We got to bangkok and it was like dejavu! Been there done that. We only stayed for 2 nights, and we booked ourselves on an overnight train and bus and boat to our first island, Koh Phangnan!!
The trip took FOREVER and I was ridiculously cranky.....I hated everyone. But when we arrived at our beach bungalow I was very happy. The owner turned out to be English and very pissed when we arrived at lunchtime!! Gorgeous views, lovely bungalow, and beautiful beach! Very happy. Laura and Louis were also on KPG and came and moved into our bungalows the following day as we had planned to go to the Half Moon Party together and we were closer to the venue.
We lounged on the beach in the day and bought in booze for the evening, drank on our bungalows balcony with music and headed upto the party. It was in the jungle area, and was quite expensive! We soon realised the music was rubbish and wasn't really very good....BOOO! Still managed to stay for a while though. I refused to pay the ridiculous price the tuk tuk drivers wanted so we walked home along the creepy pitch black road!!
We spent the next few days on the beach and we had a night out on the Full Moon Beach. Very messy night with buckets (ergh again!) and sand, and fire shows, very fun! Laura went MENTAL and started throwing sand all over Elliot and Louis!! She is mad...We decided to move onto Koh Tao after a good while at KPG and had to say byebye to Laura and Louis as they were going back to Canadialand :'( sob!!! End to Elliots bromance with Louis!
Koh Tao was lovely...we decided not to book a place to stay and just walk along the beach and find somewhere nice and cheap. Almost everywhere we went to though was really expensive!! (in Thai cheap terms) But we eventually found a perfect beach bungalow! YAY! We stayed in Koh Tao for a good few days, we did a snorkelling trip where Elliot burnt his back and I burnt my BUM! Classy. So I got to spend a few days sitting in agony! We did some Crazy Golf! And wandering around in the sun :) While there we met Lucinda and Adam at the Full Moon Party on the beach. VERY drunk night, and I felt so sick after all the mixture of YES more buckets....We met them for drinks the next day and decided to stay in touch as we were probably going to be going to some of the same places.
We were headed for Railay Beach next, which involved boat trip, bus trip an over night stay, and another boat trip as Railay is only accesable by boat. Really beautiful place!! The main beach is gorgeous and sandy, and also very expesive to stay on as there are only a couple of very expensive resorts on the beach, so we headed to the muddy mangrove ridden beach and got a really cheap bungalow, which involved walking up the hugest load of stairs EVER out in the boiling heat with backpacks on, ergh it was horrible. By this point I was getting VERY sick of the cheap simple fan bungalows....But the price is too good! We did a HIKE through the friggin jungle on our first day over to the next bay along. SO HOT and when we got to the end of the jungle track it threw it down with rain! Torrential, on and off for a couple of hours, with ridiculously lound thunder!! We tried to hire a taxi boat back to the main beach but they refused to take us unless we payed for a full boats worth, or get another 8 people to go on the boat with us!!! This on an empty beach hahaha....So the guy suggested we walk along the water, through the jagged rocks! Which we ended up doing, got pretty wet, and Elliot cut his finger open. NICE! Our few days there were spent MELTING, it was so so hot, so after the hiking day we just sat on the beach, reading etc. We planned to rent kayaks but after the snorkelling burning incident we decided against it in the heat!
After our few days in Railay, we got a boat down to Koh Lanta, where we stayed in our first air conditioned room since Vientianne in Loas! It was LOVELY! We spent a day by the pool, and did a half day cooking course which was so fun! We got to eat what we cooked and keep what we didnt eat and it was SO tasty! Loved it...We moved to a different resort after a couple of nights, into a REALLY nice bungalow, aircon, TV, lovely big windows overlooking the beach and gardens MMM! We spent our time there on the beach or by the pool. Very nice and relaxing.
We then headed for our last island, Koh Phi Phi, which was pretty busy! Very hot but lots of fun :) Here is where we met up with Lucinda and Adam again, and we spent a couple of days with them, one night drinking BUCKETS...AGAIN! (I never learn) and dancing on the beach :) At about 12 though it pissed it down and we all had to leg it! No point though as we were soaked through. We ended up back at their fancy bungalow, and drinking beers from the shop until about 4am!!
