The Koh's - South Thailand

Good Afternoon :)

Been a bit slack with the blog recently so I'm going to try write everything under one blog for Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao... WARNING it's going to be long!

Koh Samui

After flying into Bangkok on the 19th February we stayed the night on Khao San as Max was there so we spent the day & night with him catching up again.
We travelled the following night to Koh Samui, night bus and then a ferry in the morning from Suratthani.
Got to our guest house who didn't have a room for us even though we pre-booked so trapesed up and down the road and finally found a place with a room available!
The manager was a Thai lady called Lek and she was so funny, Lee & I chatted with her quite a bit and turns out she was a lady boy. (We'd been trying to work it out while we were there but couldn't decide) but she told us the day we left, bottom surgery done too! It was quite good to have my questions answered as there was a few things I wanted to know.
So we stayed in Koh Samui 3 nights and stayed in Chaweng Beach. The beach was ok there and first day Lee & I sunbathed and had a swim in the sea while Lora chilled in the room as she got badly burnt on the ferry on the way to the island. We met John and Mike two guys travelling together, John's Welsh and Mike is from Essex and a couple of English girls too while on the beach, had a couple drinks with them at a posh bar place which had a pool and chilled for the afternoon and arranged to meet up again as was a big pool party going on a couple of days later.
That night we went to a lady boy cabaret show then found a gay street and had a few Changs in this tiny bar, there was a 12 year old kid selling Hawain reefs and I took them off him and managed to sell 4 to some of gays in the bar (bunch of queens lol) . Lora wasn't feeling up for it so she stayed in and Lee & I ended up partying until the early hours of the morning. There was a really good club called Green Mango which was playing trance music and kind of felt if we were in a disused warehouse.
Didn't do an awful lot there really, the weather wasn't great and rained quite a bit, I skipped the following night out - I hear it ended up with Lee sleeping on the floor in McDonalds, the photos are pretty funny! I watched the film Remember Me which ended in me crying my eyes out annd started watching Lost from the beginning! (My stab at not giving in to peer pressure!)

Following day we went to the pool party in the afternoon but I still wasn't feeling up for a heavy one, met up with John ad Mike and chilled with them. I didn't get in on the pool party action at Ark Bar, we chilled at the side pool where it was a bit more relaxed. Night 3 we just chilled out and had a wonder around the town and packed up our stuff as we were going to Koh Phangan for the FULL MOON!.

Koh Phangan

We arrived on Monday 25th Feb at Koh Phangan which is where the beautiful friendship started between us, Holly & Blaine and Stefan and the rest of the Bang Namken crew.
We stayed in some nice beach bungalows 10 minutes from Haad Rin in a place called Ban Tai with a secluded beach and hammocks all over place, it was lovely! We arrived and instantly Lee stubbed his toe on a rock on the path up to the reception, blood gushing everywhere he'd taken a whole chunk of skin off his big toe! He had to go get cash too so he hobbled into the village to get some money and took Lora with him. I was rather bored so I started talking to a couple who were checking in which happened to be Holly & Blaine. That night we sat round a big table in the restaurant and accrued quite a few people, Kennedy, Liz and Gary who were travelling together, Stefan (Big G) & Annika and of course Holly & Blaine, Lora, Lee and myself. The full moon gang had formed!

One of the girls told us about a pool party she heard about which was meant to be good so after a few drinking games we went in a tuk tuk to Haad Rin and bumped into Mike & John from Samui! That was so much fun, Stefan had a waterproof camera with him so took some good pictures and we were all smashed!
Everyone the next day wasn't feeling great so we chilled out at the beach (the bungalows were right on the beach and it was so quiet) Tuesday night we decided to try out the Jungle Rave but it was a buddhist holiday and they weren't serving alcohol until midnight and was quite a bit of money for entrance fee so we left there and headed for Haad Rin beach for the pre full moon party. We also bumped into Mike & John again so they came with us too :) such a great night, everyone was jumping through the burning skipping rope (Menatlists!) and we were all raving hard and in case you are all wondering, nobody took a trip up mushroom mountain.


I chilled out Full Moon day, but can't say the same for the boys (Stefan, Blaine and Lee) who did an all nighter the night before, had 3 hours kip and started drinking on the beach in the morning.
Lee was so drunk by the evening that we all had our money on him bailing before we went! We all congregated in the communal area and got all dressed up in neon outfits and painted each other with neon paint.

