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Published: August 17th 2012
Beach, water, rocks
maybe this could take the place of the rock, paper, scissors game?Spending the night in Bangkok airport was just what we needed after 3 hectic days of shopping in Hong Kong, it wasn’t too bad apart from it being freezing cold because the air con was set too high. We actually envied the Thais who were hanging around the airport because they had come prepared with hats and blankets (no joke!) - all we had were thin sarongs and spicy pot noodles to keep us warm.
Our Air Asia flight was on time and we actually got seats together when the computer system usually separates us, the strange thing was on our flight from Hong Kong we also got seats together – we weren’t complaining! Once on the ground we headed out and booked a bus and fast boat combo to the island.
Our destination this time, was an island which has a world famous (and slightly dubious) reputation for partying, it’s more famous for glow sticks, techno music and alcohol buckets than a peaceful place to get away from it all…what were we thinking. The last time we went to this island we didn’t really like it but we had decided to give it another chance.
The boat
was full with both tourists and locals and we had a bit of fun watching people’s reaction to Mr Bean which was showing on the TV’s (he is SO popular in Asia, you really wouldn’t believe it!). The boat docked at our destination – Thongsala port on Koh Phangan! Immediately after getting off the boat, we ran the gauntlet of the transport mafia which are truly infamous here for their rip off tactics and overinflated charging. We haggled hard, but the minimum they wanted for a trip anywhere on the island (even just 5 minutes down the road) was 150 baht each, none of the drivers would drop their price so being the stubborn people we are, we started to walk. We walked a little while through the town in what we thought was the right direction only to find we were completely lost, amazingly, it wasn’t Donna which took us the wrong way! Luckily a songathaew drove past just at the instant it began to rain, the driver took pity on us and agreed to take us to our destination for 100 baht. 100 baht is still overpriced for most journeys on the island, but what can you do
when the majority of people just hand over the money like sheep without even trying to bargain?
Arriving at the beach, we were dropped on the main road and we walked through one of the resorts; to say we were a little shocked by how the beach looked was an understatement. From the research we had done, the beach has a reputation for being one of the best on Phangan but when we arrived, the tide was very far out. By 'very far' out, we mean you could walk for almost half a kilometre and the water would still only be up to the middle of your calf! The reason for this was that the island suffers from particularly low tides at certain times of the year and it also coincided with the black moon which also makes tides lower.
Taking a look at the rooms in the resort we walked through, Donna almost had a heart attack at the price they were asking for quite a scabby, dank room. Leaving Neil with the bags she then went off in search of a reasonably priced room and further along the beach she hit the jackpot - an air
con bungalow with a fridge and hot water for the bargainous price of 550 baht a night (that’s £11.70!). The place was run by a really sweet family and had a nice quiet location, and feeling a little happier we got changed and decided to get some food (and iced coffee to wake us up!) from the restaurant at the front of our bungalows.
Eating our food we noticed that some of the locals were cleaning up the beach, the lady who ran our bungalows had said there had just been a storm, so the locals were piling up the seaweed and other debris and putting it in the back of a pick-up truck to take it away. While we were watching them, it struck us how much the Thais who lived and worked on this beach understood that they should look after and care for their natural environment and it was really nice to see in comparison to other countries we have visited in SE Asia. It also gave us a bit of a laugh when the driver managed to ‘belly’ their truck on the beach – something we had sympathy with as we (erm, Neil with bad
directions from Donna) managed to do the exact same thing in New Zealand!
We always seem to make a lot of observations when we are in places with tourists. A real pet peeve of ours regarding some people while they are away on holiday…they are MISERABLE! There seems to be a prevailing attitude that people are ‘too cool’ to show they are enjoying themselves while they are on holiday or backpacking and they have to walk around with a face on them. Heaven forbid someone else looks like they are enjoying themselves and they get dirty looks thrown in their direction and looked down on. Now this really, really annoys us – these people are lucky enough to be able to fly to a tropical country for their holiday, how many people would love to have that opportunity and they spend their time looking like they just can’t be bothered to be there? Now although we have lived in SE Asia for a while now, everything still excites us – honestly, we are like kids just before we are going away to a beach. We love SE Asia and know how lucky we are to have a paradise beach
like this on our doorstep, so surely people who have spent upwards of £400 per person and 12 hours travelling to get there should be more excited than us? Nope, most of them sit there in restaurants or on the beach with a face on them which could curdle milk!
