Saturday 6th June 2009 - Bangkok (again)
Helo all, thomas here again. Well Chiang Mai was brilliant and annoying at the same time. We arrived in the evening after a 10hr bus trip and got to the Queen Victoria pub where we were staying (yes i know it's not in keepiong with the experience but we saw they did an all you can eat sunday cavary so we couldn't say no! Don't judge us too harshly we're young). We hit the sack right away and then arose around midday to get first dibbs on the Sunday Roast. 4 diferent meats, roast potatoes, yorkshire puds and actual steamed veg (not fried) i'll tell you this i think i ate 3 days worth of food. It was so amazing and the first roast meats for 5 months.
Anyway after feeding our ever expanding stomachs we had a look around Chiang Mai. Saw a few sparkly, gold temples and took a walk around the Sunday market with numerous godies at knock down prices. Needless to say we bought more than needed but less than we liked! We were staying in the old town of Chiang Mai which is enclosed by a 1km square wal and mote from the rest of the town/city. We also booked and paid for our tours for the next few days.
That night, unfortunately Anna became ill, for many reasons this was annoying. Primarily because its not nice and Anna spent the next day in bed, secondly we had paid for a thai cooking course that day which Anna couldn't do. And thirdly, because the reason (we discovered after calls home and passed on medical advise) was a very old GLASS (i emphasie because it was only one) of red wine. That was a bitter pill to swalow.
So that day i left Anna with DVD's, fluids and dried bread whilst i went on a thai cooking course. The first 1.5 hrs was spent buying our ingredients and having an explantion of al the food, herbs and meats used in thai quizine. I found it fascinating looking around a local thai market and choosing and buying the food. After that it was on to the kitchen to cook the 6 dishes.
The set up was very good and the instructors were realy helpful. Each dish was shown to us and then we tried it ourselves deciding if we want to put more/less of the spices that they used in. Now thai cooking is similar to a 100m sprint, everything is extremly high heat and cooking time is roughly the 10 seconds it takes to finish the race. It's prety funny because the instructors bark bark orders at you if your overcoking it (which westerners are prone to) and fling the next ingredient in for you. Well after each dish I ate my handy work and i must say it wasn't too shaby, perhaps a tad too spicy sometimes (you realise this when you start crying after a mouth full). My favourite two dishes that i prepared were steamed snake head fish (thats the name of the fish not which part i used!) and yellow thai curry (lovely and creamy with excelent spices to go with it. All in all i had 6 courses and felt fit to burst when i returned to Anna. Thankfuly anna had recovered alot of her strenght and colour. This meant she went on the Thai cooking course the next day. However, as i mentioned we had booked tours so i went out on an elephant treking tour that day. Anna didn't feel as though she could cope with treking having not completely recovered.
Anna's cooking day was similar to mine excpet that She didn't go to the market she had food calving course instead. This, incase you were wondering, is making food look pretty. Theer was also another suprise for her as the man who founded the thai cooking schools took one of her classes (showning them one dish). This man had a show in the UK called "A taste of Thai" and apparently is a massive celb in Thainland.
My day was must less artistic and began with an elephant trek. I had been looking forward to elephant treking for most of the traveling and i was not dissappointed. I shared my elephant (female) with a proffessional poker playing french man living in Bangkok who spoke pigeon English and me not great french (and that was just the begining). You were advised to buy bananas to feed them whilst treking and from the off my elephant had it's trunk over it's head demanding bananas. The truck is amazing you just place a banana there and they breath in through the truck and pop itin their mouth. Now we were happily plodding along (thats what elephants do, plod) when a second truck appeared beside me, it didn't register at first and fed a banana. Then i thought hang on looked over the side, of my bulldozer of an elephant, and there beside me was a little baby. It transpired that my elephant was the mother and the baby was ridiculously cute. It walked along with the group and basicaly tried to disrupt everything (being a typical 2 year old). It ran around in circles, trumped as loud as it could, blew water at everything as we went through the river and the piece de resistence was just sitting down infront of the waling tour. Now you may think the adults should be able to move it on easily which they tried to do, but moving a half tonne animal looked pretty tough. After an hour the tour was over and the baby elephant part took in some dog chasing (it is very funny to see dogs getting chased by a baby elephant, i was crying with laughter)
The rest of the tour comprised of White water rafting (no where near as good as Auz), 2 hour trek to waterfall (standard for me now), bamboo rafting (no so much rafting as it was completly submerged and i was sitting in the river) and a visit to a local village. That was Chiang Mai and the next day we headed back to Bangkok so we could pick up our Visa's for India.
