Hey everyone!
i trust your all well.
so i left you when i was in samui, i got board of the place pretty quickly, it was just far too touristy for me! so decided to make my way over back to koh Phangan where olie and barney were heading and also my friend Vilma form Finland who i met in my first week on phangan so was pretty cool to be around a load of familiar faces again!
so i arrived on the monday morning, the day of the full moon party so that was good timing! i found myself somewhere to stay in a hotell called the Beer Bungalows which was nice and clean and very close to hat rin which is where the party will take place! so i had a shower, rented a scooter and headed off to meet the boys and Vilma and 2 austrian girls jo and Dani who Vilma had met in crabby over at the tree house bar, i may have talked about this before but it is such a nice place, literally a treehouse built in to a palm tree on the beach, its really chilled and a great place to chill out away from the STUPIDLY HOT SUN lol, so we stayed there for the afternoon then decided to go get our fluorescent attire for the evening and prepare for the party later!
Later on that eve we made our way to the full moon party and i was knocked for six, there were soo many people there just rammed, there was fire limbo, fire skipping, fire juggling, cheap drinks everywhere, fluorescent paint and glow sticks flying about, about 15 outdoor dj sets all along the beach and huge dancing podiums!! i was having an amazing night until about 3am when 4 people confronted me on my way back from the toilets and pushed me about a bit, i managed to get 2 of them but they got my wallet! so there i was completely screwed, i managed to get a lovely girl from Sweden to pay for my taxi home, called mum with my remaining thai phone credit and that was it, went to bed to face it all the next day.
so woken up the next day by Vilma who had heard what had happened and told me to ge the hers for the day she would pay for my food and taxis for the day whilst ma and pa got some money too me. so a big thank you to you Vilma your a life saver!!!
long story short, mum and dad got some money too me and now i can go on with my trip, Barney and Ollie have gome to Koh Pipi and Vilma (shit ive just realised i have been spelling Vilma's name wrong haha oops) is going north to chiang mai with Dani and i am going down to Kuala Lumper with Austrian Jo tomorrow before i head off to Bali!
so that bring you guys up to date with me, im in thong sala in phangan now in an awesome english pup called the masons arms, i urge you all to google it, it is a very good immertation of a classic english pub.
ok so speak to you all soon!
xxxx
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
THE JOURNEY TO THE SOUTH ISLANDS
Hey everybody, sorry for such a delay with the updates, its hard to find the time to sit and do it!!
so I completely forgot to add in my last blog about the elephant riding and washing, it was a really strange feeling, being on top of something so big yet the handlers having such control over them, they really are very smart creatures and were very well looked after!
We walked around for about 30 mins then walked down to the river where they played and squirted water over each other and us, was really sweet!!!
So anyway on with the story. We were dropped off in bangkok at the bus station at 7pm where I got on the night bus, the bus was meant to take us directly to Chumphong and take 8 hours HOWEVER
at about 3 in the morning the bus stopped, told us to get off and wait for another bus to come and get us, 3 HOURS LATER another one turned up and took us to the ferry, and to top it all off on the bus whilst I was sleeping someone stole my ipod :( what a bummer!!!
so I got to the first island which I would be staying at called Koh Pha-Ngan and made my way to the hotel, the hotel was called the Weangthai and was really very nice, I had a room with a balcony, a swimming pool just outside and I could throw a stone in to the sea from my balcony! Was pretty sick. The staff were great and fun, the owner was an english guy called Dave which made things a whole lot easier in the communication department.
I was kindof lucky because my next door neighbours were two canadian guys called Rheyal and Darnel from central canada and were very very homophobic haha then on the other side was a Finish girl Traveling on her own called Vilma, two german guys who's names I temporarily forget, a Finish couple on there honeymoon and a couple from norway. I do know their names its just spelling them is a little difficult lol.
So we all pretty much hung out together for the whole time I was on the island, eating out, chilling on the beach, renting mopeds and cruzing round the island, drinking in the evenings. It was a fairly cool group and lots of story to be told but I don't have all the time in the world!!! but yeah my time on koh Pha-Ngan was super and was topped off by the half moon party which was epic! Basically just a rave in the jungle with psychedelic funky house techno (or at least thats what I was told!) yeah it was a good night!
