Memories of Yore: Thailand

We flew to Phuket, which is an island on the Andaman coast, the wealthiest of the islands of Thailand and the destination of choice for many western tourists. It was badly hit by the tsunami a year ago, but it was all reconstructed.

We arrived quite late and we had no plans. We quickly decided that the best way to find accommodation at that late hour would be in Phuket town (I'm not sure if we were correct, since Phuket town is a town, very very few tourists in there, mostly locals), but it sounded like a safe bet with more alternatives than the beaches. We arrived in a deserted bus station where all the touting sharks tried to offer us a taxi or everything else. We refused and we headed away, not knowing where we're going, the priority being to find accommodation. We found some nice thais working in a DVD shop that guided us to a guesthouse.

That's one thing I liked, normal people and even sharks were quite eager to help and quite genuine in their help. Sometimes people working in shops would guide us to their competition if they couldn't give us something we asked for or they were out of stock.

We found some cheap accommodation, not very pleasant compared to what we had before or what we would have in the next days. We were glad we found something.
The second day we rented an old jeep for about 8.70 pounds a day. We got some petrol and we started rolling, the plan was to visit the famous beaches on the west coast of the island, Patong and Kamai being two of them I can remember. All the day was spent travelling from one beach to another stopping at interesting places.

Unfortunately the weather was cloudy and 5 minutes after we paid for relaxing chairs on the beach, it started to rain. We waited hoping it would end soon, but it didn't. So we had to move along. In the end we returned to a beach which we skipped in the morning as it was slightly out of the way and we had a break from the rain and some moments to admire the sea. We had dinner there at a fancy restaurant and we headed back to Phuket town.

In Phuket town once arrived, I had a panic attack thinking I lost my passport. I was literally panicked, imagining all the problems I would have to get back home and in the UK. It was serious. Then the guy with the car told me I will have my passport back soon. They took my passport as a guarantee but I couldn't remember this detail.

The second day we took the coach across Thailand to the other coast, going to Koh Samui, in preparation for the Full Moon Party on the 16th of december on Koh Pha ngan. A 6-hour trip in an aircon coach. Not too bad.

In Koh Samui we were awaited by Carmen and Ake and as we took an open back taxi-van, going to Lamai beach where they booked accommodation, it started to rain. So lucky, we were thinking!

And that was all our time in Koh Samui, either cloudy or plain raining. We stayed in nice bungalows with a 24 hour internet and creperie right across the road from us. The Lamai beach was 2 minutes from where we were staying, but to no avail.

On one day, me and Carmen were brave enough to rent 2 kayaks and start paddling on the sea, not very far from the shore. It was quite courageous of me as I was having the flu. I think it was my first experience kayaking and it was cool. That was until the wind picked up and the wave increased in height. The kayaks became harder to control and they picked up water, which made them even harder to control. We were battling with the waves, trying not to end up perpendicularly on the direction of the waves, but trying to face them. Of course it was a precarious situation and at one point, a bigger wave flipped Carmen's kayak. No problem, she's a good swimmer, she started to push the kayak ashore. I went to get her paddle from her and I took my kayak ashore and then started to swim to her and we both took the kayak back ashore. Rescue mission successful. Baywatch here I come!

Needless to mention my utter disappointment when I learnt that the Full Moon Party has been cancelled due to bad weather and the beach in Koh Pha Ngan being washed by high waves. Noooo, not another fiasco, the weather was enough. There was no boat to Koh Pha Ngan on the day and the rumours had it that there were 4 metres waves in Koh Pha Ngan. Utter disappointment!
Later on, I discovered that the situation was quite bad in Koh Pha Ngan and that 4 people lost their lives to the waves.

We left Koh Samui with a sense of relief ... don't get me wrong, Koh Samui is absolutely beautiful, the beaches are very very nice, all it need is some sun! :-) There was a glimmer of hope as he learnt that in Krabi, our next destination, it was sunny. Well, we weren't holding our breath, we've heard that before. However, we all thought no one could be so unlucky. And in actual fact, we were very close to vindication. But we didn't know that at the time. All about Krabi in the next chapter.

Some pics to illustrate the content. First pics are from Phuket ... notice the dark sky!