The next day, we met up, all feeling terrible, and embarked on a walk around the island! Sweating out the drink from the night before!!!! We arranged to share a longtailboat for a trip out the "The Beach" the next day, and so we spent the day on our boat, looking at monkeys, snorkelling, sunning, wandering around "The Beach" and taking in the amaze views. After that we went to a fire show on the beach which was amazing!! SO ace....Said byebye to Lucinda and Adam, but agreed we would go visit them in Brighton :)
We headed off to Phuket island after PP as we were flying from there. We only gave ourself one night there as we hadn't heard great things about it. When we were arriving on the coach, we realised it was Thai New Year! Which they celebrate with a HUGE waterfight!!! We got wet just finding somewhere to stay. We got changed straight away and went to buy a water pistol!! We spent HOURS on the streets soaking people and getting soaked, and dancing at the street parties. SO much fun! After a good few hours, we headed back to book a taxi to the airport and get to bed to make sure we woke up in time!
So we made it to the airport, got the quick flight to Kuala Lumpur and waited in KL Airport for 8 HOURS!!! SOOOO BORING! Then sat on the plane for a further 11 hours!!! Just as boring....But we eventually arrived there in New Zealand! :)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
LAOS!
When at the border for Laos we decided to kind of stick with 2 guys from our minibus, Andreas from Italy, and Freddy from Stockholme. After waiting for them to get their visas we had a decision of the public bus or a mini bus (which took some good few hours less) so we opted for mini bus, but had to find another 6 people to book one with us! And so this is where we got our Laos crew together! Added to us 4 we got Mike from Austria, Laura and Louis from Canada, Martin from Prague.
The trip, unfortunately, took about 12 hours on terrible roads, and after the van 'breaking' and the trip getting extended by hours everytime we asked how long left. Cause we didn't arrive in our destination of Luang Prabang until about 2am, Mike kindly booked us all into the hostel he was staying at cause we were all just going to find somewhere as we arrived but, 2am aint a good time to go exploring! The Spicy Laos Hostel was good though, very good price and very central.
We spent our first day there looking around, we went to the temple on top of the big hill in town, and the Palace Museum, and walked by the Mekong River. In the evening we went for dinner with Mike, Frodo, Martin and Linda (a new friend from Spicy:)) After dinner we all of course went to a bar, and some how got onto what our party tricks are! And thus we all got our new nicknames:
Linda Kondom
Martin Hairy Pussy
Mike Bendy
Frodo Deepthroat
Elliot 3 Nipples
Christy Retard (rude!)
Andreas turned up with his new Lao friend Hoi, and we all ended up in a tuk tuk to the local DISCOTECH. Which I have to say was pretty awesome, as I wasn't expecting much at all! While in there dancing away, Laura and Louis appeared from the bar!! WOOHOO! When the Disco closed we headed in a tuk tuk to the BOWLING ALLEY! So awesome, drunk bowling, causing havoc, mainly Elliot and Andreas getting in trouble on the lanes. Frodo soon dissapeared when he spotted some females and Andreas managed to rugby tackle Elliot onto the lane! When the bowling closed we headed back to Spicy. Awesome night out though!
This general pattern happened again another night, and we went to the same restaurant on the river and the same bar everynight for our giraff (tower) of beer Lao! Luang Prabang was ace fun. One morning we decided to go to the Alms Giving where loads of monks get up at 5am and accept food from locals on the street. This involved not getting drunk and getting up early, which was hard. We actually went out for a few drinks but still managed to get up, too much temptation! Frodo even managed it and his motto for the mornig was 'Fuck the Monks!'. Not 100% sure if it was worth the painful 5am wakeup, but I guess I will never see that again, just too many tourists! The nutella baguette helped though.
We also did a trip to the local waterfalls which was beautiful, even when ridiculously hungover!!!
Linda suddenly upped and left one morning when she discovered her flight hadn't been cancelled after she thought it was and rushed off with an hour til takeoff! We left Luang Prabang a day later, heading towards Vang Vieng, where we had heard so many stories and seen so many bruises! Turns out we all LOVED Vang Vieng and had such an ace time, we went tubing twice and got very drunk both times. The first time we didnt make it past Bar 3, the next time we bypassed the first set of bars so we didn't get 'stuck' there and headed downstream in our wonderful rubber rings and adventured to the mud volleyball, tug of war, and HUGE slide (on which Martin, who we dragged out for another day of tubing when he was pretty sure he was done in Vang Vieng, managed to rip his shorts open!!!) While the boys took part in all the manly things, me and Laura got free drinks for being ladies, and got drunk. Well so did the guys too, but they just hurt themselves while doing it! We ended up in Bucket Bar that night, and got free buskcts and danced all night!
