Thailand!

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Its been a while since I've got round to doing this, we've been so busy! After a really easy flight to Bangkok from Hong Kong watching scrubs and mitchell and webb, we grabbed a taxi to the Soi 1 Guesthouse hostel on reccomendation of Joe who we met in Goa. Arriving in the middle of the night it was very lucky that we managed to grab the 3 remaining beds in the hostel. First impressions of Thailand were that it seemed very westernised and especially that it was HOT. Stepping out of the airport at around midnight the heat and humidity took me by surprise! There was no let off during our time in Bangkok. Another thing is that is particularly obvious is the extreme love for the Thai King. His face is EVERYWHERE, road signs, restaurants, peoples t-shirts, the money, everywhere. It seems he's a little bit of a demi-god. The Thai's seem like a very patriotic people with loads of flags and scheduled times of day for the national anthem. Our first day was spent at first heading to the station to get some tickets down to Koh Phangan within the next few days. Bus to boat seemed like the best option so thats what we opted for and left us with 3 days 2 nights in Bangkok. Headed for the Grand Palace which was well.. grand! Blinged out completely, I haven't seen so much Gold and Jewels in my life! Ignorantly we'd all turned up in shorts which were forbidden to enter the Buddhist temples. Luckily they were quite prepared for this and offer you a free change into some crazy nylon slacks. Looking amazing we admired the temple of the emerald buddha. The thai's visiting had all mastered the art of sitting with their feet facing away from the Buddha but we made a good attempt! Baking hot we headed for a little air conditioned cafe to chill and got a delicious Thai Green Curry. No more crappy Hong Kong fastfood! We visited Wat Pho in the afternoon which was just as blingy although it had the added bonus of a 40m gold plated reclining Buddha leaning back - ultimately chilled! We (well unfortunately just Katie and Rob as I was off exploring) ran into our nice stewardess from the flight who was taking a look around. We grabbed a tuk tuk, which are pretty much the same deal as the Indian rickshaws just a little less nuts, to Koa San Road which is a strip of guesthouses, bars, stalls and street vendors. Pretty much the place to go out in Bangkok with other travellers. We had a quick beer before Katie had a browse and me and Rob went back to the hostel to play some pool and chill before gathering a gang of people to come back out with us. We met Katie at a bar we'd organised before and had a good night playing the roles of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar and Ginger (watch mitchell and webb). Unfortunately I woke up and realised that we'd met this awesome Danish guy called Kasper and he'd left his travel diary and ipod in my bag! We had no obvious way to find him but were determined..

Next day was almost a right off as we felt pretty grim and couldnt handle the heat and humidity so just arsed about in an air conditioned internet cafe for most of the afternoon. The evening was good fun though, everyone staying at the hostel seemed to be at the bar area and we all got chatting, played some pool and decided to head out that night as one big hostel gang. After watching a good game of ping pong the 10 of us including some manc girls, surrey girl, aussie and irish guys and the 3 of us headed for the Koa San Road once again and had a right laugh. We tried the infamous Sam Song Whisky and got back at dawn, awesome night once again and met some crazy characters. The amount of weird western guys walking around with young thai girls is nothing short of ridiculous! After a quick yet somehow fulfilling sleep me and Katie left rob grunting that he'd pay the fine for missing check out time and headed for a McDonalds breakfast... rubbish. No sign of life from Rob afterwards so we left our bags, checked out and did a last bit of sight seeing. We caught the nifty skytrain to Jim Thompsons house - an American who made a mint working the textiles trade. He had a traditional house dissassembled and reassembled in Bangkok for him and collected all sorts of amazing artifacts from South East Asia for his house. The gardens were also beautiful. Our guide was the sweetest thai woman with the classic huge beaming smile. Me and Katie speant a lot of time looking at the fans in the room instead of some of the artifacts. I think we decided we liked his house but thought he was a bit pretentious for what he'd done here. After a deliciously cheap street curry we grabbed the skytrain back. Katie managed to get through the doors but they closed on me so we were reunited at our station - Phloen Chit (much easier we found to pronounce flowing sh*t - immature but it works for us). We wiled away the last hour playing pool with Rob. We've started the most epic competition ever. We keep the count of every game we play against each other for the next 4 or so months and the winner gets a night out on the other. At the time of writing Rob's up 9 - 6 but theres plenty of time to go. We said goodbye to everyone at the hostel and got a taxi to the station where we'd catch our bus. Usually ridiculously nippy the taxi was pretty much at a standstill in the Bangkok evening rush hour. We did however make it in time and blagged top of the bus at the front for the next 10 hours until 5am. The bus was complete luxury compared to India and was packed full of 'farangs' all looking very 'full moon' and fresh out of England. It sounds stupid but I kind of miss roughing it a bit and Thailands so squeeky clean! The journey was spent failing to sleep and instead watching bits of a crappy Roman Film and chatting to some essex girls sat with us.

