Long bus journeys and bad weather

Tuesday 9th September...

Koh Pha Ngan

We left were supposed to leave Bangkok at 6pm on Sunday and were supposed to be on a bus that went all the way to Koh Pha Ngan to arrive at 11am Monday. Hmm.

We left at 7pm as the travel operators had overbooked the coach (from what I could make out), stopped at 11pm for dinner and then just as everyone was going to try and get a few hours sleep they put on some weird greek tradegy movie which was so loud even listening to my MD player didnt drown it out. We stopped somewhere at 4am but no one had a clue where we were, then they took all our bags off the bus and left us there! We eventually realised we must be in Surat Thani but then were told we had to wait till 8am for another bus to come and get us to take us to the ferry. We eventually got to Koh Pha Ngan around 12:30 but I suppose you cant really complain for 400B. We were told that the main area of the island, Had Rin was really commercial and the beach wasn't very nice so we decided to catch a boat round the coast to Had Tien which sounded nice in the guidebook. We got there and it was completely dead and the beach huts were ages away from the beach, which was all shingle! We decided maybe Had Rin wouldn't be so bad after all so we got the boat back there and trapsed around trying to find somewhere to stay for ages. Almost eveywhere decent was fully booked. Our choices were limited to a crappy aircon room which didn't lock for 400B or a 5bed room witha shower down the road for 150B. We were going to take the latter one until a woman stopped us on our way and said her friend had rooms available. We were a bit suspicious but followed her anyway which was lucky cos we got 2 bungalows for 350B (between 2 people) with a balcony and bathroom and only about 5 mins walk from the centre so far enough away you can still sleep at night.

One of my guard dogs

We went out for a few drinks last night and I went to bed just after midnight feeling tired ad sick but Janine, Kathy and Kate stayed out drinking buckets of Sam Song (80% proof Thai rum) mixed with Shark (like Red Bull) and coke. Needless to say they felt like shit this morning while I was fine! Actually Kathy wasn't too bad and Kate was just a bit tired but Janine was really ill and sick all day today and had the worst hangover she had ever had! We attempted to get a tan today but the weather is really cloudy and windy so we ended up just lying on the beach getting sand blown all over us until it started to pour with rain! Maybe coming here in monsoon season wasn't the best idea Ive had...

Sleeping Beauty

A bunch of coconuts fell off one of the trees outside the bungalow tonight so I decided to attempt to crack one open which took a while as there is about a 6 inch husk covering the actual coconut.

The place here isn't bad over all, even if it is incredibly commercial. Unfortunately though, the taking photos of tourists with animals trade has emerged here, and I got handed a baby gibbon last night. Since I now know that they keep them awake on ampethamines, its not a nice thing to see.

Tomorrow night is the full moon party and not sure where we're going to go after that. The weather isn't too great anywhere round here at the moment. We were intending to go to Krabi and some islands over on the other coast but someone told me its been raining non stop there so we might stick to this coast.

The view from our bungalow

Will keep you posted!

xxx

Tuk Tuk terror

Very tired somewhere in Surat Thani at 4am