The last 2 days in Bangkok were non descript and comprised of shopping, eating, temple going and french open watching. Then today 6th june we fly to India. So your up to date and the next blog will be on the india tab. i've realsied that this keyboard is pathetic and so forgive any miss spwellings (haha).
A quick digression a guy had just walked past me carrying a half m square block of ice. If i hadn't looked twice i would have sworn i imagined it!
So thanks for reading and everyone take care.
Love as always Anna and Thomas
Anyway after feeding our ever expanding stomachs we had a look around Chiang Mai. Saw a few sparkly, gold temples and took a walk around the Sunday market with numerous godies at knock down prices. Needless to say we bought more than needed but less than we liked! We were staying in the old town of Chiang Mai which is enclosed by a 1km square wal and mote from the rest of the town/city. We also booked and paid for our tours for the next few days.
That night, unfortunately Anna became ill, for many reasons this was annoying. Primarily because its not nice and Anna spent the next day in bed, secondly we had paid for a thai cooking course that day which Anna couldn't do. And thirdly, because the reason (we discovered after calls home and passed on medical advise) was a very old GLASS (i emphasie because it was only one) of red wine. That was a bitter pill to swalow.
So that day i left Anna with DVD's, fluids and dried bread whilst i went on a thai cooking course. The first 1.5 hrs was spent buying our ingredients and having an explantion of al the food, herbs and meats used in thai quizine. I found it fascinating looking around a local thai market and choosing and buying the food. After that it was on to the kitchen to cook the 6 dishes.
The set up was very good and the instructors were realy helpful. Each dish was shown to us and then we tried it ourselves deciding if we want to put more/less of the spices that they used in. Now thai cooking is similar to a 100m sprint, everything is extremly high heat and cooking time is roughly the 10 seconds it takes to finish the race. It's prety funny because the instructors bark bark orders at you if your overcoking it (which westerners are prone to) and fling the next ingredient in for you. Well after each dish I ate my handy work and i must say it wasn't too shaby, perhaps a tad too spicy sometimes (you realise this when you start crying after a mouth full). My favourite two dishes that i prepared were steamed snake head fish (thats the name of the fish not which part i used!) and yellow thai curry (lovely and creamy with excelent spices to go with it. All in all i had 6 courses and felt fit to burst when i returned to Anna. Thankfuly anna had recovered alot of her strenght and colour. This meant she went on the Thai cooking course the next day. However, as i mentioned we had booked tours so i went out on an elephant treking tour that day. Anna didn't feel as though she could cope with treking having not completely recovered.
Anna's cooking day was similar to mine excpet that She didn't go to the market she had food calving course instead. This, incase you were wondering, is making food look pretty. Theer was also another suprise for her as the man who founded the thai cooking schools took one of her classes (showning them one dish). This man had a show in the UK called "A taste of Thai" and apparently is a massive celb in Thainland.
