Here we go again, a long overdue update of what we’re up to for those of you at home. Not overdue in time, it’s only been about 10 days, but in the sheer amount of things we’ve managed to do in this time!
(By the way, this keyboard is crap so the spelling mistakes aren’t my fault!)
So I left you in Phuket after our quick stay in Langkawi. We took a flight to Phuket (by far the easiest and fastest way to do that trip) and having arrived at our lovely new Hostel, we dived straight into Thai food with a Pad Thai for Lunch. With a whole plate of noodles and a sprite it only cost 50 Baht. About 1 pound. Afterwards, Gem had one of the iced Milos for dessert, which is essentially chocolate milk but gets served in a little plastic bag! We wandered around the local market enjoying seeing all of the fresah food and treated ourselves to some fresh cut pineapple for a whopping 15 Baht!
The hostel we were staying had no triple rooms, but the doubles were the same prices as a dorm bed – so Alan and I had a double and Gem was in the dorm. This worked out really well as we managed to meet some of the guys we travellled with for the next two weeks. First was Max, an aussie guy on his way to work in London for a year. And then Antonio and Jordi, two guys from Spain. Both of them were absoluitely lovely and hysterically funny! They had just arrived in Phuket too and on their bus from the airport had manged to get chatting to an Argentinian girl who’d ivited them to a party. So we decided to join them. After our first ride in a Tuk Tuk to somewhere out of town, we arrived at the hospital and Virginia (the argentinian girl) came to find us. She took us to a a place for food which she reccommended. There were no other customers and English football was on the TV but otherwise it was fine. I had my first instant of misordering though. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with Rice with vegetables, but what arrived was a pile of boiled rice (fine) which was surrounded by chopped, dry herb type things. I know one of them was spring onion but everything else was a mystery. The rice was then piled high with some brown, dry powder. The only moistening element of the dish was a pot of fish oil sauce (not for me). So not the best experience but everyone else enjoyed theirs and Jordi was even brave enough to try Pig Intestines which apparently taste like sausage (again, not for me).
After some dinner we went to the 7/11 to stock up on some beer. They’re only sold in 800ml bottles but most cost between 30 and 40 baht. (less than a pound). One of the guys had mentioned the name of a cider they’d managed to buy from the 7/11, so very excited about the possibility we bought some bottles. Again, it was about 800ml, 8% and only 27baht.(50p). We took the drinks back to Virginias hotel, wehere it turned out she was staying with all the people studying a TEFL (teaching English in a Foreign Language) course. They even had a pool which we grateully dipped our toes into. The cider was awful, more like wine, but not good wine. But we drank it anyway and followed it with some beer to get rid of the flavour. So we’re already on the tipsy side by this point. The consensus is that we’ll go to some bar by tuk tuk. We get to the main rode and there are no tuk tuks running at this point.. Virginia, frustrated with people’s lack of speed in leaving the hotel has stormed off and we later hear she got on the back of some guys bike and off she went. We all stopped at a 7/11 for more supplies but find that as it’s past midnight they can’t sell alchohol anymore. So we grab some 10 baht energy drinks. There are rumours going aroudn that the red bull here containes amphetamines. I don’t believe this for a second what with Thailand being so very strict on all things druglike. But whatever is in them is dangerously strong. Gem, Alan and I split 2 between us and that was us for the rest of the night. They kept us awake until gone 4am. We finally found the bar, through no skill – I don’t thnik anyone knew where they were going, we were just lucky it was all on the same street. And we danced with all of the locals to the live band until they chucked us out at 2. With no idea where we were we started walking hoping a Tuk Tuk would come along. There were six of us at this point, so we needed a big Tuk Tuk. Happily though, we stumbled all the way back to our hostel. Still not quite sure how that happened. And eventually, after a red bull come down, we were asleep after our first day in Thailand.
Quickly the Spanish boys became part of everything we did and we really enjoyed their company. We all went for Breakfast at a Cafe which took nearly an hour to bring out our food. So, by the time we were done it was gone midday and we all decided heading to the beach was a good plan for the day. Somewhere in this process we met Dave, another lovely Aussie guy coming to the end of his trip who came with us to the beach. The big public bus stopped right outside our hostel and cost 25 baht for the 40 minute journey. We went to Patong beach, mostly because it was the easiest to get to. I wish now we’d visited another of the more secluded, less commercial beaches, but we ran out of time.
