Thailand!

Forenote: This is a lonnnnnnnnnng blogpost and I got so bored writing it to the end. I hope you see past the spelling mistakes etcetc



With the month of April comes the Khmer New Year, a 3 day event which all Magna staff get off as a public holiday. We want to spend this time with the children, to partake in some celebration authentic Cambodian style, and some of the usual members of staff will not be coming into work, therefore we decided that it would be best to take our holiday a few weeks early. This allowed us to stay at GH during the new years, but in the meantime, we headed to the unknown lands of Thailand!

Our initial plan was to head to Koh Chang as we had heard good reports of the beaches there. Friday eventually came and as we waited in the Mad Monkey Bar for a tuktuk to pick us up at 8.30, the call came at 7.45 that there was a mini bus waiting for us. Our initial reaction was 'it's not for us'!. As we investigated further it turned out that the guys just wanted to be early so they could get home quicker, fair enough. So we hopped into the minibus and off we went to the bus station picking a few others up along the way.

The bus to Bangkok we had booked was a sleeper bus and cost $29.

Our 'Cabin' for the night

Soon we were at Poipet after a very rocky nights sleep, (our bed was right at the back of the bus under the engine, quite hot, noisy and very very bumpy!) we had to wait about an hour for the border to actually open then after filling out the necessary papers, we were in THAILAND!

The bus onwards to Bangkok was not quite the sleeper bus we had thought would continue the journey but a minibus where we were sitting near some very lovely Khmer ladies who thought our use of Khmer was good/bad/great/...? They seemed happy we were attempting their language anyway! The journey to Bangkok felt looooooooooooooong.

When in Bangkok we got a little lost on our search for the famous Khao San Rd.  Bangkok is a LOT busier than Phnom Penh and we felt a little out of our depth not being able to say much more than 'Sawadika' to the locals.  We eventually found our hostel - NapPark, ate food, browsed the stalls. We prepared ourselves for a night in the streets of Bangkok, found ourselves wandering around when we were suddenly beckoned over by a table of fellow travellers and this lot became our possy for the night. Highlights of the night included Gwen (in a hilarious fashion) eating 2 cockroaches, having a cake fight (it was someones birthday), Gwen making friends with a Thai girl named Rose who followed her the whole night and insisted on sharing beers with us. All in all it was a good night and we returned to our dorm very sleepy indeed.

Someones Birthday

Earlier that day we bumped into a guy who pointed us in the direction of a backpacker travel agent, so off we popped into a tuktuk. This travel agent seemed to know what she was doing and recommended that we go to Ao Nang then Koh Samui instead of Koh Chang as it was more expensive. Taking her advise she sorted all the necessary arrangements within 50 minutes, in which Gwen and I went on a quick, and I stress QUICK, whistle stop wat tour of the city with our tuktuk driver.

Next thing we know we've arrived in Ao Nang

First impression of PhiPhi were Amazing and there were only going to get better! We had met people in Bangkok were gave us the name of some hostels so we strolled to the other side of the island (a whole 15 minute walk away) in search of somewhere to spend the night. It was a strange feeling walking along the beach with full rucksacks while everybody else was sunbathing in bikinis! We tried a few places with dorm rooms but they were all full until eventually we found one, it was a little down the road from the beach but one of the best dorms we''d stayed in yet, and I'm not just talking about the people!

With only one day on PhiPhi you'd think we would have immediately jumped into swimwear and headed to the beach, but instead we chose to have a sleep for most of the afternoon on a platform filled with cushions at the side of one of the beach front bars. Bliss!

Eating at around 8 o clock we became acquainted with the rest of our dorm at a restaurant then we headed out for the night.

While on PhiPhi most people we met recommended going to Koh Tao instead of Koh Samui, so once back in Ao Nang we rung the backpacker place to confirm the change with them got a bus sorted and off we went!!

Cue another 8 hour bus/boat ride. Upon getting off the boat at Koh Tao we were immediately inundated by taxi drivers all offering us to get to '…….. Beach'. Seeing as we didn't have a clue where we were heading, we liked the word 'beach' and this seemed to be the place to go, we jumped on the bandwagon and decided to go there. A guy offered to share his taxi and to spit the cost so in we jumped. This guy turned out to be Joe from London and then the three of us wandered about looking for accommodation. The first place we stumbled upon as we headed towards the beach was "Big Blue Diving' where we bumped into a few other from the boat and together we were all led away by a sweet talking rep from the diving school who managed to convince us all to go scuba diving the next day… 

I have never even considered going scuba diving before nor know anything it entails and as we headed out on the boat I felt highly underprepared even after the briefing talk they gave us. Soon it was time to get all our equipment on and by golly that air tank is the heaviest thing I have ever had on my back, we had a weight belt on as well to keep us under the water and a buoyancy jacket for when we don't want to be under the water.

The scariest part of the whole experience was jumping into the water the first time as I was convinced that I would sink straight to the bottom. Upon expressing my fears and was assured that this would not happen and thankfully it didn't! Once resurfaced then we had to inflate our buoyancy jackets and this enabled peaceful floating on the surface without having to flap our feet about! There was 5 people in our group altogether with 2 instructors so I was feeling pretty safe. Once everyone was in the water we proceeded to swim on our backs to some shallow water where we could sit under the water and practice some necessary skills, such as getting water out of our goggles whilst still under water, cleaning the breathing tube thing, getting our air thing back if we take it out of our mouths and lose it, then also learning the hand signals we would use to communicate once under the water. On the way back to the boat we had our goggles on and were breathing with the tank to get used to it and I must say it is such a strange feeling, taking that first breath underwater just feels so wrong! But is was AMAZING!

If if I thought this was amazing much more was to be in store on our second dive going right underwater to the very bottom, swimming over coral, past loads of fish. Words cannot explain how cool it was!!!

The next three days on Koh Tao were spent with with Leo (whom we met while signing up to dive) and Joe and it was very good company indeed. We finally just chilled on a beach basking in the shallow waters. I didn't venture out to far because the first time I tried a fish bit me, causing a steady retreat.

Us with Leo, one of the most remarkable people we have met!!!

It was a peaceful journey back to Bangkok, our only slight hitch was getting from the bus to the airport where the taxi driver first quoted us 4000 baht (£74) this was obviously ridiculous so we got the price down to 1000 baht, we got in then he clarified it was 1000 each! Tired and not bothering to argue we settled upon 1500 for the two of us then upon realising it was a meter taxi we instead asked him to turn the meter on. He said it was broken and this is where we should have got straight out of the taxi. He kept changing the story, one minute the meter was broken, next it was not on because it couldn't work outside Bangkok. In the end we gave him 1000 baht and he took off angrily. Don't know why because we were still overcharged by about 600 baht.

We then spent 6 hours sitting near check in for the gate to open.

Then HOMEEEE!

All in all we really enjoyed out tie in Thailand, thankfully we didn't have any problems with bus/transport scams like in other stories we've heard about! We met absolutely AMAZING people in Thailand, so shout out if you're one of them reading this and it was quite nice pretending to be a proper 'backpacker' now!