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We've been quite bad at keeping the blog up to date over the last few weeks so there's a lot towrite about now!!We've been having a really great time and can't believe we're not even half way through yet!!
We arrived in Phuket in Thailand needing some much deserved relaxation after a hectic week in Hong Kong. We stayed at Kata beach, the smallest of the three main beaches in a gorgeous place called Boomerang Village. We treated ourselves to £25 which is v expensive for Thailand (considering where we are staying at the moment is £1.80 each!!) It was worth it though - we had a beautiful little bungalow which they filled with flowers and incense and the pool was lovely! They had done the whole thing really well so you felt like you were in the middle of nowhere with music playing and water fountains! And of course Happy Hour at the bar! J We originally booked for 1 night but ended up staying for 3 it was so nice! We lazed around the pool and had a day at the beach to relax - the waves were really strong though and I kept getting knocked over, much to Dave's amusement! Phuket was the first place where we didn't have any sort of plan for where to go next. It was quite a weird feeling at first not having a clue where we would be staying the next day!
We decided to travel by bus to Phang Nga, northeast of Phuket to see the famous Bay there. People call it the Halong Bay of Vietnam because of all of the limestone karst formations coming out of the sea. It's thought that thousands of years ago the sea level rose so much that it flooded all of the mountains leaving the dramatic tips sticking out of the water. We stayed in Phang Nga town itself which has hardly anything to do really! It's more of a base to do trips to the bay itself! We stayed in a bizarre guesthouse that was a former family home but they had left it pretty much the same as it was so there were still family photos everywhere! We booked our bay trip with Mr Kean, a funny little Thai man recommended in our guidebook and pretty famous in Phang Nga! He's like the Dell Boy of Thailand - whatever you need, he can arrange it, I'm sure if you were after a kidney he'd know someone who knew someone!! He even arranged a 'taxi' for us when we were leaving that just turned out to be him in his car!!
The bay trip by long tail boat was beautiful, with stunning scenery all around. We were with two German guys who were really nice and our guide who spoke about 5 words the whole day which wasn't very useful. We stopped at a cave with stalagmites and stalagtites (and loads of tiny spiders - thank god for head torches!) and went through mangrove swamps, where we saw 2 alligators (well they looked like alligators, they may have been something slightly different- we weren't hanging round to find out!) At lunch time we were taken to a tiny little isolated beach, where the guide made a joke about seeing us tomorrow (Haha) but then he actually did leave, taking the boat with him a in exchange for a cool box and some water. Lunch turned out to be paella and about 20 bananas!It was amazing swimming in the sea with the enormous jungle covered rocks as our scenery! Then the monsoon came…….it rained, it poured, we had no shelter except a few trees, no boat- it was funny but not ideal! Of course the guide thought it was hilarious when he returned 2 hours later!! We then went to 'James Bond Island' aka Scaramanga's hideaway in the James Bond film 'The Man with the Golden Gun'. It was busy with tourists but I'm not surprised as it was so beautiful! On the way back we visited a floating Muslim Village.
After the trip we weren't sure where to head next and the German guys were heading to Khao Lak on the Andaman coast so we decided to go too. We stayed in a little hut and I'm pretty sure we were the only people staying there! Lots of places were under renovation in low season so it was empty we even had the pool all to ourselves! Not long after we got there I did something really stupid…we were walking along the road and there were some men working on the road. Obviously they don't have any warning signs for this type of thing and I wasn't paying attention so walked straight into their freshly laid concrete!! My whole foot was covered in cement and having obviously watched too much television, I thought that concrete dried in seconds (I seriously had images of me walking round with a big old concrete foot for the rest of the trip!) and ran around like a nutcase trying to find water! Thankfully a woman from the restaurant (yes I had a big audience! J ) took me to a hose pipe where I managed to get it all off! I was so embarrassed but just glad to see my foot again!!!
Khao Lak itself had a lovely beach but it was quite sad there because it was one of worst hit places by the tsunami. Most of the places had been rebuilt so they were relatively new but other people must not have had the money to start again and there were shells of houses left in ruins along the beach! We decided one day was enough so the next day we were on the road again to Khao Sok National Park which we had really been looking forward to!
We caught the local bus which was a challenge to even get on. We were waiting at the bus stop and all the man on the bus did was wave and if you want to get on you wave back but they don't slow down at all so it had gone all the way down the road before it managed to stop - there we were chasing the bus down the road with our backpacks on huffing and puffing!!
In Khao Sok we stayed in a really nice place called Nung House which was run by the park warden's family. The people were really friendly there and they had a great restaurant where we met a German couple and got chatting!We were originally staying in a treehouse but the fan wasn't working and as lovely as it was, it was far too hot without a fan! The next morning we went on a 2 day 1 night trip to Cheow Lan Lake on the other side of the park. There was just us and another couple; Chris and Ria from Brighton, who we really clicked with. It was much nicer to have a small group so you could get to know eachother better! We went by van to the longtail boat which took us to our accommodation - by day lovely little bamboo huts in a row on a floating rafthouse. We could see water beneath us through the gaps in the floor of our room!! (A very different story by night!!!) The location was absolutely stunning and so peaceful! We went swimming and canoeing in the lake and then had lunch. We were really impressed by the food, we even got smiley faces on our pancakes for breakfast! We did some trekking to a cave and to a bamboo raft and on the evening after our elephant fish dinner, we went on a night safari. We saw civet cats with their eyes shining in the jungle. Once we were settled in back at the rafthouse the real fun began!!!..........there were enormous spiders and a rat in the toilets, which were handily located a fair walk away from the huts and after 11pm ALL of the lights in the whole place were turned off! Chris and Ria braved the toilet and were petrified by a very loud unidentifiable sound!! We were in our hut and we heard rustling, we knew something was in there with us so we bolted it straight out of the door. Dave was behind me and saw that it was a big fat rat climbing along the bamboo in the roof inside!! Disgusting!! After that we decided we weren't sleeping in the hut so we went to the communal eating area and tried to sleep at the table there…but then there were the strangest noises I have ever heard in there- some kind of Yetti was in the kitchen so we left sharpish!! When we went back to our bed there was rat poo on it! Not nice!!
In the morning we were all pretty tired and the prospect of trekking all seemed a bit much! Jumping in the lake to wake us up was really refreshing though! We went on a morning safari where we saw gibbons and langars (I think) which was really cool! After a slightly delirious breakfast where none of us could stop laughing we were so tired we went on the boat and all of a sudden we just pulled up at the land thick with jungle. We were all a bit confused until our guide, Bom, whipped out a big knife and started hacking through the branches and jungle. We just followed and it was really cool to trek somewhere that wasn't a path or anything!
After that we had lunch and were on our way back to Nung House. It was one of those trips where there are certain things you don't like but if you're with the right people you can really see the funny side!
Back at Nung House Chris and Ria decided to stay there too and we went to a 'monkey temple' where there were loads of cute monkeys, macaques I think. There was a mother and a baby that the guide said was 7-10 days old - soooooo cute! Typical that the camera ran out of battery! We enjoyed another evening of hot showers, food and beer, then Chris and Ria headed to Malaysia the next day. We stayed another day to go elephant riding which was absolutely brilliant! We thought it would just be walking around a flat field but it was actually walking up the river towards a waterfall! It was so amazing, the size of the steps the elephant, called Pepsi could take were massive!! We found out he was the same age as us and we saw his mom who was 45! We also got to feed him bananas which was fab! He played with a football too which was really clever! We were a bit worried at first that it might be cruel but we found that each elephant only does 2 trips a day which isn't too much and they get fed loads!! Definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far!
Lots of love Claire and Dave x
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