Thailand - a rather disorganised adventure!

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Hello :-)

So I arrived back from Thailand 2 days ago now and am running out of ways to cheer myself up about no longer being there. I've stared at the tan, uploaded the photos to facebook, told everybody at school how amazing it was and friend requested all the great people I met out there! But, sadly, the memories are fading and so I've decided it's time to write the blog (or at least make a start as it's 10 o'clock at night, I'm exhausted and I have to be up at 5.30am)

So we decided to take the Friday night flight out of Seoul to make the most of our time off. We got changed at school, packing our clothes into cupboards and left our classrooms wearing as little as possible so we didn't have to carry the extra clothes around the whole time in scorching Thailand! We looked like a pair of complete nerds with one rucksack on the back and a matching one on the front! Being completely disorganised (which turned out to be the theme of the hoilday) actually worked to our advantage at this point. As we were discussing every option of getting to the airport in the horrendous holiday traffic and how much it would cost us, a member of staff at school informed us of the express subway line that went just 2 stops from school. So on we got, and were in the airport within the hour for the total price of £1.20 or something ridiculously small like that! Great! This gave us time to completely pig out on cheesey chips and the most unhealthy 'salad' ever (it was basically KFC and a bit of lettuce) before we checked in. We then regretted it as we felt bloated and disgusting before our flight had even taken off! So we checked in, Katharine went to the toilet about 8 times and we sent those last messages on facebook, knowing full well that wifi could be elusive for a few days! The flight (Thai Airways) was OK. A fair amount of legroom, OK looking food (I couldn't actually eat if after the 'salad'😉 and a comfortable blanket. Less satisfactory things were: an unfriendly air hostess who shouted at Katharine for having her phone on when the plane doors weren't even closed, the plane was extremely cold, and then there was the in-flight entertainment system! I am going to rant about this because it deeply upset me, but I am only going to do it once so I will speak about the return flight here also. On the way out there basically everytime you pushed a button on the remote it reacted about 5 seconds later. Mine wouldn't stop being in Thai, until I got really mad, pressed all of the buttons and then it miraculously asked what language I wanted! Great, I thought! So, me and Katharine started to watch the same film (we tried to synchronise but the slow reaction of the buttons made it completely impossible) and then about half an hour in all of the systems just stopped and went back to the home page! I grumbled about it but thought never mind, I'll just go back to the film and fast forward to the correct place. This took me approxiamately 20 minutes as the fast forward and rewind functions were just as mental as the rest of the system. Anyway, I made it to the end of my film and decided to leave it at that for that flight - didn't want to push my luck! Which brings me to the return flight......well! I wanted to watch another film, the remote was reacting as soon as I pressed a button so I thought I was on a roll! But no. The film would play, but the sound coming to my ears through the headphones was that annoying plonky 'hold' music they use - not the film! The attendant reset my system but of course, it didn't work so I told her to forget in and went to sleep! When I was woken up for food I decided I'd better not go back to sleep as I'd feel rough and ended up playing 'Bejewelled' as this is the only thing that would work and it didn't need sound - desperate times! I have never had such dissatisfaction from in-flight entertainment before.......be warned Thai Airways passengers! Rant over now. I feel like a load has been lifted!

Anyway, all in all, the flight out was comfortable and I maybe got 2-3 hours sleep. We then got off at about 1.30am local time, stood in a very long queue for passport control, found our bags, got ferried to a hotel in a minibus and then settled down to another 2 hours sleep. All I can say is thank goodness we gained 2 hours on that flight! We were up at 6am, ate our first random Thai breakfast with sausages that even I find a little dubious and got ourselves a taxi to the bus station in Bangkok. We wandered around the bus station for ages trying to decide which island we wanted to go to on the Sunday (next day) and hence, which ticket to buy. We couldn't make a decision (!) so we decided to just go to Kanchanaburi where we were meeting Sophie (my friend who lives near Bangkok) and make a decision at an even later point. So we got on the bus to Kanchan, slept a fair bit, had an old man pretty much sit on my lap and watched some of the highly disturbing film that the driver had found it appropriate to play on a bus in the middle of the day with children around! We got accosted on arrival by a woman asking to take us to where we wanted to go. After Katharine had visited the bathroom (obviously) we ended up going with her, for a very reasonable fee, to a pushbike with a carriage on the back! That poor woman. There was me, Katharine, our 2 main rucksacks and our 2 small rucksacks. She went at about 2mph and was a sweaty mess by the time she got us there 20 minutes later, but get us there she did! Legend!

