Ko Samui

Massive frog/toad from Khao Sok

Well we made it to an island, Koh Samui, and have managed to find ourselves a little hut on the beach itself just a few metres from the sea at high tide which is nice.

The weather is much the same as it has been everywhere so far, overcast with the odd bit of rain but other than that all is good, fingers crossed it should clear up in a few days!

We arrived on the island on Friday on a rather old looking tatty ferry that seemed to go so slow but none the less we made it in one piece, no safety announcement at the start of this trip or a sign of a life jacket in sight although we have started to notice the severe lack of health and safety here in Thailand! But maybe we are wrapped up in cotton wool a bit in the uk!?

On our first day we decided to head straight to a beach bungalow but unfortunately quite a few were shut on the beach we were looking at so we headed to a tourist info and managed to find a room for the night. Unfortunately it was a bit more than we wanted to pay but for 900b it wasn't too bad and the food was gd.

The next day we got a moped with helmets even though we did look like goons lol and headed off around the island to explore and found a beautiful waterfall also managed to find a great beach hut(as I looked at the photo around us I thought we were at a lesbian resort lol but then alex said that it was a man in the pic he had v long hair!). We went to the fisherman's village along the next bay and managed to speak to family which was great xx alex then decided that he would get his hair cut unfortunately it is shorter than he expected next was indian for tea mmm.

We are both very happy where we are staying now at 350b which is basic with shared showers and toliets behind us but to my suprise it does have electricity!!And a great beach bar and resturant.

Hope all is well there love jen and alex xx

P.S Please keep commenting it is gd to hear from everyone :-D

Khao Sok National Park

Rain, rain, rain sun for a few minutes then more rain that has been the trend during the past two days however this has not dampened our spirits and we have enjoyed two days of real rain forest and an over night stop on the lake.

We arrived at Khao Sok on Monday afternoon we managed to locate the guy who drove us to Nung's house a series of huts set back in the rain forest. After dropping our hut in our new home we made our way to have a look at what tours were available and found a two day one night jungle trek and lake exploration with an over night stay.

All immodiomed up I decided the tour was definitely achievable and off we set.

Over to Jen

After an hour and half driving to the National park in the back of a 4 by 4 with 4 other people then a long tail boat ride of about 45 mins. That showed us the amazing scenery of huge mountains covered in many different trees and emerald blue water. We saw some floating huts on bamboo as this turn out this was home for the night. I think we were all a bit amazed and a little shocked when we all realised there were no fly nets in the one room hut!! The afternoon was spent chilling out and swimming and canoeing on the lake.

We also had our first guided forest trek that afternoon and Alex managed to get a tag along friend, a leech on his leg!

After walking on the track with everyone slipping and sliding everywhere we boarded what can only be described as bamboo sticks on the water with a engine strapped on the back and were taken across to a large cave full of many stalactites and stalagmites and the odd bat! We then did the reverse of the above, bamboo thing, slip-slide mud, boat, back to the floating hut.

7am was our time to be up the next day as we tried to see what animals were about. So by 7.15pm we were on the longboat on our way and got to see many hornbills (birds) and a handful of monkeys jumping about in the trees.

As it was raining we headed into the rainforest allowing its thick canopy layer to shelter us, so off we trekked and on finding a wild pigs tracks the guide decided that we follow, so winding up and down through dense bush we went!

It was very slippery in parts to which Jen found out by falling rather hard on a rock on her bum!

All the colour drained from her face and I thought she might faint but after a few moments she was okay and we carried on managing to see many spiders webs and a buffalo spider and also hearing monkeys swinging about the trees above.

At the end of the trek we had time for one last swim in the lake and to say good bye before heading back to Nungs house where we still are currently.

Phang Nga boat and Canoe Tour

We had an early start, well early for us anyway and were up at not long gone 6.30am after hitting the snooze button on the alarm a couple of times!

The reason for this early start was that we were getting picked up from the bungalow that we had for the night at 7.30am to head off on a boat and canoe tour of Phang Nga. The sun managed to come out through the clouds for us for the first time so far so we were definitely pleased about that! The boat we were on was typically thai with its noisy diesel engine and wooden construction, it was run by a very friendly thai crew of which there were about 25 of them!