I feel like I should white more about my time on this island but there are too many good memory’s, to tell you about them all would actually take forever so I will leave it at that!
So my time was up on Pha-Ngan and was time to move a little south to Koh Samui, a slightly bigger more touristy island, good in some ways but bad in others i.e. there is a Mac Donald and a BK hear so not perfect thai culture which is what ive been used too but hey ho all was good, I arrived on the first day of a 3 day festival called Song Kran which is the Thai New year, this is celebrated by the whole nation having a super massive water fight, people lining the streets with hose pipes, kids with water guns, teens in trucks with buckets and barrels of water and adults doing all of the above! Such a great day. I spent it on the side of the road with a bucket and a gun throwing water at people on mopeds!! and the best thing was they loved it, cheering as they got annihilated in the face!!!
During all of this I had befriended t english guys called ollie and barney who I am now hanging out with, we decided to go out that evening to the foam party which was on the beach and my god what a great night, it was just a mass of thousands of people having a super fun time and getting wasted, then made our way to the massive club and continued to party until the break of dawn!
Fun times indeed!
So that pretty brings us up to now, im still in samui and having a good time and will update you guys in a wee while!
Kisses to all xxx
so I completely forgot to add in my last blog about the elephant riding and washing, it was a really strange feeling, being on top of something so big yet the handlers having such control over them, they really are very smart creatures and were very well looked after!
We walked around for about 30 mins then walked down to the river where they played and squirted water over each other and us, was really sweet!!!
So anyway on with the story. We were dropped off in bangkok at the bus station at 7pm where I got on the night bus, the bus was meant to take us directly to Chumphong and take 8 hours HOWEVER
at about 3 in the morning the bus stopped, told us to get off and wait for another bus to come and get us, 3 HOURS LATER another one turned up and took us to the ferry, and to top it all off on the bus whilst I was sleeping someone stole my ipod :( what a bummer!!!
so I got to the first island which I would be staying at called Koh Pha-Ngan and made my way to the hotel, the hotel was called the Weangthai and was really very nice, I had a room with a balcony, a swimming pool just outside and I could throw a stone in to the sea from my balcony! Was pretty sick. The staff were great and fun, the owner was an english guy called Dave which made things a whole lot easier in the communication department.
I was kindof lucky because my next door neighbours were two canadian guys called Rheyal and Darnel from central canada and were very very homophobic haha then on the other side was a Finish girl Traveling on her own called Vilma, two german guys who's names I temporarily forget, a Finish couple on there honeymoon and a couple from norway. I do know their names its just spelling them is a little difficult lol.
So we all pretty much hung out together for the whole time I was on the island, eating out, chilling on the beach, renting mopeds and cruzing round the island, drinking in the evenings. It was a fairly cool group and lots of story to be told but I don't have all the time in the world!!! but yeah my time on koh Pha-Ngan was super and was topped off by the half moon party which was epic! Basically just a rave in the jungle with psychedelic funky house techno (or at least thats what I was told!) yeah it was a good night!
I feel like I should white more about my time on this island but there are too many good memory’s, to tell you about them all would actually take forever so I will leave it at that!
So my time was up on Pha-Ngan and was time to move a little south to Koh Samui, a slightly bigger more touristy island, good in some ways but bad in others i.e. there is a Mac Donald and a BK hear so not perfect thai culture which is what ive been used too but hey ho all was good, I arrived on the first day of a 3 day festival called Song Kran which is the Thai New year, this is celebrated by the whole nation having a super massive water fight, people lining the streets with hose pipes, kids with water guns, teens in trucks with buckets and barrels of water and adults doing all of the above! Such a great day. I spent it on the side of the road with a bucket and a gun throwing water at people on mopeds!! and the best thing was they loved it, cheering as they got annihilated in the face!!!
During all of this I had befriended t english guys called ollie and barney who I am now hanging out with, we decided to go out that evening to the foam party which was on the beach and my god what a great night, it was just a mass of thousands of people having a super fun time and getting wasted, then made our way to the massive club and continued to party until the break of dawn!
Fun times indeed!
So that pretty brings us up to now, im still in samui and having a good time and will update you guys in a wee while!
