Where did the blog go? - Leaving Thailand

It's been a long time since I updated my blog but I'm about to start getting it back up to date. There are a couple of reasons why I haven't updated it for so long. First, the last week or so in Thailand was bit of a challenge (understatement of the century) so I didn't have any urge to update my blog. Second, in the last 4 weeks I have been so busy that I just haven't had the time.

I left Thailand on 26th October and since then I've been to Bangkok again, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia arriving in Buenos Aires on 24th November. I think the best way to get this blog back on track will be to take things in chronological order. Fortunately I've been logging in a journal so not a lot will be forgotten although, as always, some things will be left out seeing as my mother reads this blog ;0)

After Phi Phi island we headed to Phuket arriving on Tuesday 7th October with a view to staying a day or so before heading to a surfing beach nearby. Pretty much everyone we had spoken to about Phuket had described it as hell on earth but on first impression I thought it was one of the nicest placest I've been to in Thailand.

I now think of it as a combination of heaven and hell. I spent about 3 weeks on Phuket in total, most of which was absolutely awesome. I stayed in some great hotels for next to nothing, had a quality little moped, was right next to the beach and enrolled in a local gym. I met some new friends who I hope I'll stay in touch with for a long time and I had a few brilliant dives to add to my tally. So for the most part it was bliss and I had the chance to take it completely easy.

The last week was probably one of the hardest weeks I've been through and I was very close to throwing the towel in and coming home. Since Thailand, just over 4 weeks ago, I've been to so many different places and had so many different experiences that it seems like a bit of a blur. It will be really hard to catch up on this blog but I'll make sure that I get as much as possible done over the next couple of weeks so I can update on South America as we go.

To summarise Thailand, I would say that it has been my favourite country so far. It's got so much to offer such as beautiful, untouched national parks, gigantic limestone cliffs both in the ocean and inland, stunning islands and breath taking beaches. The culture is great and although there are many annoyances the people are generally very friendly and welcoming. There are places to party, places to chill out, awesome cuisine and chances to explore all over the country. The diving is also the best I've experienced so far, even better than the Great Barrier Reef.

In my mind, it wouldn't be a bad thing to go back to Thailand towards the end of my trip but I won't be taking that decision lightly and want to see a lot of South America first.

Phi Phi Island

We caught the ferry from Ao Nang to Koh Phi Phi Don early doors on 3rd October. Most people know about Phi Phi as it was where The Beach was filmed a few years ago with Leonardo Decaprio. It's made up of two small islands, Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Ley of which only Don is inhabited. We arrived on Don pretty early and had to find somewhere to stay as we hadn't booked anything, so we were walking around for a bit with our rucksacks on in the blistering heat which isn't exactly fun. There's a couple of things that set Phi Phi apart from some of the other locations in Thailand, firstly both islands are absolutely stunning and second there are supposed to be no vehicles.

Apart from a couple of mopeds that rings true but it still doesn't stop loads of Thai's trying to run you over with their push bikes. There's shit loads of them, most of the bikes are a mess and it's not unusual to see a guy on the gayest, pinkest bike with a basket on the front. Anyhoo, we haven't done a lot on Phi Phi yet apart from loads of sunbathing, getting pissed, watching dodgy Thai boxing and a half day trip. I have to say, the night life is awful. There's a few nice beach bars but they are just pumping out the biggest pile of shite music I've ever heard so we're getting a bit pissed off with that.

One of the most entertaining bars is Reggae Bar, which incidentally has no Reggae influence whatsoever, as it hosts Thai Boxing every night. This is not the same level of Thai Boxing we watched in Bangkok, it's basically holidaymakers kicking the living shit out of each other. It's absolutely mental that it's allowed as most fights end up with a couple of guys throwing haymakers at each other with the end result being one of them getting sparked out. There was one Irish guy who fights every night, and to give him credit he wins most fights as he's clearly done it before. The guy is a total cock end though and he's strutting round the place like some kind of Kung Fu warrier.

