Thailand Beaches - (16th October - 31st October 2006)

From Sihanoukville the plan was to take a boat to Krong Koh Kong on the border and then cross into Thailand. Luckily the boat was an afternoon one so we had a chance to have a nice leisurly breakfast before jumping on the back of a couple of motorcycle taxis that were going to whizz us and our bags to the ferry terminal. On the way we saw the aftermath of an accident, it looked as if a bike had gone into the back of a lorry. The bike was wedged into the back wheels of the lorry and all that you could see of the people that were on the bike was a childs shoe.... Made us wish that we'd been a bit more insistent on having a helmet. Anyway we got there in one piece and made our way to the immigration office/shed. Well, actually I'm not sure what it was but the guy in the office was taking down all of our details from our paassports. He didn't ask us for any money, so maybe this means that he wasn't an official? The downstairs section of the boat where the potential sun burn victims had to sit was fully enclosed so it was boiling until the a/c was switched on when we were finally on the way, even then though it was still unbearably hot. After about 4 hours though we got to Krong Koh Krong where we had to get another couple of motor cycle taxis (with helmets) to the border. Another surprisingly painless transfer both on the Cambodian and Thai side and then it was a bus to Trat, the closest major town to the border, by now it was too late to go any further so we'd have to overnight here. Trat was nice enough we found a nice guesthouse, or rather the owner found us, and there was a good night market filled with all of our favourite Thai foods.

In the morning we took a cab to the pier near Trat for a ferry across to Ko Chang, the second largest island in Thailand. After the last few weeks we were both looking forward to a bit of laziness, and Ko Chang was supposed to be good for this. The centre of the island is mostly taken up by National Park and the rest is nice beaches. In the morning we'd met a French guy that owned a book shop in Trat and he recommended a guest house on White Sands Beach called Rock Sand Resort. This beach is located in what is probably the closest you´d get to the town centre and is where a lot of the larger resorts are, but we took his advice and took the cab here. The island is incredibly hilly and I was amazed that the pick up taxi made it up some of the hills with a full load of people. Yesterday I'd started to suffer with the flu and by the time we landed in Ko Chang I was really suffering, so it was a real effort to walk the 500m along the beach to our g/h. We checked in and the view from the room was awesome. We were sat right above the sea. The g/h sat on the beach but even at low tide the sea lapped against the wall, so we'd be able to sleep with the sound of the ocean tonight. The first room that they gave us though was missing a pane of glass, so we moved to another room, same view, more glass, but pretty dirty and evidence of a previous tenants incontinence all over the matress. Still, it was just over $5 and I was in no fit state to look for anything else so we agreed to move tommorow. We ate some lunch in their overpriced restaurant and then I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to sleep off the flu. Later in the evening we explored a bit further down the beach. The beach was nice but didn't really compare to the Bermudian beaches and was also really busy, so we decided to head 30 minutes to the south to Lonely Beach tomorrow morning.

After a hair raising taxi journey on Thursday morning, the driver was throwing the cab into corners and down hills as if he was on some sort of time trial, we got to Nature Resort on Lonely Beach. The lady that ran it was really nice and before we even looked at the bungalow she checked with us that we were ok with music being played late. How late we asked. Oh 1.00, on a non party night!!! 1.00 we've normally have been asleep for 3 hours by this time. Luckily we're travelling with ear plugs so the music never really bothered us, so we checked in to a fairly nice bungalow not too far from the beach. We spent the rest of the day realxing in the restaurant and taking a walk along the beach. Nice relaxing day spoiled only slightly by finding our first cockroach when we came back from dinner. Kamay's shoe encouraged it to die though - my non killing of animals thing stops at creepy crawlies now. This ended up as a nightly ritual, but at least it was only one a night.

Kamay spent most of Friday suffering with whatever I'd had over the last couple of days. We hired a scooter for the day so that we could explore the island. There were a lot of steep hills and lots of trees but the road was enclosed by these trees so we didn't get to see very much. By lunch time we'd got as far as the southern tip and had gone back up the western side as far as White Sand Beach, so we stopped for some lunch. But after this Kamay wasn't feeling up to anymore exloring so I took her back to our guest house where she slept and like the caring husband that I am, I went off to explore the east coast. It was mainly more of the same except that over this side it was a lot quieter. The beach at the southern tip of the eastern road is called Long Beach and my plan was to get as far as here, relax with a cold drink and then head back to my sick wife. Unfortunately about 6km from the beach I started to see lots of landslides as the roads curved around the hills, and then 4km later the road stopped and it just went to a dirt track. It was beginning to get dark, I was low on fuel and there was no guarantee that there'd be anywhere open to get any more, fix a potential puncture or even get a drink (it's still low season so a lot of places are closed and this far out it was definitely a possibility that everything here would be shut). So I turned around and headed for home.