Kisses to all xxx
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
day 2 and 3 of the mini tour
heyyyyy alllll day 2 of my tour was probably the best day so far, spent most of the day with the crazy Sweeds I nicknamed Sven and Ingrid, we went to do a little trekking up a waterfall, it was sooooo beautiful, there were 7 tiers and total walk was about 3 kilometres, we decided to just go for it and climb to the top and then swim at all the levels on the way back down, the top was the best and the waterfall had a little cave underneath it! The only bad part was the little fish that ate all the dead skin off your feet which lived in the rock pools (rob I now know your pain!!!)
On the way up we saw some tame monkeys who came down from the trees and started to climb some of the tourists it was so sweet and they knew how to beg and were holding there hands out for food!!! we were a little late for the bus so the driver was angry and shouted at us in thai but we still got lunch although we did have to eat on the bus on the way to the tiger temple!
So arrived at the tiger temple and it was awesome, we payed a little extra to go in and have out pictures with the big tigers and see them in play time which was and amazing experience! It was relay cool being so close to these 200k beasts and just watching them chase balls, jump in water and chase a plastic bag on a stick!! just like big little kittens. It was also nice because it was a charity run place so all the tigers are looked after by monks, volunteers and locals they were not drugged and only saw tourists for 2 hours a day the rest of the time they were playing, feeding or sleeping!
Ah yeah and I took a 5 month cub for a walk on the lead and cuddled him as well he was only the size of tiger (our dog) but looked like dave-steve (the cat) but obviously with tiger stripes :D
so went back to the accommodation after the tigers had a little food and met up with one of my Australian friends and had a few beers, played some pool with the locals and went to bed.
Next day woke up (obviously) and we went river rafting and went to see the hellfire pass memorial and site of the biggest rock cut along the railway line, the rafting was fun, the rafts were about 5x5m and held about 6 on each one, we were took up river about a mile and just left for the current to take us back, at first I thought it was boring but then we started to backflip of in to the water and try to tip the other rafts over so there was a bit of banter which was cool, we got back to the hotel on the river and went to hellfire pass.
Hellfire pass was relay eye opening, it is another part of the railway line going from burma to thailand which the japs made the allies (spelt wrong) prisoners of war construct, some 600,000 people died in its construction mainly UK, OZ, and indians died from malnutrition or exhaustion but not many from disease because medication was readily available, so I took a walk down the line and saw the “hellfire pass” which was a massive stone cut through for the line and many people died there.
After that the tour guide took me back to bangkok which was the end of the tour! I got taken to the bus stop and awaited my night bus to take me to koh pang yan (spelt phonetically)
speak to you all soon xxxx
On the way up we saw some tame monkeys who came down from the trees and started to climb some of the tourists it was so sweet and they knew how to beg and were holding there hands out for food!!! we were a little late for the bus so the driver was angry and shouted at us in thai but we still got lunch although we did have to eat on the bus on the way to the tiger temple!
So arrived at the tiger temple and it was awesome, we payed a little extra to go in and have out pictures with the big tigers and see them in play time which was and amazing experience! It was relay cool being so close to these 200k beasts and just watching them chase balls, jump in water and chase a plastic bag on a stick!! just like big little kittens. It was also nice because it was a charity run place so all the tigers are looked after by monks, volunteers and locals they were not drugged and only saw tourists for 2 hours a day the rest of the time they were playing, feeding or sleeping!
Ah yeah and I took a 5 month cub for a walk on the lead and cuddled him as well he was only the size of tiger (our dog) but looked like dave-steve (the cat) but obviously with tiger stripes :D
so went back to the accommodation after the tigers had a little food and met up with one of my Australian friends and had a few beers, played some pool with the locals and went to bed.
Next day woke up (obviously) and we went river rafting and went to see the hellfire pass memorial and site of the biggest rock cut along the railway line, the rafting was fun, the rafts were about 5x5m and held about 6 on each one, we were took up river about a mile and just left for the current to take us back, at first I thought it was boring but then we started to backflip of in to the water and try to tip the other rafts over so there was a bit of banter which was cool, we got back to the hotel on the river and went to hellfire pass.