Anyway, he had two fights that we saw on the first night, the second fight being with a handy professional Thai Boxer. T'was quite funny seeing the little Irish prick having the shit kicked out of him. The only downside is that there's inevitably a fight between two so called professionals but it's a proper fix like WWF so it's very disappointing. The Thai staff weren't too happy with the boos coming from the crowd, namely from me and Kev.

The highlight of Phi Phi had to be the half day trip that we embarked upon on the second day. There were three main activities: snorkeling with sharks, cliff jumping and a trip over to Maya Bay on Phi Phi Ley where The Beach was filmed. After kitting us out with masks and fins Owen, our Thai guide, took us down to the pier and piled us into a long boat to head out for the shark snorkeling. It wasn't very far and we were soon in the water snorkeling in crystal clear waters looking for sharks. Almost immediately Owen popped up and said he caught sight of one. I was right behind him and to be honest I thought he was taking the piss as I couldn't see anything.

A few minutes later we started to see loads of them. They were black tip reef sharks I think between 3 and 4 feet long. I have to say I shit my pants the first time I clapped eyes on one as they were really close and they looked like mean little fuckers. Harmless apparently though - my arse! I would say we must have had around 20 sightings but of the same 6 or seven sharks and it was such an awesome experience to be so close to them. Both Kev and I had a few moments when they started circling us and in particular in the last 5 minutes we both decided it was time to retreat as one swam past with it's mouth open.

After that we headed to another small island to do some cliff jumping which, for the uneducated, is jumping off cliffs into the sea! There were 3 jumps that we were allowed to do, 8 metres, 10 metres and 12 metres. 8 metres doesn't seem that high but it kind of does when you're standing on the edge of a cliff but we both did that one no bother. Kev was unscathed but I thought I'd popped an eardrum or something so decided to take 5 minutes and jump from 8 metres again. In that time Kev had done the 10m and 12m jumps; I managed a couple of 10m jumps and decided that was about enough for me.

Maya Bay was absolutely stunning although it looked totally different than in The Beach but apparently it was digitally enhanced and it was damaged quite severely in the Tsunami. We hung around there for a bit and then tried to catch the sunset, which we missed, before heading back to our resort. The whole thing was filmed by Owen and we watched it back afterwards which was pretty cool but we aren't buying it coz were tight arses. That's about all we've done on Phi Phi as we've spent the last couple of days lying on the beach - I hate Mondays!!! Next we're off to Phuket for a night before we go to Hat Rai which is a surfing beach really close to Phuket town, can't wait for that...

Khoa Sok National Park

We finally left Ko Toa on 30th September to head for Khao Sok National Park where we had booked a two day trek. The last couple of days in Ko Toa were pretty chilled; we sunbathed a bit, had another Muay Thai boxing session and got pissed. We also ate at 'Hippo' restaurant for about the 234th time running - chicken skewers were top notch and we kind of built up a bit of rapore with the lady boy waiter which kept drawing Kev back.

So we checked out and headed to Mae Head pier to catch a fast boat to Ko Samui, then the 6pm ferry to Surat Thani where we'd be staying the night before getting picked up the following morning for the trek. All of the travel agents were trying to get up to take a longer route but we'd worked out the quickest way ourselves and bough the ferry ticket separately. Everyone is on the take, even the bloody travel agents!

On arrival at Surat Thani, we jumped in a taxi and asked for the 100 Islands Resort with a few others heading for the centre. There was an old Thai guy sitting behind us and he just wouldn't stop coughing which was really starting to wind Kev up. Kev asked how far it was to our resort and the driver said 84k! We thought it would be about 5 mins so were a bit pissed that we'd have to endure 84k with the coughing cock end!

Anyway, we arrived at the National Park at about 10.30am and were greeted by a nice Dutch chap called William. The drive into the park was amazing, when we weren't asleep, with superb scenery pretty much all of the way. There were huge limestone hills similar to the ones found at Railey Beach and around a lot of Thailand. Apparently, according to William, about 25 million years ago they were all coral reefs, pushed up in later years by tectonic shifts (every day's a school day). Anyway, limestone cliffs are common throughout Thailand, Vietnam and China so we'll hopefully see some more sights before we leave South East Asia.

