Koh Phangan : My spiritual home

Koh Phagnan Island - Thailand

Or it would be if I had a spiritual bone in my body. I did have a spiritual bone once, but it was removed along with my tonsils for research purposes.

As mentioned before we were hesitant about coming to Koh Phangan (pronounced Phantjhgkdddrhaaaan) A few days after we were due to arrive was the big summer Full Moon party and thousands of people would descend on the island with the sole intention of getting completely hammered by any means available. Being the mild-mannered, middle aged couple that we are we decided to give that a miss and head to the opposite end of the island. So after catching the morning ferry and landing at Thonsala jetty, Cara negotiated us a ride in the back of a pick-up truck and off we headed to Haad Mai Haad in the north western corner. Apart from it's distance from the party town of Haad Rin, we chose this place after discovering the beach was connected to a small island by a sandbar, and the waters around the island had been designated a marine reserve, beacause of it's abundant coral and marine life. Sold, to the man with the copper coloured face whiskers!

Our taxi stopped among some tall palm trees and the driver told us it was the end ofthe road, literally. We could see a few small huts in front of us and beyond them a sandy beach. We wandered through the trees and into a bounty advert. Long, golden sandy beach with clear water blah,blah, blah. Along the length of the beach were 4 sets of small bungalows set back amongst the trees. We made our way, rucksacks on backs, to each one in turn, checking availability and prices. I knew this was going to be a good place to stay. My ambient sweating levels were back to Vietnam standards, although this may have had something to do with the pack on my back. When we set off fromEngland it weighed 17 kgs and by now was up to 22.5kgs at last airport check-in. Between you and me, I think Cara hides her shopping in there while I sleep to punish me for snoring.

At the far end of the beach we found a bungalow that can best be compared to a stone age hotel, but we had a good feeling about it. Jolly glad we did too, because the week we spent there was one of the best experiences of our travels. Okay, so we had to flush the toilet with a bucket, but that's a hell of a lot better than having a bucket for a toilet. The room itself contained a bed and, well actually it just contained a bed. And when I say bed, what I really mean is it had a 2 inch thick mattress on a slab of timber, but it was comfy enough. The main selling point though was the decking in front of the cabin on which we had our very own hammock. Oh, luxury of luxuries. Many an hour was spent swinging in that hammock, watching the sun go down and sipping cold beers. In fact, I think the only time I was cranky all week was when Cara beat me to the hammock.

We spent a perfect week there. The people who ran the bungalows of Mai Haad View Resort were so friendly and laid back and they made us feel completely welcome. The food they served in their restaurant may have looked and tasted like something a cat might vomit up after a long night's arse-licking, but we could forgive them this one sin. Cara had almost a quarter of a mile of golden beach to herself for most of the time and I had some of the best snorkeling I have ever done. I would spend 2 or 3 hours in the water at a time, duck-diving and exploring under huge coral pinnacles and vast fields of brightly coloured sea anemones. I swam with stingrays, saw a couple of octopus mating and watched some octopus fighting (I can't verify it was the same couple) and many other amazing sights.

As I have the capacity to spend about 2 hours on the beach before becoming bored rigid, I appreciated the fact that I could just hop on our little hired moped and explore the island while Cara put in some serious tanning time. I would ride up many of the little dirt tracks that trace their way all over the island, and I only got lost about 37 times. One time I was chased through the underbrush by a large monitor lizard, but it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity and he apologised and we shared a joke about it afterward.

One of the family who ran the bungalows had a little beach bar at night, and to my eternal joy and Cara's utter disgust, we spent Saturday night drinking beer, watching the opening days action from the Premier League, and listening to the waves crashing on the sand a few yards away. Smashing! We even managed to save a few pounds. Our room cost 200 baht a night (less than 3 quid) even the moped was only 2 quid a day. We did however splash out one evening and headed to an unexpected find in the middle of a tiny fishing village - the trendy Shisha restaurant and bar. It was a stunning place, all white cushions and fresh seafood. We both got poshed up (well, I put on my cleanest shirt and turned my underpants inside out AND back to font, a special honour) and had an amazing dinner, and Cara even managed to have a glass of decent red wine that didn't contain a dead cobra. I was taxi for the night so had to wait until we returned to our little beach bar before I
could have a few beers.

