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Published: December 7th 2007
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Well once again we have got a bit behind with the blogs, mainly bacause internert in the islands was quite expensive. We're currently in Borneo flying to singapore tonight. So as Gra is fast asleep I have decided to give this blog thing a go, I cant promise it will be as amusing or as long as Gras entries!
We left Bangkok nice and early on a very nice bus (shame we hadn't had one like that on the way to Bangkok) and managed to get a few hours sleep. About 20 mins before we arrived at the port the heavens opened and we could see nothing but dark clouds all around us and when we saw the sea we new we were in for a bad ride on the catermeran. Luckily we didnt have to wait long at the port and were soon sitting in amongst the waves waiting to set off with all the other backpackers heading to the "sunny" islands, at this point we met one guy who lived on Ko Toa and told us it was actually monsoon season still as it had come late this year- excellent!! To say it was a bad
crossing was abit of an understatement, we took a travel sickness tablet and closed our eyes and tried not to think about the waves going over the boat- and ofcourse put our ipods on to try to drown out the noise of everyone being sick (atleast 70% of the passengers were!). Once the painful 2 hours were over we were pleased to step onto dry land in Ko Tao apart from the fact it was chucking it down still.
We decided to go with a guy with a hotel on one of the main beaches but the room really wasn't that great (and the taxi was expensive, compared to what we were used to anyway), so we carried on along the beach trying to find somewhere else to stay. But we weren't very succesful at all, we thought most of the beach huts were really expensive for what they were, at this point we realized the lonely planets pricing is a bit out of date- the prices had mostly doubled, and to honest we didnt find the people very welcoming so we decided to head to another beach which someone else had reccomended. Once we got there we
found an ok resort and decided to book 1 night while we had a look round and decided what we wanted to do. Because of the weather the beach really didnt look that great and Ko Tao is known for its great diving which is one of the reasons we went but the water was all stirred up because of the wind and we were told the visabilty was pretty poor so we decided not to bother. So after a couple of hours we had decided that the next day we would head to Ko Phangnang.
So another early morning and we board another catermeran, unfortunatly the weather hadn't changed so the crossing was just as bad. We had done abit of research to decide where we wanted to go so headed to the north west of the island (away from the party beaches), but again the bungalows we went to first weren't very nice so we carried along the beach looking at others and we did find one very nice resort but it was well over budget so as tempting as it was just to stay stuff the budget we'll stay here we carried on to the
next beach. What we didn't realize was that we had to walk up a rather big hill (with our backpacks) and that the next beach really wasn't as close as what it looked on the map. We had a look at a few places on the way but decided to carry on until we got to the main beach. We realized afterwards we shouldn't have bothered as we didnt like the look of anywhere and some places seemed to be half closed down because of the weather. So at this point we had to decide whether we were going to sleep on the beach in our sleeping bags or blow the budget. Ofcourse we went with the 2nd option and headed back to bounty resort which we'd passed earlier (up another big hill), we managed to persuade the owner to give us a big discount on one of the nicer bungalows with hot water, tv etc and finally we had found our bed for the night. It was a really nice resort, small and friendly. It had its own private beach and a pool which would have been great if it had been sunny, we decided to stay a few
days and wait to see if the weather improved and in the mean time we watched alot of movies and there were a few other people doing exactly the same as us and were a really nice crowd which kept everyones spirits high! A few days came and went and it was still raining and the reports showed no signs of it improving so we started looking to see where we could go to find some sun. We decided to head to the other side of Thailand to Phuket as we'd heard they had already had there monsoon season and the weather should be getting better. So we booked a boat ticket for the next day and packed our bags ready for another boat trip, fingers crossed it would be a better crossing.
I hope you have enjoyed my first blog, i cant promise there will be any more from me but you never know!!
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