendly here-much more so than elsewhere. We have enjoyed the Thailand journey so far but found that everywhere else seems to be really affected from too much tourism, if that's possible, and the Thai people seem sick of the sight of westerners. We were pretty surprised by that and weren't really expecting it so it is nice to find a real difference in Krabi, and if truth be told, we are having ourselves a bit of a real holiday here! We were
planning to head to Malaysia tomorrow, but we have decided to enjoy ourselves here a bit longer, especially since we heard the weather is worse where we are headed in Eastern Malaysia. So for now, days on scooters finding remote beaches, followed by the most amazing yellow curries will have to continue for a few more days...
Will check in from Malaysia!xxx
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bree
non-member comment
hello, i just read this blog and all i have to say is... you guys are really doin it tough!!! NOT. I feel like ive just seen a episode of some travel show on Nat Geo (national geographic). xx