Author: Matt

Welcome, to Fantasy Island…

Well, after spending a few more days on the beach relaxing and reading (with one night of doof-doof and cheap beer) we caught our “speed” boat at the un-godly hour of 7.00AM to Koh Phangan, a slightly smaller island just north of Koh Samui.

After clamouring off the boat onto the pier (which was no easy feat as the tide was down, everyone else still on the boat got a good look at our bums), we were greeted by our pre-arranged “super cheap” taxi – turns out they were a whole 300 Baht more expensive with the average going rate being 100 Baht) which promptly took us to our hotel, the Phangan Cabana (at the Copa,… Copacabana).

Koh Phangan is fantastic! I recommend this place to just about everyone! The island itself is a lot less developed than Koh Samui and as such has everything that is nice (the beach, the food, the bikinis) without all the rubbish (the drunk Poms, the sex tourists, street pole-dancers, the crowd). Truly and amazing place!

The biggest disadvantage to a small island is the irregular power. Within our first few hours, there was a blackout! This wouldn’t usually be a problem – however, it occurred just after I had entered my PIN number into an ATM machine! Damnit – there’s a few hundred dollars lost! Luckily the security is a little looser – a bank clerk was able to crack open the ATM and retrieve my card!

The Phangan Cabana is a sweet little place, about 20 mins from the main city (the city being about the same size of say, Inverloch). The room is all pretty basic, not much bigger than the bed – we have aircon and they installed a CD player the day we arrived. We think that they are in cahoots with the guy next door who sells pirated CDs for 100baht, ($3.20) – we’ve already purchased two! I can’t believe however that they expect to run a respectable business without any television! Groan! We do have our own toilet and shower,… outside! One advantage of an outside shower is the wind on my bum when taking a shower in the heat of the day!

I’m getting pretty good at zipping through the streets on our rented scooter, a little 120cc Honda; it’s a shame nobody here knows any road rules! Philippa seems to trust me sitting on the back (silly, silly girl!). When we upload the photo’s, you will see how cool our helmets are (note: we are the *only* people on the entire island in jeans and wearing a helmet when on a bike).

It’s a little scary how much I miss all you buggers, keep up with the news from home and send off a prayer that we will get to Bangkok safely tomorrow (don’t want the boat to sink).

I’m officially sick of travelling! Lucky we are on the beach now for 7 days in Koh Samui 😛

Our last day in Chiang Mai was rather un-evenful; Philppa got a Thai massage and than we saw a movie – Kung Fu Hustle (dubbed in Thai with English sub-titles). Was really bad,… yet really good (in a bad way) 😛 The sub-titles were sporatic at best, and our fellow movie-goers were laughing out of sequence with us! If it gets to Melbourne – a must see!

We boarded our 9.50PM sleeper train from Chaing Mai to Bangkok after an hour of arguing with the station master about getting our tickets chainged (we were originally going to get off before Bangkok). Finally he told Philippa that you could change them on the train and didn’t need to see him at all, groan! The crowd gathering behind Philippa wanting to purchase tickets were relieved to see her go!

The train trip was hot, smelly (gotta love the waste disposal system of the Thai trains – it all goes out the side, including the poop which gets caught in the wheels and stinks out the place) and full of killer bugs – somehow we ended up on a train without A/C (even though we paid for it)… someone asked us later if we were Americans (as we were whinging so much),… I replied with “hell no” and promptly shut up and enjoyed the rest of the trip 😛

We arrived back in Bangkok about 15 hours later and promptly sought out the nearest fast food joint (which was KFC) – Speaking for KFC, its just not the same in Asia – kinda tastes like, ummm, Marathon Chicken (as dad once explained KFC in Asia to me)! McDonalds and Burger King is good though, its pretty much the same everywhere!!

We caught the next Tuk Tuk to Wat Po. When we got out of the Tuk Tuk we were promptly told by a man on the street that the temple was closed and that it would re-open in a few hours; he suggested that we visit his friends Suit Tailor shop to pass the time 😛 – we told him to go away and continued on to the very much open temple! Inside we saw the famous giant reclining Buddha which was, well, big and pretty impressive – apparently it is older than Bangkok as it was made in the 17th Centuary, well before the city was established – to date the oldest “thing” I have ever seen! Wow!

