Koh Phangan - Haad Yao

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We can almost say that the 12 hour overnight train ride to Surat Thani was comfier then the room we had the night before. It felt like we were sitting inside an oven though, so we are both glad that we bought air con seats/beds for when we go to Chiang Mai. We booked those for April 5th. This way we know when we need to be back in Bangkok, but don't go there and find out the train is booked for a week straight and have to hang around.

We arrived in Surat Thani around 7:30 in the morning, an hour later then expected but no biggie. We went to the orange bus like our Lonely Planet said and got on. It was full of tourists, but it seemed like they all had 'receipts' for something, and Tris and I didn't. We thought maybe they wouldn't ask and we'd get a free ride to the ferry haha. Once we arrived at the terminal they did ask to see the 'tickets' and we had to tell them we didn't have any. No worries though, i guess this was a company that did combined train, bus, ferry tickets and he just charged us the ferry price.

From Surat Thani you can go to 3 different islands, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, or Koh Tao. We decided last minute ( on the bus to the ferry terminal) that we were going to go to Koh Phangan this week, avoid the full moon party ( if you don't know what the full moon party is, just google it) and then head to Koh Samui after.

After the 2 1/2 hour ferry ride we got off. Our Lonely Planet told us a songthaow should cost 100 baht max a person. Well sure enough everyone wanted to charge us 150 baht to take us to Haad Yao ( the beach area we wanted to go too). Haad Yao was said to be the best swimming spot on the island, and if you don't want to party hardy in Haad Rid that Haad Yao was the place to go.

We ended up paying the 150 baht each and got dropped off in what they call 'city centre'. We headed towards the beach and started asking guest houses what the room costs were. We ended up finding an air con bungelow for 700 baht a night, that is considered each by island standards. Tris and I don't find the beach that nice... its sorta rocky from the shells, its not that big.. and the water itself is hard to swim in as there is quite a bit of seaweed and other stuff along the bottom. We saw a sea urchin and a crab so far. Tris did some snorkelling while I sat on the beach. He had a fish come right up to his goggles, brave little thing. He also saw a sea urchin the size of his head. He said it was hard to snorkel because the water doesn't get deep enough, and you don't really want to crawl along the bottom because of all the stuff. You don't know what you'd maybe set your kneee/foot/hand on.

Tomorrow the plan is to rent a motorbike and tour the island. See if we can find some other area that we like better. If not we are probably going to head to Koh Tao for a couple days.

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Photos

Train ride
We had top bunks

moon
beautiful blue

Nothing is ever spelled correctly
As I was taking this photo a bunch of thai's asked me why... and I told them because supermarket is spelled wrong. They've worked across from the store for who knows how long and never realized this..