Thailand North: Chiang Mai & Pai 3-20 June

So after fourteen hours of night bus, waiting two hours for the border post officials to finally process my exit in the sleepy Sunday morning of Huay Xai, and then waiting another four hours on the Thailand side of the river for the final leg I finally got into my minibus to Chiang Mai, which was to take six hours. All in all the trip from Luang Prabang Laos to Chiang Mai Thailand was around twenty six hours, and delivered me in a slightly frazzled state. 

Thailand / Laos border

As soon as I got to the Thailand side the difference in the people was immediately noticeable... more friendly, straight up and at ease with English. The middle aged, respectable man running the minibus service on the Thailand side came to find me on his scooter, I having some cold sprite in some air conditioned guesthouse that I found, to tell me that the bus was leaving slightly earlier than planned and then when he heard I hadn’t eaten yet he ran to get me a sandwich. The minibus had around four Thai business men who all started talking to me about South African crops, business prospects and about their travels there, and asking me questions about my travels like concerned uncles. When we stopped mid way to get food, they made sure I found the nicer noodles in Seven Eleven instead of just buying weird snacks. I felt really looked after by these stout gruff Thai uncles.

We got to Chiang Mai central bus station around 10pm after driving really fast through the green hills of Northern Thailand, passing Chang Rai along the way. Driving in this part of the world is totally different from the West. Everyone goes really fast and squeezes through impossible gaps and overtakes on crazy corners, and if you’re smaller you get out the way fast. But no one has any road rage, ever. If a huge truck bears down on you and forces you out the way around a bend, then instead of shaking the fist they give a little wave instead. If that happened in London then a person would pop an artery with rage, and have an accident in the meantime. Their way is much better, Zen driving.

I had a quick look in the guide book for the main guesthouse area and cheapest options. I picked a spot and grabbed a tuk-tuk which cost me 80 Baht (around £1.60) for the 15min drive to a Lonely Planet recommended guesthouse. I was trying to get my bearings as we splashed through the muggy streets, wet from that afternoon’s rain. I got dropped off outside the guesthouse when we eventually found it after a few handbrake u-turns. Everything was really quiet, this really was low season. The guesthouse was completely empty except for the two slightly sketchy looking men sitting in the reception (one had really long fingernails on one hand, yech why) and a really fat silky black and grey cat. They showed me the room for 300 Baht, and it was okay but right out the back of the empty strange guesthouse, so I went for a walk to see if I could find anywhere friendlier. I had the map and intended to walk around for a while in the old town until I found somewhere but I was so tired from my huge bus trip that I just walked into a really quiet dark guesthouse with a walkway covered in bamboo trees like a tunnel, and was shown to a really quirky wooden room in the cabin like Baan Ing Ung Guesthouse for 200 baht and so decided to do the real mission in the morning. It was a strange night’s sleep, the wooden house creaked and moaned in the night and the only other guest was stomping around next door for ages, talking on the phone in animated German. The bathroom was really funky though.

The old gates of Chiang Mai

Best coconut shake in the world

Chiang Mai street scene

Baan Ing Ung Guesthouse

Next morning I gathered my things and my map and headed out into the old town. It was a short walk away and was where all the hostels were, but everything was extra quiet that day because of a religious festival happening outside of town in one of the monasteries, which the entire local population seemed to have gone to. I headed for Juley’s hostel as I heard that was the most lively, and usually that would be a thing I avoided but in such a quiet time of year it was nice to have some travellers around. They were full but Diva’s Guesthouse around the corner wasn’t, and I’m glad I ended up staying there as it was really friendly, the staff really helpful and nice dorms. It cost 100 baht a night and they helped booked loads of activities for you, and were always super friendly about everything. I even got a free massage from the massage parlour that they owned across the road because I booked two activities with them, so I highly recommend the place.

