Thailand Part Two

Following yet another gruelling day long bus journey - this time from Siem Reap in Cambodia, to Bangkok - with a quick bus change and passport stamp on the border - we arrived at our guesthouse near the Khao San Road in Bangkok for the third time in our trip! Knackered from our journey, we only ventured as far as the bar on the corner for a quick couple of beers. According to some of the shady characters around, there was a ping pong competition going on in town - or something like that - but we were happy with a beer and early night.

The next day, we were off down south to Hua Hin, to pay a visit to Annie, my aunt, who I hadn’t seen for years. The train journey was decent enough, although the air conditioning was pretty non-existent and the seats were leather, meaning that we were sliding around on them quite a lot. After four and a half hours of slipping, sliding and Lauren upsetting an old lady by nicking her seat, we arrived in Hua Hin. We eventually got to Annie’s at about seven in the evening - our tuk-tuk driver managing to get hopelessly lost on the way! Their condo was amazing, overlooking the tenth hole of the Palm Hills Golf Club - a really beautiful setting.

The next three days were great! Full relaxation, loads of food, a hot shower, comfortable bed etc…it was perfect to recharge the batteries since our last stop at civilization back in April at Dave and Storm’s in Singapore.

Batteries well and truly recharged, Annie dropped us off at the bus station, packed lunches in hands, early on the morning of Saturday 29th August. We were heading down to Koh Tao, an island a few hours south of Hua Hin. The bus was pretty good and got to the boat in good time, giving us a forty minute wait to enjoy our packed lunches. An hour and a half later, we were on Koh Tao, and in the back of a four by four heading to Tanote Bay, a beach on the far east of the island.

After a few attempts, we found some pretty good accommodation - a bungalow right on the beach with a pretty cool laid back bar about a minute’s walk away! Our veranda was blessed with a hammock, in which I settled in straight away. It was a stressful afternoon, reading the book, going for a swim, listening to the sea as I snoozed…!

The views from the hills at the top of the bay was fantastic - well worth the half hour uphill slog to the bar at the top of the hill to see them!

We had planned to dive, but the weather on the day we were planning to dive was so rubbish that we went snorkelling instead, which turned out to be fantastic and only cost £1 each rather than about £30!. Our evenings were mainly spent at the bar on our doorstep, drinking cheap beer and eating freshly caught fish off the barbeque (freshly caught tofu for Lauren).

So after three days of lounging, swimming, snoozing, hammocking, cards, drinking and eating, we decided to get into gear again and booked a ticket all the way down to Pulau Penang, the ‘foodie centre’ of Malaysia. We’d have spent longer in Thailand, but the weather looked like it was getting progressively worse, so we decided against it.

The first leg of the journey was a new experience for us - a sleeper boat to Surat Thani - back on the mainland of Thailand.

Unsure as of what to expect of this sleeper boat, we got to the port early and bagged two decent spots. The sleeper boat was basically a big old boat with hundreds of mattresses lined up - very cosy indeed!

We set sail at nine in the evening, and arrived in Surat Thani at five the next morning, where we were met by a bloke whose only word was “Penang” which he repeated with glee time after time. After he’d found us, we were piled into the back of a jeep and driven about ten minutes away where we got some coffee and toast, got put in another car, got driven another ten minutes then got put in another van and were finally on our way to the Thai / Malaysia border, some six hours away.