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Today is Monday 13th august, more importantly it's the day after the Full Moon Party!! It's about 2 o clock an I'm sat on the floor of a boat heading for Koh Samui from Koh Phangan (Thai islands). I let stace have one of the few remaining seats because he is in a right mess from last night. As we sit on this over-crowded boat covered head to toe in bits of neon paint we couldn't get off the weird thing is that we are not that outbid place. There are a few other people with the same tired/hungover/painted expressions on their faces. However, I think we've left most of the people who were at the party on the in bed or on the beach recovering. We decided to book the boat trip to the next place before going to the Full Moon Party because then we would have to get up the next day and go rather than wasting a day sleeping! The party was mental! It's apparently low season so on average ONLY 8,000 people go, high season gets as many as 30,000!!! There were people covered in paint everywhere and everyone was so hammered! All the way along the beach there are small stall selling buckets which you can buy for about 200-400 baht (£4-8ish). In a bucket you get 1 can of coke/sprite etc, 1 extra strong small redbull, and 1 Sam som/vodka/rum (250ml), 1 bucket is enough for most! The beach is also set up with 6 huge sound systems with different music playing in each. It was amazing!
Anyway, Siem Reap was really good! We didn't drink too much because I was still suffering from the food poisoning, but we had some really good food and still went out but just didn't drink very much. We got a bus to Bangkok from Siem Reap which, yet again, turned out to be another drama! There were busses leaving at 9am claiming to get there at 4 bu as we wanted a haircut and to meet staces cousin we decided to get the 6am bus to get there for 12. We got on the bus at 6, and it left at about 7... Good start. After the usual stops at the drivers house and his friends cafe we got to the boarder where it took 70 minutes to get through, we were then told we had to wait for the next bus to pick us up in 40minutes..... An hour later we got on a bus that had been parked next to where our group had been sitting for the entire time. We arrived in Bangkok at about 3.45. And went to the hostel staces cousin had booked us in to. It was a pretty interesting place, from a distance on the outside it looked like a normal hotel then we went round a corner and saw the entrance. It was like a jungle trees and wood everywhere in the middle of a huge street in the centre of the city. The inside was the same it was pretty similar to the hostel I stayed in the rain Forrest in australia, all the halls where small with trees growing and hanging from the roof. We decided to go out to get a haircut, some food and meet staces aunty, uncle and cousin (contrary to popular belief they just moved here for work etc his uncle didn't buy a wife). The haircuts were an experience! Mine turned out ok but staces is really short, they might as well have shaved it he looks like he's on leave from the army. We then went to meet staces cousin Matt who took us to meet hi mum and dad (staces aunty and uncle) in a bar and the took us to a few places for some beer. There's some pretty 'interesting' bars in Bangkok!
We flew from Bangkok at 7 so had to leave the hostel at 5am!!! The flight was an hour so the was ok but yet again the busses and boats to get to Koh Phangan were going at their own pace. As always the 5 hour journey took 8 hours. We got there in the end and started trying to find 'top hill', our bed for the next 2 nights. Unsurprisingly it was at the top of a huge hill overlooking full moon beach! It was he'll to get to especially with our bags but defiantly worth it when we got there the views and the peace and quiet were so much different from the town. The owner was really chilled out and a bit of a hippy, he kept banging on about wanting only cool, good people to stay and wanting everyone to sit down and relax (he usually led by example). we met a couple staying there, the girl lived in Buckley and the lad broughton! Mental! The owner, Mr. Tee, put a BBQ on for everyone before the full moon party and cooked 6 huge barracuda! It was really nice bit a bit chewyer than most fish!
Wednesday...