So Lee made it out and we went back to the same place we were at the night before. We thought it was better the night before as wasn't as busy, there were 25,000 people on the beach it was insane. Just look at the photo to see how minging the air there was! Lee lasted one and a half hours and couldn't handle it anymore, he was really drunk and there was no room to move, everyone pushing past each other and was so hot and sweaty, so I accompnied him back to the bungalows. We had more fun on the walk home than we did at the actual full moon party. Definitely wouldn't do another one at Haad Rin beach, its definitely over rated!
 The rest of the guys ended up raving until the sun came up and at 8am when I got up the guys were just coming home.. Lora didn't get back until about 10! lol... good times for some, but i'm not really a hard core drinker - I actually didn't drink much that night at all, partly because I was keeping an eye out for Lee and I just felt like i'd overdone it recently.
Our last night we went out for dinner with the guys and had a quiet night, hardly anyone touched any alcohol and Lee stole my book "Memoirs of a Geisha" which I was in the middle of reading and that was him indoors for the night! Thoroughly recommend the book by the way if anyone's looking for a good book and not read it! Has to be one of the best i've read so far.
Koh Phangan was such a laugh, met some really brilliant people and will remember the fun times chilling at Bang Namken for ever :) Thanks to everyone who made it great!! xxxx

Koh Tao

We travelled o Koh Tao on the 1st March and headed for Crystal Dive School to do our PADI open water course. Emilie who we met in Chiang Mai and a couple of the other girls had done their dive master course there and had talked a lot about it so we just went with them and Emilie was still there working, so was good to see her again :) We managed to get 5 nights accommodation and the course for 9000 Baht, which is £180. For that we did the theory and took an exam and did 4 dives.
The first day was just theory and then the second we got kitted up and went to the swimming pool. Lee and Lora were quite nervous about it but seemed fine in the pool. That night Stefan (Big G) arrived in Koh Tao to spend a few days with us and crashed in our room.
The following day we had our first dive at Mango Bay, 12m in the sea and had to take our PADI exam first thing in the morning. I woke up Lee and he decided that he didn't want to do it as didn't like the feeling in the pool so after trying to persuade him to go and getting our lovely instructor to go and see him, Lora and I left him and we went off on the boat for our dives!
The following day we went to two different dive sites and it was amazing. Such a great experience, we got to see so many tropical fish and even spotted a turtle! Lee really missed out but just wasn't his thing. We were lucky enough to have our last day diving filmed so we have a brilliant memory of our dives and paid for a copy of the video which is awesome! I've taken some screen shots from it, hence the amazing pictures you see.

We had one day left before we were due to leave and Stefan was leaving for the national park so we rented scooters on the 4th day and rode to to Shark Bay to see the stunning beach we heard about. Such a shame that the weather was slightly overcast as the photos would be so much better. We
nearly got caught in a thunder storm so whizzed back to our accommodation before we got soaking wet!

The last day we had every intention of going to the twin rocks as the view is amazing and would have got some great photos but unfortunately the heavens opened all through the night and day, so we couldn't do anything with the bikes. There was one point I was teaching Lora to ride a scooter and just as we started the rain hit hard.. needless to say we got soaking wet! Anyway, so we chilled out, I knicked all her films off her laptop and gave her some IT lessons lol.

This was the end of the Koh Tao, and Lee & I said goodbye to Lora for the time being. I wanted to start thinking about heading off for Australia as the more money I go with the better unfortunately  (plus I've kind of had enough and want a change of scenery) so I decided to head for Malaysia to get a flight from Kuala Lumpur. I asked the travel agent how to get there, and they said we have to go via Krabi.
I really wanted to go to Phi Phi and Holly & Blaine were going there too, and also Stefan was heading in that direction, so I said to Lee how about we go there for a few days and then head to Malaysia, so that's what we did :) Lora stayed to  do her advanced diving course and spend some time with Emilie, so we bid her farewell and Lee and I took the night ferry over to Suratthani, and got a bus in the morning to Krabi where we first stopped at Railay at Holly's recommendation.

See you in Aus Lora, been fun travelling with you and we'll meet again soon :D

I'll write about that in another post soon... it's enough for one evening, I think i've deserved a Singha!

