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Thailand Blog (Sat 7th - Sat 21st Jan 2012)
Thailand…
So on to my trip to Thailand. So I flew out of Incheon airport to Bangkok about lunch time on the 7th January, via Guangzhou in China. It was just a short stop in China, so no opportunity to explore the city, but needless to say from the plane, the area looked like how I imagine Stalin's Russia to look like, so I wasn't too disappointed about that to be honest! The airline I flew with though was very good. I flew with China Southern, and they only cost 333 pounds return from Incheon to Bangkok. Hold luggage, all meals and all drinks were included as part of the price too. I was also given seats with extra legroom for all 4 flights, without even requesting it, so that was nice. I'd recommend flying with them for sure.
I landed in Bangkok about 10pmish on the Saturday, and then after a long wait at passport control, it was a case of get a taxi to my 1st (of 5 accommodations) for the holiday, to meet Lee who was already there. The hotel was a really nice 5* hotel called Anantara Bangkok, that me and Lee got really cheaply on Last Minute.com. The hotel was very nice, and it was a shame that we only had about 14 hours there, as it would have been nice to spend a bit longer there living in luxury.
Any way, I got there about 11.30pm and I interrupted Lee in the bar where he was chatting up some old bird, and then we had a few beers there and then decided it would be nice to go and get some food. This is when being in a 5 star hotel is dangerous; as the concierge asked us if we needed a taxi, and we said yeah we'd like to go for some food. Now if you get a taxi outside a hostel, they'll probably assume you have no money, but when you get a taxi at a 5 star hotel, they assume you have some money to spend, so the taxi driver took us to a Thai restaurant, and said he'd wait for us while we ate, despite me saying he didn't need to.
We got an alright Thai dish each and a drink and it ended up costing us 20 quid each, which for Thailand is ridiculously expensive!!!! So clearly we were pawns in a Taxi-restaurant scam whereby the taxi driver takes you from your 5 star hotel and then to a certain restaurant where they charge you a lot for a meal, and I assume the taxi driver gets something for the amount of people he brings there. This was the 1st of many such scams that seem to exist in Thailand, but thankfully after this first little scam, we were a bit wiser to such things afterwards and didn't get caught out again.
We went back to the hotel after the food as we were pretty tired from traveling that day. The next day (Sunday 8th Jan), we spent the morning chilling by our pool, and using the sauna. It is here where I wished maybe we had booked 2 days at the hotel, as the weather was sunny, very hot, and the hotel facilities were top…also there were some very sexy Russian ladies on show around the pool.
Any way by noon we had to get out the hotel, and in the evening we were going to get the overnight train down to the south part of the Thai peninsula to a place called Surat Thani, so we could then go to the island of Koh Samui to meet some of Lee's friends from England. So we had about 6 hours to go do some exploring of Bangkok.
Bangkok Part 1 (Sat 7th - Sun 8th Jan 2012)
So…Bangkok…well it's a funny old place, and I do wonder that there is not a great many things to see and do in Bangkok unless you wan to watch a ping pong show*, get a prostitute, or buy a suit…sadly we didn't do any of these things! ;-)
The city is a huge, sprawling metropolis, heavily congested and heavily polluted. It's hot and humid all year round, with no real temperature differential, and so coming from the daytime -10C of Incheon, to the 35C of Bangkok was definitely a bit of a shock to the system! My first impression though really was it was just all traffic, and lots of colour.
I mean they do make things colourful. The taxis are all bright colours, and there are bright gold Buddhist temples everywhere, as well as giant paintings, and giant photos of the Thai King (Bhumibol Adulyadej) everywhere…he really does seem to be very popular as his face adorns every public building, and is in taxis and shops, and train stations and all manner of different places. I couldn't imagine the Queens face peering at you on every street in England somehow. Incidentally, he is the longest current serving monarch in the world as he has been on the throne since 1946, so 6 years ahead of our own Queen who is of course in 2nd place in the list.