So after all of this travelling and many modes of transport (another theme of the holiday), we got to the hotel and met up with Sophie, Chris and Sam, who are all TEFL teachers near Bangkok. We had a dip in the pool, chatted about how hot it was and basically relaxed for a good half an hour! Then it was back onto the transport to go elephant trekking! This was great fun! We had a little wander around on the elephants back, which felt like a rollercoaster ride at 'downhill' times. Then we were allowed to go and swim with the elephants. Basically that meant climbing on the elephants back whilst it sprayed you in the face with water repeatedly, at it's owners command! The man then shouted 'rodeo' which meant the elephant tipped you off it's back into the water quite unexpectedly! It was a really good laugh and I love the photos :-) That evening we went out for Italian (what else when you're in Thailand?!) and a few drinks at the 'ten baht bar', i.e. '20p bar', where many of the drinks are indeed 10 baht! Katharine and I didn't last long after our evening / night / morning escapades and got an early night at around midnight. A good solid ten hours sleep was in order!

So we got up the next day and decided to sort out which island we were going to and how we were going to get there. We decided Koh Phi Phi was going to be our destination but after asking in a few of the travel agents we realised we would have to leave at 1:30pm from Kanchanaburi on a deal that took us all the way there, or risk getting a later bus to the bus station and the next bus to Phi Phi being full! So we headed back to the hotel (after a 7eleven cheese and ham toastie) having STILL not booked anything to find that we should have checked out of the room 15 minutes previously (disorganised) and that Sophie and Chris were ridiculously hungover after getting in at 6am, so weren't too fussed about doing any sightseeing that day. That decided it! We booked the bus at 1:30pm, ate some food, had a drink and made the start to what turned out to be a rather epic journey.

We arrived to Khao San Road in Bangkok at about 4pm and were told that we needed to be back for 5.45pm to catch a bus. So we went to Boots (we don't have them in South Korea!), bought some dresses and then ate some food. I had my first pad thai of the trip! This was all great and quite a nice, short but sweet stopover, or so we thought! So we headed back to the agents and then took a short walk to the side of the road to catch our bus. On got the passengers heading to Koh Tao, on got the passengers heading to Koh Samui, and the passengers for Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta just stood around looking bemused, waiting to be shown to our bus! Unfortunately there was no bus, just a man saying 'it will be here in 5 minutes'. I have to say, this was the longest 5 minutes of my life. After about 20 minutes into the '5 minutes' the man who was in charge of it all just got on a motorbike and left. 2 hours into the '5 minutes' the bus turned up! There was nobody there to say it was the right bus but we got on anyway as frankly, there was nothing else to do. The bus drove up the road, did a u-turn, then stopped on the other side of the road for 20 minutes for what seemed like no reason whatsoever!! So I think in the end our 5.45pm bus actually left Bangkok at about 8.30pm. I think this may have been the first time that I uttered "It's an adventure Katharine!".

So after a bit of disturbed sleep (disturbed by about 4 different petrol station stops between the hours of 8.30pm and 2.00am) we arrived at a destination at about 7am. This destination turned out to be 3 hours from where we wanted to be, on the other side of Thailand but we had to get off and change to an even shoddier looking bus than the first one to travel that extra 3 hours to where our boat was leaving from. Fine, we thought, as we were given another sticker to wear on our t-shirts to inform anybody who cared about where we were going, we would miss our scheduled boat but surely they would take us straight to the port to get on the next available boat. You would think! Instead, we drove for 3 hours and were dropped off at another little random place with huts everywhere (at about 10am). Here we got another sticker for our t-shirts, were told the shop selling food and drinks was closed because the person was asleep, and that another bus would take us to the port, which was 10 minutes away, in another hour and a half. Patience was wearing a little thin but the most protesting we could do was just not pay for the toilet that asked for a donation of 5 baht! Anyway, as promised, the little bus appeared an hour and a half later to take us to the port, which was ten minutes away. On arrival we realised that the boat we were getting was yet another hour and a half later so we took this opportunity to don our bikinis, book a nights accommodation for our first night on Phi Phi and brush our teeth! We still looked rough as dogs but at least our breath smelt nice! The worst thing was that there was actually an earlier boat we could have caught if we hadn't have sat in the shop-less hole of a place for so long! At this point however, we could almost smell Phi Phi island and the sun was shining so we got on the boat, whacked on some suncream, bought a beer or two and sailed excitedly to our destination whilst talking to a lovely American couple!

