Thailand Islands

On the last day at Kanchanaburi we cycled to the Chung Kai war cemetery and Wat Tham Khao Pan, it was a beautiful cycle through paddy fields and small villages. We were guided through the cave silently by our guide who showed us the many rooms including one large reclining gold Buddha with little grace and no words! It was still cool though and we ate some delicious fried banana there.

We have done a lot since Kanchanaburi! We had another night in Bangkok before heading to the station to get the night train to Chumphon to get the ferry to Koh Tao. That was the plan anyhow, it didn’t work out anything like that! Firstly, we nearly drowned on Khao San road trying to buy some waterproof backpack covers (irony). We were wading up to our calves in rainwater and god knows what else and everyone was taking pictures of us because no one else dared to go in, but we were on a mission so we had to!
We got to Hualanphong station at about 10pm and waited for our train, the station was cool in a Michael Palin sort of way. Lots of people waiting on the floor, eating picnics and stuff. When the time came we went to check our platform to find out that our train had been cancelled because of the protesting in the South. We later found out that all trains had been cancelled in the whole of South Thailand as the people of the South are against the stuff that’s going on with the government and had all come up to Bangkok (we heard some ridiculous figure like 80% of one town) to protest and riot. We met up with a French couple who’s plan was to catch the local train to Prachaup Kiri Khan (half way down) and then work out the rest from there, although the train didn’t leave until the morning, so we had to sleep rough! Oh us poor flashpackers sleeping rough! They closed the station so we slept outside, all four of us huddled around our backpacks with the cockroaches and rats (seriously, we had to keep throwing the cockroaches away from us!). It was horrible, but in a fun way. There were lots of local people there too including grannies and kids, so it wasn’t actually so like sleeping rough, more like a smelly, dirty sleepover kind of thing….Anyway, after about half an hours sleep (between us) we headed to Thonburi station at about 5am and got onto our train (3rd class hard seats all the way!) to Prachaup Kiri Khan. Six hours later and through some wicked scenery (really cool journey worth doing – it only costed less than a pound for the whole journey and there was not one other tourist on the train and it was packed with happy Thais going to the beach and ladies walking up and down the carriage with fruit and snacks and sticky rice in bags! ) we arrived in Prachaup. If you go to Thailand go here! It was beautiful! A pristine white sand beach, little islands in the sea (look a bit like halong bay - not that’s we’ve seen it yet - on a small scale), theres a small mountain dominating the town which is called Mirror mountain and had a wat and a mirror on the top and hundreds of monkeys who came down to the beach in the evenings to play and to splash in the water and stop traffic on the road. We walked up and down the empty streets along a strip of beach on an island haggling at the empty guesthouses for bungalows. We stayed in a lovely little bungalow run by an old couple. The French couple went elsewhere as our bungalow was about 20p out of their budget and they had plans to sleep in their tent (they quite riled us…quite a lot, but I wont go into it - they protected us from the cockroaches at night!). We loved Prachaup and almost stayed there instead of going to the islands, it was sunny and beautiful and deserted and the people were so utterly lovely and friendly! If you want to go there you don’t have to get the poor peoples train, you can also get a luxury bus, but I think its so unfair because its hardly mentioned in the lonely planet and I think that’s why no one is there (everyone walks around with their copy like it’s the bible, I cant say we’re much different) its also really cheap contrary to the LP. The next day we set of in the morning (in the dark) for the local bus to take us to Chumphon.

We got the ferry to Koh Tao. The catamaran was fun, to get to it there was a deserted beach we got a bus to and crystal clear waters with a long, long, thin wooden walkway that we walked for miles down in the middle of the sea. It was so funny because it was just full of backpackers and all you can see in front of you is a backpack and then the sea to either side.
We stayed in a little bungalow off the beach on the island on Sairee beach. It as very nice and relaxed, but quite expensive with lots of real holiday makers about and lots of luxury resorts. We spent the days on the beach (near deserted as most of the people come to dive so they’re in the water all day), eating banana pancakes and listening to Jack Johnson over and over and over on comfy pillow on the beach enjoying the various happy hours and the evenings snuggled up in a bar watching films on their big screens. One even had a friendly cat who slept on my lap. The sand on Koh Tao was so lovely, the softest and whitest we had ever seen and the water was crystal clear, there were hammocks in the palm trees and coconuts to sip, it was lovely.

After a few days we headed to Koh Samui, the stretch if water between Koh Pha-ngan and Samui was awful! They handed out sick bags when we started to go which was not a good sign. The waves were so huge and our boat seemed very tiny and likely to sink at any moment, people kept running to the deck to be sick and they played the same DVD twice!

Koh Samui was pretty much same same to Koh Tao, we stayed in another lovely bungalow (Free House Bungalows) and lazed on the beach and did pretty much nothing again! The most we did was have a traditional Thai massage on the beach, it was so lovely and relaxing.