We came for 3 days and stayed 8, and even then we didn't want to leave. A truly superb experience.

Koh Tao and the great whale shark conspiracy

Koh Tao Island,

Off the east coast of the Thailand peninsula

We had heard that Koh Tao was a diving mecca from various sources, so we decided to head there from Bangkok and do a few days diving and lazing on the beach. We ended up at a place called Sairee Beach, staying with a dive outfit called Big Blue Diving. Our first day's diving was at a site called Chumphon Pinnacle, where on the previous two mornings whale sharks had been spotted. Now, bearing in mind that diving with whale sharks holds the number one position on my "Things I absolutely have to do before I die" list, I was understandably excited about getting into the water. Typical of most things in Asia, we had to be up at 6am, but we managed it and off we set. Pardon the pun, but once in the water it all went downhill from there. The visability was atrocious and nothing went to plan. Koh Tao is famous for it's turtles, reef sharks and whale sharks. Needless to say, we saw none of them. Despite this, we had 3 days of fantastic diving and spent time on Sairee Beach, which is beautiful in a way that someone from Lancashire would struggle to convey.

After Sairee, we moved down to the south of the island to a place called Chalok Baan Kao. On the recommendation of one of our dive guides we'd checked into a place called Viewpoint Resort. To us, it was a massively expensive luxury, to you it was about the same price as a two carrier bags of Tesco's groceries. We had a massive balcony on our hillside room that looked out across the entire bay. The room had sliding doors which essentially opened up one side of the room onto the balcony. We would go to bed at night and wake up in the morning looking out across the bay, and hear the waves breaking on the rocks below us. One of the best locations I have ever been in, and a huge thank you to Cara's Colchester friends whose parting gift to us allowed us to stay here. We could only stay a few days , but we had a fantastic time and were very sorry to leave.

By the way, the great whale shark conspiracy is as follows : Every dive centre on the island will display a big sign out front saying that their dive boat spotted several playful whale sharks at some dive site of other, and if you want to see them you had better get in there right away and get booked onto their boat, only a few places left etc. You will not see a whale shark. Odds are the visibility will be so bad you won't see much of anything. We chatted to several dive guides and instructors on the island who had been there for years and done thousands of dives and who still hadn't yet seen a whale shark. Seeing a whale shark seems to be very much like winning the lottery. Yes it's possible, it's just also very, very improbable.

From here we moved on to the next island of Koh Phangan, which we had seriously considered missing out completely as they were gearing up for the next full moon party - hummm!

Here there be tigers

Kanchanaburi, Western Thailand

Whilst in Bangkok we took a day trip to Kanchanaburi, which is mostly famous as the location of the Bridge over the River Kwai. But it is also home to the Tiger Temple. I first heard about this place a few years ago from my friend Sophie when she paid it a visit whilst on her own travels, and I was very eager to go myself. Our intention was to spend a few days in Kanchanaburi and take our time seeing the sights, but because we both seem to be rapidly losing our ability to organize anything, we dithered in Bangkok too long and ended up booking a day trip through a local tour operator. After spending a few hours in a very cramped minibus, we arrived at the War cemetery, which is home to a very small percentage of the hundred and thirty thousand people who died whilst building the 'Death Railway' between Thailand and Burma (Myanmar now) during WWII. From here we went to the bridge itself, which is a rather small, unassuming single track railway bridge over a rather small, unassuming brown river. It in no way conveys the historical significance it attained after the movie was made. From what I can tell, there are a stack of 'Death Railway' museums in the city, ranging from the well stocked and sensitively displayed official exhibits to small, opportunistic, private-enterprises showing a handful of empty shell casings and sticks of bamboo. Around the bridge there were literally thousands of tourists, posing for photos and clambering over rusty steam locomotives. It's hard to conceive that the tens of thousands of POW's and native forced labourers that died during construction ever realised they were creating such a popular and profitable tourist attraction. This was all a rather surreallistic experience, and one in which we were both complicit. Hmmm.