After we met up with another few people to join the trek, we were frog marched off down to the river which was about 5 minutes walk. The resort looked pretty basic with rustic bungalows but we'd have to wait a bit to check in. At the river we were greeted by our guide, a tiny Thai chap who was charged with paddling the canoe with Kev and I in the front. The river was pretty cool with loads of overhanging trees and fairly quick currents. We didn't see a lot of wildlife, except a frog and some fish, and we couldn't feel our legs after about 10 minutes with pins and needles, but all in all it was a good experience. Took loads of photos but looking back they all look exactly the same so I'll only post a couple on facebook.

After the canooing we stopped off for a bit of lunch close to the river and where the next trek would start, an elephant trek. After some nice Thai fodder, the elephants started to roll back into the resort after completing an earlier trek. There must have been about 20 elephants and everyone was in awe taking photos and feeding them. After a bit of spiel from William about the history of these particular elephants and the tribes people that look after them we were ready to get onto our elephant. To cut a long story short, the tribesmen have looked after elephants for generations, they used to be used for logging but as that's not allowed anymore in Thailand they cart rich westerners round the jungle for an hour or so, blah blah blah!

So we finally mounted our elephant with the little Thai man riding on the elephant's head with his legs behind his ears, and Kev and I got on a seat tied to the elephants back. The driver had a sort of stick with a hook to keep the elephant on course and to hit him with if he's being naughty. You might think that sounds a bit cruel, and I guess we did too, but surely it's no worse than strapping a massive seat onto his back and making him carry about 40 stone in weight around the jungle. So after a bit of a moral tangle, we were carted round the jungle by Nellie and his assistant. It really was an awesome experience, although we didn't see a lot of wildlife, just being so close to such beautiful animals.

After the elephant ride we were greeted by our guide for the rest of the trip, a young Thai girl called Kong, probably about 25 years old. That afternoon we were taken to a nice waterfall and to 'monkey temple' where, as you might guess, there were a lot of monkeys at a temple. They were wild monkeys, scores of them in fact, and we fed them bananas, the little twats were just taking them out of our hands, pretty cool I say. We have loads of photos of all of this so I'll post some on facebook to piss you all off, hahaha.

The next day, a jungle trek was on the agenda. Unfortunately only I made it as Kev was a bit worse for wear so Kong, myself and another Thai fella headed for the jungle and a pretty steep hill. It was a gorgeous day, heading out at about 9am we reached a small park office shortly after and headed for the jungle, bamboo stick in hand. The bamboo was to fight off tigers according to Kong but it was really to help Kong walk up the hill as she was knackered after about 5 minutes. I have to say that there wasn't a great deal to see in the jungle except some trees (no shit), a lot of plants, a couple of lizards and a squirrel. Nevertheless, it was good exercise and I was pretty shattered afterwards. The highlight had to be 'The Big Tree', which was named by the local Thais as it's a tree and it's pretty big, genius!

After the trek, I had to ask Kong if it would be possible for the chef not to feed us as the quantity of the food being served was ridiculous and all we were after was some fruit. She was ok about that but I think the chef was a little offended but we're trying to eat healthily and fried food every day is kind of off the menu. After a bite to eat we were taken to our next destination, Ao Nang which is very near to where we started at Railey Beach. We stayed in a pretty low key hotel with basic mod cons and after checking in we took a long boat to Tonsai Beach which is the exact same place that we visited straight after Bangkok.

We'd both forgotten how awesome the boat ride into Tonsai was with it's massive limestone cliffs covered in greenery, crystal clear green waters and white beaches. We only had a couple of hours to spend on Tonsai as the last long boat departs at 6pm but we wanted to go back and see some of the local guys that we met at The Kasbah. Even though we'd only been away from Tonsai for about 3 weeks we were both shocked at how much it has changed. New bars were being built everywhere and Kasbah had closed - unbelievable how things are developing so fast. We met up with a couple of the guys for a few hours then headed back to Ao Nang for the evening. We had a pretty quiet night and caught the ferry to Phi Phi the next day.