Hope everyone's well at home :)

Lots of love

Hannah xxxxx

Siem Reap 10-13th Feb

Hello :)

I'm currently sitting in a bar in Bangkok patiently waiting for our bus, we still have 3 hours left to wait so perfect time to tap away on my netbook.

So we left Sihanoukville on the night of the 9th and arrived early in the morning on Sunday 10th February - Chinese New Year.
The hostel we'd pre booked wasn't ready so we took a walk into town and after an uncomfortable night bus we went to a massage parlour to pass the time. We all had traditional Khmer massages :)
After a bit of food we went back to check in at lunch time and our room was available. We had a 3 bed room which was full of mosquitos but luckily had a mosquito net in the room to go round our futons on the floor. It was the cheapest place in Siam Reap and as it was Chinese New Year everything was fully booked. $2 a night each was a right bargain, so we didn't mind - I went and bought a can of Raid to kill the blood suckers!

Siem Reap has a large Chinese population so we were told to go up for the celebrations, so that night we went out to "pub street" had dinner at the Temple Bar and as watched an Apsara Show (Cambodia's Geishas) over dinner and went to a few bars after for the night. There was a cool bar called Angkor What? The street was really busy, good vibes and got chatting to the others on our table throughout the night. A lot of people we spoke to said the night before was much better, but we spent it on the night bus, and thinking about it its probably like New Years Eve for us.... so we left Sihanoukvile early where we were really happy to go to Siam Reap for this amazing experience of Chinese New Year... but just  didn't turn out that way!

It didn't stop us having a good time anyway and we bumped into the 2 girls sitting in front of Lee & I on the bus the night before (Nic & Bish). It was quite late at this point after we were both smashed. I had to go off in search of food to sober myself up, and came back drinking a chocolate milkshake (we are addicted... key part of our staple diet) and a bar of Cadbury's Dream for Lee - he'd been going on about white chocolate for ages and I found some for him :) We'd lost Lora as she was dancing inside with the Canadians from our table and only by chance did I find Lee again and the two girls from the bus. Turns out Lora went home as couldn't find us and we ended up getting whiskey and a bottle of coke to drink after being kicked out of the Temple Bar and stumbled over to the X Bar. We were there for a bit and decided to go home (at 5am). By this point Lee was absolutely smashed. I was feeling OK as i'd had the food so I escorted him back (this is becoming a nightly routine) but was honestly the funniest walk back ever as he repeatedly kept falling over.. i'd not seen him that drunk before, and as I was pretty drunk too, every time I tried to pick him up I collapsed with laughter!

The next day we'd planned to go to swimming in a lake nearby, the tuk tuk we booked for 10am came and went as we didn't wake until 12 and no surprise Lee was still drunk and I felt a little bit like death. We went downstairs where there was a pool table and a help yourself bar (which was very dangerous as the beers kept adding up) and thought the only solution would be to have a can of ice cold Angkor and a couple of games of pool.
We got chatting to two Canadian girls (there's a bloody lot of them out here!!)  and decided to go to a guesthouse two doors up with a swimming pool. We had a swim and chilled for a couple of hours (with a couple beers,  Lee was going for it!) and the conversation turned round to tattoos.... I said I wanted another one so said to Lee, shall we go get one? He got up and was like Yeah!! I want one now. He was rather drunk, topping up from the heavy night before but was dead set on getting one done (only last week he said he'd never get one lol!) so we literally got up, left Lora to sunbathe with the girls and went into town.

It was about 2pm when we left and didn't get home until about 9pm as we went to a tattoo shop in the X bar and waited for the guy to come back as he wasn't at his shop. We waited about an hour or two playing yet more games of pool and eventually he came back but he had a booking so Lee couldn't get his tattoo done there and then. He was adamant that he wanted it straight away so he told us of a Cambodian man further down the road. . A sign outside said he'd be there from 6pm so we stood outside and asked a Cambodian man to call him and say we wanted to book in, he did and we sat outside for a bit. Two French men walked by while we were waiting and we chatted to them and they said for us to come to their hostel "Garden Village" for a beer and to watch the sunset on the roof terrace bar.  We went up with them and had a look at tattoo designs for Lee. When he first thought about what he wanted by the pool he came up with " I AM PREGNANT" which he thought would be a good idea ?!?!?!? I told him no and that he needed to rethink something else otherwise the tattooist wouldn't tattoo him. He settled on stars so we took a look and found some ideas and we agreed on 5 stars in a diagonal line which looked cool.
We went back for half 6 and Sinath was open! We walked in and Lee was so impatient, the tattooist found the design we'd seen and drew it up and all the time Lee was saying "Tattoo me now!" It was half 7 by the time he was ready so I went off to get us pizza, spring rolls and beer and came back to watch him get inked!

