Leigh's First Blog Entry

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Hi everybody this is my first blog entry! This will be short entry (for a change) as I'm hopping on the boat soon to head back to the thai mainland. Ko Phangan has been great, our 3 day planned stay became a week. It's real nice to have your major dilemma's for the day being "Where shall I eat?","What shall I eat?" and "Who's turn is in to lie in the hammock on the balcony of our beachfront bungalow?"

So quick update. Seen a couple of waterfalls, the best being Thaarn Sadet, where many generations of kings have visited. The road there is horrendous with very steep assents and decents, massive washouts, potholes and bumps. Hard going with 2 on the dirt bike but we made it, only stacked it once and now have a small scuff on my elbow to show for it. We went climbing down over massive boulders and rocks, traversing the water and rocks for hours which was great. Since I'm such a clutz I slipped and crack a shin, Ouch. All part of the fun though. Found a great spot, not one other person visited there, we were swinging on jungle vines into the rock pool & thought we were in the middle of the wilderness. We hiked back up, got on the bike continued a little further down the road and found a track so we wander down there a couple of minutes and yeah, you guessed it. There's our waterhole. Anyway, call me crazy, but I prefer the way we found it initially.

A bit on thai massage. They are FANTASTIC. If you are in Ko Phangan go see Gail at the little massage place behind the 7/11 in the port town of Thongsala. She is awesome. She said my bodgy back needed 3 hours but after she started she just kept saying "not good"and "wow" and tut-tutting me. She tied a knot in a towel, pointed to it then poked me all down the length of my back saying "here, here and here, and here, and here..." Must have been going over all those potholes that did it. So she ended up taking pity on me (or liked me) and gave me 2 extra hours for free (5 hours in total) said to come back the next day and she did me a great deal for 4hours more, then invited us for dinner. We accepted, then discovered that our dinner was the bags and bowls of food that had been sitting on the table outside in the heat for the whole entire day. Pork, chicken, prawns. With the language barrier it would have been impossible to explain that we were concerned about our pathetic weak western bellies and she would have been very offended so we ate it. It tasted really good and surprise of all surprises - we didn't get sick!!! This has given me new found culinary courage and I've been enjoying some good street vendor morsels.

Wat Pho is a monastery here that does traditional herbal sauna's by donations. It was so, so, soooo good. Went after all that massaging and the next day wasn't sore at all. Magic.

A note on snorkeling. In the far north western corner Ko Ma is connected with Ko Phangan by a thin strip of sand and all around there the snorkelling is really good, arguably the best on the island, save for Anthong National marine park to the south. You just go in off the beach, its clear and calm and lots to see.

Now we are off back to bangkok. Til next time.

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Comments

[Kimberly Halter]

Years of journalism are not wasted
Glad to know the years of journalism study are not wasted. You are a real travel journo now. Kimberly

[maria]

good job