Us Round The World
…….our travels across the globe

Journey to Thailand

Well it’s fair to say we didn’t get off to a great start in Thailand. First of all we bought bus tickets to get there with the world’s most weird bus company.  One thing we have learnt about South East Asian people is that generally they do not like walking. Any distance you suggest walking that is over 10 metres is met with a look of shock and cry of ‘this is too far!!’. So for this reason when you buy a bus ticket to anywhere you always get a transfer from your hotel to the bus station/ticket shop/layby included. Leaving from Siem Reap on the 6am express bus (6 hours to Bangkok) we got picked up at our hotel in a minivan transfer bus which proceeded to take us all around Siem Reap and then drop us off at the bus which was parked literally 20 metres across the road from our hotel! It then went and got the rest of the passengers all of whom got on the bus (late by now) saying ‘well if I knew if it was this close I would’ve walked!’ Anyway after much faffing we finally left an hour late at 7am and took the journey to Poipet on the Cambodian/Thai border.  We arrived at Poipet, got shunted off the bus and stranded whilst the bus driver drove off. A sea of backpacks followed each other through the rather dubious town of Popiet in search of the border. We finally found where we should be – a window next to a smelly meat shop – and got stamped out of Cambodia. We then walked down a strange street of casinos to enter Thailand. Our first annoyance on the thai side was that we were only allowed 15 days in Thailand without a visa as we were entering overland. If you fly you get 30 days – we asked if we could get longer but no can do. This put us in a slightly bad mood with Thailand thinking how unfair it was that if you flew in you got longer but if you were doing the sustainable route travelling overland and supporting local economies around the borders you were done out of 15 days! We decided to revise our trip, originally thinking we would have 3 or 4 weeks in Thailand and decided we would spend more time in Malaysia and Singapore that didn’t require us to have a visa full stop. So there!

Once we got our stamp we then had to wait for our bus at a very smelly layby next to the world’s most awful toilets (costing 30 baht!) where we were all given a nice yellow sticker in exchange for our bus tickets by a shifty looking guy in a trilby. We then sat … and sat some more and sat some more until this rather scary northern Irish girl started yelling at the man demanding to know where the bus was. The man didn’t seem to know but after about 10 minutes led us all down the road so that we could then sit at the side of the road instead of the smelly toilet where we were a source of much amusement to the thai and Cambodian lorry drivers crossing the border. Eventually a sangthew ( a car with an open back thing with 2 benches on came) and picked up 10 of our group of 30. The rest of us waited for 20 minutess until it came back to up another 10 and then 20 minutes later still us final 10 were shunted into the back of the vehicle. We drove about 10 minutes until surprise, surprise we arrived at a restaurant, conveniently owned by the bus operator which was full of our fellow group members eating and drinking away – bags of goodies bought for the rest of the journey! I remember reading somewhere now that this is a classic scam in which the bus company makes more money by delaying the journey so that you spend loads of money in their restaurant. We worked out it probably doubles what they get from the fares! We got off and were directed to the restaurant  …’ go eat , drink, buy something!’

One of the Northern Irish girls asked what time we would be leaving and you can imagine the response from the weary, sunburnt travellers when the guy responded that we would leave in 1 hour! Funnily enough 5 minutes later our mini-van turned up! However there were no space for bags so three guys didn’t even mange to get a seat on the bus as we had to pile up our bags on one row of seats – they all looked pretty hung-over anyway as we waved goodbye to them en-route to Bangkok – hope they made it there eventually!…… Welcome to Thailand!

 Bangkok

Arriving at Bangkok was a scary culture shock of an experience. We hadn’t realised how long it had been since we had seen so many cars or flyovers or traffic lights that meant something to someone. There rows of skyscrapers and shops with actual fronts walls and windows. We almost asked the bus driver to take us back but remembered the stupid journey we’d done to get there!

The bus dropped us somewhere near to the Khao San road and we all followed this Canadian guy off the bus who said he knew where it was – he didn’t but we found it in the end… unfortunately. Of all the great things we had heard from people about this place we couldn’t help but feel it was a bit like Bilston market in the sun… with less friendly people… and more wannabe crusties! We found our hotel which was right on the Khao san road and enjoyed the fact that we had a rooftop swimming pool but not the fact that every time we left the place we had to walk through a mass of people selling overpriced tourist merchandise and annoying dreadlocked ‘travellers’ (that just stayed there and there went nowhere else).

Bangkok - from the rooftop pool

The following day we decided to walk out a bit and found a very nice area with a market and no tat and then headed over to the shopping area to check out siam square and sukhumvit and also to the station to buy some train tickets. Unfortunately train tickets weren’t available for the day we wanted so we had to spend an extra night in Bangkok. We soon shifted over to nice hotel just off Sukhumvit and much preferred it over there spotting all the ugly old white men with their stunning Thai girlfriends and walking around the Arab quarter where we had some very yummy food.

