Island Hopping

We haven't been particularly good at updating the blog, but I think this is a good thing as it shows we have been busy having fun! I also put it dow to us trying to fit so much into such a short space of time, but the easiest way to digest our island adventure's will be under subheadings which is what I will do now, starting where we left off in Koh Samui.....

Koh Samui
Compared with Koh Tao it was a bit of a shock, Koh Samui is huge, there are big roads, big hotels and a Tesco's, Mc Donald's, Starbucks, all that malarky that we have been trying to avoid! There's also quite a bit of sex tourism which is not really the vibe we are going for.. We decided to opt for Hat Lamai, our guide book tells us that it is the second biggest beach in Koh Samui, after all the drinking we did in Tao we thought we should probably get a bit of peace, but maybe sometimes you can have too much peace! We chose 'Beers House' from the internet as they had a load of affordable rooms at 300b a night, after being in a dorm it was very nice to have our own space, even if that space was a bed and nothing else, it was comfortable. The family that run Beers are great, they pretty much left us to our own devices but were always smiley and friendly, especially when Tom attempted to speak Thai....The beach was busy-ish but everyone there seemed to keep themselves to themselves, which was nice at first but a bit quiet as the days went on. The sea at Hat Lamai is very clear but very rocky which made swimming difficult, but Tom and I had a great time messing about in the waves whilst trying not to get maimed by the seabed!
Craving the company of tropical animals we decided to go to the aquarium and zoo in Samui, we also decided that we walk there, two hours later (including a stop off in a muslim market - very interesting if you get the chance) we turned up sweaty and sunburnt only to be told we had missed the tiger show, with hindsight I think this was definitely for the best. It was depressing. I worked in pets at home for a summer in my second year at uni, one of my duties was to take care of the fish and to scoop out any dead ones before the small children saw them.... this does not by any means make me an expert on how to keep exotic sea life, but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out that the ages are too small and the sharks and the turtles and the fish all look pretty miserable, and who wants to go and see miserable animals? The tigers are kept in small cages but there are signs around assuring patrons they have a big outside enclosure to walk around in, which seemed to be true. The saddest part of the day was meeting a monkey in a mock bird cage, all in all not somewhere we would visit again..
Pumped up by our previous days walk we decided to walk to the 'monkey sanctuary' described in our travel guide, next to the description is a picture of a buddhist lovingly holding a monkey. Oh good we thought we can block out the horrors of yesterday and get to see some happy monkeys, wrong, for the first (but not the last time) our tour guide misled us, after 2 hours we found a monkey 'theatre' in which they dressed up the monkeys and made them ride bikes, not a buddhist in sight... we decided that it couldn't possibly be the same place so carried on walking for 2 hours, we didn't find it. We did however find a really lovely bar and ended up really getting on with the people who ran it and having the most delicious barbecue, it wasn't the day we planned but most definitely my favourite day in Samui.

Koh Phangan

We headed to Phangan after the full moon party had taken place, as the craziness dies down and everything becomes a lot cheaper, we had a vague idea as to where we were headed but once we got there they told us they were full, rats! We walked a little way down the road and came across 'Roadside Bungalows' pretty basic, lots of spiders and an ensuite bathroom that I kept having violent images of being murdered in, not the most comfortable night's sleep to be fair but it comes with a mosquito net and nobody murdered me, so at 200b a night you can't complain. That night we had some salty pancakes from a posh bar that had beautiful views over the whole of KOH Phangan, Tom has asked me not to go into too much detail, but Tom got sick, I thought he was just a bit hungover/dehydrated so as we were travelling to Dolphin bungalows (600b) in the back of a pickup truck Tom projectile vomited for a long time spraying a toxic orange liquid all over the road, ok enough detail... by the end of the day he still wasn't well so we had to go to the clinic, the nurse was incredible and within a few hours he was fine. I just wish I had taken him much sooner, however it is a lesson learned. The next day we hung out with a German girl called Gabrielle snorkelled and ate, at 2am I woke up and was sick and proceeded to wake up at 3 hour intervals throughout the night, I think it was definitely the salty pancakes! Which is ironic because the place we ate from was pretty upscale and there was me worried about eating from street vendors! Cut a long story short the same nurse fixed me, but it took the wind out of our sails for a bit. I've only briefly mentioned Dolphin but I can't recommend it enough, the food there is so delicious it managed to pull me out of my paranoia, it's run by a thai guy and his wife who is from new zealand so there is influence from both places in the menu! There are also beautiful cats lounging under the trees and lots of pretty statutes and flowers and cool places to sit.

After a few days Gabrielle encouraged us to go with her to bottle beach, a beach which is only accessible by boat or a pretty heavy drive through the jungle, we agreed and came with her to smile bungalows and smile we did The beach is perfect for swimming as we have found with the beaches here, you often have to wade out quite far into the sea before it gets deep enough to have a proper swim, not with bottle beach a few strides and you're in, and its lovely. So we stayed at bottle beach doing nothing but swimming and eating and reading ('inbetween the assasinations ' arvinda adiga - very good)! We decided that we had been in Koh Phangan for a very long time and although it's lovely we needed to see a bit more, so we packed up, said goodbye to Gabrielle and headed for Krabi....