Krabi Town

Sooo after our looong journey of an overnight boat a mini van and a coach we finally arrived at Krabi! We met two english girls and we all jumped in a tuktuk together for 50baht, bargain!! We had a wander around and settled for a guesthouse near the pier. The owner showed us two rooms the first one looked and smelt like someone had died in it haha, the second was surprisingly alot nicer so without much thought we picked the non deathly tramp room an went for the half decent one for an extra £3 lol! We went over the road to the local eatery and had a feast of pork an rice, pad thai and soup with ice lemon tea for £2! We wandered around the centre and it was a lovely quiet town with mostly locals an no tourists, it was great! We had a wander around the night market had tea and a delicious chocolate pancake then headed to a rooftoop bar.....then the weather.took a turn for the worse and instead of watching the sunset we watched lightning and a thunderstorm it was still pretty cool from the rooftop! We headed to buy our ticket to Ko Lanta for tomorrow, then hit one more bar on the way home, only to keep dry from the rain of course hehe and we bumped into a couple we met at the full moon party! Soon we were back into the room packing again for the next journey....

Ko Tao

So we arrived in Ko Tao after a four hour boat journey (who said travelling was easy?) and made our way through the barrage of tuktuk drivers. Yet again we had no hotel so off we went to find one. After not realising how hilly the island is we settled on a nice guesthouse with AC! We headed out for brekkie and had a wander round the pier. We booked our diving trip for the next day and had a few drinks in an english pub watched the sun go down and had dinner in a locals house which was delicious and we were soon asleep!

The next day we had brekkie in the 7-eleven and found our boat for the trip. The tour guide was a funny american guy and he made it even better. We stopped at a place called shark bay where friendly sharks swim but due to the recent earthquake they had all left for deeper water. The next stop the water was alot deeper and the captain took photos of us diving off the top deck and Gem did it aswell! (and it was dead high so I was proud of myself haha!) We stopped at 5 dive sites and visited the nearest island which had a great a beach and some great scenery too. The boat headed back and we went home for a quick change and out for dinner to the locals house again. We booked our bus and night boat to Krabi for the following night and went home to pack our stuff.

The next day we spent on the beach and in a few bars while we waited for our ride. The boat was an experience as it was ten hours long sleeping on super thin mattresses on an open deck in a thunderstorm so it was fair to say we didnt get much sleep! We then got on a two hour bus then a half hour tuktuk and wallah we were in Krabi Town! (Lazy backpackers you say?)

Our Thai Friend x

Songkran and Samui

So we arrived at Ko Samui after a heard few days in Ko Phangan. We thought we would have some time to ourselves and get some much needed rest but that wasnt about to happen as Ko Samui had different plans for us...We started off touring the island looking at all the beautiful beaches and Waterfalls including the Big Buddha statue and elephant sanctuary which was amazing. You got to handfeed baby elephants which was a first! The next day was the Songkran festival which in Thailand is when there new year starts and they celebrate it by throwing water and talk over oncoming people! We got straight into the spirit and got ourselves some water guns and buckets to join in the fun. We hitchhiked all over the island soaking people as we went past! We enjoyed it more than the Thai people we think. After a few afternoon drinks on the balcony we headed out and found ourselves in a Ladyboy show! Ben didnt find it very interesting (which is what he told me) but i loved it because it was just like a musical! Infact the all the Ladyboys looked better than i did! I was jealous haha. We went back out onto the strip were all of the bars were absolutely soaking. The water fights continued on throught the night and we even managed to meet a couple from Liverpool who were on there Honey moon :-). They were lovely and we had a laugh, we drank lots of buckets and danced in the Mango club until 5 a.m. The next day we took it easy as our heads werent really feeling very good not suprisingly. We booked our bus that day and the following morning we were packed up and ready to head to Ko Tao to do a spot of a diving on what is supposed to be the best places for it! Cheers!

Ready to Party!!

