Whoever said 'Money can't buy happiness' Never travelled to Thailand in Feb!!!

Hello Everyone,

The last time I was in touch, we were making our crossing from untouched, friendly and cheap Indo into what I can now only describe as hostile territory, Thailand! The country where if you don't guard your piece of shade on the beach, you blink your eyes and you are litterally sharing your towel with 10 old, pasty and fat Europeans who are all out on their 2 week annual holiday. The same fat Europeans who's fault it is entirely for making the Thai's think they can charge tourits 10 times more than the locals for the same bus ride. They don't need to be your friend because their hotels are full, their restaurants pumping and you can't throw a coconut without hitting a pasty (or pink, depending on how long they've been in the sun for) European waving a thousand Baht bill around! The Thai's are milking it and why shouldn't they?!!

Our first port of call was what can only be described as a picture book island on the South West coast called Koh Lipe. With it's crystal clear blue water, dazling white beaches and scattered palm trees, we thought we were in paradise when our ferry stopped. We excitedly hauled our backpacks onto the longtail boat that was to take us to the bungaloes and were all smiles until the inexperienced driver slammed us into a coral reef that pretty much surrounded the whole island and had probably been there since before the idiot was born. Somehow he only saw it for the first time once we were on top of it and bashing the living daylights out of what was supposed to be a national park! Once we were offloaded onto the beach with a trail of damaged coral behind us, we set about trying to find accomodation. We started from one end of the beach and gradually made our way around as we were rudely told 'No loom' by women who I'm sure had just eaten a bag of lemons and had their houses burnt down too! They were so nasty that they would have spat on us and kicked our dogs if they could get away with it . . .(or find our dogs). By sundown we were no nearer to finding a room and had to settle for sharing a one man tent (at this point please take Shaun's size into account) pitched on top of a bar blaring their idea of hip tunes out into the bay for the same price as a room! I was so angry that I hatched plans to tie the nastiest piece of Thai work to a longtail boat and drag them around until they built us a room, but finally settled on the plan that was least likely to get me incarcerated and drank beer instead!

The next morning (after a surprisingly good sleep thanks to the beer) we walked around again and found a cosy little bungalow about 50m in from the beach. This was also probably open to us the night before had we looked properly but neither of us had the heart to mention it. And so we finally settled into island life. We found an amazing little beach on the one end away from most of the other package tours and returned there most days (this could also partly be due to the 3 topless Italian girls on Shaun's part!) At night we sat at little restaurants with tables on the beach and ate fish off the braai, so life was pretty good!

Our next island was Koh Jum slighly further north on the same coast and was a paradise away from the Chinese and Euro tour groups. The beaches weren't as nice but it was a hell of a lot cheaper and I didn't have to share my towel with 60 year old women in leopard print thongs (I am not kidding!)!! It is also here that Shaun picked up a very amusing fear of coconuts after one dropped from a tree and fell on a spot where he was sitting a few moments earlier! Since then he refuses to walk or sit under coconut trees and whenever he hears the crash of something falling onto the ground he silently curses all coconuts and me for laughing at him!

After Koh Jum we headed north and stayed in Krabi for a few days to see the famous beaches with cliffs all around and also did a day trip to Koh Pih Pih. (This had to be a day trip because accomodation prices on the island had been pushed up so much that we couldn't afford to stay there, not even sharing a one man tent!). Koh Pih Pih is of course the location of THAT movie - The Beach. The day trip was on a speed boat that took us to the two islands. Well about half of Europe and China had the same idea so we were fighting for sea space with about 40 other boats heading to the same places. We stopped to snorkel in a beautiful bay but our boat also decided to haul anker in exactly the same square meter of sea as the other 39 boats so it was a tight squeeze getting into the ocean!! Once in, the little marine life that remained was coaxed out of their respective hiding places with bread which I have to admit was quite cool, until the fish mistook my fingers for bread! Maya beach (the actual location of the film) was beautiful if you could imagine it without the 40 boats fighting for docking space on the beach or the million other tourists swimming in the space that wasn't being taken by the boats, or sunning themselves and their 7 asses on the beach.
Lunch was uncluded in the package and we went back to the main island for that. Our budget and prices in Thailand at the time did not allow for too much eating at restaurants (most nights we ate from the local street vendors and would drool as we walked passed all the resort buffets) so when we walked into the restaurant and saw it was buffet, we were worse than a bunch of DSG girls when there was cheese on the sandwiches at break! We gourged ourselves on bread (which we hadn't had for almost 2 months) salad, chips, you name it, we ate it twice! Life was good!

After Krabi, we headed to Koh Sumui and were clever this time around and booked our accomodation in advance! On the ferry over though, a travel tout tried to sell us accomodation so we thought we would see what else we could get and told him our budget, to which he replied 'Then why the hell are you going to Koh Sumui!?' That just gives you a glimpse of their attitude! The lonely planet (which quoted the low season prices in our edition) gave us the wrong beach for our accomodation and so we got dropped off 6km from where we had to be. Having paid through our asses for a taxi already to get to where we were, we decided to hike back with our massive backpacks and when the sun dissappeared and our legs were starting to give way we started pricing local taxis again. We knew the locals were paying 30B for the transport but they were charging tourists 100B. So we tried to get a price somewhere between tourist and local and were promptly told to keep on walking by one driver!!! We eventually gave up, paid the full fare and made it to our guesthouse at 8pm drenched in a now permanent sweat and thoroughly exhausted! The 3 days on the island were actually really special and thoroughly enjoyed when we stayed away from the taxi drivers!!

We are now sitting in Bangkok sweating up a storm and hating the Thai's even more seeing as they stole the equivalent of 5 days budget from our bag on the overnight bus here! Partly our fault for leaving the money in a padlocked bag! Bankok has been awesome with a much younger crowd and laid back party atmosphere! From here on we head north to Sukhotai and Chang Mai for 10 days and then into Loas and hopefully away from group tours and fat Euros!