KOH PHA-NGAN

Hello all, sorry my blog is so far behind...We're getting down to our last couple of weeks and its difficult trying to fit internet time into our schedules. Sorry there are once again no photos but Laura set up a webshots album for me (thanks elle!) so I'll have a ton of photos soon enough.

Koh Pha-Ngan holds world famous "Full Moon Parties" on the night of every full moon. Full Moon party got rated #3 best party after Mardi Gras and Carnivale so its kind of a big deal. If you aren't staying on Koh Pha-Ngan, there are boats, buses, trains, all kinds of full moon transportation packages to get you there. You can't go to southeast asia and not attend.

We arrived by boat 3 days before the FMP (full moon party for you slow people out there) thinking we'd have no problem finding accomodation...Wrong! We had to walk all over the place with our heavy backpacks--unfortunately Koh Pha-Ngan is a very hilly island as well. We managed to find a place on Leela beach, which is close enough to the party beach. The only rooms they had left that first night were two bungalows on really high stilts that were a 5minute walk up a dirt cliff. Laura and I shared a bungalow that had a broken step to get into the bungalow and I'm pretty sure if it had broken just a little bit more we would've tumbled to our demise. Our room had electricity but it was just a very dull lightbulb in the corner of the room. It did however have enough power to illuminate the mildew coating the walls! Our bathroom was a squat toilet and pitch black (bad combo). A mosquito net was surprisingly provided but those things don't do much with gaping holes in them. We did have a bamboo porch but I'm pretty sure if two people stood on it at once, it would've crumbled and once again, it would've been fatal. I'm not complaining, we all laughed about it and had a great time, I'm just trying to convey how hilarious our accomodations are in this part of the world sometimes.

Our first night there we met up with a bunch of Laura's teacher friends in town. Most of the restaurants here play either a movie or episodes of Friends during dinner. It was a nice change--I haven't watched tv since I left! Lining all of the streets are vendors selling buckets (dollar store style) filled with a combo of your choice from red bull, sprite, coke, whiskey, vodka, rum, juice, etc and a straw. I always went for the cheapest--redbull, coke, and cheap thai whiskey. It tasted a little bit like dirt but it was only about $3.15 and they didn't hold back with the whiskey.

The next morning we got moved to the most picturesque accomodations we've had yet. Our bungalow doorsteps were about 10metres from the water. The bungalows were much nicer inside as well. We did have to live with a billionopede (a centipede with a billion legs) for a while but it was worth it.

Full moon night I had the beginning stages of the flu but I did NOT want to miss out on one of the biggest parties in existence. We got to the beach around 11pm (thats when it starts to get busy) and Megan and I fulfilled our mission to get glow painted out of the way first. The beach is lined with different bars and clubs and each cluster of clubs has a theme--drum&bass, reggae, hip hop, techno, etc so you can drift between genres when the mood strikes you. There were tens of thousands of people packed onto the beach, the energy was incredible. We had buckets, we danced, it was crazy. I got a solid hour of sleep before we had to meet in downtown Pha-Ngan to catch our 6am minibus to the ferry. We didn't do full moon the way you're supposed to because we had to move on but it goes from 4pm-8am then they turn off the music for 2hrs and the full moon afterparty begins at 10am. Hardcore full mooners are nuts. As we waited for our bus we saw people walking around missing various items of clothing/shoes, lying on the sidewalks or on the street, girls passed out in the dirt in their party dresses, it was quite the night.

Koh Phi Phi (pronounced "pee pee"...ha) was our next stop...Some of you might recognize the name because it was hit really hard by the Tsunami. A lot of it isn't rebuilt and one of the main beaches is still closed but it still looks beautiful.

PS thanks to everyone who has been posting--I love logging on and reading your messages, it makes my day!

PHOTOS

Since Thai computers never seem to like my camera, I'm going to send you to my competitors blog. In my links section click on "Lo's Blog." She has a link to her webshots albums there. I'm in the TB2BTeaching and TB2B Island hopping albums.