The Full Moon Party

Ko Phangan

So after the relief of getting our bag back we decided to move abit closer to the partying side of the island. Turns out we were three doors down from our Dutch friends which could only lead to one thing...five days of none stop drinking. Night number one was the much anticipated pirate party were we drank flesje sterik and made our way to the shindig. Turns out the pirate party was a full on rave with techno music on all night needless to say it wasnt really our scene but were threw a few shapes nobody had EVER seen before! cant remember what time were fell in - always the sign of a good night. Round two - Mushroom mountain. You cant pretty much guess what went on here and No we never had any shakes. We spent the night with lots of new characters there was around fifteen of us and we had a scream! Round 3 - The jungle Party. Which was a rave in the middle of the jungle with UV lights techno music and fire shows. It really was a one off experience and Ben managed to get a lift with Wessel on the roof of the tuk tuk all the way home while Gem was squashed in the sweat box all the way home with about ten German guys.Round 4 - The big one - The full moon party!! All 12 of us got ourselves neon painted up and Ben looked stupider thanks usual haha. Jonny shaved a face into his hair on the back of his head to try and freak people out haha. We got the full moon party where 30,000 people were waiting for us - Bring on the buckets! Were instantly lost everybody and wandered from bar to bar watching all the crazy events (30000 people dancing on.a small beach with alot of UV paint!) About four hours later were met everybody again had more buckets and danced til the sun came up on Haadrin Beach. Round 5 - Quiet drinks at cozy bungalows and a few games of pool (maybe 100) and a recap on last nights antics. We watched a few films had some beers and called it a night. Round 6 we visited the local english pub and night market for food and drinks and watched manchesters'united play arsenal while jonny sang every MUFC song her knew and high fived the whole bar when they won. We played ping pong,pool and darts drank more beer and said farewell to our friends as tonight was the last night we would see them all :-(. Tomorrow we will leave for Ko Samui but its there were we will celebrate Songkram the Thai New Year water festival.

The Happiest Bag In The World

Ko Phangan - The beginning

After walking in a torrential storm to the south bus station we got on our night bus southbound. The bus was quite comfy and we got a doughnut with potato filling, vegetable juice and some coffee flavoured peanuts what more could you ask for? We arrived Surat Thani at 5:45 and jumped on a tuk tuk with a fella from Newcastle. We then booked our bus boat and hotel with a travel agent.....then the madness began if you didnt think it had already! After a two hour bus journey to the port Gem got locked on the bus and the bus started to drive away aswell as the boat trying to leave without us. Gem dived off eventually and we legged it to the boat forgetting one small thing....We got on the boat for the three and a half hour journey to Ko Samui then to Ko Phangan when we realised we had forgot our bag. But, this wasnt any ordinary bag....it only had two ipods, camera, phone, ipod speakers, three pairs of headphones, Jimmy Kelly's swiss army knife (one of a kind), five books, two bottles of suncream and ALL of our malaria tablets....oh and Bens snickers. We both went white. Gem nearly spewed it...Ben went white. There was nothing we could do...except the obvious dive off the boat which wasnt going to work. We got off at Ko Phangan and got our Tuk-tuk to the hotel coming to terms with losing the bag and having to buy everything again which was around the 400 pound mark. We had a word with the hotel owner who was quietly confident and thought we would get it back. We thought no more about it and stayed in the Hotel resort for the rest of the night. We were going to play cards but oh yeah they were in the bag too. That night the hotel manger told us he had spoken to the travel agent who had spoken to the bus driver who admitted he still had the bag (suprisingly!!) who would take it to the port to get on the next boat to Ko Phangan!! We had abit of hope but didnt want to be sure. At 7:30 we were given the news that the bag did get on the boat but got dropped off at Ko Samui (the wrong island) two hours the wrong way and it would be spending the night in the port :-( Gem nearly cried picturing the bag with a sad face all alone on the pier in the rain. Gem didnt get much sleep that night.

Morning arrived and we didnt pester the hotel owner because we thought it was gone anyway. So at 2 o'clock exactly the time we had arrived at the hotel the tuk-tuk driver pulled into the resort. Gems face lit up. He had the bag! We still didnt quite know whether it would have anything in it due to the 150km round trip it had made in the possible 7+ thai peoples hands. But could you believe it, everything even down to the melted snickers was still in there. We could not believe it, we tipped the tuk-tuk driver 100 baht and all our belongings were back with us again. Gem drew a smiley face on the bag, hugged it then cried. In exactly that order. Everybody else thought she had gone mad but this was the norm for me. That night we celebrated in the local burger bar and got our favourite bottle of Samsung whiskey and played cards and drinking games until the small hours. G'night!!! :-D

What happens in Bangkok stays........on Facebook :-/

One night in Bangkok...

Soooo we arrived in Bangkok after getting our 6 hour day bus which actually turned out to be about 10! We heard this happens alot and since being in south east asia for so long we can pretty much expect this to happen every time. We dived out of the mini bus thanked the bus driver for sharing his fried bananas, grabbed our bags and strated searching for somewhere to stay. After walking round for twenty minutes completely lost we come across Khoasan road where an Indian guy told us of some cheap rooms and low and behold he was right! We decided we really need to start listening to the locals abit more often! Threw our bags in the room and found the nearest Pad Thai street food specialist. After waiting two months for some of their specialty we thoroughly enjoyed it! So we went on our way to find a way of getting to the South bus station in Thailand. After arguing with many Tuk-tuk drivers about a fair price we decided to just get the bus! Easy! We paid 8 baht each instead of the tuk-tuks recomended 150 each, each way! The bus station was a fairly new one were gem got two pairs of denim shorts she'd been wanting for the tasty price of 2 quid! I got meself some socks (boring) for a quid and we got out bus ticket to Surat Thani which is in the Southern Gulf of Thailand and is were you get another bus then a boat then a tuk tuk to Koh Phangan....We headed back to Bangkok pleased to not be getting ripped off by anyone and going it alone. Then we ended up getting the wrong bus ending up in the middle of nowhere were nobody could talk english and got another bus back to Bangkok from there! (It was for the story) We decided to go straight out on the ale and stay out to 4 drinking buckets of Samsung? (sangsom??) local whiskey and dancing in a thai locals night clubs with a couple from Russia who were constantly scrapping. Fell back the room and slept til the cockerels hooted.

