The South of Thailand...

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Donna and Aisling were due to be arriving into Bangkok on the 15th of February, so we bid farewell to Cambodia and departed by bus for the infamous Khao San Road. This time around though we knew what to expect and where we'd be staying.

The bus journey seemed particularly long because we were both excited and looking forward to seeing the others after all the time that had passed. We eventually arrived and booked into the cheapest dump we could find, about 500m from the K.S.R and headed out for that obligatory "Welcome to Thailand" bucket.

As it turned out, we bumped into Donna and Ais on the Khao San Road...
... and thus began a great couple of weeks in the south of Thailand!!!

I wont go into too much detail because much of our time was spent lounging on the beach and just generally enjoying the sun holiday that it was but there were a few highlights that are worth mentioning.

So first off, the itinerary:
Bangkok- Koh Pha Ngan- Koh Samui- Koh Tao- Krabi- Koh Phi Phi- Sungai Kolok (and then on to Malaysia).
All together we planned on spending the full month that our visa allowed us to.

And now for the highlights:

(1) Getting the Advanced Open Water cert in Koh Tao.

The diving was amazing and we saw (to name but a few) bull sharks (2m long!), moray eels, seahorses, sting rays, huge grouper, a shoal of about 2000 barracuda, trigger fish, angel fish, butterfly fish... etc etc...
We got the opportunity to dive to 30m and it was a different world at that depth. There were just so many fish in these enormous shoals and the sea scape was incredible. We also got the chance to take underwater cameras down with us, so we have a few good shots of eachother in all the scube gear but very few of any of the wildlife- underwater photography is a lot harder than it looks!

(2) The Full Moon Party on Koh Pha Ngan.

They are world renowned and for good reason. It wasn't just the night of the party, it was the build up to it. There was a great atmosphere, the town was packed and everyone there had converged for the same reason and you could feel in the air how excited everybody was. The night itself was great and the beach had been decorated with a number of huge UV pieces of 'art', there was a massive Full Moon Party sign lit up in flames and there were fire dancers and jugglers all over the beach. Add that to the 8,000 people and the amazing location and it's going to be very memorable!

(3) Camping on Maya beach (the beach from the film "The Beach".

We spent the night on Koh Phi Phi Leh camping with about 20 other people and it was amazing. None of us were expecting it to be as enjoyable as it was. The beach is beautiful, probably nicer than the film depicts and the water is so clear it is more like a swimming pool. We had a BBQ, listened to music, walked through the jungle and went night swimming and got to see all the phosphorescent plankton. That was especially impressive because i have never seen anything like that before. When you disturb the water it's like thousands of sparks exploding from your finger tips- awesome. We went kayaking, slept under the stars and the sky was filled with shooting stars. Best of all- we had the entire island to ourselves because nobody lives there, it is a protected area. So the next morning we actually got an hour or two of perfect, unspoilt, sunny beach. In Thailand- that's priceless.

The south of Thailand is definitely not to everybody's liking but i guess how much you enjoy it depends on what your expectations were of it before you arrived. If you are expecting deserted, tropical beaches and Thai villages oozing culture, then more than likely you will be disappointed. If you go there looking for a good time in beautiful surroundings and come to terms with the fact that you are now on a sun holiday in a beach resort, then you will enjoy yourself and you will appreciate the region a lot more. Thankfully after the few months of travel and the regular moving on, we were more than happy to relax and enjoy spending more than three days in the one spot.

So after catching up with Donna and Ais, topping up our tans (not you Declan!), getting more than our fair share of lie-ins and becomming mini-golf champs, we decided to move on and up the pace.

We "accidently" over-stayed our welcome in the country by a day but thankfully the immigration officials were more concerned with making IRA related jokes than giving out to us!

Next stop: Malaysia (counrty number 6) and the Perhentian Islands...

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