Ok so I havn't really had a chance to write on this since we arrived in the south of Koh Phanghan so I will outline the main events of the past week. (If you would l;ike the better, more detailed version please visit chris' blog at gapyear08chris.blogspot.com).
So we checked into our hostel called Thong Yang just 3km from Haad Rin (Haad Rin is the beach where everything happens) on Tuesday the 19th. Thong Yang was a great place to stay up in the hills just 5 minutes from the wonderful BaanTai beach. The rooms wernt too bad as we were paying about 3pounds per night and the owners were very relaxed which made it very enjoyable. We didnt check out til about 7pm on the last day! So when we arrived on the 19th we spent most of the day checking out the beach and settling in to our temporary home. We were once again met by jane and polly by accident again, not on koh san road this time, it was down on the Beach. They managed to find accomodation just up the road from us which was useful as most nights we all shared taxis into haad rin and back home. So that evening we went to another party, this one named 'the Jugle Experience' which was good fun, not as good as the half moon party but it was good to get out with everyone, we played a few drinking games and chilled out for most opf the night as there wasnt as many people as we expected there.
So the next 3 days followed a very simular pattern.. we would be out till about say 5/6am and then most of us would sleep till about 2pm get up and head down to the beack for a swim and lunch at the Blue Lotus. Spend a couple more hours on the beach playing guitar and chilling out then we would all head back for an overdue shower and an attempt tp find some clean clothes for the evening.
The evenings are very mixed up for me as they were quite simular but different. 'same, same... but different' A saying that they use alot out here that I dont really understand.
So here are a few things we will definately never forget that happened in Haad Rin:
- Drinking Games - Stuart Straw, My Peter Griffin Impression 'milkshake' and Mikes random noises to strangers.
- Tom's eyebrow piercing
- Whisky buckets, Large and Small
- The Fire Skipping Rope / Fire Poi
- Dancing the night away.
- RAVE paint on the faces.
On the 23rd of february we were kindly invited by Paul (a family friend of chris' who we earlier met in Hong Kong) to attend a Wedding Reception on Koh Samui (a neighbouring island) and to join him in staying in a 2million pound beachside villa for the night for the grand cost of nothing... We really couldnt refuse. We arrived at the Wedding Reception (the nicest hotel I have ever seen) around 10pm where we walked into a room full of people doing 'line dancing'. It was very awkward as we knew no-one and we didnt attend the ceromony. We had to simply explain we were invited by our friend paul howard, which was very awkward at first but we were soon introduced to the bride and groom and from there on it was fine. We had access to the free bar which was a luxury, on of the reletives dragged us into a new drinking game for us which was good fun, stu and I came out worse on that 1 I think, but it was good fun. Later on after the reception we took a taxi to Pauls Girlfriends boss' villa which was brand new, no one had ever stayed there before and we were asked to check it out for them to see if everything worked etc. It was stunning, I cant really describe how nice it was (iu guess youll have to see the pictures), put it this way, we had a bath, a hot shower, a pool, maids and our own chef. We spent the night by the pool drinking the beer from the poolside fridge with paul and his friends, listening to music at 3am having a beer fight was soo funi. Something I will never forget.
The following day, the day of the full moon party, I woke up early to make the most of this luxury beachside villa. I got up and had a bath OUTSIDE as I still stunk of beer from the night before. A tropical storm hit us at that time which was good fun, Ive never really had a bath outside before let alone being in heavy hot rain at the same time. About 4hours later the rest of the guys woke up and we headed down to the pool for some breakfast. Bacon and Eggs, Cereal with mint tea! This was all too gooid to be true, all cooked by our own chef. A great hangover cure. Shortly after we all headed to go and visit one of the waterfalls on the island followed by sie elephant trekking which was really good fun, that is something ive wanted to do since we got out here but hadnt had a chance until then. It was strange being so high up but feeling soo safe from the sturdy amimal beneath us. I bought a few benanas to feed him with which didnt last very long. Shortly after we found a Monkey which we named Leonard who became friendly with us all, you will have to see the pictures when i get them up. Afterward we decided to head up to the waterfall, it was stunning, a good 45minute walk into the hills in our flip flops, was followed by the biggest down pour,we were soaked head to toe and stuck at the top of this waterfall, attempting to get back was a slippery attempt but really good fun. At 5pm we dried off and the chef back at the hostel had spent the day preparing the best bbq ever! There was everything, King Prawns, Kebabs, Fresh Fish, Local Satay sticks and Steaks shipped from aboard that were earlier picked up from the airport. It was soo good a bit different to what we had been eating recently, we made the most of it.