From there we went on to the local 'Elephant Farm', which is where they grow elephants, or something. Our small group were only there to take lunch, but others were staying there the night and going on jungle treks the following day. Quite why somebody thought it would be a good idea to have lunch amid huge mounds of elephant dung and steaming puddles of piss is quite beyond me, but then again I'm stuck in my western ways. Then our delightful driver for the day, a small, ratfaced little whip of a man, politely ushered us back to our transport by clapping his hands at us and shouting 'You get back in car, NOW '. It was at this point that I finally snapped and stuffed him bodily and head first up the nearest elephant's arse. Let me rephrase that. It was at this point that I almost snapped and imagined myself stuffing him bodily and head first up the nearest elephant's arse.
You see, the weaselly(?) git had been doing this all day and once he had finally corralled us all back into the van, which was the exact opposite of what the TARDIS must be like only hotter, he would slam the sliding door shut, then walk off to have a fag and a chat with his mate from another van. Not the sort of thing to settle the moods of a dozen sweaty tourists. Anyway, we all got back in the van, he slammed the door and walked off to have a fag and a chat with his mates. As we were leaving the elephant plantation, an Australian girl observed that she thought it was cruel that the elephant handlers steered the animals by whacking them on the head with a cane. I pointed out that this was probably akin to a squirrel tapping her on the forehead with a small twig, but I don't think she was convinced. We spent the rest of the journey arguing about whether elephants had ankles, and if they had, why did they never sprain them walking down hills like I do in my flip-flops.

The name 'Tiger Temple' is a bit misleading. The temple is not made out of tigers, it is made out of wood, and it is not so much a temple as a small shack with a Buddha statue in it. The tigers are actually kept during the day in a small. Steep sided quarry a little way from the temple. When we first arrived I assumed the tigers would be tethered to something large, heavy and immovable, but no. What they are is completely free to sit on the rocks and chew on enormous bones, letting out the occasional bowel-loosening growl. But this is all perfectly safe because we the visitors are kept securely behind an insurmountable barrier of................Red string !! Fantastic. Nothing between me and the gaping maw of certain death but a length of darning wool.

Actually the tigers, there are about 10 of them, are very placid and pretty much spend the whole day lying around doing nothing more arduous than posing for photos. We were told we could go into the 'Enclosure' to have our photos taken with the cats so, one at a time, in we went and smiled for the cameras. Now I'm a big believer in evolution through natural selection, and I think there is a good reason why it feels just plain wrong to be patting the head of a 7 foot long, 300 lb carnivore. However, that aside it is a fantastic experience and the tigers are incredible. The handlers make you feel completely safe, well maybe not completely, and they are happy to egg you on with helpful suggestions such as 'Sit closer', 'Pat him on the head' and my personal favourite 'Don't put your head near his mouth !' While you're the one sitting with the cats you feel extremely glad that they are so laid back and uninterested in what's going on around them. But to be completely honest with you, there is a small part of you that is morbidly imagining when it's somebody else's turn, that one of the big buggers will just flip out and whip a huge paw across the top of their head. No ? Just me then. This in itself is fairly irrational. As was mentioned earlier, the only difference between them and you is a small piece of string. It's not like the tigers are sitting there thinking 'That fat, pasty, white fella looks tasty, and I'd love to wipe that smug grin off his face. If it wasn't for that pesky string I'd have him in a second.' I always find it curious when I read stories about how a tiger has gone 'crazy' and attacked somebody. In the words of Chris Rock, 'Tigers don't turn crazy. Tigers turn tiger !' Eating things is what tigers are SUPPOSED to do. It's the sitting around getting their photograph taken with yahoos like me that's the unnatural part.

After our first turn with the animals, and the other folks had done the rounds, Cara and I decided we'd have another go. In we went and handed the camera to one of the handlers to take photos. It was this time around that the guy decided he was going to be David Bailey and reel off a few hundred shots from every conceivable angle. Now I don't know how many of you have spent any serious amount of time sat beside a full grown predator crunching on a large femur, but it is fascinating to witness how your confidence in your own safety can diminish rapidly after you've been sat there for an age waiting for Mr Snappy Snaps to take his fiftieth shot of the tigers favoured left profile. We can probably apply Newton's Inverse Square Law although I doubt we'll be reading about it in any science journals soon ! After 10 minutes of that I was itching to get back to the safety of the string perimeter.