Hero

Siem Reap & The Angkor Wat

We arrive in Siem Reap after our six hour day bus and got dropped off in the rural cambodia with absolutely no street signs anywhere. After trying to find which direction to go in we thumbed a lift from a tuk-tuk with two people WITH backpacks already in it. The driver then assured us we could fit in....he was right but we were both hanging out of it for the three km journey. We wandered around Siem Reap and after taking the advice from a random local bicycle rider of 'CHEAP ROOM THATAWAY' he was pretty much spot on! The room cost 4 quid for air con and a fan private bathroom hot water tv for the both of us! After checking in we headed down 'Pub Street' for scoff and beers. We met our Ozzy friend from tubing and had a few beers and caught up on each others travels. We called it a night and got some much needed rest.

We started our day by getting up at 4:30am! Hired two bikes and rode the 6km in the dark to the biggest religious monument in the world. The ride was pretty nice despite getting up so early and when the sun rose over the Temple it was definately worth it. We visitied a few temples such as Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm also know as 'The tomb raider temple'. We think we cycled around 25km and 5km into it Gem got a flat tyre and carried on riding through the day on it! We decided we'd taken enough photos and done enough sightseeing to warrant ourselves a tuk-tuk ride home so Gem could take it easy. Some street food and beers and we were in bed before we knew it.

Today we visited the Landmine Museum ran by a ex-khmer rouge child soldier turned bomb removal expert called Aki Ra. He was known as a local hero who we cannot begin to explain what he has done for his country so here website have a look at it for more info : http://www.cambodialandminemuseum.org/
The Museum was heartbreaking Gem cried the whole time we were there but with good reason lol. Behind the museum is a orphanage which houses the children whose lives have been affected by devastating landmine accidents usually losing limbs. After watching a short film on Aki Ra's life and his works we met a Californian who has also dedicated his life to the cause. We bought some t-shirts and other merchandise and headed back to our hotel once again not realising how lucky we are to come from such a carefree country. We reluctantly booked our bus out of Siem Reap to Bangkok that night and looked back on how little time we spent in such a brilliant country with possibly the friendliest people we have ever came across! We decided one day we will go back to Cambodia!

The Full Moon Party

Ko Phangan

So after the relief of getting our bag back we decided to move abit closer to the partying side of the island. Turns out we were three doors down from our Dutch friends which could only lead to one thing...five days of none stop drinking. Night number one was the much anticipated pirate party were we drank flesje sterik and made our way to the shindig. Turns out the pirate party was a full on rave with techno music on all night needless to say it wasnt really our scene but were threw a few shapes nobody had EVER seen before! cant remember what time were fell in - always the sign of a good night. Round two - Mushroom mountain. You cant pretty much guess what went on here and No we never had any shakes. We spent the night with lots of new characters there was around fifteen of us and we had a scream! Round 3 - The jungle Party. Which was a rave in the middle of the jungle with UV lights techno music and fire shows. It really was a one off experience and Ben managed to get a lift with Wessel on the roof of the tuk tuk all the way home while Gem was squashed in the sweat box all the way home with about ten German guys.Round 4 - The big one - The full moon party!! All 12 of us got ourselves neon painted up and Ben looked stupider thanks usual haha. Jonny shaved a face into his hair on the back of his head to try and freak people out haha. We got the full moon party where 30,000 people were waiting for us - Bring on the buckets! Were instantly lost everybody and wandered from bar to bar watching all the crazy events (30000 people dancing on.a small beach with alot of UV paint!) About four hours later were met everybody again had more buckets and danced til the sun came up on Haadrin Beach. Round 5 - Quiet drinks at cozy bungalows and a few games of pool (maybe 100) and a recap on last nights antics. We watched a few films had some beers and called it a night. Round 6 we visited the local english pub and night market for food and drinks and watched manchesters'united play arsenal while jonny sang every MUFC song her knew and high fived the whole bar when they won. We played ping pong,pool and darts drank more beer and said farewell to our friends as tonight was the last night we would see them all :-(. Tomorrow we will leave for Ko Samui but its there were we will celebrate Songkram the Thai New Year water festival.