2 Weeks Island Hopping: Thai Islands

New Year's Party

We took a pretty miserable overnight bus from Bangkok to Surat Thani (southern Thailand), where we arrived at 6:00am and had to wait in a dirt floor hut with a couple hundred people for two hours to get on the ferry which took almost four hours to get to Koh Pha Ngan. Koh Pha Ngan is one of the most popular islands in Thailand - mostly due to the partying. The upside was that we had booked for five nights so were able to stay put for a while and relax. :) Our hotel was near Ben Tai beach, halfway between the pier (Thongsala) and Haad Rin, the beach where they throw the full moon parties. The hotel was decent and in a good location, but we certainly had some hotel envy; the resorts on the beach were amazing! :) We had arrived in the afternoon on December 30th, so spent the first day and a half exploring the town of Thongsala where there are loads of restaurants and tourist shops, eating delicious food and checking out the beach near our hotel. The lady who ran our hotel was a little crazy, she would get so flustered anytime anyone asked her anything and was really hard to understand but her food was great. :) After sleeping in and lazing around during the day on New Year's Eve, we caught the tuk tuk down to the Full Moon New Year's Party!

Ring of Fire

We hadn't known what to expect but the streets of Haad Rin were lined with tables of buckets of booze and the bars and streets were packed. It started to rain a little when we first arrived a little before 10pm, so we bought our first bucket and hid under a storefront. The buckets consist of a flask of liquor, probably half the size of a mickey, a bottle of pop and a bottle of energy drink with ice. Prices range from about 150 baht to 300 baht ($5 to $10). They actually weren't half bad. :) When the rain stopped, the crowd starting venturing to the beach. There are around ten huge bars lining the beach with party-ers going right out to the water. In between the bars are sketchy booths selling cheap buckets. We noticed pretty quickly that the liquor and red bull bottles had been resealed so were clearly full of cheap home brew, kinda gross. :) We were told that about 30,000 people come to the New Year's party, it was crazy busy and we were lucky in that the rain held off for the rest of the night. The bars have huge sound systems and light shows trying to attract the ravers and for the rest there are waterslides through fire, fire jump ropes, rings of fire to jump through, etc. None of which Dev and I were keen to partake in, but it was fun to watch! The next day we saw soooo many people with bandages and casts, so probably a good call. :)

 

Blacklight Paintings!

Time flew and before we knew it, it was midnight and we headed to the clock in the middle for the countdown. Everyone was getting these great blacklight body paintings and we totally got caught up in it and paid 500 baht ($15 ish) for blacklight paintings all over our arms, Dev got sweet flames and me a fish skeleton, why not? :)

Dev, Me and Rhys

The craziest part of the night is that shortly after midnight, Dev ran into a friend from university who is teaching in Korea and we hung out the rest of the night with him and his group of friends. Small world! :) We bar hopped and danced to some classic rock and before we knew it, it was 4:30 in the morning and I was absolutely starving! :) There were beer bottles and people past out all over the beach but the party wasn't even close to winding down (we were told the after hours places open around 11:00am), we've never seen anything like it! We headed back into town and grabbed the most delicious chicken sandwiches ever! and then caught our tuk tuk back to our hotel. The next day, I was in bed until 4:00pm! I'm not used to drinking liquor this trip and didn't feel too hot. :)

When I finally got up on New Year's day, all we had time for was watching the sunset at Ben Tai beach which was really beautfiul and then we went for dinner at a really cool seafood restaurant called Fisherman's. Our table was in a small boat off the back of the restaurant and over the water. Not super comfortable because we sat on the floor and were kind of on a tilt, but pretty cool just the same! :)

Beach Lunch (maybe where devi got food poisoning :))