We did explore other parts of the temple complex and saw wild boar, deer, peacocks and other assorted fauna but blah blah. It was all a bit of an anticlimax after the tiger experience. I'm glad we went to see it when we did, though. The monks handed out a pamphlet to us while we were there, outlining their plans for building some huge Disneyland for tigers style behemoth. It had a moat, water features and acres of landscaping. Soon you'll be able to buy doughnuts and commemorative T-shirts and catch a glimpse of a tiger off in the distance in it's enormous habitat. Great for the tigers. Bollocks for us flaky westerners who want to throw a couple of quid in the collection plate and get an experience like we had. Oh well. After leaving the tiger temple we did some other stuff, but quite frankly, I can't remember what it was.

Dithering in Bangkok.

As this was our second time in Bangkok we realy didn't intend to spend any time there, and planned to use it only to get to Kanchanaburi where you can see tigers. However we couldn't seem to get ourselves organised. So we decided to do the next best thing and go shop! A boat ride downtown and a few hours and purchases, mainly by Mik I have to add, and we were finished. I'd even managed to squeeze in a haircut, which at $10 for a Toni and Guy trim couldn't be missed. It was the one and only time my hair has been straight in nearly 3 months now.As we hadn't got anything organised regarding the tigers we took another day out to go to the cinema. We decided to splash out and treat ourselves to VIP seats, it still cost less for 2 than it would to go in the UK. We felt really decadent sat in our massive armchairs set out in pairs with loads of leg room. We considered staying the whole day! We didn't, but we did watch The Island. Not a bad plot but the best bit was that it stared Ewan McGreggor and at times you got to see two of him on the screen at once - PHOAR! Also staring Scarlett Johanson so Mik was happy. I have to say she was stunning - cow. Might have to get that one on DVD.Basically Bangkok costs too much money as there is just so much to spend it on. And whilst we actually throughly enjoyed big city buzz each time we visited by this time schools were out and it was heaving. Won't be rushing back but I have grown to like the place. So once we had survived the tigers, more from Mik about that, we got the hell out of there and headed for the islands.

Cara

Leaving Laos and onto Bangkok - again.

When we arrive in a new place we tend to take it in turns either staying with the bags or going off to find us a room. In Vientiane it was Mik's turn. Having been dropped off at the riverside we decided to stay in the area and so Mik went to three different places to check out the rooms and came back to report. All the rooms were fine apparently, but as one was larger than the others and had a balcony overlooking the river we went for this one. Upon entering the room I realised the pluses had blinded Mik to the fact that the bed was knackered and that there was no private bathroom. Hummm. But it was only for one night so I didn't stamp my feet! Although we won't be doing the 'bathroom down the hall' bit again if we can help it. Later we realised that we had also gone for this room over the others as it was only $6 compared to the $12 or $15 the others would have cost (with private bathroom of course!) Long gone are the days in Vietnam where we thought nothing of spending $15 a night, in fact we usually insisted on it. It's not even that our budget doesn't allow us to spend more - I guess we have just gotten used to keeping track of every dong, dollar, baht or kip. Either that or both of us would still rather spend any extra cash on food and beer!

Anyway, we spent the afternoon wandering round the capital of Laos, but as we had already been warned it's nothing to write home about. Dinner was good though (funny that we remember a meal), sitting in the food market, watching the sunset over the Mekong with a fellow Brit, a few beers and some lovely BBQ fish. In fact we only left when I started to get eaten alive my mozzers - grrrr. 9 bites in about 10 mins, and some of them were the biggest yet - NICE! I do look forward to the day when I can cover myself in perfume instead of mozzie spray before leaving the building!