Something I really wanted to do in Northern Thailand was to spend the day with some Asian elephants. There are many places offering rides or walks through jungle, but I really wanted to visit a proper sanctuary where they look after and protect working elephants, and don’t just use them as a money maker and behind closed doors treating them miserably. One such sanctuary is Baan Chang Elephant Park, where they buy working elephants out of captivity and look after them. There you can spend the day with them; feeding, learning to ride bare back (none of those horrible platforms chained to their belly’s) with simple commands, feeding them, taking them for a walk through the jungle to get their daily exercise, and then taking them for an end of day swim to get them all washed and cooled off for the night. It really is a lovely place, and the owner hopes to expand his grounds to rescue even more than the twenty or so elephants he has already. He used to be a worker in an operation that misused elephants in his youth, and witnessed some really terrible things that they do to these poor elephants. They take them into jungle with no roads and make them pull huge loads of logs with chains around them, and feed them amphetamines to make them work harder and longer. Really horrible. But these elephants had been long since rescued, and some even had baby elephants while there. We got given some blue overalls to wear and then an introduction to the place and how to be around the elephants, and then were shown huge baskets of bananas and sugar cane to feed them. They were all huffing and puffing at us and extending their trunks to make sure that we came towards them with big bunches of bananas to put straight into their mouths. Apparently one small elephant eats of 200kg of food each day! It was so fun to walk straight up to them, nudge their searching trunks out the way and shove a whole stack of bananas into their mouths. They really smiled at you. 

Hello Mr elephant

After feeding them we learnt how to get on and off them, and the commands the mahouts used to make them sit, stop, and turn left and right. Two mahouts came with their elephants to demonstrate to the group, and one of the elephants was a young male and was such a sweet animal, definitely my favourite elephant of the day. It was almost as if he was smiling when you came near him, and he seemed to really enjoy the attention of everyone and being able to show us how to climb on and off him. It’s such an amazing sensation being lifted into the air by an elephant. Their skin is very rough and their hair very bristly, and you really feel high off the ground when they stand up. You press against their massive head to hold on, and if you really feel like you’re going to fall you can hold their giant tough ears, where the skin is so thick they don’t feel it. They sway back and forth and can sometimes stop suddenly to inspect a juicy looking leaf on the side, throwing their head down to munch at it, so you really need to clutch on.

Having a scratch before we begin

sweet young elephant showing us how to get up

After showing us how to ride the elephants bareback, we sat down outside to some delicious lunch, Thailand staple food like sweet and sour stir fry with coconut and rice, with some yummy vegetable soup. We then got all the elephants together for their daily walk in the jungle, which is their exercise. The rest of the time they are in the yard under the trees, flapping their ears to keep the bugs away and to keep them cool, talking amongst themselves. We got on and rode through the bursting green jungle in our grass hats and overalls, holding on for dear life when the elephant decided to pull a branch off for a snack or when it was walking downhill and stooping his head low, and almost tipping you over its head in the process. They really seemed to enjoy getting out in the jungle and being taken for a walk, so it was really fun for all of us.

The next thing on the elephants routine was bath time, their favourite time of the day. They were lead to the big pond in the sanctuary, babies and all, and are allowed to dip and play to their hearts content, getting all the mud and mites that had collected during the day off their skin. We were given buckets and rough brushes to pour water over them and give them a scrub, but they all ducked their whole bodies under the water in the shallow pond. The babies were really playful, sucking water up in their trunks and squirting it out over all of us. They loved playing around with us, and are really strong so you can stand straight up on them and then they chuck you in the water. So much fun with these amazing animals and their mahout keepers.

My elephants Mahout

I would definitely recommend Baan Chang Elephant park if you’d like to spend time with elephants that are well looked after and aren’t used as money makers. The owner of the park has to pay quite a hefty sum to buy the animals out of captivity, and then 200kg of food each day for each elephant doesn’t come cheap so your money really is going to their welfare and not just to line some pockets. The cost of the day was Baht 2400 (£48) including transport and lunch, and was booked through Diva’s Guesthouse, although I’m sure you can book directly. They pick you up from wherever you’re staying in Chiang Mai and then bring you back again, it’s about an hour’s drive from the centre and you get back around 5pm. There were two couples there on their honeymoon too which shows what a once in a lifetime special experience it is.

