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Okay we're afraid this blog will be quite boring for you guys as it basically will just be about us chillin' out, maxin' and relaxin'... so instead of doing what we normally do and writing a day by day account we will just tell you about the things that we think you will like to hear!
We asked tourist information on Koh Phan-gan where the Western tourists tend to head next and a nice girl with an actual teddy bear as her mobile phone told us to head to Koh Tao. So we booked a seat on a boat and set off. We arrived at the port and boarded our boat and got some rather good seats with our legs dangling over the side. The boat men were piling our luggage up behind us and when about 350 people had boarded (the maximum capacity for the old, rusty boat) we thought 'wa-hey - we're off!' However, the number of people boarding the boat did not stop at 350. Times that by about 3 and you have the number of people plus all their baggage who were crammed onto the boat. The luggage towered above reaching a maximum height roughly equalling that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa... and you probably could have called it that too as the final persons bag hung menacingly over our frightenend selves. Still we were relatively happy as we had managed to board early and get decent seats. The poor folks who had been unlucky enough to be behind us had to stand up for the entire journey... and what a journey it turned out to be. The boat finally set off, EXTREMELY slowly due to the excess weight... but it set off none the less. Unluckily for us we managed to pick the day to leave Koh Phan-gan when the sea was probably the roughest that it could possibly have ever been. Waves crashed up the side of the boat desperately trying to capsize us. About half an hour into the one and a half hour journey we realised we might not make it to Koh Tao alive let alone in one piece. Imagine one of those toys with a round bottom so that when you push it it doesn't quite fall over but it practically touches the floor anyway before bouncing back up... that was our boat - literally. The waves pushed our little mariner from side to side so that our dangling feet plunged deep into the sea when it tipped to our side and we fell onto all the baggage when it tipped back to the other side. It was at this moment that Laura discovered she had a major fear of boats and her mild hysteria developed into a full blown panic attack at which Martha and Nyima desperately tried to keep her occupied to divert her attention from almost certain death. All the boat men ran out and jumped onto everyones baggage to stop it from tipping into the sea and at this point everyone started screaming. Except Laura who proceeded with the walrus noises... only this time instead of the noise resembling one dying walrus, it now resembled about 73. Several unlucky people who boarded last and had to stand up for the entire journey fell off the boat and were sucked into a vortex of swirling water and a massive storm battered the tiny ship into a million tiny pieces. A 50 foot long shark leaped over our boat and snapped up a few more unlucky 'stander-uppers' and part of the ships floor fell away so that some othere poor souls plunged deep into the chasm of doom. Okay that last bit was a lie but the rest is true and it was a truly terrifying experience! We have tried to make it sound as horrifying as we can but we still don't think it truly portrays the near death experience we just about survived. Thankfully, though, we arrived safe and sound on Koh Tao and got settled into our wonderful beach chalet surrounded by gorgeous gardens filled with blooming, colourful flowers, a stones throw away from the luxurious white, sandy beaches and sparkling, clear blue sea! Jealous? You should be!
Our resort was basically in the centre of all the action in Koh Tao next to the bar/restaurant where all of our evenings began 'Choppers' which serves delicious food all day long and is stuffed to the brim with young, Western people! It is also just down the road from the main bar 'Lotus Bar' which is where EVERYONE goes after their evening meal... including us obviously! And it is also a short walk away from the islands two main nightclubs 'AC Club' and 'Maya Club'. So it really was perfect!
We basically spent our days in the sea frolicking around and trying to make friends with people by asking if they had seen the fish anywhere in the squeakiest possibly voice we could manage (it's a private joke but it is very funny!) or asking if they were 'Svensk?' which we think means 'Swedish?'. There wasn't really much else to do as it was just so incredibly hot that if we were not in the sea we would probably actually melt. Also we had no aircon in our room so staying in was NOT an option. And our nights were spent in the following order...
1) Choppers for dinner and a drink. Choppers do fantastic food and every night they have a different promotion for example, on Fridays it is half price Thai food night and on Tuesdays it is Ladies Night so all ladies get half price meals and cheap drinks. We sort of developed a special routine here that went... we all ordered our food at the same time, Martha's was brought out first EVERY time, then Laura's about 10 minutes later and then finally about 20 minutes later Nyima received her meal. It began to get very frustrating. Also we always ordered a glass of ice with our drinks due to the intense heat and one day after the silly little waiter forgot Nyima's glass of ice she patiently repeated to him that she wanted 'an ass, a glice of ass please!'. Whoopsie! They also have about 107 television screens that play every single sporting match going on so usually it was filled to the outer edges with young hotties cheering on their favourite football teams!
2) Lotus bar until it closes at 2.30am. We want to take this opportunity to express our love of Lotus Bar now just incase any of you ever come to Koh Tao... which we highly recommend as it is just the most perfect place! Even if it is just for a holiday! We planned to spend three nights here but that turned into 7! Whoopsie! Anyway Lotus Bar is a small bar right on the beach so that the dance floor is actually in the sea. There are cushions all over the sand where people can just sit and relax and it is literally THE place to be. Even though it closed at 2:30am we wouldn't leave until about 3:30am as it was just so hard to tear ourselves away!