The next morning we set off to make our own way back to Bangkok. What I mean is that we didn't just book a bus trip that would have taken us directly there. No, we decided to save ourselves another 14 hour overnight bus journey and cheat and fly instead! We did however suss out that flying a domestic route within Thailand would be a lot cheaper than from the capital of Laos to the capital of Thailand. So all we had to do was get ourselves across the border and to a city called Udon Thani. Easy. And actually it went surprisingly smoothly.

First negotiate tuk-tuk to the bus station. Must always look prepared to walk away if the price isn't right (although we bulging backpacks on your back it's quite difficult to do) so you get the best deal. Amazing the number of drivers who won't get out of bed/hammock for less than a quid...! OK. Arrived at the local bus station, now just had to work out which bus was headed in our direction. Hum, everything in Laotian - no clue. Luckily an inspector took pity on us and showed us exactly which bus we needed and where to buy the tickets - bless. Oh and the bus looked fab - newest one there, even looked like it might have aircon. It did. Lovely. We were the only westeners on it. Took us to the Laos border, off we piled, through passport control and back on the bus, across no mans land and onto the Thai border control, off the bus and through, back on the bus. All good fun. All the time watching out for anyone who appeared to be raiding the luggage compartment. Arrived in Udon Thani and went looking for somewhere to while away 5 hours til our plane left.

What we came across was a shopping centre. We then proceeded to spend the next 5 hours taking it in turns to wander what turned out to be a rather dull shopping centre but it was better than sitting on the street or at the airport. Negotiated a tuk-tuk to the airport - actually we didn't even bother haggling, he said 100 baht (about 1.30 quid) and we thought that sounded reasonable, even thought we had no clue how far it was to the airport! As it turned out I think we got a fair price. Caught the nice Air Asia flight and arrived in Bangkok just in time to find a room and head out for dinner.

Vang Vieng - Slacker Heaven

We stayed in Vang Vieng for almost a week and had a great time, although we didn't get a huge amount done. We did manage to do a lot of lying around on huge cushions, drinking beer, eating unhealthy food and watching crappy pirated movies.
We did manage to spend a day kayaking, and it absolutely hammered it down with rain for the entire day. Enormous fun though as the river had flooded its banks in many places from the heavy rains upstream and the current would whip us along at quite a pace. Our guide was adamant that he only took us through grade 1 rapids but reckon they were more like grade 173. Our kayaks were the 2 man inflatable variety. Like trying to steer a whale but much more stable on the white water than the fibreglass and plastic varieties (we saw many of those capsizing over the course of the day). The current was so strong that most of the time all we had to do was steer and the flow of the river kept us going as fast as we needed to go. We took lunch on a raised platform over the river immediately after navigating a particularly nasty bit of turbulance. We all made it through okay but over lunch we could sit and watch all the other groups try to get through in their little plastic kayaks and almost to a man, they turned them over in the fast water and spent the next 200 yards getting swept along by the current and trying to catch up with their boats. Not too comfortable for them but very amusing for us. Schadenfreude I believe the Germans call it.

Another afternoon was spent 'Tubing', which involved climbing onto a tractor innertube and floating down the river back towards the town. Not as dull as it sounds. The scenery along that part of the river is breathtaking and every 200 yards or so along the river are little 'bars' to stop and take refreshment. By bars I mean a couple of local lads with a few crates of cold Beer Lao and a rope swing set up over the river for us to play on. You float down the river for a bit, stop at a bar, have a beer, have a few swings out over the river and plop in, swim back, drink more beer and then climb back into your innertube to move on to the next one. A few of the bars have rope slides stretched across the river and every now and then you can zoom across the river on your slide and try to take out a few Tubers floating down from a rival bar. This bit was fun but you soon tired of it as trying to swim back to the bar in the strong current soon takes it out of you, especially after a few cold ones. Unfortunately, we were enjoying ourselves too much and floated way past the point where we were supposed to get out of the water. The end result being we had to walk back to town dripping wet and carrying a couple of rather cumbersome tractor innertubes. Oh well, down to the riverside bars for a couple of happy milkshakes and a bite to eat. Hard life.

We were in Vang Vieng for a week. We did nothing. We spent a grand total of 47 pence including meals and acommodation. We left. The bus trip to Vientienne was neither as beautiful nor as interesting than the previous one.