At 7pm a speed boat picked us up from the beach of the villa and took us all the way to Haad Rin for the long awaited Full Moon Party. I had never seen the beach soo busy, There were about 8 or 9 different bars along the beach all playing their different styles of music. I managed to somehow loose everyone which resulted in me spending half of my night trying to find everyone again. It was good fun. I must do for anyone who visits thailand on the right time of month.
It took us a good few days to recover and we all decided to leave on the 26th, Jane, Polly and Tom got a taxi to ThongSala for their boat to Koh Tao (an island north of Phanghan) to do some scuba diving. They left around 2pm which was quite sad as we had all had soo much fun as a group over the past week, something that was a shamne to leave behind. It was quite hard leaving fordie again for the second time as we wont see him again for another 4 months. :( Later on that evening we were meant to be picked up from the accomodation for our journey to Kaula Lumpur at 8pm.... This never showed...
I am now writing to you from Trekkers Lodge in Kuala Lumpur we had a pretty strange 26hr journey down here from koh phanghan it's taken soo long, first of all our taxi never showed up... so we ended up waiting until 9pm. The really kind guy who owned our accomodation from Thong Yang drove us all the way to the night boat. We got to the nightboat and were late of corse because of the lack of taxi so we had no beds allocated which meant we had six hours sleeping on the hard wooden floor wasnt a great way to start the journey. So we arrived in surrithani (6hrs later) only to find we had to get a bus to a travel agent to get another bus 1 and a half hours later which took us to another travel agent 4 hours down the country closer to the border. Here we were told we apparently needed 300ringgit to cross the border where we were marched to a cashpoint. NO WAY we thought, it was a big con. They were trying to get us to exchange money with them for silly exchange rates theres something like 7.9 baht to the ringit and they were selling at about 18.9. We were going to get caught out big time so we decided to sort it out at the boirder if and when we needed to. It turns we only needed 5 baht to cross the border so all was lies and a big money making scheme. Once we crossed the border we had another 4ish hour bus journey mpw taking us to butterworth, the time was 4.30pm now and we were taken to another travel agent to be told that WE MISSED our bus by 20minutes (It wasnt even our fault!) and had to wait til 10pm. Long story short we were taken in by a lovely malaysian family who own the resturant we ate at who kindly let us use their showers and beds in one of their rooms. At around 8.30pm we were greeted by the resturant owners son who was 19, he took us to the beach to show us the coastline of Penang and introduced us to some authentic malysian food which he refused to let us pay for. Such a nice guy, he goes to college in Kuala Lumpur so he also helped us out on suggesting places to go during our visit! He kindly dropped us off on at the bus park aroun 9.45 where we actually got onto a real coach to KL. We got here around 3am. It was a crazy journey, soo long. I think in total we had to take 2 Taxis, 1 Boat, 4 Bus' and 1 Coach.
We are now staying in a hostel in Kuala Lumpur called Trekkers Lodge we checked in about 4.30 this morning and its costing us about 3.50per night with included breakfast and internet.
Today we plan to go sight seeing in KL and book our travels to Johor Bahru as we will leave KL tomorrow. I hope to update this much more now i mislaid my diary on one of the many bus'.
Photos will be uploaded as soon as we can.
much love
Alex.
xxxxxx
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