My day was must less artistic and began with an elephant trek. I had been looking forward to elephant treking for most of the traveling and i was not dissappointed. I shared my elephant (female) with a proffessional poker playing french man living in Bangkok who spoke pigeon English and me not great french (and that was just the begining). You were advised to buy bananas to feed them whilst treking and from the off my elephant had it's trunk over it's head demanding bananas. The truck is amazing you just place a banana there and they breath in through the truck and pop itin their mouth. Now we were happily plodding along (thats what elephants do, plod) when a second truck appeared beside me, it didn't register at first and fed a banana. Then i thought hang on looked over the side, of my bulldozer of an elephant, and there beside me was a little baby. It transpired that my elephant was the mother and the baby was ridiculously cute. It walked along with the group and basicaly tried to disrupt everything (being a typical 2 year old). It ran around in circles, trumped as loud as it could, blew water at everything as we went through the river and the piece de resistence was just sitting down infront of the waling tour. Now you may think the adults should be able to move it on easily which they tried to do, but moving a half tonne animal looked pretty tough. After an hour the tour was over and the baby elephant part took in some dog chasing (it is very funny to see dogs getting chased by a baby elephant, i was crying with laughter)
The rest of the tour comprised of White water rafting (no where near as good as Auz), 2 hour trek to waterfall (standard for me now), bamboo rafting (no so much rafting as it was completly submerged and i was sitting in the river) and a visit to a local village. That was Chiang Mai and the next day we headed back to Bangkok so we could pick up our Visa's for India.
The last 2 days in Bangkok were non descript and comprised of shopping, eating, temple going and french open watching. Then today 6th june we fly to India. So your up to date and the next blog will be on the india tab. i've realsied that this keyboard is pathetic and so forgive any miss spwellings (haha).
A quick digression a guy had just walked past me carrying a half m square block of ice. If i hadn't looked twice i would have sworn i imagined it!
So thanks for reading and everyone take care.
Love as always Anna and Thomas
Friday 29th May 2009 - Bangkok
Hey Thomas here, we've had a great time in Koh Ta, Not really been up to much except laying by the pool, eating, sunning, drinking and swimming. ALthough on our first night in the bungalow our bed and Anna was acosted by bed bugs! digusting! The only up side was i didn't have a bite on me but Anna didn't take kindly to me informing her of that particular up shot. So we moved to a much claner and criter free bungalow.
The sun was out every day and on our 5 of 6 days we went on a snorkeling tour around the island. Our first stop was shark bay. Scary. It's about 4m deep where we were snorkeling. All i wanted to see was a shark and my wish was granted twice towards the end of our time. we saw 2 black tiped reef sharks about 2m in length but very well build. They look like buldosers oof the sea. It was amazing. We had 3 more snorkel sites in and around soft and hard coral with lots of different fish we hadn't seen in Auz. Had a great day and got back to the room exhausted after actually doing some exercise for a change.
Whilst on Koh Tao we found the best penang curry to date for only 80 bt (1.60 pounds) at a restaurant overlooking the ocean. Which we usually went to around sunset. Absolutely beautiful. On May 27th we left for Bangkok.
Hi all, Anna here. So we finally left the beautiful islands of Thailand and ended out 'holiday' from travelling. Had a mamoth boat and bus ride to get to Bangkok but hey all part of the eperience. We arrived in the eve and got a taxi to the hostel, very nice but fully booked!! eek! ended up staying in more of a motel down the road very cheaply for the first night before checking into the nice hostel.
First morning we decided to sort out our visa for India. Well! That was a palava and a half! The embassy was quite far from the hostel so got a taxi. The driver when we showed him the address said "yes yes i know i know.....45baht". Brill, pretty cheap. Anyway we end up on this massive highway thinking this is right yeah? so we show him the address again and say Indian embassy and again "yes yes i know i know". half an hour later we are STILL on the highway so we check again. "5minutes". Five minutes later we make it to the address, but wait a minute, wheres the emabassy?! The driver has to ask a local who explains to us that he misunderstood the address and now knows where the embassy is. We ask how much longer and he says 20mins - WHAT?! anyway we finally make it to the embassy 1 hour and 250baht later and refused to pay the whole lot as he went wrong and it should have been much quicker (20mins MAX). We get to the embassy with only 45mins left of open hours for visa services for the lady to tell us that the visa section is in another building! So off again on a very brisk walk for 15mins round the corner and FINALLY get to the right place. phew! In complete contrast getting the visa was very quick and easy and everyone was very helpful.
spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around a bit and then had to go sort out our flight to India. Thankfully this was MUCH easier and finally made it back to the hostel shattered at 4 for a nice afternoon nap. In the eve as we were feeling very pleased with ourselves for sorting everything out in one day we decided to treat ourselves to a nice Thai dinner. Very romantic little restaurant playing jazz music. I tried a dish that apparently is very popular with locals when they cook at home. It was whole mackeral and crispy catfish and then a range of very very strange veg and a very very spicy dipping sauce. I would love to tell you what veg i had but it looked like nothing i have ever seen before! Some were tasty but others were a little strange. All in all quite enjoyed it and was nice to try something that is very much a local dish.
Today we went and looked around the Grand Palace (thomas will tell you about this) and then went to a massive market and spent some dosh on some knock off nigels and local items.
Thomas again. Anna couldn't bring herself to talk about the grand palace. I was very pleased about the visit because i felt we had been neglecting our culture events having spend the time on islands. And the Grnad Palace did not dissapoint, the name sums it up. Unbelieveably stunning, gold, green, red and blue everywhere. The emerald budda temple was an amazing experience. But i get ahead of myself. First we had to enter and given we wern't properly atired. (Neither of us fancied wearing trousers and long sleaves in the 32C heat and 95% humidity) So i was given a pair of what can only be described as sweat pants that were 3 sizes to big. Anna was even funnier given a mans size BHS skin coloured shirt. We have pictures don't worry.
The palace was immense. The emerald budda temple was my favourite, inside and out it was ornate with gold everywhere. It's actually quite important in the buddist religion. Many thai people flock there everyday to pay hommage to the budda and his teachings. The emerald budda is actually carved from jade which i found quite funny. But in 1790 when it was carved they believe it to be emerald. The temple must have been 2 football pitches in size and over 10m. The next impressive building was the manpog building, again gold in colour (we overheard a guide say all the gold plates they use are 24 carrot). The impressive thing about this building was that it held the sacred scripts whihch were all written on palm leaves.
Anyway we left after a few hours and as Anna said participated in some retail therapy. More like torture for me, especially when you have to barter all the time (good fn at first but not on the 10th go!). So your up to date so far. We're heading to Chiang Mai tomorrow where we hope to do some elephant treking and such things. We'll keep you posted. Take care everyone
Love Thomas and Anna xxx
The sun was out every day and on our 5 of 6 days we went on a snorkeling tour around the island. Our first stop was shark bay. Scary. It's about 4m deep where we were snorkeling. All i wanted to see was a shark and my wish was granted twice towards the end of our time. we saw 2 black tiped reef sharks about 2m in length but very well build. They look like buldosers oof the sea. It was amazing. We had 3 more snorkel sites in and around soft and hard coral with lots of different fish we hadn't seen in Auz. Had a great day and got back to the room exhausted after actually doing some exercise for a change.
Whilst on Koh Tao we found the best penang curry to date for only 80 bt (1.60 pounds) at a restaurant overlooking the ocean. Which we usually went to around sunset. Absolutely beautiful. On May 27th we left for Bangkok.
Hi all, Anna here. So we finally left the beautiful islands of Thailand and ended out 'holiday' from travelling. Had a mamoth boat and bus ride to get to Bangkok but hey all part of the eperience. We arrived in the eve and got a taxi to the hostel, very nice but fully booked!! eek! ended up staying in more of a motel down the road very cheaply for the first night before checking into the nice hostel.
