We got away from the jetty and went to sort out some transport. We'd heard that the taxis on Ko Samui were heavily fixed at a high price so we managed to get on the back of a Saungthauw, me standing on the back plate and clinging onto the roof rack. It's a good job I was as we'd only been driving for 10 mins when I saw the name of our hotel flash past. I knocked on the roof and rung the bell for it to stop and we got off. I went round to pay and he told me it was 200B each. I was not happy with this but we had to pay up. As we were to discover later, the transport on Ko Samui was limited to over charging taxis and pick ups. They could charge what they liked because there were no other options. Anyway, we walked back a bit to our hotel which turned out to be the poshest spa resort I've ever seen in my life. While we waited for check-in, we were brought some sort of healthy, fruity, gingery iced tea thing.
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| Our lovely room... |
We were taken to our room and had one of those moment where we both look at each other in amazement after we've been left. It was a very big room in a sort of wooden bungalow thing with a massive bed, big TV, day bed (?), fridge, kettle, tea and coffee and the massive bathroom was an 'outdoor' bathroom with plants in it and a sort of corrugated plastic roof over it, big bottles of shower gel, shampoo and conditioner etc etc. We checked out the beach, which was lovely and quiet.
We decided to go to the main town area as Bindya needed her legs waxed. We decided to just jump on a pick up, watch what other people paid and just give over money without asking a price. Using this method we paid 150 B for the two of us for the 20-30 min ride.
So we looked around for a place to get me legs waxed, based on the conversation I had with some young, rich, posh girls from our resort it was a hard thing to find here. I looked at a few places who only seemed to judge the price based on seeing my legs beforehand. As most were charging around £15 I felt very hairy.... Finally I found a place that charged £10 for my legs wax, it look professional and a place that I would unlikely to get an infection from. Neil left as I was escorted to the upper floors, I went past the beauty room to a room full of beds which has half naked men being massaged by young Thai women. I was asked to lie down (a little uncomfortable with the amount of men in the room) luckily they pulled some curtain as they started to wax. I was given two women (well one women and one lady boy) to do my waxing. One had each leg and both had different styles. What I did noticed was that they were both not very good and it was the most painful waxing I had ever had. The wax was too hot, the sticks scraped across my skin (making them red and sore) and the ripping off simultaneously hurt like hell. When done I paid up and waited for Neil to arrive, he asked me how I was and I think my face said it all.
I cheered Bindya up by showing my purchases – a bottle of rum for 200B and some biscuits. We had a little walk up the road to find somewhere to eat and quickly chose a Thai place with seats upstairs on a balcony area. We had a little coktail as a treat, ate some nice food then went to organise transport home. We did the same thing back and just got in a truck with other people in it. He said he was going up to the beach where we were but everyone else had got out by the time we got to Mai Nam. At this point he came round to the back and said, 'You know the price at this time of night?'. We sighed and asked him how much. He wanted 500B so we just got out. He asked for money and I argued a bit as he hadn't taken us where we wanted but I was under the impression that we weren't that far from our place so I just gave him 150B and we walked off. About an hour and a half later we got home, cursing all pick up drivers and taxi drivers. We'd asked a few taxis on the walk back and they all wanted stupid money too. It's not really a lot of money – 4 or 5 quid – but when you're on the budget that we are that's the same cost as dinner.
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| Our beach |
We picked up our boat tickets friom the office near the dock but had been given the wrong time so we had to wait for an hour The boat was late as well so we waited for about an hour and a half on top of that. It came a little before sunset and we got on, it was already pretty full of tourists from the mainland but we got a seat easy enough. The trip to Ko Phangan took about an hour and a half and we grabbed our bags, walked past all the taxi drivers etc. and strolled in the general direction of where I thought our place was. We knew it was close to the pier and the main port which is why we chose it. It was not far away but we were a bit sweaty as we had our, increasingly stuffed, bags to carry as well. Having just come from one of the loveliest places we'd stayed, we were more than a little disappointed with the round, concrete box that was our new 'bungalow'. Didn't think much of the staff there either but maybe we'd been spoiled. We walked into town to find somewhere to eat. It was mainly full of large bar/restaurants geared to the European crowd but we settled on a small Thai place which did a decent chicken and hot basil.
Next few days were spent relaxing by the beach or pool. We went into Hat Rin to go to the Indian restaurant there but there was a power cut so we ate in the dark for most of it. After that we got a cheap taxi back too our resort and then headed up the road to the Muay Thai Boxing. We got normal tickets (not VIP ) as others people we had spoken to said it wasn't worth it and we got good seats in grandstand seating, got some beers and waited for the fights to start. Now there were about 7 fights and they started with the kids...yes that's right, 12 year olds fighting. It was hard to watch at first but we got into it. There is a ritual with the build up, some dancing they do to the crowd, a lot of hugging and then more use of elbows and knees then anything else. We then built up to the teenagers, around 18 years old, followed by adult Thai men. As the fights went on you could see the level of the boxing progress and the technique was better. We pretty much saw knockouts with fierce kicks to the head (see videos).
Full Moon Party day arrived so we spent the day relaxing and sleeping before starting to have a few drinks around 7 ish. We'd got a bottle of rum from the local supermarket which was a little better than the bottle we'd got previously – it cost about 3 quid and described itself as, 'White Spirit'. Always knew that day would come... We'd arranged a lift from our place for midnight and were a little tipsy by the time we aet off. The ride there is pretty hairy, up and down hills, but we got there in one piece and found the main entrance to the beach. We paid our 100B to get in and got a nice rubber wristband then stopped at the first stall to get a 'bucket'. We'd been wondering for a few days what these buckets were that everybody was talking about and now we knew. It was simple a small plastic bucket, like the sort a child takes to the beach with a spade, filled with half a bottle of booze and mixer. Stick a couple of straws in and there you go. We got a Sangsom bucket for 200B – half a bottle of Sangsom 'Thai whisky', a can of coke, a small bottle of Red Bull and a handfull of ice. We took our bucket along to the beach. It was a very nice, wide, long beach, none of which we could see because it was crammed full of people. Drunk, dancing, passed out already, covered in UV paint, all carrying buckets.