The next day we got up at a more reasonable hour :) and rented a motorbike for two days. We headed first for the national park in the middle of the island and the Pabang Waterfall, which wasn't much of a waterfall but had a great lookout. Then we went past the Chinese temple and to the north side of the island where the beaches are more secluded and spent a couple of hours at Haad Kohm beach which was really nice. When we got hungry, we drove to Chaloklam for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the huge beach there. It's a shame but most tourists to Koh Pha Ngan only stay near Haad Rin where the party is every night. The island was surprisingly really beautiful and great to explore. We didn't even make it to the other half of the island! We took the long way home along the west coast and went back to our hotel. Dev ended up with food poisoning that night (he's a delicate flower lately :)) so we stuck around the room that night and most of the next day except for going back to Thongsala for lunch and a little shopping. That evening, when Dev was feeling better, we drove out to Haad Rin again to check out the full moon beach in the daylight. It's really pretty but pretty dirty, but the road to the beach goes over some enormous hills with amazing views of the ocean so it was a beautiful drive.

Double Parked :)

The next morning, we woke up super early to catch the ferry to Krabi, on the west coast of the mainland in the Southern Gulf Coast. We booked a hotel off the bus about ten minutes from the town centre but they had a pool and gave us a motorbike for free. We checked into our bungalow which was really cute but right away Dev clogged the toilet and then looked down and noticed that a frog had been under the toilet seat and was now also in the toilet! :P Needless to say, it was pretty embarassing when we had to go tell the front desk! We took a swim in the pool, grabbed lunch at the hotel then took the bike into town. Our hotel was closest to Ao Nang beach, which was really pretty and surrounded by cliffs so we took a swim and relaxed for awhile. We wandered around town which had the typical restaurants and tourist souvenier shops and got ice cream (I'm going to be about 100 pounds heavier when I get home :)) We were double-parked by another motorbike, but Dev manouvered it out and we headed back to the hotel. He's really good at driving the manual bikes now. :)



Our bungalow on the beach

 The next morning we checked out and took the ferry to Koh Lanta. We had been told that it was a pretty island where we could get a bungalow on the beach for cheap, which Dev had been waiting the whole trip for! We booked a hotel for one night in advance on Klong Khong beach (where the affordable accomodation is) but it was a little removed from the other bars and hotels so we looked around that afternoon for a more rustic place. We booked at a hotel in the middle of the main strip along the beach called "Where Else" that was so adorable. The bungalows were super rustic, with mosquito nets and the bathroom off the back practically in the woods! :) We even had a wood front porch with our own hammock and nocturnal crabs scratching around in our bathroom at night! :) Since the hotel food is always expensive and pretty subpar, that night for dinner we ventured behind the hotel strip to the small local eateries and found an awesome restaurant run by a Thai women and her family. :) The food was amazing and we ended up going there a bunch of times, especially for her cashew chicken and green curry! Yummy! :)

Exploring the Island

The next day, we moved down the beach and spent the day lounging around the bungalow, lounging in the hammocks at a nearby restaurant with banana shakes and then lounging around the hotel restaurant on the beach which was soooo cool and ecclectic. The next day we rented a motorbike and explored the rest of the island. We drove out to Old Lanta, where the houses are on stilts over the water, tried to get to the national park but gave up when the road was unpaved and crazy bumpy, went to Ao Nuy beach for a swim, shopping at the markets in Klong Dao, then back to our bungalow. That night, we had a few beers with a German guy we met at the bar while we watched the sunset and had a late dinner at our favourite restaurant. We spent one more day on the island where we checked out a nearby pool and then we left early the next morning for Koh Pi PI.

Ao Lo Dalam Beach & a Banana Chocolate Smoothie!

We were a little worried about finding a room in Koh Pi Pi because it's high season there but booked a room at tourist information right off the dock and were picked up in our taxi. :) There are actually no motor vehicles on the island so the taxi is actually a guy with a huge trailer that he pushes down the streets that he puts our bags and in this case, his toddler son into to our hotel. :) These guys are everywhere, carrying cases of pop, pinapples, anything and it looks like tough work, especially in that heat! Our hotel was pretty crappy but it worked and we didn't stick around long before we headed out for lunch and to the beach. Ao Lo Dalam beach is the largest beach on the main island which is actually called Pi Pi Don and was really pretty. Both Don and the smaller island Pi Pi Ley are strangely curvey which makes for some great coves and bays surrounded by limestone cliffs which is what makes the island so famous and supposedly the location of some of the world's most beautfiul beaches. The beach was packed and was covered in beach chairs, so we rented two chairs and an umbrella (for about $3) and chilled for the rest of the day. The next day on the island we had booked a boat tour around the island of Pi Pi Don, Bamboo Island to the north and Pi Pi Ley. The smaller island (Ley) is undeveloped and can only be visited by tours. It apparently is protected because of a very lucrative business of collecting and selling some special bird's nests from the caves on the island.