First morning we decided to sort out our visa for India. Well! That was a palava and a half! The embassy was quite far from the hostel so got a taxi. The driver when we showed him the address said "yes yes i know i know.....45baht". Brill, pretty cheap. Anyway we end up on this massive highway thinking this is right yeah? so we show him the address again and say Indian embassy and again "yes yes i know i know". half an hour later we are STILL on the highway so we check again. "5minutes". Five minutes later we make it to the address, but wait a minute, wheres the emabassy?! The driver has to ask a local who explains to us that he misunderstood the address and now knows where the embassy is. We ask how much longer and he says 20mins - WHAT?! anyway we finally make it to the embassy 1 hour and 250baht later and refused to pay the whole lot as he went wrong and it should have been much quicker (20mins MAX). We get to the embassy with only 45mins left of open hours for visa services for the lady to tell us that the visa section is in another building! So off again on a very brisk walk for 15mins round the corner and FINALLY get to the right place. phew! In complete contrast getting the visa was very quick and easy and everyone was very helpful.
spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around a bit and then had to go sort out our flight to India. Thankfully this was MUCH easier and finally made it back to the hostel shattered at 4 for a nice afternoon nap. In the eve as we were feeling very pleased with ourselves for sorting everything out in one day we decided to treat ourselves to a nice Thai dinner. Very romantic little restaurant playing jazz music. I tried a dish that apparently is very popular with locals when they cook at home. It was whole mackeral and crispy catfish and then a range of very very strange veg and a very very spicy dipping sauce. I would love to tell you what veg i had but it looked like nothing i have ever seen before! Some were tasty but others were a little strange. All in all quite enjoyed it and was nice to try something that is very much a local dish.
Today we went and looked around the Grand Palace (thomas will tell you about this) and then went to a massive market and spent some dosh on some knock off nigels and local items.
Thomas again. Anna couldn't bring herself to talk about the grand palace. I was very pleased about the visit because i felt we had been neglecting our culture events having spend the time on islands. And the Grnad Palace did not dissapoint, the name sums it up. Unbelieveably stunning, gold, green, red and blue everywhere. The emerald budda temple was an amazing experience. But i get ahead of myself. First we had to enter and given we wern't properly atired. (Neither of us fancied wearing trousers and long sleaves in the 32C heat and 95% humidity) So i was given a pair of what can only be described as sweat pants that were 3 sizes to big. Anna was even funnier given a mans size BHS skin coloured shirt. We have pictures don't worry.
The palace was immense. The emerald budda temple was my favourite, inside and out it was ornate with gold everywhere. It's actually quite important in the buddist religion. Many thai people flock there everyday to pay hommage to the budda and his teachings. The emerald budda is actually carved from jade which i found quite funny. But in 1790 when it was carved they believe it to be emerald. The temple must have been 2 football pitches in size and over 10m. The next impressive building was the manpog building, again gold in colour (we overheard a guide say all the gold plates they use are 24 carrot). The impressive thing about this building was that it held the sacred scripts whihch were all written on palm leaves.
Anyway we left after a few hours and as Anna said participated in some retail therapy. More like torture for me, especially when you have to barter all the time (good fn at first but not on the 10th go!). So your up to date so far. We're heading to Chiang Mai tomorrow where we hope to do some elephant treking and such things. We'll keep you posted. Take care everyone
Love Thomas and Anna xxx
Wednesday 20th May 2009 - Koh Phangan Island
Dear all, thomas here sorry we've been out of contact for a while but we've been sunning ourselves on the beaches of Thailand. I bet your all very happy to hear that!
Anyway we last left you in Penang (Malaysia). We caught our flight to Phuket, Thailand, which is on the east coast. Phuket was rather nondescript except for the fact that our room appear to be an entire apartment! We walked in to find t.v, two sofas, a fridge freezer , en suite and enough room to swing a cat. All for the measly price of 7 quid each a night. BARGAIN.