Upon arrival to the island (at 3:30pm - 26 hours after we left the guys in Kanchan) we started to partially regret the 2 hours sat solidly in the sun drinking beer as it seemed that we were quite drunk, over tired and possibly had a little bit of sunstroke! However....when we arrived at the room we had booked, I was actually rather glad that I was drunk as I don't think a sober version of myself could've coped with the disgusting-ness. Green wallpaper everywhere made it look like somebody had done a huge sneeze all over the walls, and they had even wallpapered the bathroom! We dumped our bags and went straight to another hotel to see if they had rooms available for the next evening. They didn't. But we did book the two nights following that and decided that rather than stay in the disgusting bogey room for another night we would go and sleep on a boat in the middle of the sea on Tuesday instead! After sorting out this problem we then ate, slept on the beach, went back to the room, slept some more, then forced ourselves out of bed to go drinking so we weren't complete losers on our first night on Phi Phi! There were buckets of gin and tonic for me, and vodka and coke for Katharine. There was dancing, there was the beach, there were random men invading our photos, and there were horribly disgusting toilets that cost 10 baht to visit! All in all, I think it was quite a good night. The 'let's go out for a couple of hours because we're really exhausted' turned into rolling in at 5am, so it must've been a good night!

We woke up just a little worse for wear on the Tuesday but I knew I had to get up to go and book our boat trip (determined NOT to stay in that room for another night). So I dragged myself to the agents and booked us on, then dragged myself back to Katharine and the room and told her the 'good' news. Honestly, the floor of a boat in the middle of the sea was more appealing! We also realised, in our disgusting state, that we did not want a repeat of the 26 hour journey we had endured to get there when we returned to Bangkok later in the week and decided to book ourselves a flight. The first travel agent said they wouldn't book flights so we ended up at this small agents, which was basically this woman's house, paying for the boat, minibus to Krabi airport, and airplane out of Krabi back to Bangkok. It only later occurred to me (at the end of the week when the flight had been successful) that this was really quite dodgy and there is certainly a vast amount of trust involved when booking thngs like this in Thailand! Anyway, feeling very proud of our morning achievements we ate a dirty breakfast, watched some BBC world news (about the man-made Korean earthquake) and then treated ourselves to a nap on the beach for a few hours, before heading off at about 2pm to find our bed for the night in the middle of the sea!

On arrival at the pier, the clouds moved in and spots of rain started to drop. The sky seemed pretty stormy, and the sea seemed pretty choppy; to the extent that the boat had trouble pulling into the pier for us to climb onto it! Katharine is not a seasoned sailor to say the least, and on this trip even I felt the negative effects as the boat crashed over the waves. I went a little clammy and had to close my eyes and concentrate on not being sick. I blamed a mixture of the drink the night before and the storm that seemed to be brewing. We made it safely to Maya Bay (the beach where the film 'The Beach' was filmed) and the boat dropped it's anchor in a much more mild sea than the one we had travelled in. The sun wasn't suite shining but the clouds were disappearing! We stripped down to bikini's, grabbed a snorkel and quickly got into the water to settle our stomachs. It was at this point that it seemed the panic I didn't have in Borocay when I was drowning decided to come to the surface (a few months too late). Every time I put my head under the water to look at the fish I started doing really short shallow breaths as if I wasn't going to be able to breathe through the snorkel. Me being me, and rather stubborn, I kept on practicing until I managed to calm myself down and snorkel like a normal human being. I have no idea what fish I saw - I think some were angel fish, and there were these really bright blue ones! Katharine and I then decided to swim over to this little tiny beach as it looked cute! As we got closer, obviously the coral got higher so we were literally crawling across the coral. We got to the little beach and added a stone to one of the various stone towers that had been built, then decided to crawl back. I felt a little stab in my finger as we crawled back over the coral but thought nothing of it until we made it back to the boat, when it really started to sting. I climbed aboard and could see a black dot in my finger so asked the tour guide man if he could take it out! He told me it was a sea urchin sting and you couldn't take them out, and really, I shouldn't have touched the coral (let alone crawled across it!) He then sent me to one of the Thai cooks who squeezed a lime all over it and then told me to sit with the lime on my finger. I felt sorry for myself for about 5 minutes and then got bored and threw the lime in the sea! What a div!