That night Kayla, a friend who I met in Vang Vieng and then briefly in Luang Prabang Laos, arrived at my hostel in Chiang Mai. It was great to meet up with this fun loving, cute girl again and we decided to attend Sammy’s Organic Cooking School the next day. It was to be a whole day with visiting a market and cooking in the morning and then eating lunch, with more cooking and eating in the afternoon. Sammy owns an organic farm about a 45min drive outside of Chiang Mai, and as with everything in Thailand it’s so easy to do. Just book at your guesthouse and Sammy will arrive the next morning to pick you up. The market was really fun, a proper local food market with tons of fruit and veg, meat, coconut milk, rice, sweets and other brightly coloured and scented staples of every day Thailand life. He showed us the different rices and what their prices and weights meant, and then took us to the mini coconut milk factory where we watched freshly picked coconuts be peeled, cut and then squished in a machine to make delicious fresh juicy coconut milk. He let us squeeze it in our hands which felt so nice, but the machine squished the rest into a bag for us to make Thai Green Curry.

Sammy showing us the market rice

Squeezing fresh coconut

He then drove us through the streets of Chiang Mai to his farm, and there was a bit of a traffic jam as hundreds and hundreds of university students in some kind of uniform were marching in the morning heat, just walking along in groups with hats made out of newspaper protecting them from the sun. They jam packed the road so that we had to crawl, and they were all very cute and friendly waving at us as they weaved in and out, some on scooters. We called out to them asking where they were all going but none could explain, although they were really trying to speak English back to us. Sammy said that every year they make a long walk to symbolise the start of the university year. After leaving the traffic jam we went down a small country lane and then found ourselves in Sammy’s beautiful farm. He has an outside kitchen, all set out with a big comfortable wooden table in a beautiful shaded kitchen area each with our own pestle and mortar and in another area little individual stoves for the students, with all the appliances out in the open. Outdoor living, I love it.

He had some jasmine tea and fruit (ripe delicious weird Thai fruit) ready for us for some snacking before we began, and also made us some little eggy sweet tarts to go with our tea. He took us into his garden and showed us all the veggies and herbs, and picked armfuls of Thai ginger, kaffir lime, Thai lime, Thai lemon basil, turmeric and chillies, and made us crush them in our fingers and breathe them in deeply, I’ve never been in such herb heaven. He brought us everything we needed to make green curry paste, and we happily bashed it all together with the pestle and let the aromas waft over us.

After explaining all the herbs and some other Thai cooking delights to us, he let his very cute, stout wife take over. She led us to the outside kitchen to make Tom Yam Soup, Thai Green Curry (Genie put seven chillies in hers, the rest of us two and it nearly blew our heads off) and Pad Thai. When it was done we sat down with some brown rice and sticky white rice, and feasted to our hearts content. It was honestly the most delicious Thai food I had there, with amazingly fresh ingredients and in such an lovely location. The sun was shining and there were fans to keep us cool in the kitchen, but after lunch we all had to sink deep into the furry comfortable hammocks Sammy insightfully dotted around his garden, and we fell into them like fat happy whales. After an hour of snoozing we went back to cooking, this time deserts like coconut rice with mango, pumpkin custard and also some appetizers like tangy mango salad and some sesame marinated chicken wrapped in banana leaves and fried. YUM YUM YUM. All washed down with ice cold water and jasmine tea. Sammy and his wife were so cute and lovely, and there little daughters came home from school and waved at us and ran around. The farm is really beautiful, and its a really fantastic day if you ever get the chance to do it.

It cost 900 Baht (around £18) and you get all the food and an entire day of cooking and transport for that, absolute bargain. And did I mention the toilet? It’s in an outside greenhouse of flowers and plants, open air as nature intended, and as Sammy say ‘the best toilet in Thailand’. We also each got given a little recipe book with everything we had cooked and more in it, so if anyone wants to come round to mine for some Thai dinner when I get back to London, book yourselves in!

The next stop for Kayla and I was Pai. This was a place I had heard so much about and was itching to get to. We booked a minivan from our guesthouse, it was to be around a four hour journey and cost 180 Baht (£3), totally worth it to get that and not the local bus as it’s a really, really windy journey climbing up in the hills and then down again, and we felt like a vomit washing machine the entire way... luckily none of us were actually sick (other than in our heads) but if you had a big rickety bus full of people who knows what might end up in your lap. The road is beautiful though, green and jungly and windy, it would be amazing by motorbike. Aya is a transport company that rents motorbikes from Chiang Mai to Pai or vice versa, and then takes your luggage in a van for you so you can ride those turns and hills without hindrance. That to me sounds like the best way for sure but in the monsoon season maybe not the safest.

