Last time around we were sat in a bar in Koh Tao with Alex's friend Bekka, and I was nursing a foot infection. Since then we haven't done all that much moving around; we really liked Koh Tao and stayed there for ten days in total, then briefly visited hell on Earth - sorry, Koh Samui - before making the longish trip west to the Andaman Coast, ending up in Koh Phi Phi.
The main reason for staying in Koh Tao was getting some diving in - we tried to talk Bekka into doing a Discover Scuba dive but after a days snorkelling she seemed content to stay on the surface. So whilst it was still the three of us we crammed in quite a bit of fun and games, starting with a day out on quad bikes.
This was really good fun, you could explore pretty much the entire island - its only 20 km square, and there is really only one main road - in a day. The road quickly gives way to dirt tracks as soon as you leave the main town, which provided ample opportunities for off-road adventuring. Our mission was to visit all of the small bays around the island, and we made it to most of them. This was our favourite :
As we had two quads we rotated drivers throughout the day. Bekka won the Evel Knievel award for stunt driving hands down - her approach to getting up the steep bumpy bits consisted of screaming and then going double hard on the throttle. Extremely effective, but it also had Alex screaming for dear life as she clung on the back.
After having a brief panic due to running out of petrol, we managed to get back to the main road and hit the local crazy golf. It turned out to be a pretty decent 18, with some suitably crazy bits :
Despite an impressive hole-in-one from Bekka, James came away with the victory (after obviously taking it far too seriously, and shouting "spirit of the hole" at anyone who dared to take shortcuts.)
The next day was our last day with Bekka, and she'd requested one last day on the beach to maximise her tanning time. That night we hit the town and started off with a 3 litre beer tower at Choppers before heading to Lotus bar, the main club on the island.
We said our goodbyes the next day and faced the reality of it being just us two again.
Next up was diving, we booked in with the cheapest diving school we could find and crossed our fingers (the budget has taken a bit of a hit in Thailand :-S) Luckily the only complaint was the lack of a decent lunch on board - the dives were still amazing and no one got left behind - bonus!
I think that day we visited Japanese Gardens (loads of different coral types) and White (or maybe Green) Rock. The second dive site had a smallish wreck we swam through, and a pretty fierce current, so it was quite challenging but good fun. Its an amazingly knackering past-time, and because you normally start so early in the morning it pretty much writes off the rest of the day. Afternoon naps become epic 5 hour sleeps, and you get this weird floating sensation when you close your eyes... all good fun though =)
We'd developed a bit of an evening routine by this point - cocktails at sunset on the west facing beach. The bars all have lounging around cushions on their decks, making it the ultimate in relaxation.
Obviously after a few cocktails it would be wrong not to try some tree climbing, and fortunately there were a few palm trees dotted along the beach that didn't pose too much of a challenge :)
We wanted to do another dive - to a site called Chumphon Pinnacle - which everyone said was the best site around Koh Tao. But the weather conspired against us for a few days, so we stuck around and filled in the time with more beach lounging and another day of exploring on the quads.
Giles - this one is for you. Inspired by your comment about the half-finished road and cliffs from our drive around Samui that time, Alex and I had to go even further off-road to try and find something to beat it. This "road" lead up to the reservoir at the highest point on the island... I wouldn't have fancied it in a car to be honest, the quads just about fit on the bit of track that wasn't totally churned up.
We also visited the cove we both liked from the last trip, and Alex grabbed a snorkel and mask and went exploring. (I'm not sure you can see her that clearly in this photo, but she made it out to a rocky outcrop in the bay.)
The next day we got lucky with the weather and the cheap and cheerful dive shop were going out to Chumphon, so we signed up and headed out. It was well worth the wait, as this was definitely my best dive yet. The site is centered around a huge underwater pinnacle, which is far enough out in the ocean that it attracts all sorts of creatures to stop and have a break there. Sadly we didn't get to see anything amazingly exciting (Alex was hoping for a sight of the rare whale sharks that sometimes stop off), but we swam with school of large angelfish, and thousands of other assorted swimming things.