Buddhism is huge, and seems to be the only real religion, and most people seem to follow it to some degree, as most taxi drivers have Buddhist things in their taxis, and you always see Thai people walking up to statues of Buddha to pray, and then going back about their business. There are also lots of Buddhist monks everywhere too. We did go to a Buddhist temple, and saw a few from the outside, but as nice as they are, you kinda think if you've seen one, then you've seen them all. Other than temples, and places that sell suits, then there isn't much else to see as far as I could tell tourist wise, so me and Lee kinda sacked off the sightseeing early and headed to a bar outside Bangkok train station to sample some of the local brews.
The beers in Thailand are brilliant. You have Chang, Singha, Leo and some others and they're all brilliant and taste clean, crisp and refreshing. Korean beers are by and large rubbish, they are cheap to be fair in Korea, like often less than 1 pound 50 for a pint, but they do taste like your typical American style beers like Bud or Miller and therefore a bit gassy and bland. Thai beers though are a different story. They come in small and large bottles, and Chang and Singha are deffo the best. Chang is dangerous though. If you have a few of the large bottles of Chang (680ml) at 6.5% then you're well on your way to being in a state of drunkenness!!!
Any way we had a good munch on some Thai food that was very tasty and cheap, and then sat back and nailed a few beers while sat on some plastic chairs on a busy main road waiting for our train to depart at 7.30pm.
The Overnight Train (Sun 8th - Mon 9th Jan 2012)
I never thought I'd say a train journey was one of the best experiences of a holiday, but the overnight sleeper from Bangkok to Surat Thani was a top experience! The train is huge, and has lots of seats, that at about 9pm, they convert them into bunk style beds. The beds are actually surprisingly comfy and big enough even for a 6 foot 2 man like myself. You get a blanket and pillow and curtain for privacy. In 2nd class that we were in, you get a fan too which is cool. In 1st class you get Air Con, but the problem with this I'd envisage is it getting too cold, and you can't control the Air con so you just have to put up with it. With the fans we could switch them off if it got too cold.
The trains didn't have the same health and safety as an English train as when you walked between carriages, there was nothing to stop you jumping/falling/getting pushed off the train as there was no doors at these joining areas so you had to make sure you weren't too pissed that you may fall off the train in the middle of nowhere, just trying to get to the toilet! ;)
The best bit wasn't the beds though, or the potential for near-death experience, no the best bit of the train was the restaurant cart!!!! The train had a restaurant cart area where you could get hot meals, and get beers while rattling along through the Thai countryside, with the windows down!!! It was here where me and Lee got a few more beers down our necks and got chatting to some people on the train. The best thing was they played cheesy dance tunes in this area, and also had disco lighting too, and by about midnight the whole cart was rocking, like some sort of cheesy nightclub or something! I'd deffo like flying more, if you could just turn the plane into a nightclub and mingle and dance and have a good old boogie at 30,000 feet….tune of the night was deffo N Trance - Set You Free….I have a good video somewhere of this "going off big time" that I'll have to put on Facebook!
Chaweng, Koh Samui (Mon 9th - Wed 11th Jan 2012)
So I woke up the next morning with a bit of a hangover, and we got off the train at Surat Thani, and got a bus for about 90 minutes to the port where we were going to get the ferry to Koh Samui. Now the island of Koh Samui isn't very far away from the port, and we were on one of these fast ferries, and it didn't seem windy particularly, so I wasn't particular anticipating rough seas….Now if I had have anticipated rough seas, then maybe I wouldn't have eaten a cheese and onion sandwich and bag of crisps just before boarding the ferry, I probably would have remembered to buy some seasickness tablets too, and I maybe I wouldn't have drunk myself stupid for 8 hours the day before!!!
Needless to say the 60 minute ferry ride was torture and I tried, and failed in my attempt not be sick over the side of the boat!
I still felt rough when we got to Koh Samui and on the taxi ride to Chaweng to the hotel where Lee's friends were staying. The island was a lot bigger than I thought it would be and it took 40 minutes to get to the other side of the island to Chaweng. I was pretty glad to get out the taxi as didn't fancy being sick in a Thai taxi!