Note-If you check out the teaching album, the clothes I'm wearing were donated by Laura from her ugly clothes pile. You have to wear a long skirt and a collared shirt (2 things I did NOT bring to Thailand). Frumpy Mcfrumperson.

KOH SAMUI

We dediced to fly to Samui because we found a cheap-ish flight from Pattaya (mainland Thailand). We got to board the plane via a flight of stairs on the tarmack--just like they did in the old days. After a an hour in the air we touched down on the second most touristy island in Thailand--Koh Samui! After chilling on Samet and Chang, we were ready for the Maui inspired Samui.

After checking into a couple of bungalows close to the beach, we met up with the birthday girl (Laura). After teaching in a tiny town in Northern Thailand for the past 3 months, Samui was the perfect spot to celebrate...She finally got to see other white people in Thailand!

Met up with a John and Jen, UBC Ski/board club people for birthday-ing. Samui had a Haagen dazs shop where we all ordered the most amazing desserts ever. Went to a beachside bar where the drink menu was very poorly/hilariously translated. I had a pena corada and some chooters.

We spent our days at the beach during prime tanning hours and went shopping for fake Versace bikinis and Chanel sunglasses, etc in the evenings before dinner. Dessert at Yogen fruz, baskin robbins, or haagen dazs would follow. Very tough life I'm living here in Thailand. On our last night we discovered the most fun club scene we've seen in our travels so far. There was a lane off the main street that had open air club after club and hundreds of people inside and spilling out onto the street. It was crazy good!

Some Samui highlights:
-how retarded hot it was (when we were tanning I was worried that my body was literally going to explode)
-When a bat flew into Laura and Megans bungalow and hid somewhere inside
-When we came home to a large cockroach swimming in our bungalow shower (it was seriously doing laps). I had to make a trap out of a glass and ashtray and chuck it outside. Quite proud of myself for going near it.
-All of the western food restaurants (We had Italaian twice!)
-Laura
-Watching two (gay?) guys practice THE move about 20 times from dirty dancing in the sea in front of us then discovering that they were staying in the bungalow next to us. (Hi Zach and Jake!)
-The mango lady who would come up to our beach mats to sell us delicious mangoes for about 0.50 (We didn't even have to move to get lunch)!

Samui was fun but you can only handle so much of having to share the beach with all of the euro men in speedos and you just get tired of how touristy it is in general. Going to head off to Koh Pha-Ngan for the epic full moon party (Anyone who's anyone in Southeast Asia will be there).
Photos to come soon I promise...Thai computers hate my camera!

Of course it starts to monsoon when I want to leave the internet place. boohiss.

KOH SAMET

Photos to come later--ghetto computer here, once again.
We took a short ferry to Samet and arrived to the pier at night (makes climbing across another boat and having to practically jump onto the pier from the boat much more challenging). We met a fun Korean couple who shared their patented nail buffering kit with us and a Danish couple. Very entertaining boat ride, and hey, shiny nails too! We checked out a place that had a bungalow up in the boonies with a broken window, a broken fan, broken steps, and a mosquito net with gaping holes in it. We decided to keep looking. Jeps bungalows had a mediocre room but a sweet beachfront restaurant so we dropped our enormous backpacks there. We arrived on Canada day (yes I know this blog is extremely behind), expecting to have to make our own party but we sat down for a beach BBQ next to a huge table full of...Canadians! They gave us stickers and we all sang the anthem...It was all very patriotic. There were about 20 of them, all in Thailand teaching. We met up with them later for some more festivities at the only club on the island. We had to endure a monsoon to get to the club. Those things are crazy, they turn roads into rivers, hills into waterfalls, and flip flops into boats (I almost lost mine countless times).

Our room on Koh Samet unfortunately reeked like mildew b/c the clothes we all washed on Koh Chang never dried thanks to the rain there. It also had quite an ant problem. Needless to say we spent as much time as possible on the beach, in the restaurant, or in town.

