Thailand

Just an update on our trip to Thailand, the story begins in Bangkok airport. Our flight lands (remarkably smoothly) and as we have a nice window seat we can see that the airport is one of those ones where you park and get a bus to the terminal. So we park on up and get buses to the terminal, the whole reason I'm telling you this is because that is when we first noticed the heat. It was about 9:30pm and our clothes just sucked up all the moisture and the heat and it was like we were being boiled. I think it was about 36 degrees when we landed. We had arranged to stay in a reasonable hotel on the main river that flows through Bangkok, as part of that deal we got a free airport pick up (very handy). We met up with our driver and he led us off to the carpark, which was under the arrivals area. We got down into this carpark and we were standing next to this little shop and our driver says to us 'you wait here, I come back with car' so we waited. After about 5 or 10 mins I say to Peter, what if he doesn't come back? Turns out Peter was thinking exactly the same thing. Anyway he did come back and off we went to our hotel.

The majority of the drive to the hotel is along this really long toll road free way, not a great deal to report along there except the billboards. I have never seen such huge massive billboards. There are built like free standing scaffolding and just have these huge billboards on them. We saw some people putting up a new poster on one and you could just make out these tiny figures leaning over and unfurling the poster. Anyway they were huge! The other thing worth noting on the drive (this is a bit of an engineering thing so sorry to non engineers) was the traffic signals, some of them are your run of the mill traffic signals. Others however have countdown clocks on them. So if it's a green light it counts down to how long is left for the green and visa verse for the red. I couldn't decide if that was a great plan or not.

We arrived at our hotel and realised it was a little more flash then we had originally thought, wonderful service, wonderful drinks and interesting pool and grounds, loads of mosquitoes though outside.

The following morning we had about three hours after breakfast to do things in Bangkok, before we headed off to Koh Samui. We decided to take the local ferry up the river and maybe see some of the sights near the river. This was a really amazing experience, purely because you just don't get things like this in the western world. The local ferries are very long and you have to sort of jump the gap from the pier to the boat (it's not far). I couldn't help thinking of the lack of 'health and safety' that maybe we have all gone a bit overboard on. The ferry girls are extremely good at remembering who has paid and who hasn't, which I thought was pretty cool as there were over eleven stops and the ferry could probably take about 70 people. On our little tour of the river we saw mainly heaps of buildings and boats (not really that surprising!) What stuck us both was how you could have these really flash high rises right next door to these shanty building that look like they are about to cave into the river, it just looks really weird, it was like all the posh and slums were all mixed in together. I guess we both also thought that riverside would be top realty, but that was not the case! Two things that I can't describe or bring to memory is the smell and the heat, both are so uniquely non western. It also wasn't as scary and strange as I thought, maybe because of Africa, who knows. We got off the ferry and took a wonder down some streets towards some fancy Thai looking places. One thing about being white is it is really obvious! Everyone wants to help you, give you directions, take you places, tell you you are going to wrong way. I think after about 5 mins we got very used to saying no thank-you we are ok and walking like we had some idea of where we were going. The streets of Bangkok (or the little bit that we saw) were pretty much like any street, road, pavement, buildings. Yet the power lines/phone lines, the street stalls, the trees, the rubbish, made them oh so different. We found one tourist attraction and that was a huge reclining Buddha, it was huge and very impressive. After we had seen that we ventured through the animal market, which from what we could see was a whole LOT of dried fish, holding our nose, back to the ferry for the return trip to the hotel.

As we left Bangkok our last view was the vast amount of pollution and haze, onto the clean air of Koh Samui.

Koh Samui is a large(ish) Island of the southeast coast of Thailand. The airport is very similar to the one I imagine are in the Pacific, thatched, wall less buildings surrounded by bougainvillea and coconut trees. We got a limousine, which in Samui is a shared minibus to our accommodation. We stayed at Big Buddha beach on the north of the Island, called this because there is another large Buddha at the end of the beach! The place we were staying in was a very Thai (well not overly resort like) place. We had our own little bungalow with a view of the beach. The place we stayed in had no air conditioning which made the first night really hot, no bedding required. The place had it's own restaurant with Thai chefs so we ate lots of Thai food which was really yummy, the strangest food or most interestingly presented was Thai pineapple fried rice served in half a pineapple. I think we will both miss the food including the curries, which were yummy!

The next day consisted of a time table which went something like this, swim, eat, read, swim, eat, read, swim, drink, eat, sleep. Tough day and apart from getting sun burnt and finishing book number 1 not much to report!

Following day we were picked up and driven 500m down the road to a pier to embark on our day of activity. Snorkeling and kayaking. We signed up, paid our marine park tax and had some toast for brekkie. The off into the speed boat with the rest of our group. Our tour guide, Liam, was a laugh indeed, he liked the ladies, especially the pair of Swiss girls and our stereo typical LA chick who I don't recall ever wearing more then her string bikini. On our trip out to the marine park we were lucky enough to see a pod of pink and blue bottle nose dolphins (some where pink some where blue), very cool indeed. The snorkeling was pretty good, heaps of ropes and bits of ships though which seemed weird. Lots of sea lice though so now I have lots of little red dots (needless to say our LA chick didn't stay in very long). We then heading down to the rest of the 42 islands that make up the marine park. This was the inspiration for the movie The Beach. We stopped at an Island with a big steep staircase leading up some very sharp rocks to the top. We climbed up these stairs and at the top we had a lovely view of a landlocked saltwater lake that was tidal. It was fed by an underground tunnel, very pretty indeed. Also from the vantage point we could see some of the other Islands. Back down the ladder stairs to the beach and the boat. I was getting back on board the boat and Liam thought he would help me out by taking my camera (in it's case). I didn't have a second thought and handed it over. Two seconds later my camera is in the water, Liam had dropped it by accident. I was stunned, Liam was stunned, Peter was on to it, suggested we take it out of the case and dry it, take the batteries out etc. Needless to say Liam was extremely sorry and apologetic, I think he apologised non stop for about two hours. The camera, once dried and aired seemed to work ok and, touch wood, is still working. We did manage to get the photos off and so all is not lost. I did find it rather ironic that I have ummed and arrhed about buying a camera for about 4 years and I finally did it, and I didn't even have it a month before something happened to it. Hopefully it will be ok for a while.

Our final day was spent having a look round the tourist area of Samui, being hounded mainly by British guys in their late thirties trying to get Peter to buy into some dodgy hotel scheme. Driving, or in our case travelling, on the roads on Samui is an interesting experience. People don't exactly drive fast but they follow very few road rules at all. There must be at least one motorbike per person on that Island and no-one wears a helmet. On one section of road the pot hole was so bad it had worn through to the reinforcing steel.

Well we made it back home to England and now we are both settling back into work and life here. Looking forward to lots more trips this year, Easter with our friends from Ireland travelling around a bit of South England is our next planned thing. We will have our photos up on our website soon which no doubt will illustrate my rather epic tale.