On arriving at the first of the islands we got into our canoes and headed into a cave which was full of bats and had a rather unpleasant smell to it! There was light at the end of the cave which opened up to reveal that the island was in fact hollow and so had water in the middle! As we came out we soon realised that we were not alone and were surrounded by monkeys, two of them were even in the water fighting!

We headed back to the boat where lunch was waiting for us, a well presented assortment of thai dishes and a very western dish of spaghetti and tomato sauce thrown in for good measure!

Whilst we were eating the boat made its way to the famous James Bond island as made famous in the 'man with the golden gun', even film buff Jen was unsure which one this was and when we were told that Roger Moore had been the main man I soon realised it wasn't all that recent!

A long tail boat escorted us from our main boat to the island (a long tail boat can only really be described as a tuk tuk on water with its truck engine mounted like an outboard with a straight through exhaust pipe making lots of vibration and noise),

Once on the island we were harassed by many touts trying to sell us all kinds of rubbish from their stands all trying to cash in on the many tourists that go there daily.

The final destination on the tour was another small island where we had some time to swim and enjoy the sunshine.

Once back on the boat our crazy boat crew turned up the music and began to break dance for us, was quite funny to watch!

After saying our good byes we spent the night in Phuket town.

We should have been heading up to Kho Sok national park today but unfortunately towards the end of the boat trip i started to feel unwell and have had a bad stomach ever since along with the symptoms of a cold to go with it,we therefore decided to spent another day in Phuket town where we have done absolutely nothing to try to get better. Jen has been a great nurse to me and we should be good to head up and out of Phuket tomorrow for the national park at some point tomorrow.

All the best

Alex and Jen

Phuket

Yay we are finally out of Bangkok after a crazy couple of days, after getting off the plane last night we decided to head straight down to the hotel unfortunately we had a detour again to a tourist info place but after 10 mins carried onto the hotel. After going through some mad road we arrived at the hotel which was very nice for the price we paid 1200B however we arrived to a Thai Elvis Presley live lol.

We have noticed that Phuket is not really a major backpacker haven and so the prices are higher than that of the islands the other side but its all still a good experience.alex again

The next day we decided to explore Kata Beach and had breakfast right next to the beach which had beautiful views of the bay as the area was quite touristy we decided to head across to Rawai Beach where we are now :) it is lovely we found a little bungalow right across from the beach.
The weather has, as feared not be as awesome as we would have liked, today has been slightly overcast with the odd bits of rain! Its still warm though so phuket :-P (that's my input to this blog, Jen told me it was too rude!

Tomorrow we are off on a tour to a few different islands including James Bond Island should be interesting will keep you all updated.

Bangkok!

Well we made it, after what seemed like an endless plane journey at the time actually turned out to not be so bad and the nice hotel we had booked in Bangkok was a welcome greeting for us both.
It is now our third day in Thailand or our second full day if you want to be more exact and we have already experienced all different sights and smells (and no I don't mean Jen!).
From seeing a random bird in the airport on arriving to our taxi into Bangkok with the driver in tears mourning the death of a royal!

We are clearly not fully on thai time yet as we managed to wake up at 11.30am yesterday morning...wups! Although I see to be finding it harder than i remember to adjust Jen is seemingly having no problem with sleeping at the correct time, or it could just be that she is ignoring me when i ask if she is still awake!


We have already taken in a bit of the local culture by taking a trip down the river on a rather long narrow boat, the water level was rather high and so we had to test our balance walking along some narrow beams to get back to dry land and then experienced a show last night, which even i must say was quite good!

As I am writing this I now realise I have left our camera back at the hotel (its ok m&d its in the safe!) and so this entry is lacking much colour!

In a few hours time we will be back at the airport to continue our journey, we decided against the usual low budget traveller option of a 14hour bus to Phuket and instead have opted to fly down in 1.5 hours.
So yeah thats the future plan for now really, Phuket-Islands, beach, sun, chill out.

Hope all is well
lol
Alex and Jen