3) And then either AC Club, Maya Club or roaming the streets with our new friends... after getting food at the little food huts along the way! (Maybe that is what is affecting our stomachs...?) We preferred the street roaming as the clubs were usually full of old Thai men searching for very drunk Western girls or old Western men searching for very drunk Thai girls. They also had an ultraviolet light covering every bit of ceiling which was a bit hard to get used to. On the one night that we did stay at one of these clubs we found some lovely, inviting red cushions on the beach and fell asleep on them, even though there was pumping hardcore dance in the background. We only woke up 2 hours later when it started to rain!
We have finally started to meet people of the Western variety and we wanted to make the most of this opportunity so we practically introduced ourselves to EVERYONE we met under our code names Tilly, Cassie and Peggy-Sue of course! Here is a list of our new friends... two crazy Norweigans, Fredrik and Erland (pronounced Allan!) who wore stripy trousers, string vests and bowler hats without fail every night and have a tattoo of a moustache on their fingers (we actually met them in the day when they came up to us in the sea and asked if we would like to hear them play a song on their instruments, a picolo and a violin. We gladly agreed only to be struck by an awful rendition of "In The Jungle')... a mad, gay Irish man who was run over by a bicycle and chipped his tooth... a wierd gothic lady who wore a net top and no bra and had shaved the sides of her head... an extremely messed up man from Brooklyn who insisted on telling Nyima that she might be pretty now but in two years she will pile on the pounds and her waistline will expand horrifically... an East London posse who is cushti innit Booyakasha... a Canadian man whose trousers we pulled down not realising he was not wearing anything underneath so he bared all to the entire beach... two Swedish guys who we got on with at first but who now for absolutely no reason at all call us 'Cheltenham scum'... three guys with curly hair who we nicknamed 'Curly Craig', 'Round-haired Ricardo' and 'Oval Oliver'... a girl with a voice about ten octaves below Laura's dad who kept asking us if we were going to the 'pool party'... a singer from Choppers who Martha insisted on telling that he was quite good but he sang too loudly... his wife 'Sexy Sue' who had a minor disagreement with Laura as she stole all of our food (which is very important to us!).. an in-denial gay boy called James who insisted on gatecrashing our balcony pary with Fredrik and Erland, and then tried to thrust himself into Fredrik whilst slow dancing to 'Killing Me Softly', a Mr. Waterhouse (our ex-business teacher) lookalike who was trying to pull an Albanian woman twice his age... possibly the best Borat impersonater you will ever meet - we liked him, he was very nice, we want sexy time - NOT! and many, many more. We spent every night running round taking various sips from people's (mens) buckets containing anything from Samsung (a Thai whisky) to the normal vodka and coke... enabling us to spend very little money but still have a bloody good night! We managed to stumble into our chalet every morning after 6am, thus our days started at approximately 3pm!
Now for something that will actually interest you! On Monday we went scuba diving and it was amazing! It was only a one day thing, not a course, so we had a little bit of training and headed out to the open water. Laura was a bit worried as she has tried diving before but her ears really hurt and Martha was generally worried as she is not the biggest fan of the sea. We got kitted out in our wetsuits, flippers and air tanks and plunged into the water. Our first dive was in 6 metre deep water but we still saw loads of fantastic tropical fish. There was one type of fish whose scales were the colours of the rainbow and it was so beautiful! We saw the shoals of fish from Finding Nemo who moved together and made shapes and pictures in the sea. And tiny blue ones who insisted on eating the scabs on Martha's legs from the mosquito bites. After we got out of the water and back onto the boat they offered us the choice of doing another dive which went down to 12 metres... which we delightfully accepted! This spot was in the middle of the sea and when we jumped into the water and started swimming we couldn't see anything but deep, blue water. We dived down to 12 metres and it was even more amazing! We were told we might see things like puffer fish, Moray eels and turtles but we didn't. However, we did come across a bright blue and purple stingray hiding in the coral and about 1000 of the biggest sea cucumbers you will ever see in your life. They were actually the size of dogs... much to Martha's delight! Nyima spotted a few tiny and colourful starfish and we bumped into a few others divers whose flippers kept catching our eye making us think we were surrounded by whales and sharks. The 40 minutes sped by and before we knew it we had to go back up to the surface. We really wish we had done it sooner because now we wont have another chance to do it here! And only after we had climbed out of the water did Nyima tell Martha that during the training she had actually been kneeling on a sea cucumber... which is probably one of her worst nightmares!
Unfortunatley we have encountered a few problems with our cameras... Laura's melted in the overwhelming heat and Martha's met its fate in the sea. Therefore, we are slightly fearful about taking Nyima's camera out with us as we must treasure it to ensure it doesn't meet the same sticky end. Our next stop is Bangkok so we will try and get them fixed there. Hope you are still enjoying our blogs! We will write from Bangkok! x x x
P.S. We have noticed a lack of messages on our message board recently and we are beginning to get quite worried that people no longer care about us! You know what to do! x x x
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