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Published: April 14th 2008
Hi all!!! So... Koh Samui!!! We left Knachanaburi via our Chauffeur driven mini bus (even though it was just vicky and I in it!!!) and arrived at Kanchanaburi's bus station to find our bus waiting out side the ticket office! We bought our tickets, got on and off we went! Couldn't have timed it any better (of course this was down to our impecable planning!!!) The bus journey was quicker than we expected even though it was raining pretty much the whole time from when we got on it to the time we got off! We arrived at Bangkok's southern bus terminal to find that Vicky needed to visit the "rest room"...AGAIN (on this occasion i didn't really mind as I too was pretty deparate!!!!) After the loo stop we spotted a rather western looking 'dunkin doughnuts' stall in the bus terminal, which we of course had to see whether they tasted as good here as the do at home!!! Mmmmmmm!!! Well we carried our 6 box of doughnuts to where we had previously been dropped off from the airport two days before. Once again we find a minibus to the airport waiting patiently!!! We paid our 70 baht (around one pound ten for a 45 minute cab journey) for our ticket and got in, we waited for around 20 minutes before we left for the airport. The journey took us all the way through the centre of Bangkok and eventually we arrived at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport which was a bounus as we were expecting to have to get a shuttle bus for the last part of the journey (luck was really on our side today!) We walked straight into the airport and straight up to the check in desk, no ques, no hastle just pure efficiency from our little thai friends!!!! We got rid of all our bags and wandered into the domestic flight part of the airport. By this time our 4 out of 6 doughnuts had somehow not satisfied our ever hungry gullets so we found the food Hall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And this is what you call a food hall!!! When you go in you buy a card and get whatever food you want. They had salad, sushi, curry, noodles, pizza, you name it they had it! When you have decided what you want you give them the card and they deduct the amount from it. I of course ate traditionally on this day and opted for the biggest pizza i think i have had in a long time! Vicky had a Chicken Salad.......and then saw the supreme ham and mushroom pizza i had and helped me on my way!!! After your food fest you go to the counter and they refund you what you havent spent and send you on your way!!! By this time there was just enough time to have a quick look around some of the shops and walk to the gate. We were flying with Thai air who charged us some tiny amount to fly with them so we wern't entirely sure on what the service would be like. The plane was spotless, loads of leg room and the staff were really smart and friendly. Once again, no messing around straight on the plane and it was off down the runway. As you cannot use any electrcal devices while taking off and landing i think i listend to my ipod for about 3 minutes for the 40 minute flight!!! We even got complementary food and drink on the plane... very impressed!!! As we landed in Koh Samui the weather was well.....pissing down. As you can imagine our idea of a semi paradise island did not involve any form of precipitation!!! Rain aside it was still bloody hot!!! The airport, if you can call it an airport was a thatched hut with a baggage reclaim belt under it! we collected our bags and wandered through to the car park where we found a taxi sevice that wanted 70 baht each for the journey to our hotel which we saw as a bargin!!! We were told which mini bus to get in and wandered over to it. here we met a thai man sitting in the back of the minibus behind the one we were told to get on telling us we needed to get on his one. however he really didn't want to tell us where he was going when we asked him, ( we wanted to make sure we weren't getting hustled or something!) we stood for about five minutes (no lie) saying where are you going, he would reply where are you going, we would reply no where are you going. In the end our military training paid off and we broke him. He told us he was going to Bang Rak, this is where we were staying. We got in and our bargin taxi ride lasted all of about 3 minutes! we arrived at Nara Garden Beach Resort which looked really nice, we checked in and got shown to our room which seemed fine. We dumped our stuff and as it was early evening we both needed an ice cold beverage of the Beer Chang variety! so we wandered along the "strip" whach we instantly liked as was teeming with bars, restaurants, 7 elevens etc! we wandered for about 10 minutes when we stumbled accross yet another traditional establishment.... The Elephant and Castle!!! Of course we had to sample the delights of this place and we settled here for a lovley dinner. We went to the bar where we had spyed a rather thai looking lady behind it, both of us prepared to be greated with a "Sawadee" instead we got a "Ello wot can i get ya" she sounded rather cockney to us!!!!!!!!!! Anyway we ordered our food, I had Bangers and mash with onion gravy and Victoria had Toad in the hole, again with mash and onion gravy! She was really nice and the staff seemed really friendly, as for the food mmmmmmmm (don't worry mum yours is better!!!) After dinner and our long day of travelling we got back to the hotel showered and we were dead to the world!