The next day Kamay still wasn't feeling 100% so we just relaxed on the beach in the shade for most of the day. We did a bit of snorkelling but didn't see much except a few fish and a few too many jellyfish. Then at night watched a fire display put on by a couple of the lads that work at the resort. I think it's a bit of a cliche on the islands that you get these people twirling sticks that have had their ends soaked in petrol and then lit, but all the same it looked dam impressive and we both really enjoyed it.

By Sunday Kamay was feeling better so as a way to celebrate my dads birthday we went out on a snorkelling trip around some of the islands around Ko Chang. On the way to the pier we met a French guy called Phillipe so we kind of pall'd up with him when we were on the boat. The boat trips leave from a different pier than the one we arrived at and I was surprised at how big the pier was. There must have been about 20 boats tied up and ready to head out on some kind of tour, way more than we were expecting. Although the island is one of Thailands biggest I was so surprised at how developed it was, both here with the large (and soon to be larger) pier and with all of the big fancy hotels at the northern end of the island. Our boat was packed, turns out that this weekend is a local holiday (commemorating the death of one of the kings) so the whole island was teeming with Thai tourists and I think most of them were on our boat. They were lots of fun though, but I was amazed at how few of them could swimthey were all wearing and needed life jackets while they were in the water - Í can´t believe that they signed up for a snorkelling trip!! Even with the life jackets there were still people resting by standing on the coral!! And there was nobody from the boat telling them not to do it or not to touch anything. Such a shame, although we did see lots of cool fish and some different coral to the stuff we saw in Bermuda, we also saw a lot of dead coral. I'm sure that this must partly be down to the actions of us tourists. There was plenty of food and drink on the boat and we stopped at four different islands for snorkelling. Although it was a bit of a circus at times with up to 10 boats stopping at the same place it was a good trip although not sure if we'd do it again, just a few too many people out there and not enough guides telling people what not to do.

Sunday morning we were leaving Ko Chang and to be honest we weren't too sad to be leaving. It was a beautiful place, but it is very quickly being spoiled. We were expecting a nice quiet island with hardly any development, instead we got lots of concrete and lots of people, not exactly what we were after. Back in Bangkok we just had time to find a hotel, top up on second hand books and get some dinner.

The following morning we had to travel down to China Town to the main post office where I had a parcel to pick up, we also sent home a few things that we'd bought on the trip that we didn't want to carry around with us. Very friendly staff at the post office. It was also a good chance to get back on the river boats. There's been a lot of rain here recently and we were amazed at how high the river was. Some of the boat stops were actually flooded, the river must have risen by about 60cms cince we were here in August. We had time to get back to the hotel and then it was time to head out to the brand new Bangkok Airport for our flight to Phuket. Again, we took the easy option and went with the budget airline flight rather than the 15 hour bus ride. Transport to the airport is supposed to be really good, but not from where we were staying, so we had to get a cab to a place that we could catch a bus, being too cheap to pay for a cab all of the way to the airport. The driver didn't understand where we wanted to go so we ended up getting the MRT for part of the journey, so all in it took us 2 hours to get to the airport using, a taxi, a train and a bus - all for a flight of just over an hour!! The airport is really impressive - nice and shiny, but with very little vegetarian food, so I had to make do with a tiny plate of expensive noodles :(

I'd always sworn never to go to Phuket, it's one of the main areas that package tours come to and has a reputation for being the Costa Del Sol of Thailand, not my cup of tea. BUT every year they have a vegetarian festival that runs for 9 days, so we were going to be in town for that. It's a Taoist festival and everyone sticks to a blood free diet as a way of honouring two of the emperor gods. Without boring you with the details of everything that goes on and why (well actually it's mainly because I don't know) there are lots of street processions and rituals at the various temples around town with thousands of followers and hundreds of people that have been posessed by one of the 9 deities who do crazy stuff like walk across hot coals, climb bladed ladders, bathe in hot oil and best of all turn themselves into human pin cushions. Before we got to see any of this gruesome stuff or taste any of the food we had to go to Ko Phi Phi a small island 2 hours away and the setting for the movie "The Beach". Oh life is hard!!! So we arrived in Phuket, got a cab to the beach resort Kamalla and then left the next morning on the boat to Ko Phi Phi. We didn't get to see much of Kamalla, but what we did see wasn't great. Lots of girly bars with massage services, overpriced food and more cockroaches in our room.