This nicely brings us onto another observation that both disappointed and surprised us. Thailand has a deserved reputation of being one of the world’s best cuisines (if not the best!) and one night we were sitting in a restaurant scoffing our fantastic Thai food, the restaurant had 10 tables full and we counted only one other table eating Thai food. It was like this most nights we were eating, the majority of people where eating burgers and chips, chicken and chips or other ‘Western’ food and the other table that night which was eating the Thai food were pushing the food around on their plate, pulling faces at each other and complaining it was too spicy. Now this shocked us as well, as we had to specifically ask in the restaurants to make the food spicy as how it came was dumbed down and bland – actually even the
spicy version we added more chilli to! These observations led us to ask why go to a place which has such a great reputation for good, cheap and spicy food and then either not eat it or complain about it?
As a side note, another couple (we think they were Swedish) who were eating on the next table to us ordered spring rolls, fried rice and something else. After they ordered these dishes, they then ordered bread and butter. Intrigued we waited to see where the bread and butter would come into this meal and soon enough, the guy put tomato ketchup on the bread and butter and the spring rolls were slapped between the bread and he tucked into a spring roll butty. Mmmm, nice – we really have seen everything now!
The Thai’s working in the restaurants and resorts were really nice (but strange!) – one place had real pissheads for staff, they were always drunk (even at 10am!). Another restaurant had the happiest staff we have ever encountered, which ended up being our favourite place to eat – they always knew we wanted the food spicy and were always smiling, giggling and singing. The other
place on the cliff we went to had staff who were completely out of it, no matter the time of day we went there it was as if they had just woken up – you know the type of staff who you are never sure have your order right but it turns up right?!
This cliffside restaurant also had a pet parrot which came out every sunset to preen and eat sunflower seeds. The parrot was quite happy to pose for photos as you can see and really enjoyed his afternoon snack. We also enjoyed the views from the restaurant and the coffees they served and got some fantastic pictures while we were up there.
The nightlife at our beach was nice and laid back, just a few resorts on the beach with chairs on the beach where you could eat or just sit and have drinks. A few nights we did partake in a couple of Leo beers, but unfortunately we can’t blame beer for a mishap we had. We were coming down the stairs from the cliffside restaurant on our way to get a beer on the beach and at the bottom of the stairs there
were some rocks, Neil slipped on the rocks and somehow (we still aren’t sure how!) managed to crack the screen of our smarter-than-us Samsung Galaxy S2. So the next day we had an impromptu day trip to Koh Samui to buy a new phone – we had to do this as we run our business while we are away and use the internet data plans to connect to the internet…without the phone we wouldn’t be able to run our business, so it was kind of essential that we got a replacement. We have to say we did rather well – we left the resort at 6am and were back by 1pm and there was a lot of relief on our part when we got another phone.
Luckily, after a couple of days of very low tides, the water level got back to normal and the beach was absolutely gorgeous, one of the best we had been on. There was also excellent snorkelling about 500m out, which we didn't attempt this time but no doubt we will do when we return...yes, once the weather and tides calmed down we had decided we would be returning!
We had quite an
active time on our beach, getting up early to run – it was a perfect beach for running and only Donna and Neil, the crazy people running, and the Thai’s doing their daily beach clean-up were around at 7am. One day we also walked to the beach next door which sounds a lot easier than it was. We had read that the next beach was only a 20 minute walk away, it was only 20 minutes to walk, but it was up and down some really, really steep hills which made our legs burn. We did take pictures but it didn’t really show just how steep those hills were, the last time we had seen hills that steep was on the Inca Trail in Peru! It was a good work out had the bonus of us seeing another beach and it made us feel like we had really earned our massage on the beach later that day!
Our last observations for this blog is that banana hammocks seem to be making a huge comeback (anyone who doesn’t know this term, Google is your friend!), we would blame this on the Olympics but it hadn’t started when we were there.
But honestly, someone needs to say this, banana hammocks and moobs are not a good combo 😉. There were also a lot of French people in Thailand at this time, so we decided to name the blog in French in a blatant attempt to make us sound knowledgeable and worldly (when in reality we had to double check our French was correct on Google Translate!).
We spent the last couple of days of our stay in Thailand shopping until we dropped (literally!) and had the most amusing toilet experience in Terminal 21 shopping centre. Now usually when we talk about toilet experiences, you shouldn’t be reading the blog while you are eating, but this time we came out of the toilets and said ‘erm…the toilet?’ with quizzical looks on our faces. It was at that point Neil confessed he had taken a picture (take a look). The toilet was a full on Japanese electronic jobbie with heated seats, bidet mode, deodorise mode, nozzle clean and a weird little diagram that looked like a bum along with a bum dryer! Ha, hands down the weirdest experience ever in the toilet stakes and Neil was very thankful that no-one saw him
taking a picture of the toilet!
Until next time…who knows where!
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Ahh well....
....you managed to avoid the dunka dunka music and the dancing zombies. There wouldn't have been much point heading south anyway. There isn't much left after I went at 'aad Rin with my Death Star. Hopefully, we will get the chance to sit and tourist watch with you some time in the future....it would be a barrel of laughs :)