After one last day of lounging around, we decided to move on. It was a toss up between heading West then towards the other coast, or taking a few days to visit Koh Samui properly. We were a bit worried about the weather on the other coast - it is their rainy season now - and hadn't heard anything from Bekka to say it was sunny, so we booked a boat over to Samui. Within about 10 minutes we got the message from Bekka saying it was amazingly sunny, and Koh Phi Phi was one of the best places she'd been yet... typical timing!
We'd booked the ticket at short notice so we were resolved to going to Samui for a few days. We still had about 12 days left in Thailand as well, so it made sense to try and make the most of each area.
I'd been to Samui before with the CMC gang, but we pretty much spent our time there in the confines of a lovely 5-star beach resort. I can vaguely remember we went out one night (when Si's brother Dave came over to meet us?) in the town, but my hazy memories didn't prepare us for the reality of Samui's big towns four years on.
We landed in the main city, Chaweng, and quickly found a cheap room along the main road. The town is pretty much one massive long road that stretches down the coast, with plenty of fancy hotels on the beach and lots of bars, shops and food places along the main road.. and even a couple of branches of Boots too. It was all nice enough, but the beach was hawker central, to the point where you'd get harassed every five minutes without fail.
In the evening the place became a cross between a poor man's Ibiza and the most salacious parts of London's Soho. Almost all of the neon-lit bars featured gangs of Thai women being chatted up by much much older western men. Not really the sort of night we were aiming for, that's for certain.
We wrote that off as a bad choice of town, so the next day we headed down the coast to the quieter town of Lamai. We found a really nice place to stay, and then rented a moped again and went exploring. We hadn't done any uber-touristy stuff for a while, so we headed for some waterfalls and stopped off to do a quick elephant ride on the way =)
This was probably the highlight of Samui - it was just the two of us, the elephant and a chap to make sure it didn't run amok. After we'd got about 10 minutes away from the main buildings the chap jumped down and wandered off behind us leaving the elephant free to wander. Fortunately it seemed pretty well trained, and we got to sit on its neck, and see it picking up a huge palm tree trunk whilst we were clinging on for dear life. All good fun. We also visited the local branch of Tesco, which was quite the culture shock after spending so long in tiny beach shops.
That night we hit the town again hoping for better things... but no such luck. Lamai was just as nasty... the faint hearted might want to look away now (also note to family - might not want to send this bit to the grandparents :p) This is an oh-so-creative collage of some of the bar names we found on our walk around town :
It really was this bad. There were two areas in the town which just contained bar after bar - a bit like stalls at a fair - chock full of girls with older blokes lining the seats around the edges. I know you hear the stories about sex-tourism on the news back home every now and again, but it was a different ball game coming face to face with it ourselves. Maybe we being a bit prudish, but it was quite an easy decision to head off to the west coast the next day.
The journey was another bus-boat-coach-boat epic, taking about 11 hours... but as soon as we climbed off the ferry and walked down the jetty on Koh Phi Phi it was totally worth it. This place is 100% desert island paradise.
We've been here a few days now, and are really enjoying it. Its definitely overcrowded - and this is the low season as well - but its not too overwhelming as pretty much everyone here are backpackers. The main town is built on a strip of land between two big hills, and has a beach running down both sides. The bars, shops and hotels are all packed in along this strip, so everything is really close by.
The only downside is things here are really pricey! We paid 1600 baht for two dives in Koh Tao, but here they want 2500 baht. There seems to be some price fixing cartel action going on, which hardly seems like cricket. Our daily budget is only 3000 baht, so for both of us to dive it means we can't eat for a couple of days :( We still can't decide on that one... we might do some rock climbing as well, or do an overnight camping trip on the island they filmed "The Beach" on - but they are also really expensive sadly.
We've only got 8ish more days in Thailand before our 30 day visa runs out, so we are starting to think of where to head to in Malaysia. We both really hope its more like Vietnam than Thailand - the over-development of the islands and crazy prices here mean its not in the same league as Vietnam. Still, the beaches are amazing, and the views are breathtaking, so it can't be all bad... =)
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