...back on the road again. We are currently making our way from Koh Samui to Krabi. Koh Samui was really nice, although very touristy. They had mcdonalds, burger king, subway, and pretty every other fast food chains, as well as loads of pubs, bars and big hotels. We stayed the first night in the centre in a cheap and pretty crap hotel. As we only got there late and stace wasn't feeling on top form we chilled out for the first night played pool, got sone food and went to a few bars near to the hotel. The next morning we got up checked out of the hotel and booked into a more rural less touristy part of town, even though it was only 15-20mins walk away. We stayed in a place which was just as cheap as the first but a lot nicer, the rooms were bungalows! So it was pretty cool and it gave me the perfect opportunity to use my favorite (probably by default) inherited joke - why are they named bungalows? Because the builders couldn't be bothered so said bung-a-low roof on it, thanks dad! No one seemed to understand, it was wasted on them. Ebb though we'd moved there were still plenty of bars and restaurants close by so we went out for a walk.
At home when my friends and I have been bored we made a game by basically playing golf minus the golf equipment - using a football instead. We made courses where you start and finish in the same place but you have to go up a hill or through/round goal posts on the way. So you can imagine the bitter sweet feeling when we came across an 18 hole purpose built football golf course!! We went for a round but I was still pretty disappointed we hadn't invented it. It was going well for the first few holes but the grass was very short and it wasn't flat anywhere so it was hard to make the ball stop anywhere, it often rolled back past the start. Somehow I ended up with a really light, bouncy ball and stace got a heavy one. His ball was stopping and dropping in the hole from all sorts of angles, whereas mine was rolling over the hole, bouncing out of the hole and flying off down the course when the wind blew. As ever I soon got overly competitive an annoyed by the fact I wasn't doing as well as I could be, so one thing led to another and my ball ended up over a wall in what was basically a jungle. I decided to bite the bullet climb in and get it seeing as technically it was my fault it was there. After a few more miss-haps I got my game head on again and only ended up 4shots behind stace.
Later in the afternoon we went out and booked our boat-bus-boat-bus trip to another island on the other side of the Thai mainland, Koh Phi Phi. We were set to be picked up at 6.30am so we headed in to town for some food and a quiet night. We found a restaurant offering all you can eat BBQ chicken, pork kebabs and pork ribs with corn, salad and potato, all for £8 each. Deal. More expensive than our normal meals but you can argue with that offer. Two hours later we couldn't move, I've never eaten so much meat in my life. We were about to stop and get the bill when they brought over the biggest plate so far, we obviously couldn't leave it, people are starving in Africa. I've never ever been so full. We headed back toward our new bungalow stopping off at some bars to play pool and chill out for a bit. Turns out our new place is just off the red light district so we were getting dragged in to pubs to buy cheap drinks and talk to ladies of the night (most of whom were defiantly men). We managed to find a quiet bar and played against the owner and her sister and managed to get some free drinks from them after we won a game or two. Not surprising really as her sister was 23 and literally about 4 foot I'm surprised she could see over the table, we've got photos.
We got back about 1 an set the alarms for 5.30 to get up for the bus. We woke up and waited... 6.30 went. No one had turned up so at 7 we rang the number on the tickets. No one. Knew what was going on so they told us to walk to the travel agent where we booked it because we hadn't been booked on... Brilliant. Bags in hand we started the walk, got there about 10 minutes later to find out it opens at 10. A few phone calls later we got hold of the guy we booked it with who said his driver was on his way it was now 7.20, yesterday he told us it was an hour to the boat which left at 8. Five minutes later a car turned up ad told us he was driving us to the boat, he drove us half way where we had to get out and into another car with a woman, her sister and her sisters son on his way to school. She took us to the pier in a pretty sharp time but we still got there for 8.15 so the boat had gone. They obviously felt pretty bad so the company gave us a refund and bought us breakfast. The woman cane with us to breakfast whilst her sister went to drop off her son at school, she help us buy new tickets to get most of the way to Koh Phi Phi but as we'd missed the boat it meant we wouldn't get to Krabi before the last boat (3pm) to Koh Phi Phi. So we'd have to have a night in Krabi. We aren't to bothered about that as we were originally going to do that before we decided to skip it as people had said with the short time we had there are nice places to go an the new tickets have ended up costing us more, but no point crying over spilt milk now we are on the way an it could be a lot worse!
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