So we got to Chaweng and I met Lee's mates from England, Anna, Keeley and Dean who were traveling around Asia. They are all really cool, funny people. It's nice as well to speak to people from the UK with that North of England attitude and humour. Me and Lee are probably the only 2 people from the north of England in the whole of Incheon (city of 2.7 million people), so it was good to have some of that stupid, northern banter (aka talking s***!) with people again. They are known collectively as "The Three Idiots", and this is reflected on their Travel Facebook page. Now I prefer "The Idiots Three" moniker. So when I refer to The Idiots Three in the blog from now on you'll know who I am referring to, though "The Idiots Three" is a bit of mouth full, so I may just refer to them under the acronym 'TIT' going forward….:-p
So I checked into my 2nd accommodation, which if being honest, was definitely the worse accommodation of the holiday. We went into our room, and there was 2 pairs of boxers shorts strewn across the floor, rubbish everywhere, and also the shower only dribbled out cold water….not the nicest but hey we were only there a couple of days. That first day we just had some food and a few drinks, and then the next day we had a car hired so we went out exploring the island. The car was the s***test, oldest Suzuki jeep I'd ever seen but I kinda got attached to it. You could only fit two people in the front so the other 3 of us were in the back on rotation. It felt like one of those American High school movies, when the kids go to the beach for Spring Break with people piling on the back of the SUV shouting "Spring Break"!!! ;-)
There is no health and safety in Thailand as we regularly saw families of 4 people on one scooter with no helmets, so us all stood on the back of a jeep seemed pretty safe in comparison! Getting fuel is different too, as it involved buying an empty Martini bottle, filled with what looks like Olive Oil (but is apparently fuel) from some random shop. Only costs 80p a litre though so I'm sure people would probably buy it in England if they could, though I'm sure there are probably rules in England on restaurant owners selling their own brand petrol as a sideline.
Koh Samui is a nice island, very tropical and green with lots of forests, mountains, and palm trees, with lovely white sandy beaches, though the waves that batter Chaweng beach are pretty strong, but good fun too.
So in the car we went to some famous rocks that are by the ocean which are supposed to represent a penis and a vagina (sorry mum!), the penis one was pretty accurate to be fair, but the vagina one wasn't all that accurate, but then maybe I don't have extensive enough knowledge on such matters…Only in Thailand and maybe Amsterdam would such things be considered a top tourist attraction!!!
We then went to find some famous waterfall in the middle of the forest, but we quickly sacked that off when our unofficial guide tried to lead us on the route to the waterfall, and it involved some steep climbs on slippery rocks in a forest, and we all came very ill prepared for such treks, wearing just flip flops. Also it was incredibly humid in the forest and we were all dripping with sweat, so we decided to give the waterfall amiss, and go to visit this bar and swimming pool that was further up the mountain.
It took a fair while to get there, especially in our spluttering automobile that was struggling up the steep mountain pass. There were a few moments on a steep incline, where the car almost stopped, and Lee had to say to Deano "don't you f***ing stall this now!" or else we would've gone rolling straight back down the hill with our exposed passengers on the back, liable to be making direct contact with whatever we hit first!!! ;-)
Any way we made it to this bar-cum-pool and we had a dip and had a look at some wonderful views across the island. The weather was a bit overcast, but it was still very peaceful and relaxing. While we were admiring the views we noticed a Zipwire assault course in the forest across from where we were and decided we'd go and give it a try.
So after a momentary payment "misunderstanding" ;-) with the pool owners, we went across to do the Zipwire course. This was one of my favourite parts of my holiday for sure.