The beach BBQ's on Samet are famous. The beach is lined with restaurants that fill up wooden boats with ice and place fish, chicken, shark, anything from the water, on plates on top of the ice. They have live mussels, lobster, and crab hanging out in tanks beside the food filled boats as well. You basically point at what you want and they cook it up and throw in some corn, potato, or garlic bread. Those were some fun dinners. (Dad and Robert, you would've been in heaven).

We left Koh Samet for Samui after 5 glorious days. I am more tanned than I have ever been before. The Thais still laugh at my pale skin though. Koh Samui update to come soon!

KOH CHANG PHOTOS

Photos:
Megan and I posing with some of the weird food we found in a 7-11
The most popular seat in our beachfront restaurant at our resort
Some kayaks on the beach at our resort that we didn't rent because it rained the entire time we were there
Another table with hammock seats
A snake that slithered across the bar and around my beer one night. Megan touched it.

Thailand part I PHOTOS!

The blog puts the photos in random order so here is a description and you can play a mix and match guessing game:
1. A typical Thai restaurant--also the restaurant below our guesthouse in Bangkok
2.Stickers that were attached to lots of seats on a taxi boat. Monks need a place to rest after a long day of watting.
3. goldleaf buddha statues at Wat Arun (one of the most famous wats in Bangkok)
4. Bangkok moto traffic. This photos not very realistic because traffic is actually MOVING!
5. Our diving resort on Koh Tao (This is the view from our balcony and our room was $6/night per person)!
6. Megan and I in our scuba gear just after a dive (And still looking pretty pale).

KOH CHANG

Woke up to rain in Trat this morning...Hoped that it wouldn't reach as far as Koh Chang. We picked up a songathaew (pickup trucks with an awning and benches in the back for passengers) in the centre of Trat and got dropped off at the ferry terminal. The ferry system here is not like BC Ferries--the terminals are just big cement blocks sticking out from shore or they are long rickety piers that feel like they are about to collapse under your feet. All types of traffic board at the same time--we walked alongside cement trucks and motos as we boarded.

A songathaew met us at the pier and after some barganing we got ourselves a pretty good price to get to the bungalows we'd chosen out of my lonely planet guide. We ended up switching songathaews twice of course, as this is Thailand.

We got a ghetto-esque bungalow the first night but managed to get the closest one to the water for the next 2 nights. The rain/greyness followed us to Koh Chang and unfortunately stayed for our entire stint there. We did get out into the massive waves, even with the less than perfect weather. The undertow is so strong there that they warn you not to go swimming, it was pretty crazy feeling how powerful the water can be at that shallow a depth. We had to experience the undertow that caused 20 drownings this year already (Don't worry we were careful).

One of the Thai guys who works at the "resort" (ANYTHING can be called a resort here) offered to take us to a waterfall that only the locals know about one afternoon for free. There are lots of waterfalls on the island but they're really touristy and cost about $6CAD to see (which is a lot of money in Thialand). Tos (our guide) warned us that it was a difficult hike in broken english but we thought he just meant lots of uphill which of course the girls and I can handle. Turns out we had to criss cross back and forth across the river and climb slippery rocks as well as climb up a steep quasi-trail (Tos went ahead with a machete to clear the "trail"). It was so worth the climb when we got up to the waterfall though. It was gorgeous and we were the only people within miles. Megan and I attempted to swim in behind the waterfall but the water was so black and it was so loud and the waterfall was pushing us back--it was pretty scary (but fun)! On our hike back down I was attempting to step across a slippery rock and I was holding onto a vine but I slipped and lost my grip of the vine as well. I bounced down about 4m of rockface and landed in the river on my side. If I'd landed a few centimetres over in either direction I probably would've been seriously injured. Luckily I escaped with quite a few bruises and some cuts/scrapes and a freakishly bruised ear. (Don't worry mom I'm okay)!

Went to a good party on our last night at Koh Chang--more buckets of redbull and vodka (you can't drink out of a glass here, it has to be a bucket). Next off to Koh Samet--the closest island to Bangkok and favourite weekend getaway for Thais.