My sister
and I are horrible at travelling together. One huge issue is that she likes to
sleep when I am up at the crack of dawn. Thailand was no exception and since I
was up hours before the two of them I wasted a good amount of my days doing
nothing waiting for them to wake up. Definitely my fault I should have
organised to meet them places and entertained myself but I always forgot and
since they had no phones I just stayed in my smelly hotel room reading books. I
think I also had more faith in them then I should have assuming that they would
wake up at somewhat reasonable hours :P
Two days
after full moon we made arrangements to head down to another beach. I was up at
about 8:30am after getting a good night sleep crashing about 10:30 the night
before. Heather and Sam finally crawled out of bed about 11am only after I
finally woke them up. I said we should go to the beach and then eat there they
decided to eat before meaning we never made it to this beach until 1pm. On my
last day on Koh Phanagan I spent once
again doing nothing.
So we go to
the beach which is pretty chilled and relaxed, I decided I didn’t feel like an
overnight travel to Koh Lanta since I only had a few days left and instead
decided on staying at the beach. After arguments with Heather & Sam where
all my frustration from the previous few days boiled to the surface, we fought
and I ended up staying at the beach and they went back to HaaD Rin. I know now
if I do ever travel with those two stoners again I need to make plans for
myself during the days and just hang out with them at night because partying is
always great with my little sister! (and sam of course)
That night I
sat at the bar and got drunk with my Austrian friend and the bar turned into a
little party of people. We played drunken celebrity heads that resulted in
shots every time you answered the question wrong. I met a German guy who
offered to share a bungalow with me since there was no accommodation & I
smoked a lot of weed as joints seemed non-stop around the bar. I passed out at
some point in the Austrian guys hammock and woke up next morning on the beach
watching the waves crashing in. As I gathered my things to get a ride back to
Haad Rin I found the German guy “Toby” just chilling on a hammock and we had
breakfast together I promised him I would return soon. I went back to Haad Rin
to check out of my hotel and found Heather & Sam deciding to take the overnight
ferry to Koh Lanta. I packed up my stuff said goodbye and made my way back to
the beach. Toby was MIA so I made myself comfortable on his hammock reading my
book before he returned. I set myself up in his room and headed down to the bar
again.
I booked
myself in for Diving at sail
rock supposedly one of the best dive sites in that part of Thailand.
However I was to be disappointed. Visibility was low, the waves harsh. At one
point I was cruising along about 25m deep when I went to get a closer look at
some coral next thing I knew I was all alone. I am quite a new diver especially
deep see diver, about 18 dives in total so I did start to panic a little. Even
though I was close to three huge ships I just felt so alone. I’ve talked about
diving before and the immense feeling you get under the water imagine that when
you know your 25m deep and you can see perhaps a metre in front of you. I knew
in that situation I had to stay still unless I ended up drifting out to sea and
if I still hadn’t been discovered by my guide I would gradually surface. It
seemed like hours but was probably only five minutes when my guide returned
tapping on her tank. If I could have I would have hugged her!!
Other than
that my time in north Koh Phanagan was pretty uneventful. I had to catch a
plane by Sunday so I caught an overnight ferry/train to Bangkok. From the ferry
we had to catch a bus to the train station which was a bit crazy. It was about
40 minutes long and no seats so I sat on the floor in the aisle getting a numb
ass. There were three steroid induced German guys who kept asking me stupid
questions they had been partying on Haad Rin for an entire month. Thank fuck I
never met them. Arriving at the train station I was hanging out with my
Austrian friend and some other guy when we got joined by an aussie girl and
south African guy. We drank and ate for the two hours till the train left. I
got a sleeper train which was nice. But the steroid german guys were right next
to me, I even had to kick one of them out of my bed!! Still I had earplugs and
settled down to catch some Zzzz.
Arriving in
Bangkok I caught a Taxi to Khoa San Road. I found a place to charge my phone
and a bar where I could drink. I started up conversation with an Italian guy
who was living in Switzerland. It was a fun conversation but I realised I had
to make my way to my CS hosts house about an hour away! This is the problem of
couch-surfing. I was having such a good random time I could have easily just
gotten a room and gone out with the Italian guy but I had already made a
commitment so made my way via boat & taxi to my host. This was taxi disaster
#2 & #3 The first taxi took me to the wrong place and the second taxi spent
half an hour lost driving the same street up and down and then expected me to
pay the cost. I refused to pay the extra and jumped out of his cab and ran away
hahaha.
My host was
a beautiful local Thai couple who took me to a very local restaurant of Thai
Hot Pot. The food was insane it was SO good. I couldn’t eat anymore haha. At
the end they paid for me which I had a hard time accepting but it is part of
Thai culture to look after guests. Their house was nice and cute.
The next morning
Kwan took me to a local market where we got breakfast delicious sticky rice and
caramel wrapped in banana leaves and some pork satay sticks. I then left to go
to the big famous market for a day full of shopping since it was my last day in
Bangkok. I got distracted by the animal section it was full of so many obscure
animals. At one point I went crazy in front of some reptile tanks only to see
after taking a million photos a huge sign that said “NO PHOTOS” Apparently many
of the animals are illegal so they don’t like people taking photos. Well that
explained the sour looking store holder. After making it home my hosts made me
a delicious Thai Green Curry. I went to bed early, completely satisfied.
The next
morning I got up early to get to the airport for Taxi Disaster #4. We went
through several tolls and the guy kept taking money off me then I worked it out
he took to much and he would return the money. So he starts talking about his
medication he needs the money for. I am getting frustrated. Then we get to the
airport the cost is something like 300BAHT
and he says that will be 350BAHT.
I’m like are
fucking kidding me you already stole maybe 50BAHT off me you get 250BAHT he
grins and goes “ok” making me think he stole a lot more money off me. Anyway
whatever it was small change to me really and not like I could use the Thai
Bahts back in Darwin. So off to my plane and head home to Darwin.
This was
written quickly but it’s a few months overdue :P
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