After Vang Vieng we went separate ways with everyone, and headed towards the city Vientianne. We had a coach booked, but when we got on we were chucked off saying our tickets hadn't been booked properly and so had to get off cause there weren't enough seats! Well annoying. So to make sure we still got to leave that day we decided to get a jumbo, which we discovered was just a bigger tuk tuk, full of locals and stopping CONSTANTLY to pick up people or sacks of stuff. One guys ended up getting off cause he felt sick, and one woman looked like she was dying grogging/throwing up in a plastic bag!! ERGH! The journey took HOURS....and we got dropped off in a dark carpark full of tuk tuk drivers, right pain, but we were pissed off so didn't let em mess with us! They actually gave us a really cheap price for a change! WOO! We couldnt find somewhere very cheap to stay so we stayed in a nice hotel :) There wasn't much to do there considering it was a city, but we went to the Buddha park which was cool, hundreds of Buddha and Hindu statues all collected together and we went to a cultural show with music, dance and foood where Elliot got dragged up on stage to dance with them hehehe.
We then booked our travel to the 4,000 Islands (Si Phon Don) which involved an overnight 11 hour sleeper coach and a 3ish hour mini bus, then a boat to the island. Took quite a while and it was REALLY hot but Si Phon Don was lovely. Very relaxed and they have only had electricity for a couple of months, so nice and simple. On our first day there, we were sat in a bar and Laura and Louis appeared! How ace :) So we had dinner with them and arranged to go tubing down the river the following day, which we did, but it was SO HOT so didn't get too far before we headed to shore for a drink, and thats where i discovered I had burnt my legs so much! They were bright red...ergh! Very painful. Laura and Louis were leaving the next day so we had dinner with them again and said goodbye and said we would meet up in Cambodia. We had planed to leave for the border ourselves either that day or a day later, but my legs were so painful that we postponed it for a few days. Everything was pretty cheap there and the hut we were staying in was £3 a night between us so we weren't too bothered! But then as we were about to leave we realised we didn't hardly have any cash left! There were obviously no cash points on the islands, and there were non at the border!! So we didnt have enough to go straight to Cambodia...We had to go all the way upto Pakse which was a 3 hour drive away, which after our minibus kept breaking it took about 5 hours, we decided we couldn't be bothered going back for another 5 or 6 hour drive to the border for the then even more hours to a town!!!! Sick of buses....So we got a bus to Savannakhet and bought a plane ticket back to Bangkok (oooh flight - luxury!) SO we ended up not going to Cambodia!! We thought we would spend the money on the Southern Thai Islands instead. We do regret not going cause everyone says its amazing, and we still want to go, so NEXT TRIP!! :D
The trip, unfortunately, took about 12 hours on terrible roads, and after the van 'breaking' and the trip getting extended by hours everytime we asked how long left. Cause we didn't arrive in our destination of Luang Prabang until about 2am, Mike kindly booked us all into the hostel he was staying at cause we were all just going to find somewhere as we arrived but, 2am aint a good time to go exploring! The Spicy Laos Hostel was good though, very good price and very central.
We spent our first day there looking around, we went to the temple on top of the big hill in town, and the Palace Museum, and walked by the Mekong River. In the evening we went for dinner with Mike, Frodo, Martin and Linda (a new friend from Spicy:)) After dinner we all of course went to a bar, and some how got onto what our party tricks are! And thus we all got our new nicknames:
Linda Kondom
Martin Hairy Pussy
Mike Bendy
Frodo Deepthroat
Elliot 3 Nipples
Christy Retard (rude!)
Andreas turned up with his new Lao friend Hoi, and we all ended up in a tuk tuk to the local DISCOTECH. Which I have to say was pretty awesome, as I wasn't expecting much at all! While in there dancing away, Laura and Louis appeared from the bar!! WOOHOO! When the Disco closed we headed in a tuk tuk to the BOWLING ALLEY! So awesome, drunk bowling, causing havoc, mainly Elliot and Andreas getting in trouble on the lanes. Frodo soon dissapeared when he spotted some females and Andreas managed to rugby tackle Elliot onto the lane! When the bowling closed we headed back to Spicy. Awesome night out though!