Anyway we wanted to get away from the towns and cities as soon as possible and after 2 nights we left early for Koh Phi Phi Island. Took around 1.5 hours and we landed to be accosted by numerous accommodation sales people. The next hour was to be a lesson learned for us. We went for an accommodation that was unrated on hostelbookers, due to a lack of choice (mistake 1). Which we paid for in full for 5 nights as soon as we arrived (mistake 2). So we got taken to the apartments in the sun up on the hil side feeling very happy with ourselves until we turned the corner. Directly below our room was a 'lake' which to be fair sounds really nice. However it hadn't rained in months so it was more of a small mud pool in the middle of lots and lots of black plastic. To top it all it was surrounded by tanks looking suspeciously like portaloo's!
You can imagine our feeling of anger and resentment at that point! In fact it took us 4 hours on the beach and a drink of beer to start feeling even remotely happy again. At least the room was very nice and spacious with t.v (so we've caught up with all the bloody m.p's expenses! thats all we've heard for 5 days, SKY news is very repetative).
The rest of the 5 days were amazing, relaxing on the beach in the sun. Drinking and dining in the evening, this was our 'holiday' from travelling. We even got to like our bungalow on the hill with it's unique view. Ironically enough the resort is called Ingphu viewpoint resort. On our final day we went on a tour around the island and it's sister island Koh Phi Phi Don. I'll let Anna take over.
Hi. So, we got on the boat at around 2.30pm for the start of the tour. We first kayaked to Monkey Beach. Well as you can probably guess it is a little secluded beach which is full of monkeys running around. We even got to feed them bits of pineapple and banana. It was amazing to watch the monkeys actually peel the banana. We then went round a few more bays and coves and kayaked around them and saw some amazing fish and views. We finally went to Maya Bay (where 'The Beach' was filmed). To get to it we felt like we were little castaways as we had to swim from the boat, climb over rocks through a whole in the cliff holding onto a rope to get onto the island. We then walked through some of the rural part of the island to reach the bay from the otherside. It really is a beautiful place although it is a little spoilt from all the people there and so doesn't feel anywhere near as remote as it should do. unfortunately the sun had gone behind lots of cloud by this point so didnt manage to get any really impressive photos. After about 45mins in the bay we went back to the boat for dinner and watch the sun set.
The next day we caught our first ferry from Koh Phi Phi to Krabi on the mainland. From there we had to catch a bus and another boat to get to Koh Phangan island off the east coast. unfortnately this journey did not go as smoothly as planned, however we did not find this out until we arrived at our hostel in Koh Phangan and opened our bags. It turned out we were part of a little scam a few thai's have going. halfway through our bus trip we had to change buses to a double decker coach and our bags where stowed on the lower deck. During the 2 hour journey there wer obviously guys on the lower deck going through everyones bags. We even had padlocks on ours and they managed to pick the locks. Luckily we had most of our valuables on us so it was not where near as bad as it could have been. Thomas ended up have the equivalent of 70pounds stollen and had to cancel one of his cards incase they took the number down. Pain in the ass!
Koh Phangan has been much like Koh Phi Phi in the sense that we have spent each day sunning ourselves on the beach and eating dinner overlooking the sun set. For those of you who know Koh Phangan is famous for its full moon parties we decided to stay well away from that and stay in the north of the island instead. We stayed in a little bay called Haad Salad which is pretty small - only a couple od shops and a few resorts. We stayed in a really nice dark wooden bungalow 2 mins walk from the beach. It was so quiet and iydilic as at most there were only 3 or 4 other people on the beach! So we can safely say we are now very relaxed!
Tomorrow we are getting a ferry over to Koh Tao island (second best dive site in the world after Cairnes) a bit further north - all valuables in hand luggage and big bags not going out of our sight!
So thats all for now, will let you know what we think of Koh Tao and all the fish
Love
Anna and Thomas
p.s. hope pop and wendy enjoyed their 10 days in italy.
Anyway we last left you in Penang (Malaysia). We caught our flight to Phuket, Thailand, which is on the east coast. Phuket was rather nondescript except for the fact that our room appear to be an entire apartment! We walked in to find t.v, two sofas, a fridge freezer , en suite and enough room to swing a cat. All for the measly price of 7 quid each a night. BARGAIN.