Hairy bus journey No. 3 - Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

The bus journey down to Vang Vieng was very interesting. Imagine strapping yourself into a rollercoaster whilst browsing through a large stack of very pretty postcards and you'll have some idea of what it was like. For a change, the bus itself was just fine and the aircon worked a treat. What made it interesting was the fact that the road was a narrow 2 lane affair that wound itself tightly around the sides of mountains and hairpinned itself up and down for most of the trip. It seemed that at any particular moment one side of the bus or the other was staring down a 500 foot sheer drop. This in itself isn't all that interesting, but couple it with the fact that the driver genuinely believed in reincarnation and was prepared to put his money where his mouth was. Either that or he was just very, very drunk. So we have a large packed bus careening up and down narrow mountain roads at breakneck speeds attempting to play chicken with every truck and water buffalo he came across. We spent many hours like this and most of them were through what I can only describe as the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. Enormous limestone pinnacles shooting straight up into the clouds and steep sided valleys coated with dense jungle. Waterfalls and meandering rivers were dotted along the way. Screech around an impossible hairpin turn on 2 wheels and there in front of you is another amazing vista.

At this point a few of our fellow travellers started to feel a bit uncomfortable with the busride. People began to scrabble around for carrier bags or anything else they could vomit into. I don't know whether it was from vertigo or travel sickness, but pretty soon we had crusty backpackers throwing up left, right and centre. Maybe they were just travel sick from being thrown about the bus without being able to see where we were going (most honkers were towards the back). Up near the front however, one person could definitely see where we were going and he wasn't happy. Sat immediately behind the driver was a young American guy who we first bumped into on the boat ride from the Thai border down to Luang Prabang. We didn't really know him as we had spent the 2 day journey trying to avoid the guy as he was carrying a guitar. All travelers you see carrying guitars should be avoided at all costs. They almost always try to get everybody involved in a sing-a-long and they genuinely believe they are uniting all the peoples of the world through their gift of music, which is usually a mediocre rendition of 'American Pie' or something by REM. For the record, there is only one universal language, and that's football. So; guitars bad, ramifications of the amended offside rule good. Just remember that.

Anyway, back to our journey. Our American friend was usually to be found with his feet up in a bar telling some pretty young lady about how this or that was, like, so totally awesome. On this occasion however he was a little less laid back than normal. He could see everything the driver could see and he didn't like it at all. He finally snapped on some crazily death-defying driving maneuvre and leapt out of his chair shouting something along the lines of 'We'll never make it to the bottom !' He marched past me with a look of such abject terror on his face the like of which I have never seen before. His mouth was agape and his face was so white he made me look Mediterranean by comparison.

So on we went like this. 1. Screech around another hairpin turn at suicidal speeds. 2. 'Huhhhblurghh!' into the carrier bags. 3. 'we're all going to die !' from the chirpy American. 4. Another breathtaking panorama opens up before us. 5. Begin again from 1. As the back end of the bus seemed to lean out over the cliff edge at a nervous angle, I started to hum the theme tune to the 'Italian Job'. I enjoyed every minute of it. Round a corner, get thrown up against the window. Round another corner, get thrown into the aisle. More breakfast gets ejected, more doom and gloom from the back. Fantastic. I felt fine the whole time and I'm proud to say Cara did too. It was the most enjoyable bus journey I've ever been on. After about 4 hours we came out of the mountains and it was all fairly ordinary after that.

The only other things of note that day were that my MP3 player crashed on me, and with no decent computers around to sort it out so no more music. And I broke my sunglasses in the first place we have been to that doesn't have a sunglasses vendor on every street corner. If I look like I'm squinting on all our Laos photos you now know why.

Nothing new on the horizon

Hi all,

Sorry there has been nothing new on the site for a few weeks. This is not because something unpleasant has happened to us both, but because we have been far too busy scuba diving and lazing on long, golden beaches to want to spend any time sat at a computer. We're only here now to make sure we still have money in the bank for the upcoming adventures. So, all the best to you all and we will get something written as soon as we get some rain.
Thanks