Island Hopping

It’s been a while since our last post and nearly a month since we arrived in Thailand.

After arriving in Phuket we had our first taste of Thai hospitality when our taxi driver conveniently forgot where our guesthouse was. After a very frustrating visit to their travel agent ‘for directions’ (and a sales pitch) we did eventually manage to get the driver back in the car and get in the general area of our hotel. After a call to the owner he managed to find us arguing with the driver at the end of the street. The driver was maintaining that after being given directions several times that he still had no idea where it was, but of course he could take us to a much nicer hotel. That’s pretty much how it works in this part of the world- not quite the land of smiles, more like the land of con artists, touts, scam merchants and seedy bars, but after a month we are used to it and can avoid most of them! Phuket was an odd place. It was low season when we were there and in the bars the tourists were far outnumbered by the go-go girls!! The beaches were great though and I had some fun with a body board.

After a few days we took a boat to Koh Phi Phi. The movie, The Beach was filmed on one of the islands though it was far from tranquil when we saw it having been invaded by loads of boats loaded with day trippers. We stayed in a nice bungalow on Long Beach, a short walk from the main village on the island. Phi Phi was badly hit by the 2006 tsunami so a lot of the bars and hotels are newly rebuilt. Long beach on Phi Phi Don was a gorgeous place to while away a few days with great views across to Phi Phi Ley (although we still have yet to find anywhere more idyllic than Kecil, one of the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia).

Next we headed to Krabi, back on the mainland. The beach where we stayed, Ao Nang, didn’t have much to do, so we took a day trip kayaking. The route took us along a river, towered over by limestone cliffs, we paddled through some cool caves and lagoons, though our arms were seriously aching the next day!

I had been thinking about doing some scuba diving on our trip for some time, but kept putting it off. Our next island destination, Koh Tao off the east coast is a diving mecca so I decided to take the plunge and signed up to do a 4 day open water course. So now i’m a certified diver! We stayed at Ban’s Diving Resort (highly recommended) which is where Rachel did the same course 6 years before. She was very surprised to see how much the island had changed. Although the resorts are springing up all over the place we still loved the place and could happily have hung around for a while, but the next island adventure awaited – Koh Phangan for the full moon party!!

We learned another valuable lesson relating to Thai business practices – NEVER pay up front! We were panicked into believing that at full moon everywhere gets booked up, so instead of our usual practice of just turning up and finding a room when we get there we booked on the web. We chose what looked like a lush hotel, bit pricier than we usually pay, but what the hell?! Anyway it was a dump, and each room looked like it had been broken into many times. Rach attempted ‘negotiations’ for quite some time but as we had already paid we had little bargaining power, so we were stuck with the place. Thankfully we were not robbed and the party was brilliant so it’s not all bad news! There was fire dancing, fire skip rope, buckets of booze, dance music, fluro painted bodies everywhere (including us), palm and tarot readers, all through the night til sun up.

After a day to recover we took the ferry and night bus to Bangkok, and from here we fly to Hanoi in Vietnam on wednesday. So until next time……