Patong Beach
Either way, underneath all of the overpriced sun beds, and beach hawkers it was really incredibly beautiful. Powdery white sand, turqoise waters and plenty of palm tree shade. We spent all day there sunbathing, swimming, playing cactch and reading. We sampled some of the mobile food stalls wares – Pineapple, Papaya and Mango, all for less than a pound. When one of the food sellers showed up with his crepe kitchen attached to a moped I couldn’t say no ( and neither could Gem) so we sat on the beach eating a Nutella and banana pancake. 
We had to run for the last bus back to Phuket town, a Tuk Tuk would have been much more expensive, but we made it and fell asleep on the way home. After some much needed showers I’d planned to go out and grab a T-shirt to wear for our Snorkelling outing the next day and maybe a slice of pizza. It turned into all of us going out for a buy one get one free pizza fest! Gem and I even got to share a sald bar, which to Gem’s delight included Crab!
Maya Bay Snorkelling
The next day we’d all booked to go on a snorkelling trip to Koh Phi Phi. After some pizza for breakfast we were picked up by the driver and taken to the little port where our speedboat would leave from. There we were fed a surprise breakfast including tea, coffee, Fanta and toast with pineapple jam The whole group jumped onto the speedboat, having been warned it was a litle bumpy out there, and we were off. It was more than a little bumpy and we were very glad we’d chosen to sit at the back. Max at the front was being thrown around like a rag doll. Our first stop was Maya Bay, the beach from the movie – The Beach. We were a little disappointed by the number of other tours\ boats there, but it was still the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. We jumped right off the boat for some snorkelling where the visibility was amazing and the fishes were the most vibrant colours i’ve ever seen. People were given bread to feed the fish and we found ourselves surrounded. Fish were actually all you could see. There were purple ones, turqoise ones, green ones, stripey ones, spotted ones and some were even two-tone!
Our trip included a buffet lunch which we made the most of and then it was time to get back on the boat. Except Alan and Dave had wandered off somewhere and weren’t there to get back on the boat. The crew were marching up and down the beach shouting “Blue Team” (the colour of the thread they put on our wrists, which has now been adopted as our group name). A loud Russian guy took it upon himself to stand up next to me and wolf-whistle in my ear trying to attract their attention. Everyone kept asking me where the ywere and I had to admit I had no idea.
Finally, the sauntered back towards the boat, unaware of the chaos they’d caused! But with everyone back in the boat we were on the way to our next destination. And that’s when the rain started. The boat had a cover but not enough to really keep you dry, so we arrived at the next island soaking wet and cold. A little disillusioned we headed for the bar, but as the rain started to lessen I decided to join the boys for some more snorkelling. Unfortunately the rain made the visibility rubbish, but we did get to see a family of Spiny Normans. And avoid stepping on any of them. The island was tiny, Alan and I were able to swim around the whole thing in about 30 minutes. It was really just a pile of sand selling overpriced beer. But beautiful all the same. And that was it for our snorkellig trip. We made our way back to port turned down the option of a souivenir plate with a picture of our faces on it and got back to our hostel. And just to make sure we did the really touristy thing, we got back and watched The Beach. As it was Dave’s last night we celebrated by buying 4 pineapples (for a pound) and a botle of Samsong (Thai rum). We carved out the pineapples and stuck the fruit in the blender with most of the rum and then put the finished cocktail back in the pineapples. It’s no overstatement to say everyone in the hostel was very jealous.
Pineapple Cocktails
For our last day in Phuket we had some French toast for Breakfast and then once again all piled into a bus towards Patong beach. On the way we stopped for Alan to throw himself off another bungy, while for Dave it was his first. Then we carried onto the bech and wandered around the Markets. Gem and I found tops we loved but had to debate quite how much when the stall owner turned out to be a bit of a perv. To Gem – “Can I ask you a question?, You might get angry… It’s a bit rude” So we quickly left and luckily later some lovely Thai ladies were manning the stall. We had to drag Jordi along through the market as at ever other stall he stopped to either talk to a pretty Thai girl, or to try and haggle a stall owner down to a ridculous price (he’s actually very good at this). We had a late lunch in a lovely little Thai cafe where i tried a noodle salad – very tasty!