Next was a taxi ride with a friendly driver to an air-con shopping centre in Bangkok – he was realy nice untill we tried to pay with a 500 baht note (about AU$18.00) – he called us all sorts of names and got realy angry as we didnt have smaller notes (and was outraged at us thinking that he would be able to change it). The taxi fare was a little under AU$3.00 for over half an hour in the taxi; its a different world huh! We tipped him generously once we got change 😛

We past the rest of the time, waiting for our next train to Koh Samui (due at 7.30PM) by watching another movie – Finding Neverland! Oh – here’s a travel trip for you, the toilets at nice shopping centres are greeeaaatt!! Much better than train stations or smelly trains! Heh – I went twice just for the fun of it!! 🙂

The train to Koh Samui was a little late, but was much nicer than the one from Chaing Mai – we at least had snooty, posh air-con this time! The trip was also somewhat shorter, our train arrived at its destination at about 7.00AM; we than caught a bus and a ferry boat to the Koh Samui island (sounds more exciting than it was, promise!)

We were ripped off as soon as we arrived; we paid at least double what we should have for a shuttle bus to our hotel – pffft, …and they made me get our bags off the roof of the bus! Mongrels!! 😛

The hotel is great, the Samui Orchard – its also a zoo and bird park and everything, sleeping with tigers is great! The rest of the day was catching up on sleep and sitting on the beach, nice and relaxing!

That brings us to today, again, nothing exciting – we caught the hotel taxi into town and had lunch and jumped on a computer! Thats all folks – miss you all more than I would dare admit! — Matt

Puff,… what a week!

After tromping around Bangkok for 3 or 4 hours, we finally found a TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) Travel Agency who promptly booked us on some tours for the following few days and than a train to Chaing Mai.

We woke up the following morning nice and early and boarded a mini bus which took us to the Bridge on the River Kwai (go on, start whistling the tune). There was a small museum set up there which was absolutley facinating (however slightly unconventional – we weren’t entirely convienced that all the ehbits were what they claimed to be). We saw the final resting place of hundreds of Australian (and Dutch, English and US) soldiers and the now re-constructed bridge. Next was the Hell-Fire Pass, where another museum was set-up (this one was constructed by the Australian government and was realy slick) – we learnt about the role of the allied POW forces in constructing the infamous railway line and the horendus conditions they lived in (well, those that DID live). Seeing the actual cutting (which was a short walk away) actually brought a tear to my eye.

Than we saw some waterfall (more like a rapid), which was apparently beautiful 😛

A local dinner followed on a raft-boat and then we were taken (by jet-boat) to our accomodation – which was nothing more than a shack floating on the river and a mattress on the floor with a door that would not shut properly, let alone lock! We nick named it the hotel California, because the host could not stop singing the song. We had a lot of fun chatting with the other tourists (mostly Dutch) and managed to get a few winks of sleep before we were whisked off to some more *wonderful* waterfalls! (7 actually – I only saw 4, but Philippa saw them all). We had a lot of fun on the tour, packed a lot into the two days. The most amusing part of the whole trip was a couple of French tourists (hippy backpackers) who where happy to try anything – even Cobra mixed with mull!! I’m sure that they will spend a lot of time in the loo on their trip 🙂

The trip back to Bangkok was long and uneventful; we were finally dropped off at the train station for our trip to Chaing Mai at about 6.00PM. We waited at the train station for what seemed like a month; I paid a total of 6 baht to use the toilet (2 baht each time) – I kept chickening out as they where that gross! We finally borded our overnight *express* train at about 10.00PM.

The train was clean, and turned out to be a relatively fun ride except for the fact the it seemed to stop at each station along the way; the train got lost and headed back the direction we come from for a few hours; the drunk brittish tourists (brickies) and of course – they only had squat toilets! We had a ball!!

We finally arrived in Chaing Mai and was greeted by our hotels driver, who was somewhat anoyed at the fact that the train was 2 and half hours late (and he had been waiting for us the whole time). We slept for the rest of the day, ready for a next set of tours the following day!

More to come soon…love all you guys and miss you heaps. Sorry about the spam on the comments site, we have kinda fixed the loophole.