We left Bangkok on an overnight train to Trang in the south of Thailand. The train was pretty cool as we had 2^nd class sleepers which were basically 2 seats that turned into upper and lower berths with curtains across so they were quite comfortable, private and very cheap. Our plan was just to turn up in Trang and hope that we could be on an island by that afternoon without actually booking anything. Sure enough as soon as we got off the train there was a lady with a large board with all the names of places that her company could take us to- she informed us we could do to Ko Lanta in an hour’s time so off to Ko Lanta we went!

Andaman Islands

The part of Thailand we spent the most time in was the Andaman islands off the west of the mainland this was apparently the best place to go at this time of year weather wise and was also supposed to be a bit less full moon partyish (we have discovered we aren’t really backpackers!) and there are more places for peace and quiet if you avoid Phuket. Our first stop was Ko Lanta which was a shock at first, as its really been a long time since we saw real holidaymakers and its strange to say this but we felt guilty for being on holiday – it’s like that we got into such a frame of mind of travelling and roughing it that when you get to somewhere as beautiful as the Thai islands and its full of people on their annual two week holiday it feels odd! We also realised that actually we were so relaxed and away from it all that we didn’t really need the relaxing break of a two week holiday and that actually all those western tourists made us feel as though we were back in the western world. It also felt like we were going home soon as all the Thais we spoke to thought we were getting a flight home every time we were moving on or checking out a hotel!

So it took us a while to adjust but then we got ourselves some snorkels (well 1 snorkel as we are so poor and Ko Lanta was too

Us at Ko Phi Phi Ley

 expensive for us!) we had a great time. We went to Ko Phi Phi after Ko Lanta staying in this secluded and very basic resort place with its own beach which involved a very bumpy boat ride to get to – it was beautiful though and full of some strange characters. We took the resort’s boat out to Ko Phi Phi Ley famous for where the film the Beach is set ….. wow! The island was absolutely gorgeous, we got there really early so there were very few people there and the beach was gorgeous white sand, clear and turquoise water and a stunning backdrop. It’s a national park which is really good as  no development is allowed and all visitors there are on daytrips. We also did some snorkelling which actually turned David into the world’s most enthusiastic snorkeller as we saw amazing fish (don’t know what they were but David is buying a book so he can find out and will let you know!) and went swimming in the blue lagoon waters. We were so lucky to do the trip with just 3 other people on a traditional longtail boat early in the morning as when we were leaving we saw huge ferries crammed full of Chinese tourists all wearing lifejackets (even to snorkel!) and screaming a lot, struggling to see anything over the top of each other.

Our resort owned its own jungle as well which had a trail to an island viewpoint. The jungle was amazing with monkeys running around on the trail in front of you and baby monkeys high up in the trees, there was no one else around and it was pretty cool to be on such a busy island and get that all to ourselves. That was until we got to the top and found out that about 100 tourists coming up from the other direction had decided to watch the sunset as well!

Ko Lipe... gorgeous

After a few days on Ko Phi Phi we got a 5 hour ferry down to Ko Lipe which is in the Ko Taratou national park but not part of it so it’s the only island with any development in the whole of this area of south Thailand. Ko Lipe was gorgeous, no cars, no real roads, and you could walk around the island in about an hour.  The snorkelling was great and right off the beach and I think we found our favourite ever beach there looking over to Ko Adang which is an undeveloped island. We stayed 5 days in Ko Lipe managing to find a place for £8 night (which to be far was worth about £8 a night!). The island itself is very expensive which is understandable as they have to get everything from the mainland but prices were 3 or 4 times higher than what we had been paying so not many nights of vodka bucket drinking for us!

So the time came when we had to leave Thailand as our visa ran out and our room on Ko Lipe was starting to become disgusting (no cleaning for 5 days with a toilet with a bucket of water as a flush!) and we were thinking we may get dysentery. We headed off to the mainland to get a train to Kuala Lumpur – we could have got the boat to Langkawi in Malaysia from our island but we decided we needed a break from the sun! We left Thailand with mixed feelings on the place as on the one hand we were a bit disappointed as we had heard how friendly and cheap it was which we didn’t really find it to be  – but we also know we visited a very small area of Thailand and we can’t really judge it on this alone. We found that we had more interaction and banter with locals in other countries that we visited as well than in Thailand. We also found it to be very touristy but then why wouldn’t it be as it’s beautiful. But asides from us just be very anti-social people ; ) – it’s obvious that tourism is doing quite a bit of damage environmentally, socially and probably to an extent on the very local economy and you get the feeling this is ignored by the Thai authorities.

On the plus side the islands were the most beautiful we had ever been to, with clear waters, white sand and tall palm trees. The weather was amazing and it’s a beautiful place to get away to. They have the best fruit shakes ever in the whole world and also the best chocolate banana pancakes and there is nothing better than lying back on a mat on the beach bar at sunset and into the night with a cocktail or an ice cold Chang……..