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This time round, Bangkok was little more than a hot frenzy. A short sleep and we were out on the street practicing our bartering skills for the months ahead, a few hours later we were already on a bus headed South out of Bangkok to the small town of Suratthani, from where we caught an early morning ferry over to Koh-Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. The quick exit was to make sure we made it down to Koh-Phangan in time for its infamous full-moon party, held, unsurprisingly, on the night of the full moon. Here, we were meeting Sarah (NZ) and her new amigos for the celebrations. There was a big group of us and the Sang Som buckets (yes plastic buckets typically filled with some edgy Thai whiskey, coke and red bull) were going down nicely, but when we finally made it to the beach, we soon got dispersed amongst the crowds and were lost to each other for remainder of the night. A couple of days later we then reunited on the neighbouring island of Koh Tao, a little more chilled out than Koh-Phangan with some nice bars and restaurants, especially the 'blue one.' Here we spent a few lazy, but not overly refreshing days on the beach due to the bath-water temperature of the water, went snorkeling (and saw a reef shark and lots of cucumbers), visited Nangyuan Island (gorgeous) and whiled away a very funny night (Jonny in a bright yellow wig and sparkly, short black dress dancing the YMCA being the highlight) with Thailand's prettiest boys at the Queens Cabaret.
A few days later we said goodbye to Sarah and co and went on to the Andaman Coast, an area hugely affected by the Tsunami in 2004. Our first stop was the Phuket Peninsula, where we chose to stay in the town. I was surprised to find the tiny number of tourists there seemed to be in Phuket, spending a whole night in a packed Thai bar with ALL Thais, and it wasn't until we attempted to visit the beach for a day that we realized where they were all hiding. The beaches of Laem Singh and Surin seemed to be miles away! And when we got there, of course, it poured down and we spent the whole day slurping milkshakes and reading to pass the time.
We soon moved on to Koh Phi Phi, an island almost completely swept away by the Tsunami, and although there were obvious bare patches where reconstruction hadn't yet begun, this place was crawling with bars, restaurants and guesthouses. We stumbled upon a lovely bar called Hippies which we then frequented a fair bit, spent a lot of time on the beach, and did a very good day outing/snorkel duo trip which involved seeing monkeys attacking nosy Germans, pretty purple fish, the idyllic Bamboo Island and Maya Bay, the setting of the 2000 film The Beach, minus Leo DiCaprio. We also took a walk to a viewpoint at the top of the mountain, which turned out to be a trek and a half, and by the time we got there we were so fed up the view hardly got a look in. Jonny also decided it would be a great idea to attempt the Burger Challenge, 800 grams of sticky meat served with piles of greasy chips and wedges, that if you managed to eat within 30 minutes, you had for free. Along with the other 5 guys on the table, he failed miserably, although not in the worst possible way as one of the guys threw up in his plate. Ewww.
Coming back to mainland, we spent our last night of Thailand Part 1 in Krabi, a bit boring but with a night market serving the cheapest Pad Thai (Thai noodles, mmmmmmm) we've found yet, at 50p a plate. The next morning we set off early to make it into Malaysia before dark.
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