It was a Zipwire through trees across several platforms built around trees. It lasted a long time as there were about 6 or 7 different wires, of varying length, and varying height from the ground. It was quite exhilarating at time, though the scariest bit was our lives were in the hands of a teenage boy, and his 9 year old brother who didn't speak English. So when the 9 year boy is attaching your safety harness and smirking, you kinda wonder if maybe you'll end up plunging to your death! ;-) It was really good fun though and I only had one injury, when the little scamp said I could go, but Keeley actually hadn't finished her zip run in front, and so I ended up coming to the finish behind the trees and saw that Keeley was still attached to the line, and I went flying into the back of her! Thankfully I only grazed my wrist as Keeley took most of my 16 stone impact! ;-)
That evening we went out around Chaweng in Koh Samui, and ended up in an Ice Bar which was a bit different when you've been in warm weather all day. We also went around a few other bars too. It was good, but Chaweng was a bit touristy to be fair, it felt like Magaluf, and it was a bit seedy too, as there were prostitutes at every bar trying to get you to come into the bar and drink with them. I mean the whole area seemed to be built on a sex industry, and it was a bit too in your face, and it was full of 60 year old fat Germans walking around with gorgeous 20 year old Thai girls, and so it felt a bit too seedy and fake.
Lamai, Koh Samui (Wed 11th Jan - Sat 14th Jan 2012)
Anyway, the next day TIT had to leave as their visa was running out so they went to Malaysia and Singapore, and so me and Lee decided to move to another area of Koh Samui called Lamai for a few days, and we stayed in a resort called Lamai Chalets which were a lot nicer, as they were right by the beach and had a pool and wifi and free breakfast included. They were only about 12 quid a night too. The shower was cold still but hey you can't have everything! ;-)
So in Lamai we met a friend of a friend of Lee's, who owned a sports bar there so we met him and got very drunk and ended up watching the Liverpool - City League Cup semi final with a load of scousers at 4 in the morning, who were actually pretty sound as far as scousers go! ;-)
The next day was a right off as we were both feeling like death, and the weather was s***, and so the day after we decided to make a move to the island of Koh Phangan for a change of scenery. So we got the ferry in the pissing rain to make the short ferry ride to Koh Phangan. Thankfully the sea was much calmer and so there was no repeat of the previous ferry journey.
Koh Phangan (Sat 14th - Tue 17th Jan 2012)
My first impressions of Koh Phangan were much better than Koh Samui. The island is smaller, more peaceful, and has a big hippy vibe to it. There's much less of the seedy prostitute side to it, and a more relaxed (maybe stoned!) side to it. The beaches were amazing too and the sea was much calmer and stays shallow for what seems like miles and miles.
Our accommodation was brilliant here too, and probably my favourite of the whole holiday. They were called Lime & Soda Beach Resort, and they were close to the ferry terminal, just around the corner. They were on the beach, and had a really nice beachside pool, bar and restaurant. The cabins had free wifi, cable TV and we actually got a warm shower at last…hurrah!!
I did say to Lee that the only thing we needed now was a couple of sexy Swedish girls to be in the cabin next door, and no word of lie, that actually came true, when two such girls did move in! Sadly we didn't know they were Swedish until some Kiwis had already muscled there way in to their affections at the bar, so that sadly ended up a no goer!
Still the accommodation and island were perfect, and the place was a bit cheaper than Koh Samui when it came to food and drinks, so all the ingredients were there EXCEPT for the weather! The weather was still s*** as it had been for a large portion of our time outside of Bangkok. I didn't really have any colour whatsoever, and as good as all the other things above are, in the day time if you don't want to spend money, then you kinda need the sunny weather.
So it was a little depressing and as me and Lee were watching the FULL match repeat o Leicester City v Southampton in our cabin, we did both start to wonder whether we should go back to Bangkok again, just so we could get some sun!
Thankfully though, saviours came in the form of Darren and Mikayla who were 2 people we knew from our orientation in Korea, who were also on their vacation. They surprised us by turning up at our resort unannounced, and then Christy and Ronan also turned up in Koh Phangan, so things got better, and that evening we headed out to Haad Rin beach which is famous as the beach where they gold the Full Moon parties.
Even though it was a week after the full moon party, the beach area is obviously lively every day of the week, and so we bought buckets of booze, and there was music and fire breathers and such like, and we got terribly drunk on the beach.
