Thailand Ko Pha Ngan & Bangkok

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7 ish Days in Thailand flew past, after a wobbly start getting into the country (wow the immigration is laborious after the smooth entry into Cambodia) and a hellish 2 hour mini bus ride across Bangkok to the Southern Bus terminal, we were on our way to Ko Pha Ngan. Or so we thought! At 5am we were unceremoniously dropped off at Surat Thani nowhere near the port, kidnapped by a taxi driver and taken to a dodgy travel agent who tried to charge us double the price to get to Ko Pha Ngan. To be honest, despite what the guides seem to say, all in all we think it is probably easier just to head to Khao San Rd and buy a ticket from there return as we ended up with all sorts of negotiation problems on the way. Eventually made it to Ko Pha Ngan where we wandered about in a daze for 10 minutes while various taxi drivers tried to charge us extortionate prices for taking us to the beach we wanted to go to. Luckily two angels in the shape of Lou from London and Stefan from Sweden decended down and transported us to THE beach to be on out of Full Moon season. Thong Nai Pan Yai Beach. We ended up at Bamboo, where followed four days of chilling out and getting disgustingly drunk at Andy's 33rd birthday party (nice hats eh??). See the pictures.

After chilling with little Caleb on the beach for four days we were just about ready to hit Bangkok. Well, almost. We wisely jumped on a tourist bus on the way back, spending some serious quality time at various restaurants in Surat Thani before eventually heading back to the city. Arrived at 7.30am to find no room at most inns. We made our way across the river and found a little haven called 'the villa'. Run by a nice elderly Chinese lady it had a little garden and a lounge area full of books from across Europe! Rustic charm sums it up, we try to forget the cockroach on the last night, ugh. Bangkok was great, think we needed more time there. We made it to the reclining Buddha which was amazing, but missed out on the Grand Palace, definitely need to head back to Bangkok. At least we managed to get a couple of all important Thai cushions in the post before we flew out to Borneo and our tour of Sabah..

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