The boat ride to Ko Phi Phi was good, and an a/c boat, with free coffee and tea, what more could you ask for? The fun started though when we got to the island and had to contend with all of the touts trying to get you to their hotels that were "near" the beach that you want to stay at. We managed to get ourselces a boat taxi though and went around the coast to Long Beach as it was a bit quieter than the main area that we arrived at. This whole area was very badly effected by the tsunami in 2004 and they are only just getting back to normal. This may be one of the reasons that even though it wasn't peak season we couldn't find any accommodation!! Luckily we found a German guy who told us about the place that he was staying in right up on the hill, it wasn't officially open yet as they were still doing a lot of rebuilding and the electricity and water was sporadic, but it turned out to be really good place. Very clean rooms and a great view out over the bay. Just a shame about the climb up all of those steps to get there. We spent the rest of the day around Long Beach, a bit of lazing on the beach/restaurant and a bit of snorkelling. There's a tiny island about 40 metres from the beach that you can easily get to and we got to see lots of fish, some more dead coral and a shark!!! Couldn't believe that we saw it - it was a black tipped reef shark and wasn't going to be any threat to us, but all the same we were a bit nervous when it started to swim towards us.

The next morning we walked around the coast to the pier and booked a snorkel trip that would take us to a few of the islands around Phi Phi. We were all put onto a noisy long boat and ferried around the island. The first place we visited was our island from the day before, no luck this time with sharks, but sill lots of cool fish. Next up was Bamboo island where we also had an early lunch, just as well because there was nothing to see here. Then it was Monkey Beach where we saw loads of colourful fish and a few cheeky monkeys on the beach. Finally we got to the smaller of the two Phi Phi islands, Phi Phi Lei, which was actually where they filmed the movie. The beach was beautiful but there weren't many fish and there was lot more dead coral. After this it was back to town where we booked a scuba trip for the next day.

It was an earlyish start for the scuba, but I made sure that we found a bakery for breakfast before we got to the dive shop. There wasn't much for us to do at the dive shop, as we'd sorted out what size wetsuit, fins and BCD the day before. So we met our dive master for the day, a Japanese girl that didn't really instill us with any confidence. Originally we were supposed to have a different dive master but there had been a bit of a change around in groups. It ended up ok but first impressions weren't great, she seemed really shy and barely spoke to us until we were on the way back to Phi Phi after the dives. This was only our 3rd and 4th dives since qualifying in Bermuda so we were both nervous about the sea conditions (we were both sick last time) and over whether or not we'd remember what we were suppoed to do when we were under water. Luckily the water was as calm as a lake and after a couple of minutes under water everything felt fine and I stopped worrying about drowning. We had two dives during the day, both of them around islands just off of Phi Phi Lei. The coral here was in a much better state, than any of the other coral we´d seen in Thailand, mainly because there are less tour boats that come here. Also got to see loads of great fish, puffer fish, groupers, clown fish and lots more that I have no idea of their names, oh and Kamay saw a sea snake as well - it was pointed out to me, but I had no idea what they were looking at so I just nodded even though I hadn't seen anything.

After we were back on dry land we followed our dive masters advice and climbed to the highest point of the island for a great view of the island. From up there you can see how even though the whole place was desimated by the tidal wave less than 2 years ago, the place is quickly going back to the way that it was before the disaster. Which is a shame, it was a great opportunity for people to build in a way that didn't make the whole town resemble a shanty town. It's amazing that a place that is naturally so beautiful can be made to look so ugly just by a few people who are to eager to build something without thinking about what it looks like or what it does for the area. We really enjoyed the snorkelling and diving but we were very keen to be leaving Phi Phi the next day.

No free coffee on the boat back to Phuket, just as well really because this was a sweaty boat without any a/c. From the pier there was a taxi into Phuket town which is where all of the festivities were going to happen. Originally we were planning on staying out at Kamala and driving in every day for the processions. But seeing as though it was crawling with cockroaches and the area wasn't as nice as we were expecting, we decided to just stay in town instead. And we were so glad that we did, the hotel we stayed in was really nice, friendly owner and the processions went right past our front door!!! So we checked in, walked around the town to find some lunch and the tourist information office. Food was great - it seems as if nearly every restaurant in town was now only serving vegetarian food - it was so good not to have to worry about what was going to be in it. And it all tasted so good. In the evening there was some bladed ladder walking at one of the temples in town so we walked there and joined the huge crowd that was there, mainly Thais but a decent number of Westerners as well. There were 16 steps to each ladder and they had to climb up one and down the other, this they did in a trance like state after being taken over by the deities. There wasn't the blood that we were expecting, I guess the blades aren't that sharp and maybe by spreading their weight over them they don't cut themselves, so in a ghoolish kind of way we were a bit dissapointed. Mind you I still wasn't about to try it.