The next day was horrific, and I struggled with a bad hangover which I managed to make a bit better by sleeping most of it off.
Then it was out to the Half Moon party.
Half Moon Party (Mon 16th Jan 2012)
The Half Moon party for those that do not know is a party they have that celebrates the half moon appearing, but instead of on the beach, it is in a bit of a jungle area, a mile inland. You pay to get in the Half Moon party (10 quid) whereas the Full Moon Party is free, but the Half Moon is known as being a bit safer as it has security and is closed off, and is less commercialized than the Full Moon party. The layout was certainly very interesting with lots of UV lights and mad, crazy drawings, and video walls everywhere playing trippy videos. It had a really mint sound system; and the music was really good quality psy-trance. The crowd seemed up for it and cool too, with a fair few hippies and crusties with their dreads, and skirts made of wheat! ;-) And there was not too many k*** as well which was nice.
The alcoholic drinks were ridiculously cheap too. Even a bottle of water cost you 40p for a 500ml bottle, which got me thinking to when I had to pay 11 pounds for a bottle of water half the size in Amnesia in Ibiza!!! Any way we had a good time there but we didn't stay until the end as the next day we were getting a ferry back to the mainland, and then doing the overnight train again.
The water was like a duck pond on the way back, and the sun finally came out, so I took my top off and got myself my first bit of colour on the ferry journey back. The train was delayed a couple of hours on the way back to Bangkok, and we weren't feeling up for partying this time on the train, so we just slept on the sleeper train going back to Bangkok, and recharged a bit.
Bangkok Part 2 (Wed 18th - Fri 20th Jan 2012)
So I got back to Bangkok on the Wednesday morning (18th Jan), and I headed to my 5th and final accommodation of the holiday. The accommodation was called Khaosan Palace Hotel, on the middle of the famous Khaosan Road in Bangkok. Even though it didn't look much from the outside, it was actually nice inside and had a nice rooftop pool and sunbathing area, and I made it my mission to get 2 really good days of sunbathing done as the weather was sunny in Bangkok and still very hot at about 35 C.
The Khaosan road is a mad, crazy place that is quite famous as being a location used in novels like The Beach. Before I visited I kinda had visions of a very long road but it's actually probably no longer than 200 yards, and it is very narrow with loads of bars, and shops selling trinkets, cheap clothes and what not. It is very popular with hippie types and backpackers, and it has good vibe for drinking. Lee's friends, TIT, returned back to Bangkok for the last 2 days I was there, so we met up with them on the Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
We did some good drinking on the Wednesday, and I ended up buying a nu-style crazy frog from a street hawker. It basically is a small frog shaped ornament for want of better word, with a ridged back, and it comes with a small stick that you can use to play a funky Frog sound on….it is better than it sounds…no it's not actually, but any way I bought it and it'll make a good addition to the Westbourne Grove Prop Box one day I'm sure!!!
So Anna brought the sambucas out, and things got messy, and we ended up dancing in a bar to cheesy dance tunes, and then out in the street as well as they had sound systems playing and people just drinking buckets, and 'strutting their funk' in the main road….pretty mental. I also bought about 6 kebabs on a stick at about 80p each from a street vendor, as is my style!
N.B. If LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem is the unofficial tune of Korea, then Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris - We Fell in Love in a Hopeless Place is definitely the unofficial tune for Thailand….they play it everywhere!!!
So on the Thursday, I woke up early with a sore head, but I was determined to get a sun lounger, and so I got one and proceeded to sweat out the booze from the night before, and I felt okay very quickly. It's amazing what a great hangover cure, sunshine and doing nothing actually is.
Then in the evening we met up with TIT again and we went to Pizza Hut for a typical Thai meal, and then we went to the hotel where part of the Hangover 2 was filmed. Unfortunately we weren't really dressed appropriately as it was quite a posh hotel, and you needed to be in a certain type of attire really, so we never got further than the lift, but I must admit I wasn't too arsed personally. Then we went for a drink at an Irish bar, and ended up calling it an early night as I unfortunately had to be up early the next day for my flight home back to bitterly cold Korea….