Anyway we wanted to get away from the towns and cities as soon as possible and after 2 nights we left early for Koh Phi Phi Island. Took around 1.5 hours and we landed to be accosted by numerous accommodation sales people. The next hour was to be a lesson learned for us. We went for an accommodation that was unrated on hostelbookers, due to a lack of choice (mistake 1). Which we paid for in full for 5 nights as soon as we arrived (mistake 2). So we got taken to the apartments in the sun up on the hil side feeling very happy with ourselves until we turned the corner. Directly below our room was a 'lake' which to be fair sounds really nice. However it hadn't rained in months so it was more of a small mud pool in the middle of lots and lots of black plastic. To top it all it was surrounded by tanks looking suspeciously like portaloo's!
You can imagine our feeling of anger and resentment at that point! In fact it took us 4 hours on the beach and a drink of beer to start feeling even remotely happy again. At least the room was very nice and spacious with t.v (so we've caught up with all the bloody m.p's expenses! thats all we've heard for 5 days, SKY news is very repetative).
The rest of the 5 days were amazing, relaxing on the beach in the sun. Drinking and dining in the evening, this was our 'holiday' from travelling. We even got to like our bungalow on the hill with it's unique view. Ironically enough the resort is called Ingphu viewpoint resort. On our final day we went on a tour around the island and it's sister island Koh Phi Phi Don. I'll let Anna take over.
Hi. So, we got on the boat at around 2.30pm for the start of the tour. We first kayaked to Monkey Beach. Well as you can probably guess it is a little secluded beach which is full of monkeys running around. We even got to feed them bits of pineapple and banana. It was amazing to watch the monkeys actually peel the banana. We then went round a few more bays and coves and kayaked around them and saw some amazing fish and views. We finally went to Maya Bay (where 'The Beach' was filmed). To get to it we felt like we were little castaways as we had to swim from the boat, climb over rocks through a whole in the cliff holding onto a rope to get onto the island. We then walked through some of the rural part of the island to reach the bay from the otherside. It really is a beautiful place although it is a little spoilt from all the people there and so doesn't feel anywhere near as remote as it should do. unfortunately the sun had gone behind lots of cloud by this point so didnt manage to get any really impressive photos. After about 45mins in the bay we went back to the boat for dinner and watch the sun set.
The next day we caught our first ferry from Koh Phi Phi to Krabi on the mainland. From there we had to catch a bus and another boat to get to Koh Phangan island off the east coast. unfortnately this journey did not go as smoothly as planned, however we did not find this out until we arrived at our hostel in Koh Phangan and opened our bags. It turned out we were part of a little scam a few thai's have going. halfway through our bus trip we had to change buses to a double decker coach and our bags where stowed on the lower deck. During the 2 hour journey there wer obviously guys on the lower deck going through everyones bags. We even had padlocks on ours and they managed to pick the locks. Luckily we had most of our valuables on us so it was not where near as bad as it could have been. Thomas ended up have the equivalent of 70pounds stollen and had to cancel one of his cards incase they took the number down. Pain in the ass!
Koh Phangan has been much like Koh Phi Phi in the sense that we have spent each day sunning ourselves on the beach and eating dinner overlooking the sun set. For those of you who know Koh Phangan is famous for its full moon parties we decided to stay well away from that and stay in the north of the island instead. We stayed in a little bay called Haad Salad which is pretty small - only a couple od shops and a few resorts. We stayed in a really nice dark wooden bungalow 2 mins walk from the beach. It was so quiet and iydilic as at most there were only 3 or 4 other people on the beach! So we can safely say we are now very relaxed!
Tomorrow we are getting a ferry over to Koh Tao island (second best dive site in the world after Cairnes) a bit further north - all valuables in hand luggage and big bags not going out of our sight!
So thats all for now, will let you know what we think of Koh Tao and all the fish
Love
Anna and Thomas
p.s. hope pop and wendy enjoyed their 10 days in italy.