This general pattern happened again another night, and we went to the same restaurant on the river and the same bar everynight for our giraff (tower) of beer Lao! Luang Prabang was ace fun. One morning we decided to go to the Alms Giving where loads of monks get up at 5am and accept food from locals on the street. This involved not getting drunk and getting up early, which was hard. We actually went out for a few drinks but still managed to get up, too much temptation! Frodo even managed it and his motto for the mornig was 'Fuck the Monks!'. Not 100% sure if it was worth the painful 5am wakeup, but I guess I will never see that again, just too many tourists! The nutella baguette helped though.
We also did a trip to the local waterfalls which was beautiful, even when ridiculously hungover!!!
Linda suddenly upped and left one morning when she discovered her flight hadn't been cancelled after she thought it was and rushed off with an hour til takeoff! We left Luang Prabang a day later, heading towards Vang Vieng, where we had heard so many stories and seen so many bruises! Turns out we all LOVED Vang Vieng and had such an ace time, we went tubing twice and got very drunk both times. The first time we didnt make it past Bar 3, the next time we bypassed the first set of bars so we didn't get 'stuck' there and headed downstream in our wonderful rubber rings and adventured to the mud volleyball, tug of war, and HUGE slide (on which Martin, who we dragged out for another day of tubing when he was pretty sure he was done in Vang Vieng, managed to rip his shorts open!!!) While the boys took part in all the manly things, me and Laura got free drinks for being ladies, and got drunk. Well so did the guys too, but they just hurt themselves while doing it! We ended up in Bucket Bar that night, and got free buskcts and danced all night!
After Vang Vieng we went separate ways with everyone, and headed towards the city Vientianne. We had a coach booked, but when we got on we were chucked off saying our tickets hadn't been booked properly and so had to get off cause there weren't enough seats! Well annoying. So to make sure we still got to leave that day we decided to get a jumbo, which we discovered was just a bigger tuk tuk, full of locals and stopping CONSTANTLY to pick up people or sacks of stuff. One guys ended up getting off cause he felt sick, and one woman looked like she was dying grogging/throwing up in a plastic bag!! ERGH! The journey took HOURS....and we got dropped off in a dark carpark full of tuk tuk drivers, right pain, but we were pissed off so didn't let em mess with us! They actually gave us a really cheap price for a change! WOO! We couldnt find somewhere very cheap to stay so we stayed in a nice hotel :) There wasn't much to do there considering it was a city, but we went to the Buddha park which was cool, hundreds of Buddha and Hindu statues all collected together and we went to a cultural show with music, dance and foood where Elliot got dragged up on stage to dance with them hehehe.
We then booked our travel to the 4,000 Islands (Si Phon Don) which involved an overnight 11 hour sleeper coach and a 3ish hour mini bus, then a boat to the island. Took quite a while and it was REALLY hot but Si Phon Don was lovely. Very relaxed and they have only had electricity for a couple of months, so nice and simple. On our first day there, we were sat in a bar and Laura and Louis appeared! How ace :) So we had dinner with them and arranged to go tubing down the river the following day, which we did, but it was SO HOT so didn't get too far before we headed to shore for a drink, and thats where i discovered I had burnt my legs so much! They were bright red...ergh! Very painful. Laura and Louis were leaving the next day so we had dinner with them again and said goodbye and said we would meet up in Cambodia. We had planed to leave for the border ourselves either that day or a day later, but my legs were so painful that we postponed it for a few days. Everything was pretty cheap there and the hut we were staying in was £3 a night between us so we weren't too bothered! But then as we were about to leave we realised we didn't hardly have any cash left! There were obviously no cash points on the islands, and there were non at the border!! So we didnt have enough to go straight to Cambodia...We had to go all the way upto Pakse which was a 3 hour drive away, which after our minibus kept breaking it took about 5 hours, we decided we couldn't be bothered going back for another 5 or 6 hour drive to the border for the then even more hours to a town!!!! Sick of buses....So we got a bus to Savannakhet and bought a plane ticket back to Bangkok (oooh flight - luxury!) SO we ended up not going to Cambodia!! We thought we would spend the money on the Southern Thai Islands instead. We do regret not going cause everyone says its amazing, and we still want to go, so NEXT TRIP!! :D
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