Kayla and I were filled with instant happiness when we arrived, it was definitely both our kind of place. Slightly hippyish, cheap with beautiful natural surroundings and lots of fun things to do. As always with Thailand, everything is super easy to do and find, and we set off for Spicy Pai Backpackers which we’d had recommended to us by many people as  a great place for solo backpackers. I was on map reading duty, and I’m not sure what happened but in my excitement I set us off in completely the opposite direction to where it was (also some scorned motorbike taxi person pointed me vaguely in the wrong direction) so we ended up walking quite a bit the wrong way in the blazing heat. All was fine though, when we asked some super friendly cafe owners where the heck we were they chuckled and called the place to pick us up. It also gave us a chance to have a mango and mint shake to cool us down. We got picked up by two motorbikes, hoisted our huge backpacks on the back and set off through the pretty town to Spicy Pai.

Spicy Pai has three main buildings made of wood and bamboo which are pretty funky and very Thailand, with cool monkey-like dorm beds made of wood and set in a few levels. They don’t have private rooms, and the dorm beds are 150 baht. For Pai this is pretty steep, seeing as you can get your own bungalow for 150 Baht and a really, really nice one with own bathroom for 200 Baht. Even the dorm beds in Chiang Mai were 100, so I’m not sure where they get off charging that much. The toilets and showers are outside, and its all very basic. The showers are hot and nice, and the bed pods are cool but other than that I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. They make no effort really to make your stay nice, the girl running it was pretty abrupt and cliquey, and the rest of the guests were all looking for something that wasn’t there too, not a very friendly atmosphere. Its also quite a walk from town through some dark roads so not so nice by yourself after a late night (although the town is perfectly safe, you never know). We stayed there three nights, but all the people we ended hanging out with we met in the town, its so easy to do in Pai with loads of great places to drink tea and hang out, lots of street food stalls and places with live music or outdoor fun, so you really don’t need to stay in a backpackers to meet people.

Spicy Pai living room

Spicy Pai dorm

We searched Pai for our next place to stay, and found BaanPai Village which had really beautiful bungalows with big bathrooms and porch for 350 Baht which Kayla and I shared, or smaller cute bamboo bungalows for 200 which I stayed in after Kayla left. Definitely a million times nicer than staying in Spicy Pai. It was right in the middle of it all but set back with bamboo trees and little ponds so felt peaceful, and a few seconds walk brought you onto our favourite street. The staff there are really nice too, really making an effort to make your stay pleasant, putting on some acoustic singers in the evening in the small, lantern lit restaurant.

It’s been great travelling in low season, and Pai was no exception. In high season its heaving with Western and Thai tourists, the guest houses are packed and much more pricey, and you can’t get a seat in any of the cute places. Low season has some rain in the afternoon that cools everything down, things are cheaper and the locals are more relaxed and themselves, and you can do everything you want with no crowds, all of Pai to yourself it feels like. 

Pai is set in some beautiful green foresty hills, roads perfect for motorbiking, amazing little cafes for food or tea, waterfalls and walks and even an outdoor pool, perfect for those hot mornings before the rain. It’s all too easy to spend days and days there, especially if you meet some fun people. I spent nine days there with Kayla and we really had fun. One day we got a whole gang together (called ourselves WOLVERVINES) and set off on motorbikes to the canyon, to the waterfalls and just to generally whizz about the beautiful surroundings. We found a great quirky place to eat set on a hill, with a cute Thai lady there making us some delicious Thai food like red curries and iced ginger tea. I can’t go on about the food in Thailand enough, it almost makes for a single reason to visit the country. Slightly on the expensive side in Pai unless you’re eating local, but it’s worth it. One of our favourite places was The Good Life tea shop and restaurant opposite Baan Pai Village. Amazing teas, the best Chai Masala I’ve ever had (thanks to Kayla for discovering) and really yum organic vegetarian food.

Pai relaxing

Looking for food in our favourite night time hangout

One night we ended up Be Bop Bar for open mic night where friends that we had made were performing. A mad, weird awesome Thai girl got up on stage and did some crazy singing and dancing and got everyone riled up and on their feet and grooving. Avi, a truly incredible Isreali flutist living in Amsterdam and in Pai while we were there busted out some awesome jazz freestyle flute. He also makes his own bamboo flutes which are absolutely beautiful, some of the nicest music I’ve heard while travelling.