We went back up the road to find a stall that let you use their UV paints for about 40 B each and proceeded to cover each other in particularly bad decorations. The woman at the stall found this all very amusing and took a picture of us. There was some sort of small fight kicked off whenwe were doing this but it all calmed down pretty quickly. As we got back on the beach, some dozy woman carrying an open pot of paint bumped into me and spilt it over my new shirt. We wandered around a bit, checking out all the sights, having a dance here and there. There were different stages all up and down the beach but we prefered the one we first found. We had another bucket. We ate some sort of food thing.
We laughed at all the people. Next thing we know it's 5 in the morning. We go up onto a big stage at the main entrance and have a dance there for about an hour before we realise that most people have gone now, just a few hard-core dancers and randomly sleeping people dotted about on the sand. We walked up to the town and got a ride back no bother, crawling into bed around 7:30. Overall we had a pretty good time and didn't spend that much on the whole thing. We chilled that day and I tried to see if we could organise a train ticket for the next day but the woman at reception just laughed at me and said it would have been booked up for weeks.
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| Us painted up |
We went back up the road to find a stall that let you use their UV paints for about 40 B each and proceeded to cover each other in particularly bad decorations. The woman at the stall found this all very amusing and took a picture of us. There was some sort of small fight kicked off whenwe were doing this but it all calmed down pretty quickly. As we got back on the beach, some dozy woman carrying an open pot of paint bumped into me and spilt it over my new shirt. We wandered around a bit, checking out all the sights, having a dance here and there. There were different stages all up and down the beach but we prefered the one we first found. We had another bucket. We ate some sort of food thing.
Next morning I got up at 9 and went into town to sort out how we were going to get back to Bangkok. I tried a few places who couldn't help but eventually found someone who sold me a couple of boat and bus tickets for 11:30. Cue the worst journey of our entire trip so far.
Luckily, we got a lift to the pier from our place as there was a nearly full minibus going our way. When we arrived there was literally hundreds of backpack-covered tourists pushing their way to get to the ticket office on the pier. I left Bindya with our stuff and squeezed my way into the mob to try and work out what was going on. I had to exchange my ticket with some stickers at a small shack in the middle of the mob. This took me about 40 mins but I managed it quicker than some people who were queueing at the wrong shack. I decided not to tell them this as it would make my 'queue' worse. Somehow we managed to get our stickers and get onto the right boat which was rammed. The boat trip was long but straightforward. We got to the other end and stood around waiting for our bus. Bus after bus came and went but no-one said it was for us. After half an hour someone told us to go down the end of the pier and wait at the building there. The pier was very long and it was starting to get pretty hot now. At the end of the pier was a building surrounded by loads more backpackers. We waited again. After asking a few people I managed to find out that the Bangkok bus was going to be here at 4. Great. 4 came and went. Around half 5 a bus came and we were told it was the Bangkok bus. We just looked at each other in amazment. The bus looked as though it wouldn't make it to the end of the road. It was a local bus, open windows, no luggage compartment, tiny, cramped hard seats. Bindya managed to get us seats at the front, so that I had leg room, and we set off. We were all a bit confused – was this bus going to take us to the proper bus? After about an hour of driving I started to think that this was the one that was going to take us all the way. Bindya was asleep. As it was starting to get dark, we pulled into a coach stop place and we all got out. We had to queue up again to get our names on a list for the proper bus to Bangkok. I just waited until everyone had queued as I couldn't be bothered with pushing and stuff but when I got there the list had been filled up. The woman just asked me to write our names at the botom of the paper, even though all the spaces had been filled. I was given two stickers with '3' written on. We sat round and waited again. Eventually a bus turned up and the woman shouted, 'Number 3', so we all ran over. I was worried a bit about there being enough seats so I pushed to the front to drop off my bag, then ran uostairs to get us some seats. I got the last 2 together. We sat waiting more as they tried to work out what to do with the 5 or 6 people who were left without a seat. We think that they ended up cramming them into the 'VIP' area downstairs which had a couple of sofas in it. Not much more to say about that night except how horrendous it was, crammed into the smallest seat we've had so far, full of the most annoying people in the World. Obviously the two in front of us reclined, the two behind us stuck their feet through the gaps, Bindya's armrest didn't work etc. I was so relieved when we pulled into Bangkok at 5:30 in the morning and they threw us out onto the street. Overall, our experience of being on a 'Tourist' bus was pretty negative. We found our way to Khao San Road – looks a lot more seedy at this time in the morning - and got turned away from a couple of places (first choice – Indian Restaurant) before we got a room at Sawasdee Smile Inn. We'd had people from the bus following us all this way to see where we were staying.
Next couple of days involved a bit of shopping, getting stuff ready for Cambodia etc. We set off for the bus station about 8 a.m. To get our bus to Siem Reap.
Big THANK YOUs to Tish George for the Muay Thai Boxing and Nilesha and David for the Full Moon Party
Ko Samui
Islands and Muay Thai Boxing
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=280268&id=547011402&l=7d5e7085f0Last of Bangkok
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=280269&id=547011402&l=e3fe87742f 
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