While he was getting everything ready Sinath noticed that Lee didn't just have 2 nipples... he has 4 so was absolutely amazed at the other two he had and called all these Cambodians over to take a look.. some were disgusted with him lol but they all wanted to touch him and see for themselves! Sinath at the end then took photos of his tattoo and afterwards a picture of each nipple and then one of all 4... funniest thing!
He did a good job and made it unique by shading the stars each in a different way and Lee was happy with the result :) I agreed to go back the next day to get mine and we walked home.
On the way back Lee was shouting out "I've been stabbed" as he was walking through the town with his top off and clingfilm stuck to his hip. Definitely one of the funniest days as I was cracking up with laughter and reassuring passers by that he's just being a drama queen. One lady looked so concerned and feared for her life, so I had to explain that he'd just been tattooed.

The next day we chilled and went to visit Angkor Wat which is the largest religious monument in the world and its falling down so won't be there forever.We went for sunset and took some photos and Lee & I thought it was a bit of a let down really... wasn't at all what  I was expecting. I thought it was going to be some grand temple with lots of gold and bright colours, like every other temple we saw but how I was wrong.
We bought a pass for the next day for the Temples of Angkor as Angkor Wat is not just the only one, but it's the biggest tourist attraction.

Tuesday Evening I got my tattoo after we left Angkor and I already knew what I wanted. "Follow your heart and chase your dreams" and Sinath suggested the Khmer language. So I got him to write it out and looked good and was quite long so I got it along the bone in my forearm. (Never ever said i'd get a tattoo which is so visible.. but Cambodia really seemed to be the place where we've all done something we never thought we would!)
So we all hung out there that evening, Lora came with us and she was looking through the books too contemplating whether to get one as well!
She found a design that she really liked and symbolised her love for Asia - the 9 spires.
She got it done the following evening on her thigh.
Wednesday we booked into a hotel as the hostel was full and we hadn't planned on staying a 4th night and went to the temples of Angkor for the day.

We got a tuk tuk to drive us to each of the temples and went for the long tour which took us to about 9 temples, each one was falling down but the best one we saw was Ta Phrom which had massive tree roots all over it, so that was interesting and Tomb raider was filmed there.
Was a long day and we'd had enough by about 7 temples so we got the tuk tuk to drop us off back to the hotel.
We booked a bus to go up to Battambang for the following morning and went to the tattoo shop and hung out there all night and met quite a few Aussies who were getting tattoos before Lora. Good ending for our time in Siem Reap :)

Summary of Siem Reap - lots of beer, all got a tattoo and the temples of Angkor are overrated (or so me & Lee thought.. Lora disagrees) and if you ever go, stay in our hostel - Mangolo. Was great and so cheap :)

Will put up Battambang and Phnom Penh soon, now only an hour to wait until the bus to Koh Samui so tomorrow morning we'll be back on a beautiful beach where we belong :)

xxxxxx

Sihanoukville = Amazing

Hi everyone:)

So we arrived in Sihanoukville around midnight on Monday 4th February, we started our travels from Pai, North Thailand at 2pm the day before. We decided to do it all in one hit as we got to Bangkok at 5am and had the intention of staying there that night to break the journey up but  the hostel that we checked into was used as a whore house and Lee & I saw so many prostitutes taking men there and leaving half an hour later and sitting in the hostels reception at that hour just made us think yuck!!
We went to the first travel agents open at 7.45am and booked a bus leaving at 9am :) Lots of buses and eventually a taxi from the Cambodia/Thailand border took us down to Sihanoukville :) 1600km journey but we made it and found a nice guest house to check into.

We were so excited to be at a beach resort, the first place we've been on our travels where we can just have a dip in the sea and lie on the beach, so that's exactly what we did for 3 days & nights. We found a guest house with two massive beds for the 4 of us to share which had air con and was huge for $5 a night each and was only a few minutes walk to the beach.

