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Published: January 15th 2013
We had to take a small break from blogging and any sort of communication via any kind of signal as we've basically had none in the last 4 days.
We'll start off by recounting our fun little journey from Kanchanaburi to Surat Thani which is the drop off point to the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. So we decided we were going to be smart and plan our own trip down. Most travel agencies, and it seems like pretty much anyone on the street will offer you some sort of bus+train+ferry+donkey combo to get you down there.
We gathered as many "official" train times from as many "official" people as we could find, including several timetables and even looked online when we had a bit of wifi available. Because it seems that everyone tells us of a different time the trains come and go..We figured it out! That wasn't so hard we said. Ha!
So travel in Thailand and possibly all of Asia suffers from "they do as they feel syndrome". Trains are delayed, buses leave early and sometimes the method of transport which you paid for doesn't even exist. We got pretty lucky and only suffered a half
hour train delay on this leg of the trip. Phew! So back to train. We both just absolutely love train travel, it's not neccessarily the quickest but definitely the funnest so far. Our first train from Kanchanaburi took us 2 hours then we got to our "layover" town of Nakhon Pathom. Such a cool place! Wish we could spend a few more hours there. We had about 2 hours until our sleeper train arrived so we ventured out. The town was bustling. Street food as far as the eye could see, motorbikes EVERYWHERE, and not a single foreigner in sight. We loved it. Really felt like we finally saw some of the authentic Thailand. We even saw a baby elephant being ushered through the crowd. We ate some chicken skewers (delish!) and went back to the station to wait. So now to the sleeper train. This was such a fun experience. We could only get a top bunk each so we were facing each other on this tiny bed with two straps attached so you don't fall off at night! There were no compartments in this train so it was just one long hallway with beds on each side with
a curtain. We got a comfy pillow and blanket each and pretty much passed out after taking our motion sickness pills haha. The only bad side was that the AC was sooo cranked up we both completely froze at night. Nevertheless we both got a good nights sleep and before we knew it we felt a slight tap on our heads telling us we have ONE MINUTE to get off as this was our stop. It's a good thing the bed was so small we didn't take anything out of our bags besides a book.
So 4:30AM and we sat down and had breakfast at Surat Thani waiting for our next method of transport, a bus to the pier which was about an hour away. Boat ride was very nice, big boat with cars loaded onto it. We finally saw the ocean too so we were happy.
We got to the island of Koh Samui and after trying to be smart again and walking away from all the taxi drivers by the pier to find cheaper options...none were available. So we decided to walk a bit and see how far we could get. Not very. We walked
for about 15 minutes completely drenched in sweat and no guesthouses, taxis, or any other people in sight. We came across a nice man sitting outside his home who offered to drive us the the beach we wanted to go to for a reasonable rate. We got to our beach and went guesthouse after guesthouse afteeeer guesthouse and no rooms available. Finally found a cute bungalow operation called New Hut Bungalow and paid our 18$ a night for a lovely a-frame hut on the beach. We had a shared bathroom and shower which was actually super clean and close to our room. We hung out in Samui for 2 days. Ate good food, watched a fire show at night, went to a market. One of the days we rented a scooter to go explore the island which was really nice. We actually ended up kinda sorta falling off of it a little bit....(moms don't worry we are FINE just a few small scrapes) we weren't going fast just doing a u-turn and caught some gravel on the road and just kinda slid off. We did break one of the mirrors and a scooter shop next door happened to have one
for 150BHT (5$)...that's our second "phew" because our guesthouse would have charged us an arm and a leg to fix it. So we just brought the keys back when it was dark and no one noticed anything. We hit up a pharmacy for some peroxide and bandages and cleaned up our scratches. We will def be a lot more careful then we already are next time we ride one. Having not liked Samui thaaat much we decided to move on. We needed a smaller island with more bohemian appeal. Koh Phangan here we come! This is the island of the famous full moon party that happens every month. Apparently the last one had 50,000 people attending it. We are not going to be...but we are going to enjoy the more secluded parts of this island.
We took a ferry and again decided to be smart and walk away to look for transport to our beach....3 hours later....we realized the beach we booked (Than Sadet on the East side of the island) is one of the most secluded ones...and one that doesn't have a direct road to it. It also rained for the last few days here so the non-existent
roads here are just a bunch of muddied pathways at this point. We asked a few jeep drivers to take us, they actually laughed at us! oh vey..we ended up taking the advice of a Dutch guy working as a "taxi boat salesman" to wait until the next ferry docked for more people. That way we could share something and it would be cheaper. Nope, not happening..we waited. No one wanted to go the secluded beach with no road! they all wanted to party where there are 100 other guesthouses. Hmmm..what to do now?? We got a taxi boat, just us two..for a whopping price of 2000BHT. That's around 65$ for the two of us. That's pricey, but oh well. We got here, it's beautiful! Our own little cove with a few small bungalows scattered on the beach. Huge mountains all around. Just perfect. We hiked up about a 'gazillion' steps to our hilltop bungalow resort only to find out after we made the booking (without paying yet) the owner emailed us back saying she has nothing available. Ok, no biggie we go to the adjacent resort and voila a huge bungalow with a big comfy bed, a shower, a
large deck facing the mountain and ocean with a hammock. 20$ a night. Lovely.
We walked to a nearby waterfall today, not very impressive but a fun hike either way. On the walk back we experienced our first monsoon. It was awesome. Rained so hard we couldn't hear each other. We got back to our bungalow and it stopped raining. That night we hung out with some new friends we made, two solo travellers. One from Holland and another from New Zealand. Very nice guys that we may meet up with further in our travels.
We loved the seclusion at Than Sadet but it is getting a bit pricey having to rely on 3 bungalow resorts for food, drinks, supplies. A 7-Eleven would be fantastic at this point! Food is delicious but pricey here..around 90-120BHT per meal. We are used to paying less then that even on Samui which is considered the priciest island. Time to move on. The guys we met walked to the next beach yesterday and said it's not an easy walk but doable at around 3KM's...we decided we've been spending a bit of money, between buying broken mirrors to getting massages on the beach
to paying 65$ for a 15min boat ride. We needed to be frugal for a few days. So walk it is.
This morning we headed to another beach on the East coast of the island. Wasn't toooo bad, I mean it was pretty much UPHILL BOTH WAYS! and we were beyond drenched with sweat when we arrived. But we truly felt like we were in a wild jungle with nothing around us but mountains, and we saw a pretty big green snake we both almost stepped on. All in all took us almost 2 hours, with our backpacks but we're happy we did it! So now we're sitting at a beach restaurant having a Singha beer and finally having WiFi, catching up to all our cyber stuff. We will stay here for a few days then it's off to the North side of Koh Phangan. Until then..enjoy the pics!
xoxo D & A
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Alkami5t
Albert Meskawy
BUDDZIESSSS
Loving the pics guys. With ya every step of the way! <3 ps:SKYPE DATE LEMME KNOW!