We then went onto 'The Beach' beach by taking a longboat a little closer, and then wading the rest of the way. We walked around for a bit, took some tourist snaps and went to the snack bar where we got free spring rolls - win!! We watched the glow that the sunset made on the rocks, but were in the completely wrong position to actually see it happening and then went to eat dinner, prepared by the local people. We had a lovely chicken curry with rice and vegetables! Soon after a man appeared with a bucket which he then tipped onto the floor right next to us, and it turned out to be full of hermit crabs! They all had different shells and were crawling all over the place. I had a little girly fit and wouldn't touch them but some of the others were holding them, including Katharine - a weird moment of role reversal! We then headed back to the beach in the pitch black with our buckets of alcohol and sat chatting with Sofie and Chloe from Belgium and Marco and Damien from France. We were chatting about our holidays and mine and Katharine's ridiculous trip and then just random rubbish. Upon chatting it turned out that I had no idea about the plot to 'The Beach' - I thought it was the film where the dude made friends with the football - Wilson - but apparently that's Castaway! Ha ha! I now need to make it my mission to watch that film! However, I wasn't the biggest loser of the group as Marco had lost his shoe and was walking around with one green shoe and the other foot bare! The main problem we encountered during this evening was the toilet run. It was absolutely pitch black and the toilet was a good 2 minute solid walk away, with about 3 lights to guide the way. I'm not going to lie, we would start the walk, but we never actually made it to the toilet block on any of the occasions! At about 10pm there was then more food on offer - BBQ'd chicken and garlic bread. I of course loved it - more food!! :-) We then headed back to the main boat via the longboat and stripped off again to go back and do some more snorkelling, this time in the dark to see the glowing plankton. It was a little cold and at first we coudn't even see them but after we got a little bit away from the boat and moved our hands around in front of us we could see all of these little glow in the dark dots! It was really cool. We then headed back to the boat to set up camp on the deck for the night with the girls and the boys, which basically involved a rubber mat, sleeping bag and a pillow each. We chatted for a bit then settled down for a lovely night's sleep under the stars :-)

Of course, 'night's sleep' is an exaggeration. 'A few hours of interrupted sleep' is much more fitting for a description of the night's events! There was some snoring, Katharine standing on people in the night when she went for a wee, and basically weird 'in the middle of the sea' noises. However, at 6.45am we all woke up looking beautiful and amazing, ready to head back over to the beach before any other tourists arrived. I think we actually had it to ourselves for all of 15 minutes and then at about 7.30am the other visitors started to arrive! However, we got a few lovely pics of it being all serene and lovely, looked for Marco's shoe for a bit to show willing, and then chilled out on the beach. We headed back to the boat pretty soon and ate some great scrambled eggs on toast (garlic bread) for breakfast. We did a little bit more snorkelling - I just wanted to prove to myself that I was most definitely over my weird panic attack thing - and then were headed back to Phi Phi before we knew it, on a much calmer sea than the way out!

This is when the only relaxing hours of our holiday began......We arrived back to Phi Phi island, dropped our bags at the reception to the hotel and were stationed by the pool by 10.30am :-) It was great! The weather was scorching hot, we sat down for hours on end, dipped into the pool every now and again when it got too hot, and basically chilled out masssively! We had a half hour break from this strenuous activity to get lunch, which consisted of a huge slice of pizza each and a great chocolate milkshake for me! Then it was back to the pool side, soaking up the rays. Now, it was about 3pm when I realised that I was looking rather pink. I would like to point out that I had applied factor 30 twice that day, so I wasn't being silly, it was just that hot! As much as it pained us to go inside on such a beautiful day, we had to, and the shower revealed that the burn was not just in the places I had originally thought! So we sat in bed with the air con on for a bit, re-packed our bags for the rest of the holiday (i.e. put all the dirty washing at the bottom of the bag) and then I decided we had done enough resting for one day and we should take a lovely hike up to the viewpoint! We picked up a pancake first, to provide us with the energy it would require, and because we had missed pancake day the day before (I had sugar and lemon and Katharine had nutella) and then we set off up the countless number of steps to the highest point on the island. It was worth it. The view was great! You can still see some areas where the tsunami destroyed buildings and homes as it hasn't all been rebuilt, but it is almost back to normal. We had some lovely corny 'view' photos and then headed back down to the room to get ready for the night out.