Next morning we were up early for the street procession. It was amazing how many people were out and how many people had shoved things through their skin. There were people with tens of skewers throuh their arms or cheeks, people with branches, swords, knives, pipes and god knows what through their cheeks, there were even two people that had umbrellas up, protecting themselves from the sun, but the handle of the umbrella was through their tongue!! There doesn't seem to be any trickery to it - they really do pierce the skin - there was real blood, people were mopping it up from the wounds for them as they walked. If you looked around you could even see some of the people that took part on previous days as they still had their wounds, but with tiny band-aids over them. Crazy. The only bad bit was that our camera died the night before so we weren't going to get any decent pictures until we bought a new one. Not all of the mediums were into this masochism, some of them seemed to have been taken over by some kind of child deity as they were walking around with dummies in their mouths or drinking from babies bottles. Occasioanly one of the mediums would stop at the offerings that the families had made outside of their houses and either take some food or drink the tea. This is supposed to bring the family good luck. We just thought that it was funny watching a man with a spear through his cheek trying to drink.

After the procession we bumped into Leon and Vicky who we'd met in Phnom Penh who were also in town for the festival, so we spent the afternoon with them in Patong (the main beach area). The beach is nothing special, very crowded with lots of jet skis and speed boats, but on the way back we called into a lovely airconditioned shopping mall. Dinner in the evening and tonight's entertainment at the temple was walking over hot coals. Again, big crowds but this time nobody wanted to get too close too early, those coals were incredibly hot, even from 5 metres away we were boiling. The actual walking was a little dissapointing as there were probably only a few people that actually walked across, most of them ran. Still, beats staying in watching telly.

The next day was the last one of the festival, so we made sure that we were up early again for the procession and we followed it around the streets this time (with food and coffee breaks in between) so we got to see them 3 times. More of the same today, but this time there were also people with axes! The first time we saw them tapping them on their foreheads - not so hard that they were smashing bone, but hard enough that they were bleeding profusely from their wounds. At one point loads of them stopped in a circle and started hitting themselves in the backs with the axes. Gross - but so cool.

In the evening the deities were being sent home, so we all met up, ate some food in the market and waited for the evening procession to start. I'm not sure how you send a deity home but I think that part of it is scaring the crap out of it with loud noises. This was way more dangerous (well to the spectators) than the whole piercing thing. The procession basically involved lots of people walking around the street, just like before and carrying a large seat like thing that must contain some kind of image of the deity in a large chair and then everyone that's watching throws bangers and fire fireworks at the chair. Most of the guys taking part in the procession were wearing scarves wrapped around their heads or glasses to protect their eyes and there was A LOT of tissue paper in peoples ears. This was nuts - you had hundreds of people throwing fireworks at each other!!! I have no idea how we didn't see anyone need hospital treatment, we tried to watch it from a distance for a bit and then tried to make it back to the hotel. On the way back though Kamay had a run in with a couple of rats that scurried out from a couple of rubbish bag. This wasn't enough to spoil these last couple of days in Phuket though, the festival is amazing and it would be great to come back again one day with a camera that works.

We'd spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out what to do next. Originally we were planning on heading to the East coast and doing some diving and then into Malaysia for a bit more diving and beach time. But Malaysia and the East coast of Thailand are just starting their rainy season so visibilty will be bad and the sea will be rough. Also, both of us were done with the islands - probably the fault of Bermuda, none of the beaches were as nice as the beaches that we'd taken for granted for the last 2 years and a lot of the people that were around us were annoying - a few too many of the hippy travellers that spend their entire time stoned or loudly talking crap. So we decided to bring forward our trip to India. Originally we were planning on going next year but the weather is manageable now and by going there now for a month we can get a decent idea of wether we want to go back again next year and see more of the country. So we booked a flight to Singapore and were about to book a flight onto Delhi when we realised that we'd need a visa to go to India. The only place that looked like we could get this done was Kuala Lumpur, so we'd have to fly to Singapore (the flight couldn't be changed) then take a bus to KL and then stick around Malaysia for a week while they process our application. All a bit of a palava, but it beats kicking our heels doing nothing on a tropical island?!?!?!