The water was such a cool colour!

The boat tour was nice because it was a really complete tour of the islands so we got a chance to see all of the really neat and secluded bays and coves but it was a little exhausting. :) It was a pretty small longtail boat with a really loud motor and we got pretty wet all the time; it was a lot of boating. :) We got to stop for a swim or snorkel a couple of times; although the coral was pretty dead, the fish were cool and the water and scenery were really amazing. We also stopped for lunch on the beach at Bamboo Island, to see the monkeys (or monkey in this case followed by like fifty tourists :)) on Monkey Beach and finally to watch the beginning of the sunset at Maya Bay on Pi Pi Ley which is where they filmed the movie "The Beach". There were soooo many tourists and tourist boats there for the sunset that we were pretty excited that we had booked a camping trip for the next night where it would be much less crowded. :)

Maya Bay

The next day, we checked out of our hotel room and went back to Ao Lo Dalam beach to chill and swim a bit before we had to meet our boat at 3:00pm for our Maya Bay camping trip. There were about 70 on the camping trip, so we all loaded onto the boat and headed for Pi Pi Ley. Along the way we stopped at a snorkeling spot in Piley Bay which had pretty nice coral and some colourful fish and then we swam to the back entrance through the trees to Maya Bay, just like on the movie. We had to swim in with just our flip flops in our hands. :)

Maya Beach Camping Trip

The beach was really beautiful and deserted now except for our tour group. We grabbed beers and watched the entire sunset this time and then lined up for our dinner of chicken curry and vegetables. They had set up a large square of beach mats with beer can candles for everyone to hang out on and so we enjoyed a couple of beers and rum buckets. :) It was a surprisingly bright night and the water was so amazing. Apparantly there is phospherous in the water and when the conditions are right, the water can light up or glow in the dark. It wasn't glowing on the night that we were there, but when we went swimming in the dark, the phosperous would move around and look like glitter all around your hands and feet. It was sooo cool! :) Our Thai tour guides put on a pretty crazy fire show too. :) At the end of the night, we grabbed two beach mats, two pillows and two sleeping bags and found a place near the end of the beach to spend the night. I haven't slept on the beach since high school and the sand was surprisingly hard, but we both had a pretty great sleep. :)

Our Beach Digs

We were woken up by the sun and mosquitos in the morning and had breakfast on the beach and a refreshing swim before getting back on the boat into town. What a great trip! :) When we got back into town, we were happy to see that our bags were still at the travel agency and we grabbed lunch and got back on a boat, a ferry to Phuket. :) Phuket is the largest island in Thailand and so doesn't feel like much of an island but has some really amazing beaches. It is the most popular place in Thailand for all inclusive resorts. Once on the island, we got a room in Phuket Town, the older part of the city and explored. The island has a lot of Portuguese influence so the buildings are older and European style so is a bit different. We were pretty tired so after walking around a bit and grabbing dinner, we headed back to our hotel for a movie. :) We had to check out the next morning but our flight didn't leave until 9:00pm so we left our luggage at the hotel and took a local bus to Patong Beach.



Patong Beach

I don't know if I have ever seen a bigger, morie crowded beach! But it was really beautiful and the colourful umbrellas and chairs kind of add to the look of it. ::P We rented some beach chairs and the service was great! :) They guys would come and adjust the umbrellas whenever the sun moved so that we would be fully covered and would serve drinks! :) It was so crazy hot that an umbrella was entirely mandatory, leaving even to go for a swim was really hot! :) We explored the souvenir shops and headed back to Phuket Town by bus later in the afternoon. We went out for our last meal in Thailand (the food is so good here!) and then caught a cab to the airport. Ten days left of our vacation! :)