We argued for a long time with the rank of tuk tuk drivers and finally got them down to a price we were happy with. In retrospect not the best idea. On the way back, which seemed to be taking a rather long time, Dave decided to check the times of his flights home that evening. He’d thought he was leaving Phuket at 11pm. It turned out he was actually supposed to fly at 8pm and it was now 7pm. It was at this point the tuk tuk driver pulled over, jumped out and ran to some guys asking for directions. Luckily, they knew where we needed to go and one of the guys offered to lead the way on his moped. By this point Dave had resigned himself to missing his flight. He called the airline and was able to get the same flight the following day for only a $50 fine. Not too shabby. SO he and ALan thought they’d celebrate by finishing off the bottle of Samsong and buying another. I feel asleep on the sofa about 1:30 and carted myself off to bed. When I woke up at 4 and Alan still wasn’t in bed I went to see if he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. but no, he and dave were still going strong having finished the second bottle of rum! He kept insisting he wasn’t that drunk! But he certainly felt it in the morning!
We’d booked a bus pickup to take us to the ferry port 4 hours away to get he ferry to Koh Samui. We’d arranged to take the overnight ferry to save on nights accommodation. The bus picked us up and was a huge disappointment to begin with. It was a little shabby minibus which they proceeded to chuck our bags on top of and tie them on. We were all quite unsure of this but we had no choice. Inside the bus we were squished in and Jordi drew the short straw as he was in the middle front seat trapped between the two Thai men. He actually reduced me to tears with the question – “Five hours? Like This?!” Of course, one of those you’d have to be there moments, but the look on his face was hysterical. The floor of our van was burning hot from the engine and so we were trying to sleep while holding our feet in the air. Alan with his hangover was not at all happy. We arrived in Surat Thani where we’d expected a three hour wait for the ferry. But instead we were thrown off of one bus, given a sticker and chucked in the back of a picku-up type tuk tuk.
150km in a tuk tuk
They insisted we were onthe 7′o’clock ferry which would arrive an hour and a half later. I made a hurried phone call to our hostel to try and explain that we needed anm extra night, but this turned out to be completely futile. What we didn’t realise at the time was that we were being taken to the next ferry port over, Don Sak, which is a quicker ferry route to Koh Samui. It’s 76km north of where our first bus had dropped us ad we had less than an hour to make it to the 7pm ferry. We watched the speedometer climb and climb until the driver was actually doing 150km. At times he was on the wrong side of the road, and at another point he actually pushed between two jeeps on the two lanes on our side of the road. We were all sat in the back of this open truck holding on for dear life, convinced we may actually die. But we didn’t we arrived at the ferry port at 6:55 and had to run with our bags onto the ferry. The ferry was uneventful, which was nice actually. When we got to Koh Samui we fought through the throngs of taxi drivers ad went to get some food. Very tasty, very cheap, but nothing turns up at the same time here!
However, by the time we got back to the ferry port all of the cabs had disappeared and so we sat and waited. After a while we decided it was a good idea for Jordi and Antonio to go and talk to the driver of a pick up truck to see if they’d take. Which surprisingly they were quite happy to do – until they realised there were six of us with backpacks and their suspension just wasn’t going to cut it. So eventually we decided to call the hostel for a pickup, we’d avoided it before because they wanted 700 baht which seemed too much to us. As soon as I’d got off the phone to the hostel a 7 seater cab showed up and offered us the ride for 500 baht. So i sheepishly had to call the hostel and let them know we didn’t need the pickup anymore…
So we got to the hostel, finally manged to explain who we were and that I’d called earlier. This didn’t help much, but they chucked us into a room which we were incredibly grateful for. We all decided a nice dip in the hotel pool was needed after our day. But then we all quickly disappeared off to bed for a much needed sleep.
The adventures of Koh Samui will have to be saved for another very long email. Ah such fun.
Hope you’re all well!
Sarh (Alan and Gem)
xxxx
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