Day 2: well the sun was shining and the view over the bay from our balcony was amazing, photos will prove this!!! As we were not staying in the really touristy part we decided to explore that part today! we walked around the massive strip which made ours look rerally small to find all the usual bars, starbucks, mac d's, burger king, boots, tesco's etc! we wandered to the beach and found a really nice white sand beach and the clearest water i have ever seen, it was so nice. No holding us back - Daniel Craig and Pamela Anderson jetted off down the beach jumping gracefully into the crystal clear sea!!!!!!! We hung around on the beach for a while then ventured to tesco where we bought some french bread and ham and went back to the beach for lunch. by this time we had both discovered, despite wearing factor 30 sun cream we were both savagely burnt so we sat in the shade steaming!!! While we were in Kanchanaburi I received a text from a friend to say that she was in Koh Samui and had seen that we were in Thailand and wanted to know if we were going to Koh Samui. So we arranged to meet up in the evening. We went back to the hotel got showered and went for dinner at an italian place down the road which gave us really nice food! After dinner we popped into the Elephant and Castle for a quick drink before meeting Sophie in Chaweng (where we had been during the day). We got into Chaweng and found Sophie waiting for us outside Burger King (no we didn't go in!) Afetr all our hellos we found a bar to go in and had a couple in there before moving on. We started to walk up the strip to find a group of Lady Boys dressed up, and to my horror Sophie was a real fan so it was no quick walk past!!! We walked a bit further and went off the strip down a side road with bars in it which wasn't the best of ideas as i got hounded!!! we walked past "Dream Girls" which Vicky and Sophie were more than willing to go in but as i was the only male i new i would be robbed blind so i resisted!!!! We settled for a norwegian bar where we stayed for a little bit before making our way back, Sophie had an early flight to Phuket and we were really tired, home to bed!
Day 3: OUCH.... We both woke up to realise that our sunburn was worse than we thought!!! Vicky's was quite a bit worse than mine, we were both hurting!!!! We decided to stay in today as we didn't want any more sun! We pottered around and watched Star Movies channel which is not all that riverting, lets just say they love Hot Shots!!! We found the ferry times to Koh Pha-Ngan where we had planned to dive with a dive school where i new the owner. When the sun had gone down we went to our "local" and had dinner and a couple of drinks then went back to the hotel to pack for tomorrow and go to bed as we had an early start in the morning, the ferry was at 8am.
We got up about 6:30 as were were told to be ready for the taxi at 7:30, we went down for breakfast and ordered. We were then told our taxi was here so there was no time for us to eat. We got driven a minute down the road to the pier where we were able to get some toast. We got on the boat and off we went to Koh Pha-Ngan. The Ferry took about half hour and when we got off we made our way to Chaloklum which is a small fishing village at the north of the island. This is where Sail Rock Divers is located! We found the dive school and spoke to Alex (the owner who i havent seen for about 15 years!!!) we wanted to dive the next day as it was my birthday!!! He said they were diving the 'Golden Triangle' which is 3 dives around the coasts of Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao. the trouble was that we would have to be at the dive school for 8 am, not too bad but thats what time the ferry from Koh Samui to Koh Pha-Ngan is! we had a chat and decided to stay on the island for the night. Terry ( one of the instructors) took me on the back of his mo ped to have a look at some of the beach bungalows just round the corner. We had a quick look at them and they were basic (cold water showers etc) but perfectly fine for one night and for only a fiver you cant go wrong!!! However we hadn't planned for this and had no clothes or diving gear so we had to shoot back to Koh Samui and grab some stuff!!! We made it back to Koh Pha-Ngan around 14:30 dumped our stuff at the beach bungalow ( you could spit in the sea from the front door!!!) and went back to the dive school for a couple of drinks. Met loads of people that night one of which is a World Famous Superstar DJ called Graham Gold (niether of us have heard of him) who was hillarious, he'd just moved to the island!!! We called it a night about half 10 as once again we had an early start for diving!!! Quicky run to the 7 eleven and went back to the bungalow where i chased round a rather large spider, by the time the room was de-bugged we were pretty much asleep!!!