Summary
So overall I enjoyed the holiday a lot, and it seemed to get better and better as the holiday went on. The weather in January can definitely be a bit stormy and wet at times, so I'd deffo suggest going more late February, March time as I hear that is the best time to visit in terms of getting less rain, especially around the islands.
The place is cool, and overall pretty safe, a lot safer than people make out should you read a lot of the travel websites about the dangers of Thailand. There are scams about but they are by and large pretty obvious, and you never really get into danger.
Don't get me wrong, it is not as modern a country as the UK or South Korea by any stretch, and there is sadly still a lot of poverty about. The health and safety rules and the Old English 'prudish and proper' attitude does not exist in Thailand. I mean, you can buy a real Taser AND a dildo from the same street vendor if you want; or you can even hire a car using someone else's passport…..which we did by the way. That is I mean we hired a car using someone else's passport; just so you know we didn't buy a TASER and a dildo, Jesus that woulda been awkward going home through airport security!!!! ;-)
Thai people are pretty laidback, and always smiling too. They call it the Land of a Thousand Smiles, and it is true. Fair enough some of them are smiling because they want to relieve you of some money, but they're not aggressive in their sales tactics. They all speak good English in the tourist areas, and they're definitely not as shy or reserved with strangers as Koreans tend to be.
The Thai food is amazing too, very tasty, spicy, and you get that lovely fragrance of lemongrass everywhere which is very nice (though Keeley will disagree with me here I'm sure!)
The country is cheaper than a lot of tourist destinations, though perhaps not as cheap as some people make it out to be. I spent 333 quid on my flight, and then I spent about 730 pounds for 2 weeks in Thailand. You've got to remember that was for accommodation, taxis, buses, trains, food, drink, ahem…. musical frogs so that equates to about 50 quid a day spend which is not too bad. You can deffo do it cheaper (maybe 25-30 quid a day!) if you are prepared to do the full-on hippy thing and stay in the very basic hostels where you get a room, and a maybe a light switch and that's it.
These places can be found for 3 or 4 quid a night if you look around. Likewise, you can just eat simple Thai food the whole holiday at some quaint, family-run gaff and often get meals for around one pound a pop!
We were staying in places that were between 10-12 quid a night that usually had a modicum of comfort to them, like their own toilet, shower, wifi access, a small swimming pool etc. They weren't posh hotels or anything (apart from the 1st night), just a step or two up from the hostel experience, and just below a 3 star hotel standard.
Beer is the area you spend a lot of money as it's relatively cheaper than the UK, but like we tend to do in Korea, because it's maybe a pound cheaper for a pint, you tend to drink that saving in beer! So you never really save any money as because it's cheaper, you just end up drinking more to compensate!
Any way I would recommend for any of my friends to go and visit sometime. I'd go back again at some point I think if I could afford, though I'd maybe try and do the other side of the peninsula so Phuket, Phi Phi, Krabi etc. I'd maybe also do the north of Thailand and also try and explore Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam too at the same time.
So sorry for waffling on for over 5000 words. If it wasn't for the fact I've had nothing to do at school for the past 2 weeks, I'd have probably still not finished this blog by the time I got back to England. Any way don't expect another blog for at least a month or two! :-P
'Nuff Respec'
Jonny
* P.S. Mum and dad, if you are wondering what a "ping pong show" is then please just Google it!
P.P.S. On second thoughts, mum and dad, please do NOT Google "ping pong show"!!!
- comments
Pri hahhahaahahhahaahha. Brilliant piece of writing Jonny Pops. Have you ever thought of sending this to lonely planet? There is some good stuff here! Entertaining, wise and detailed! xx
Sue Gaskell Enjoyed the update, Seems like you had a great time.The photos look good. Back to reality -work- Must go now and look up "ping pong show" on google Speak to you soon. Love mum xx