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Thailand, best country to finish in!
Thailand, my last country in a journey of many many countries :)
After having a very relaxed travel journey on the slowboat from Laos, I arrived in Chiang Maimand met up with my travelbuddies from the UK. Unfortunatly their past three days hadn't been much fun, as both got really ill.. Sooo my first day in Chiang Mai was spent in the hospital, getting both checked out. Luckily it was nothing serious, and after a few hours we left with some antibiotics. I must say, after having spent too many hours in Dutch hospitals, this one seemed much better organized!! We were quite impressed, maybe they should share their tricks with the Nl..
Next was my 2 day jungle trek, and that was awesome!! We did the non-tourist trek, and indeed, there was hardly a path to follow. Our guide kept picking things off trees and bushes and urged us to eat it, very cool! He wouldn't tell exactly what it was or how it would taste like, so it was quite the surprise to go from extremely sweet to extremely sour. When he picked up this major Australian-size bug and told us it was delicious for cooking, I kindly reclined... Think I rather go bungeejumping again.
Upon my return to the hostel, my travel buddies made plans to go to an authentic Italian restaurant, and who was I to say no? I can tell you, I still remeber the taste of that pannacotta.. I had a three course dinner and though we were the only customers, we couldn't stop screaming how delicious it all was. We were offered a glas of amaretto, and though it wasn't Disaronno, it wasn't the worst thing either ;)
Pai was my next destination, and I immediately fell in love with this cute little town!! I stayed a little out of town in a very outdoorsy and open hostel, where it was common to skip nights by being drunk and high on pills.. Alrighty. Anyways, I had another massage, did a whole day of yoga and ran into a friend from the slowboat. Good times!!
I was planning on taking a minivan from Pai back to Chiang Mai (4 hours), spent the night there, take a daytrain to Bangkok, nighttrain to Chumphon and morning ferry to Koh Tao. However, when I got to Chiang Mai I was told the train option wouldn't be ok since there was a high risk of missing my nighttrain out of Bangkok. So I decided to join my travelbuddies on a nightbus that left Chiang Mai 30 min after I arrived there again. Ah well, have been in so many buses now that it really doesn't need much preparation anymore!
We arrived in Bangkok around 4 o'clock in the morning, and spent the morning at the MacDonalds watching the drunk kids making a fool out of themselves. We than spent the day walking up and down Khoa San road, the shopping street with all its stalls in Bangkok. Also treated ourselves with another massage, and around 19.00 hours we were leaving on our next bus again. Again around 4 o'clock we arrived in Chumphon, waited an hour for another bus, which brought us to the ferry terminal. Waited another 2 hours for the ferry to leave, and finally we were on our last bit to paradise!
Koh Tao is heaven on earth. It has free swimming pools where you can chill all day, beach bars with huge mattresses and lounge chairs, bean bags everywhere, and even a few open air movie theatres. Very touristy though, proven by the presence of 7/11 shops, book and clothes shops, dive schools, pharmacies and tattoo shops. Weird combination but definitely the winning one apparently.
And we loved it! Met up with Celine, a dutch friend whom I partied with on Queensday as well, and we had such a fun time again. Set on getting our tan as much as possible, we spent a whole day on an island nearby. It was cloudy though, and ofcourse us geniuses returned as lobsters.
I also did 4 more fun dives, and on my last one I got to dive with a turtle!! So special and so amazing.. I tried to get a bit more closer while keeping a safe distance, but it made a turn and swam right in front of me, about a metre away. Beautiful! On my first dive I was viciously attacked by a cleaner wrasse, a tiny tiny fish that likes to nibble at your wounds. Can't say it looked very professional, trying to get away from a 2 cm fish while twisting and turning for 55 minutes :P but hee, their bites are really painful!
After a glorious 5 nights on Koh Tao, I went on my very last train/bus to go to Bangkok. Only 3 more nights and the party is over.. However I am looking forward to our Dutch toilets haha ;-)
- comments
Katja nice didi!it sounds all so familiar and i'm glad that you had an amazing time.loved pai as well:-)
Niels It's still so cool to read all adventures! Enjoy the last days there and you're welcome to relax here in Noordwijk a bit soon when you're back!