MY BIRTHDAY!!! We got up and i jumped in the shower, i was just about to come out of the bathroom when vicky shouted don't come out i'm not decent!!! So after waiting for a bit and getting permisiopn to leave the bathroom i walked into a pitch black room with a little glow of candles in a cake and a fantastic rendition of Happy Birthday!!! The little trickster!!! We had a quick bit of breakfast and went to the dive school. We loaded all our gear onto the truck and got driven to the pier where our boat was waiting. Our first Dive site was called Southwest Pinnacle and took about 50 minutes to get to. We did a 40 minute dive which was really cool and surfaced for about an hour while we drove to our next dive site called Chumpon Pinnacle which again we did about a 40 minute dive. We ate lunch between this and the next dive - which was rice, and we think it was pork with garlic and baby corn, was very nice. Terry our Guide told us that they had saved the best dive till last which was Sail Rock. This dive was the best, there were millions of fish and they all saw a turtle, except me. We saw Bat fish, puffer fish, stone fish, massive groupers, pipe fish, angel fish, trigger fish... the list goes on!!! Drove back to the pier and back to the dive school where we had a few drinks and watched the video that Hooch had taken of us all on the dive which was pretty cool. They all invited us both to go out with them that night to one of the temple festivals in Thong Sala, which has stalls etc and half of the profits that everyone makes goes towards the temples. This meant that we were staying another night!!! At the festival the guys made us eat some sort of Grasshoppers or Locusts!!! Not as bad as you may think, after pulling off the wings they taste very much like the cripsy skin of roast chicken!!! After the festival which was not all that exciting we went to either a mongolian or korean barbeque reasturant (No one was quite sure!!!). You get a bbq thing on the table and go and select meat, noodles, veg, etc and cook it all yourself. All the juices from the meat drip into the bottom of the dish where you make a noodle soup, was quite nice and a good experience!!! All the guys from the dive school bought our meal and drinks as in was my birthday which was really nice of them!!!! After that we all drove back to Chaloklum to our beds, except from Graham (the DJ) and our Guide Terry!!!
We got up rather late and packed ready for our ferry which left at 4pm, we went and had breakfast and sat admiring the view from the beach front resturant. We went and said our good byes to everyone at the dive school and made our way to Thong Sala where the ferry leaves for Koh Samui. We got back to Koh Samui showered and got ready and went for dinner, we had duck and green noodles, pork, rice, it was really nice!!! We went and bought dessert from Tesco, Oreo cookies and Peanut butter!!!!
Day before we leave Samui and it's a doing day!!!!!!! need to put photos onto disc, packing, replying to e-mails, and writing this blog!!! The weather is a little overcast today which makes it a good day to sort everything out!!!! We fly to Phuket tomorrow morning, and have discovered that it is theThai Lunar New Years day. Unlike us, who celebrate New Years eve, they celebrate the actual day with huge street water fights! Apparantly we are set to get totaly soaked! Oh well it will be another story to tell and with the 30+ degree heat, a good dousing might go down quite well! So untill then hope that you are all well and not missing us too much!!!! Speak soon, loadsa love to all G & V xxxxxxx
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Mum
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Gr8 blog
Hi you two, All I can say is that you sound as though you are eating well, even insects!!!!!!!! Hope the sunburn has calmed down a bit now. Where are the latest pic's? Keep up the travel blogs we love them. Take care of each other and carry on enjoying yourselves. Love and hugs, Mummy Mandy xxxxxxxxxxxx