Hellfire pass was relay eye opening, it is another part of the railway line going from burma to thailand which the japs made the allies (spelt wrong) prisoners of war construct, some 600,000 people died in its construction mainly UK, OZ, and indians died from malnutrition or exhaustion but not many from disease because medication was readily available, so I took a walk down the line and saw the “hellfire pass” which was a massive stone cut through for the line and many people died there.
After that the tour guide took me back to bangkok which was the end of the tour! I got taken to the bus stop and awaited my night bus to take me to koh pang yan (spelt phonetically)
speak to you all soon xxxx
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Day 1 of the mini tour
so another bright and early start on Saturday morning where I would be picked up from my hotel in bangkok and taken 200k up north to see and do lots of touristy things!
So we started in with the floating market which was interesting to say the least, basically a network of what I can only describe as canals all in a grid and all along the sides there are stalls with people selling you things, literally shoving things in to your hand shouting “you buy you buy” its was an experience!!!!
next they took us to the river kwai (probably spelt wrong) there we crossed the railway bridge the Japs bombed in the second world war then looked around the museum of the bridge which was interesting.
Then we went on the death railway which was part of the railway which went from bangkok to Burma that the POW's constructed, this day was fairly ok but not amazingly exhilarating but at the same time was nice to be with a large group of people!
So they then took us up to the accommodation which was super awesome it was a massive floating raft with a bar and a big seating area and then all the rooms as well. It was so pretty and quiet :)
had some great conversations with some of the other group members that night, met some Sweeds and Israeli's, Germans, fins, French and not a single other Englishman!! and we just stayed up drinking through the night.
So we started in with the floating market which was interesting to say the least, basically a network of what I can only describe as canals all in a grid and all along the sides there are stalls with people selling you things, literally shoving things in to your hand shouting “you buy you buy” its was an experience!!!!
next they took us to the river kwai (probably spelt wrong) there we crossed the railway bridge the Japs bombed in the second world war then looked around the museum of the bridge which was interesting.
Then we went on the death railway which was part of the railway which went from bangkok to Burma that the POW's constructed, this day was fairly ok but not amazingly exhilarating but at the same time was nice to be with a large group of people!
So they then took us up to the accommodation which was super awesome it was a massive floating raft with a bar and a big seating area and then all the rooms as well. It was so pretty and quiet :)
had some great conversations with some of the other group members that night, met some Sweeds and Israeli's, Germans, fins, French and not a single other Englishman!! and we just stayed up drinking through the night.
What happened next
Well a bit of an update for you guys, I left you when my intention was to head south to Ko Samui to I will pick up from then!!
So I got up nice and early (7am) on the friday morning and made my way to the train station via a tuk tuk (will tell you a funny story about tuk tuk's later) he in fact took me to a travel agent where he assured me it was a good place to buy my ticket, so a little sceptical I went in to this place which was situated in a bit of a back alley and was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a bubbly canadian! Who's first words to me were “you asked to go to the train station didn’t you” I smiled and said yeah how did you know?? he replied by explaining that travel agents, suit makers and jewellery shops pay tuk tuk drivers 400 baht to bring tourists to their shops! And advised me next time I get on a tuk tuk to say to the driver for example “you take me to train station and I will give 2 stops and you pay me 200 baht” the driver is more than willing because he will be making 600 baht profit and all I would do is walk around the shop for 5-10 mins looking interested and everyones happy!!!!!!!
Anyway on with the story, I asked Keith (the canadian) if I could buy a train ticket to go down south, he laughed at me and told me although the islands were fine and no more floods, there was no way of getting there for a couple of days, so instead I booked a 3 day trip up north, leaving the next morning so I found somwere els to stay for the night and embarked on my trip the next day which I will tell you all about in the next blog!!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
quick update!!
Hey girls and boys, hope your all well!!! just a quick update, im all good, currently in destination unknown on a tour of some kind trying to avoid the peril that is the south thailand floods! i dont have much internet time so will probably give you a good update tomorrow :) im on a floating hotel on a fast flowing river, its fricking awesome!! so chilled, met some great ppl etc etc will elaborate tomorrow :D off to wash an elephant tomorrow so yeah
love love xxxxx
love love xxxxx
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