In our time in Sihanoukville we literally did nothing, the nightlife there was pretty good, lots of westerners working in the bars and it was all a bit mad! Food was pretty good, similar to Thai and we stayed on Serendipity beach and the beachfront is  full of bars/restaurants with tables & chairs all on the beach and each one serving a BBQ for dinner as well as Khmer food and western dishes.
We met Faye the following day who we met in Chiang Mai as she was over there on her travels and Max came with us too (after a bit of persuasion)
We went out that night and ended up playing beer pong and ring of fire and consuming lots of buckets of whiskey and coke and we also met a girl called Marie from Denmark who was staying in the same dorm as Faye, so there was a few of us out and of course as there are so many travellers there there ended up being about 12 of us playing card games. Once we finished that as we were in a beach front bar we decided (half cut) that it would be a good idea to go swimming in the sea and that night ended up in me like this;

The following day me, Max, Lora and Lee had booked a boat trip and paid a deposit to go visit a desert island and go snorkeling etc but the boys were too hungover to move, so ended up just me and Lora.
They missed out! Beautiful clear waters and white sandy beach, we did a  little trek through the forest and ended up walking through a river and once that was over we got to lie on the white sandy beach for the afternoon :) Great hangover cure!

That evening the boys had recharged their batteries and we just chilled with a few beers in the company of Faye and Marie.
Thursday we chilled by the beach soaking up the sun. Got myself a pedicure and manicure on the beach and and on Friday we booked a booze cruise run by one of the bars..!
2pm it started and literally was just 40 travellers on a little boat getting drunk! I've never been on a booze cruise so was my first time, was seriously messy lol! We met at their bar "Dolphin Shack" and were given a free bucket of whiskey and coke before we even got on board (which we all said we wouldn't be getting too drunk) they went down a treat and as we were boarding the boat they gave us all a can of beer, shoved a hole in the bottom and all together opened the can and downed the beer - my first shot gun!
We got drawn all over with random facts about us which didn't wash off for 2 days!
Usual shenanigans on board; topless diving for free beers, beer bongs, licking chocolate sauce off each other and whiskey trains.. literally all on the boat for one reason.. binge drinking!!

 It was a lot of fun but by the time we got off (6pm) we were smashed! Lee & I went home as he needed to go to bed to sober up and I came off the boat and stepped on glass and my foot was pissing blood everywhere.
By the time I got back to our apartment my foot was fine so dragged Lee to a nearby bar, we had a beer and he went home but I stayed and played pool. I must have played about 7 games with the guys in the bar and won every time except one guy who finally beat me.. I couldn't believe my luck, the role however has now ended!

Lee & Max having a play fight with Cambodian kids, there was about 5  kids running around with them , they then all came and sat with me while I was skyping Mum and Emily, so sweet! I may come home with an adopted Cambodian child.. Angelina Jolie did it, so  can I :P

So anyway on our last day (Saturday 9th) we hung out in one of the beach bars in the shade with everyone and the Toms from Chiang Mai finally made it down and came met us for a couple drinks.
We booked the night bus up to Siam Reap and left a few days earlier than anticipated as the following day was Chinese New Year so took the sleeper bus that night after saying goodbye to Max who went to meet his girlfriend in Bangkok, our time travelling together had come to an end :(.
It was pretty decent, WIFI on board and bunkbed seats (hard to explain), such a curse having long legs and a rucksack, you need to be able to stretch out for a good nights sleep! Me & Lee were both a little tipsy when we got on and he had me in stitches, we really do bounce off each other :D

So that was Sihanoukville :) definitely the best beach I've ever been to and the Cambodians are so much nicer than the Thais!

I'll write about Siam Reap and Battambang soon, lots of love xxxxxx

I like Pai!

Hey guys hope you are all well :)

I've been chilling these last couple days on a beach in Cambodia and not done a lot but get sun burnt and drink excessive amounts of beer but it's been fun! We're off to Siam Reap tonight so i'm sitting in the shade in beach bar, just had a full body massage and a swim in the warm sea :)

So Thursday 31st Jan we left Mojito House in Chiang Mai with our new friends and traveled up to Pai, 3 hours north over the mountains and the journey was rather bumpy!
I found accommodation with availability called Darling View Point Bungalows and so we made our way there and was beautiful surroundings, very peaceful :) It was slightly up the hill from the town but only a 5 minute walk away.