That evening we headed out for a lovely Thai meal. I enjoyed 'chicken and cashew nuts' - one of my faves - and a Mai Thai cocktail! Great! We then felt really full and even after a bucket, weren't getting in the party mood! We were enjoying laughing at some of the reps outside the pub though, who were just vile men trying to get people to go into the bar, and only managing to get people that were already heading that way anyway! Somewhere along the way our party spirit kicked in and we ended up heading to the beach where the main party was happening. We say the 'fire acts' for a bit, but weren't to impressed as the seemed to keep dropping, and even at one point, throwing, the fire where it shouldn't have been thrown - i.e. into the crowd! So we moved on and went for a quick dance! We then saw Marco and Damien and swopped Facebooks to meet up the next day, I ate another slice of that huge pizza on the way home (as apparently I hadn't eaten enough that day) and then we rolled into bed at 3am without a care in the world as for once in our holiday lives we were sleeping in a bed and there was no alarm set for the next day :-)

We got up at noon and felt great for it, despite missing a few hours of sun. We had a lovely cup of tea in the room then a great lunch of a chicken ceasar wrap, fries and an orange smoothie (very Thai.....NOT!) We pottered through the shops but weren't in the mood so we decided to pay a man with a longboat to take us over to a different and more secluded beach further around the island. We found out later that Marco and Damien had walked there and back, 45 minutes each way, so felt a bit lazy, but at the time we just coudn't be bothered! We chilled on the beach, I collected some nice shells and had an ice lolly and Katharine slept off the hangover, which seemed to have progressed during the day! We then got a boat back to the main area of the island and did actually look in some shops this time! I bought some Thialand tat and then we had a cheese and ham toastie from 7eleven as a pre-dinner snack! When we got back to the room we arranged to meet with Marco and Damien that evening for dinner at 9pm. We got ready and went to this small little traditional Thai place. By traditional I mean the chairs and tables were plastic, the table cloths were those horrible shiny plastic laminated things, and the staff couldn't speak a word of English! It was great! I had spring rolls and a pad thai :-) Me, Katharine and the boys then went out to 'Reggae bar'. This is basically a bar with a boxing ring in the middle of it and you can choose to go in and fight. I wasn't keen on the idea of watching this but once I'd made a start on a bucket and got chatting I was up for it (watching it, not doing it!) We watched a couple of fights, which were actually quite funny, and then a 'proper' thai boxing fight, which was actually even more funny as it was the most staged thing I'd ever seen - like WWF! When we got bored of watching this we decided to go down to the beach and have a little dance! Damien went home but Katharine, Marco and I danced until about 2am and had some corny photos under the Valentine's day balloons! We then walked back to the hotel, where Katharine and I realised we had locked ourselves out of our safe because we couldn't remember the code. In fact, we couldn't remember who had even locked it to remember the code! So Katharine went to get somebody, but nobody could do it until the morning so we had no phones, and hence no alarms! So at 3am we arranged a wake up call for 7am from the hotel and passed out in our beds!

When the wake up call came through the next day I could've actually killed somebody! An alarm is bad enough, but a telephone waking you up is somehow worse! We ate a mediocre breakfast at the hotel, got the safe unlocked, packed our bags and then walked back to the pier, feeling a little bit sad to leave but also satisfied that we had done all we came to do on Phi Phi! We got on the boat and decided to sit outside at the top to help Katharine's travel sickness. MISTAKE! About 10 minutes into the journey, the heavens opened and we had to shelter under this tiny little bit of roof! Every 20 minutes or so it would stop and we could get out again, but then it would just restart. So we spent about 2 hours standing up, then sitting down and getting a wet bum and putting hoodies on, then taking them off! Anyway, we made it back in one piece and actually felt quite smug that we had left the day that the rain started! We then got the minibus we had booked to the airport, which was overbooked so I was practically sat on the driver's knee. Katharine found this highly amusing! We then checked in and got onto our flight, where Katharine and I both promptly fell asleep, neither of us seeing take off, landing, or indeed any of the flight! We could barely make conversation from being so exhausted as we made our way to get a taxi in Bangkok, so we vastly overpaid at one of the booths, but really didn't care!

