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Our ferry pulled into the Thong Sala dock at about 6pm in the rain. Rather than risking gettting caught in the rain, unable to find a taxi-boat, we decided to stay in Thong Sala for the night and head to Haad Kuad (Bottle Beach) the next morning.
This idea proved slightly harder than first expected though, as basically everything in Thong Sala was closed. We finally found a shoddy little basic hotel where we got cable tv AND aircon for 350Baht! Bargain! We grabbed some nice food from the hawker stalls around the corner and came back to watch bbc news and various shows on the Australia Network for a few hours.
In the morning we set off for our destination of Haad Kuad. First leg was a taxi to Ban Chaloklum and then a taxiboat around to Haad Kuad. All in all this took about 20minutes.
Haad Kuad turned out to be a nice change from the hot and chaos of Kuala Lumpur and we spent about 8 days there. Our little bungalow was very nice, at Smile resort, it was about 20m up the hill with a nice view of the beach and surrounded by a pleasant tropical garden. As there is little to do on Haad Kuad in the way of 'sights to see', 'activities to do' etc, we spent alot of time lying around reading or sunbathing on the quiet beach. We also invested in a pack of playing cards which brought several hours of entertainment. Our repertoire of games is currently at 'Speed' and "cheat', the latter only works with more than 2 ppl so has been seldom played!
The weather was mainly fine, the sea breeze makes it a bit cooler then inland which is nice, and the water is a good place to cool down.
For a few days in the middle it turned rather overcast and poured rain at times, confining us to our rooms and making us a bit stir-crazy with only our books to read.
After 8 days lounging on Haad Kuad we got word from Marcus that he and his friends had just arrived in Haad Rin and set off there ourselves. Haad Rin is around the other side of Koh Pha Ngan so one of the cheery guys from Smile resort drove us over.
Haad Rin is now famous for its 'full moon' parties and the town is practically one big bottle shop wth beers, spirits and assorted buckets of things in nearly every shop, every street! After spending the morning trying to find somewhere to stay we decided it was all too expensive and went over to where Marcus was staying on the other side of town, the Coral Bungalows. Coral Bungalows had a very 'school-camp' feel and i doubt there was anyone there under the age of 22. The rooms were only 400baht, about $15 with aircon and hot water and they had a massage special, only 150baht!! ($6). We went up one night and enjoyed a very nice thai massage for an hour, it was a bit strange when Miriam's masseus began telling her about her friend who has just gone insane and been commited to hospital, but apart from that it was very relaxing!
We stayed in Haad Rin for about 3 days with Marcus and his friends Paul, James and Kieran. Apart from the abundant supply of alcohol everywhere there isn't all that much to do, but its still actually quite a nice town with lots of small little alleys, lots of motorbikes and very few cars.
We left Haad Rin on Saturday 18th July in a very crowded taxi-car to the Pier.
Our Songserm boat to Koh Tao left about 1 hour late and took 45 mintues longer than advertised. Don't go on Songserm!
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