It had a little swimming pool, bar, hammocks, camp fire at night and the owner "Darling" was a complete nutter! 50 or so years old and possibly the most craziest woman I've ever met who we where certain was always off her face on drugs!
We didn't arrive until 5pm so walked into town accross this rickety bamboo bridge and found a place to eat. The girls we met came on a different bus and got there earlier so after dinner we found them and went to a reggae bar after. We had a bit of a mental night the night before so we weren't feeling like a mad one so had a couple and went back to our bungalow and sat in the bar area and got chatting to some people staying there. We met the funniest girl called Francesca who was travelling with her boyfriend and just had a couple of Chang Chang Changs & was in fits of giggles all night :)

On Friday we rented 4 scooters and met up with the girls, they checked into place and rode the scooters up with their backpacks on too! We decided to go to the hot springs which was cool, so we all rode up in convoy, I didn't trust myself carrying a passenger so went on the back of Javiera's bike.

It was so hot in the springs, i'd never seen this before and definitely the wrong time to have gone there in the middle of the day as was boiling anyway! We were laying in one of the pools for a while which was 37 degrees,  so hot! One of the pools was about 80 degrees and you could buy eggs to boil! They were so tasty :) this nice Thai local let us have one each and he put some soy sauce on for us too.. so delicious! I randomly bumped into Francesca and Rob and got chatting to them for a bit and then they joined us for the day as we went to find a waterfall which was worth a look :)

Boiling eggs in the hot springs

On our way to the waterfall, can't really see it buut the scenery was beautiful.

So 12 of us went in convoy up to the waterfall which must have been about 30 minutes drive, got a bit lost but Zuzanna our "tour guide" got us there at last. Did a little trek up to it and chilled out. On the way back after the waterfall (too cold to go underneath that one) Javi & I got a puncture as we went over a massive pothole and probably didn't help that I'm a fat bitch lol! So we drove to a petrol station and a nice man helped show us where we could get the inner tube changed. Luckily was quickly sorted and made it in time to join the rest of the guys back at a view point to watch the sun go down. Was beautiful.

We got back, showered and changed and went out for dinner and met the two Toms as they arrived in Pai too :) we all had a mental night and there was 16 of us at one point, taking over the bars! I remember at the end of the night giving Mel a piggy back most of the way home and we fell on the bamboo bridge LOL.. MAN DOWN!! Things you do when your drunk.... that bridge really wasn't a good place to be messing about on!

So we stayed a third night which wasn't planned and Javi ended up seeing some friends she was travelling with before so the next day I rode the scooter. After breakfast (Pesto Eggs!!) The rest of us and the Aussie Toms went to find the Canyon but out of nowhere it chucked it down with rain, I ended up getting another puncture :S so went off to get that fixed and as I was at the back nobody realised I had to stop even though beeping my horn furiously lol!! So anyway mission  was over and went back to our accommodation.

Had a few drinks that night too but weren't feeling like getting trashed again so had a few at Spicy Pai - the Toms' hostel and back to Darling to chill out :)

The next day we all had breakfast and went our separate ways :( Lee, Lora, Max and I took a bus to Chiang Mai (3 hrs) then the overnight bus to Bangkok.

We arrived in Bangkok early hours of Monday morning, everywhere was fully booked so struggled to find a decent guest house, so ended up in Marco Polo which possibly was the worst place ever! Lora went to sleep but we couldn't so sat in reception using the wifi for an hour and in that time about 5 men and prostitutes were coming in and 30 minutes later leaving again.. DIRT! So we didn't feel like staying in Bangkok as the city is a hole so Max Lee & I went to to the first travel agents that opened at 745 and booked a bus to the Trat, which left an hour later (took 6 hours)! After there we managed to get a bus to the Cambodian border and from there got a taxi all the way over to Sihanoukville... 2 days of travel in one go but we made it by 11pm :) 

Just been chilling here on the beach for the last 3 nights and now waiting for a bus to take us to Siam Reap, so I shall post in a couple days after we've seen Ankor Waht!

Lots of love Hannah xxx