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Published: November 6th 2007
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We left our nice hotel with our backpacks, walked up the sleazy alley, past the lady-boys, pimps and dealers ("Hell No"..."No way"..."We're leaving") and onto the main street in Patong Bay. Within two seconds, we'd been aquired by a taxi driver who was by now sprinting across the road to us and dementedly waving his arms in the air to ensure some business. Carrying backpacks, it's got to be a lucrative drive to either Phuket Airport or the bus station. As it turns out, we asked him to take us to the bus station but on the way, we got to bartering a price for him to drive us (literally) to the opposite coast of Thailand, from West to East.
We're getting pretty good at chopping down prices here now (we have a double act of laughing loudly in chorus at most of the original offers from the locals) and as we accelerated past the bus station, we agreed a deal of paying 3,000 baht (just over 20 pounds each) for a 600km drive through the Thai countryside, which would take us a fraction of the time and actually drop us at the port instead of in Surat Thani, a town 100km short of the harbour to Koh Samui, where the bus would have dropped us. I thought of how far a taxi would go for 20 pounds in Edinburgh and reckoned it wouldnt be much further than from, say, Portobello to South Queensferry or maybe Waverley Station to Dalkeith Butterfly World. The taxi driver tore up the road and sythed through Thailand's breadth to drop us at the port in good time for the next ferry running from mainland Thailand to the small island of Koh Samui.
As we got out of the taxi, the skies opened and released a torrent of heavy, monsoon rain. Strangely enough, Trung and I were still airing and mulling the prospect of making the Full Moon Party on Koh Samui's neighbouring island of Koh Phanang. Previously though, while in Phuket, we had both decided we could take it or leave it and decided to devote our time to having a relaxed time in Koh Samui instead, before embracing the next stint of our jaunt in Cambodia.
So off we went on the 1.5hr ferry and when we arrived in Koh Samui, we quickly realised just how heavy the rain had been
here recently. About 80% of the roads on the island were waterlogged to pavement level and many shops had saturated or burst sand bags protecting the front doorways. We took a bus to the boutique hotel we'd booked into (from the port on the mainland) and after an hour of assurances and reassurances from the driver that he had a clue where he was going to, he admitted he was lost. Finally, he dropped us off at the right road-end and we waded with our backpacks in the dark up the sodden trail to the hotel.
When we arrived at the open-air reception with wet feet, we realised we'd opted for a really nice hotel and it was a pleasure to be taken to our own, separate thatched bungalows, which were to be our crib's for the next three nights. We were lucky the hotel was so comfortable because the bad weather persisted through the night with no sign of the rains abating.
The next day, I spotted an advert at our water-logged reception that detailed a return speed boat ticket to Koh Phangan and The Full Moon Party. By now the rain had stopped and we were
looking for some fun. We booked up, went to the town to buy some Crocs (aka Tourist Shoes - sorry Britta, I bought some!) and before we new it, we were bouncing across the waves between Koh Samui and Koh Phangan in a high powered speed boat towards the beaches of Haad Rin and the Full Moon Party.
The party was in full swing when we arrived and although this is low season in Thailand, there were still around 3,000 excited revellers having fun on the sand, dancing to the music from the numerous beach-front clubs that each blasted out a different flavour of music to the cheering punters.
The crowd was 99% backpacker and within that, I'd guess about 40% British. It was ace to check it out and we were glad we'd kept this option on the backburner instead of totally scoring a line through it. We arrived back off the return speedboat to Koh Samui at about 5:30am and zonked out in our bungalows.
The next day was a predictable right-off and we prepared our backpacks to get ready to fly out of Siam to Cambodia. The next morning, Trung left early as we
couldnt get on the same flight from Koh Samui to Bangkok where we'd take a connecting flight. When we met in departures and took stock, we talked about our expectations of the next jaunt of the trip, the stage I've been looking forward to the most since planning this escapade a year ago. Roll on Siem Reap, Cambodia...
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