At 5am we were deposited at a drop off point in Surat Thani with a covered area with plastic tables and chairs. Another bus to our boat would arrive at 8.30 and as time went on more and more busses turned up and dumped their travellers. The backpackers here all looked so different to what we'd come accustomed to, it felt a little bit like we were heading to Ibiza or something! The next bus took an hour or so to get us out to the peir for our boat to Pha Ngan. We stripped off, got lotioned off and sat on the outside of the boat on the decking with our feet off the edge. Now this was the way to travel! It took an hour or so and we passed dolphins, little jumping fish and of course beautiful scenery. Back at the drop off point we'd signed up for one night at some beach huts about 30 mins from the action in Hat Rin. Everyone had convinced us it would be impossible to find anywhere near to Hat Rin with 3 days until the full moon party so we'd caved. On arrival in Thong Sala we got picked up by the jeep owned by this place and driven up to our beach hut. It was beautiful but we couldnt help but think we preferred palolem. After an exploration and no sign of like minded people- only nudists and the odd huge lizard- we figured we were in the kind of area you come to do absolutely nothing. That's fine during the day but we quite fancied going out a bit too so while katie sunbathed me and rob rented some scooters and cruised down to the south coast to see if it was possible to get a place a bit more in amongst it! We stopped for a game of pool and I managed to break down as the previous owner had left no petrol in it whatsoever. Rob went off in search of petrol while I sat road side chatting to this Danish guy. I could think of worse places to breakdown! Backon the road It turned out everyone had been panicking about nothing and we quite easily located some huts on a beach better than ours, for the same price, and only a 10 minute walk from Hat Rin. We drove back up and told Katie we'd be moving down tommorow. Only problem was we had had to pay for the rooms for this night as well to secure them. It was ok though and only like 4 quid each. We had to pay a ridiculous price for a taxi down to Hat Rin that night to check the place out which made us even happier that we could just walk it from now on. We speant the evening sat on the beach drinking 'buckets' and meeting a bunch of crazy people. It was like a minature version of what full moon will be like and we partied on the beach most of the night! Amazingly I ran into Kasper the Dane on the beach. I was so happy to see him and explained what happened and we organised to meet up tommorow so I could reuinte him with his things! We still couldnt help but feel we were in a more exotic 'malia' or something and that all the real backpackers seemed to have disappeared! Couldnt be bothered to go all the way back to the 'other room' so we all bedded down in the nearby one.

In the morning however we did have the problem that all our things were half an hour away on the other side of the island. We abandoned the idea of a taxi after we figured it would actually be cheaper to use scooters by a long way. So Katie hopped on the back and we headed back up, on the way we ran into some of the Bangkok 'hostel gang' which was cool. When we got there we put our bags in a taxi with Katie and followed them down! Quite complicated but we got there in the end and saved loads of money. I saw a man who had just come off his scooter and his leg looked in a bad way. I'd already been taking it really easy as I'm sure its pretty easy to have an accident, at least we could walk places from now on! We chilled out on the beach in the evening and tried to catch up on some diary which we'd been slacking on and then headed into town to look for some food. Ate in a place showing Anchorman which instantly sold it to us before heading onto the beach to meet Kasper. Whilst waiting we watched some amazing fire jugglers. Completely amazing seriously! Kasper turned up and I gave him his things, he was really grateful and told us about a pool party about 3 minutes down the beach from our place, we said we'd make an appearance but had planned on having a bit of a night off the drink! Rob took a nap back at the hut and me and Katie headed down. As soon as we got there we realised it wasnt gonna be a night off as we ran into so many people we knew. The essex girls, the hostel gang, kasper. It was a good fun night yet again. Met some cool people, one of which amazingly is from Shinfield and is good friends with a friend of mine from primary school. Small world! Also met a guy on crutches after a scooter incident. I'm not surprised so many people have accidents, there so many guys on this Island with such a huge ego and they go ragging it around when they've probably never even ridden before. Anyway today has been spent exploring with Rob, playing some pool and sitting here right now giving u guys a long overdue update! Full Moon Party tommorow which should be fun but probably a little overhyped. We all think we'll have and have already had better nights elsewhere! Afterwards we're heading north about 20 minutes by boat to the tiny (as in you can walk everywhere) island of Koh Tao where the snorkeling and diving!
Miss everyone, Keep in Touch
Luke

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