We arrived at the hostel place in Bangkok, checked in, chilled out for a bit, then realised we deserved a treat after all our hard work travelling. So we went and ate some street food in the form of spring rolls and sat and had ourselves a foot massage in the street too! It was great, if a little rough on the calf muscles, which were still hurting after our walk up to the viewpoint! We went for a quick drick, where Katharine asked for fresh orange juice and received cordial (which they had no shame in as they bought out extra cordial to top it up) and then went to meet Sophie and Chris back at the hotel and got ready for the evening. We then had a night out on Khao San Road with Sophie Chris, and two of their friends. We ate Thai food in the street with a beer, then went to a roof top bar for cocktails and to listen to a man with a guitar, and then started on the buckets. From then on, the night basically involved drinking, paying to go to disgusting toilets, great conversation and a McDonald's to finish. I think we went to bed at about 5am.

Which brings me to our last day in Thailand :-( Check out from our room was at 11am. I woke up at 8am and asked Katharine if she would rather check out at 11am, or pay the fine for checking out late? We agreed to check out late (definitely the answer I was looking for) and passed out until about 12.30pm! We left the hotel at about 2pm to do our 'pharmacy run'. Basically Thailand is great for getting anything medical that you need in that it is cheap and easily accessible, so we had a list of things to get for people including inhalers and the pill! We also got Rachel some contact lenses as they are much cheaper out there as well! We then met Sophie for brunch and she took us to a place that had great smoothies and a lovely cheap fry-up type breakfast! We decided to go to the park, which was about a half hour drive in a taxi. However, once we had been stuck in traffic for that scheduled half hour, we decided to get out and just do some shopping around Khao San Road. We had literally moved within walking distance of where we started! So Katharine and I went and bought more dresses, a bit more Thai tat, and had another foot massage! We then decided that our last meal had to be street food and we ate THE BEST pad thai and spring rolls I have ever eaten! The perfect last meal! We wandered back to our hotel, picked up our bags, said goodbye to Soph and Chris and then got ourselves a taxi to the airport, which was remarkably much cheaper and quicker than any other taxi we had taken before! We were getting a few random looks at the airport when we were in the queue for check in and really couldn't work out why! We then realised that we were in the queue for flights only between Thailand and Japan or Korea and that everybody else around us was Asian and with a suitcase. We were Western, with huge rucksacks that we were dragging along the floor, and were talking rather loudly about how amazing our holiday had been! We looked like a pair of complete travellers, still in our shorts and strappy tops, so then I understood why we were so amusing! Anyway, we bought some Milka in duty free and got on our flight (which I don't need to tell you about as you already know my issues with the in-flight entertainment) and we landed back in Seoul on Sunday morning after about 2 hours sleep. We got back to Hannam Tower at about 9am and both went back to bed for a few hours, before spending the day unpacking and feeling sorry for ourselves about having to go to work the next day!

Anyway...... I've now been writing this for 5 days (inbetween parent consultation evenings, planning a staff meeting and general school stuff) and it's turned out to be the longest blog ever. But then, it was the most eventful holiday I have ever been on! Congratulations if you have made it to the end, not sure I would've done!

Sawadee ka!

Claire xxxx

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Photos

Leaving Korea
Trying to wear as few layers as possible on the subway.

At the bus station in Bangkok
About to travel to Kanchanaburi.... the first of many buses!

Taxi to the hotel....
....well, a sort of taxi!

Playing board games whilst eating a great Italian.
We never actually played the board game, just set it up ready!

Arriving at Phi Phi
The end of the 26 hour journey!

A sea urchin sting!
Consoling myself with a lime....

FREE SPRING ROLLS!!
Best day ever :-)

Chilling in the pool
Finally relaxing at about the mid point of our holiday!

Thai pancake!
Gutted that we missed actual pancake day by one day!