Maria and Paco at Be Bop Bar open mic night

One of the most memorable things in Pai was meeting Mau and Maria and their lively, intelligent fun kids Issa and Miro. Kayla wanted a tattoo and was asking around about the artists in town when she was told about Mau from Avi. He is from Chile, and lived with his family in India for many years before moving to Pai. They didn’t want to shout about him doing tattoos in Pai as there were some local artists that might feel that work was being taken from them, but really Mau is in a league of his own. If you want a tattoo of an anchor or a butterfly then you can go to any artist, but Mau designs amazing tattoo art himself and puts his own style and interpretation into the tattoo. He interpreted Kayla’s idea of a feather with birds into his own beautiful unique style, and after meeting him and his family and spending time in their house I really felt like this was perfect to get something covered on my back that I’ve wanted done for ages. To be extra crazy and out of character, I asked him to design it with some ideas I had on theme and colours, but with no other input. Maria translated and interpreted some of it to him as English isn’t strong, and what came out was a really beautiful, special artwork that I had no idea what it would be until it was finished. What an amazing experience! I feel lucky to have such unique ink art by such an artist.

Mau, Maria, Miro, Issa

Thanks to Kayla, Genie, The British boys Luke, Euan and Simon, Marlieke, Sebastiaan, Mau Maria Issa and Miro, Paco, Avi, The Italian boys Silvio and Luca and Diego for making Pai so much fun! I’ll never forget ‘ducking’ (if anyone comes up to you and asked if you’ve been ‘ducked’, definitely go for it, its an experience to remember).

At the waterfalls

After nine days it was time to head back down to Bangkok. While I was in Pai, I was notified that my epic, much anticipated month long trek through Nepal, Tibet and into China had been cancelled due to some monks demonstrating in Lhasa. The Chinese government just slapped a ban on all foreign tourists (big grrr and middle finger raised to China in that moment from me) and so I had to come up with a plan B fast. I really, really wanted to be in the Himalayas for at least a month so I decided on the spot to go to North Western India, which turned out to be probably the best decision I made my entire trip. I met Michael, a Jewish Australian who had immigrated to Isreal, on the minivan to Chiang Mai and we had a fun night train ride playing guitar and ukulele and shooting the breeze, eating really expensive Pringles (200 Baht if you must know) and laughing about life in general. The night train ride is around fifteen hours from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and cost 880 Baht when booked through an agent.

Michael on the night train

He showed me a place in Koh San Road in Bangkok to stay that was only 150 Baht, Sitdhi Guesthouse. Just a bed and door, with shared bathroom. I had a little mission around Bangkok on local buses and motorbike taxis trying to find trekking shoes and failing. Happily I met up with Stu Bishop again, who was en route to Malaysia and it was such a nice treat before heading off into the (seemingly) scary unknown of India. I had my last Thai street food meal literally on the street near a big train station.

Street food with Stu and a black kitty

One of the things I had to do in Bangkok was get my Mongolian visa and maybe even Chinese visa sorted, as I really didn’t want to do either in scorching hot Delhi. I cut it really fine, leaving only one day to get both, and after searching around with taxi’s to find the Mongolian Embassy (the address on Google maps is wrong by the way) and finally finding it down a random side street, I knew that two visas was way unrealistic. I had to beg the Mongolian Embassy to give me a same day visa, which actually isn’t the same day at all its 24 hours (so technically the next day, if you want to be facetious which I did) and I had to pay way more for the pleasure, and got seriously told off in the process. Why was I rushing, why didn’t I allow more time for the visa, why (okay this was validated) had my Thailand visa run out by two days? Did I expect them to issue a visa when I had been so cavalier with another countries visa? After paying the very high fee of 2400 Baht I finally got them to issue my visa 22 hours later instead of the official 24. I had to rush to the embassy before my flight the next morning, I had to be at the airport at 10am and collect the visa at 9am. Thank goodness for Bangkok’s Skytrain that’s all I can say! Slightly stressful start to my India trip, but hey its all part of it.

Thai people are really friendly and so used to Westerners that practically you don't feel like you're in another country half the time., especially in the cities. It's hard to find local food houses in tourist areas as there are so many restaurants catering to tourists with good cheap food, but if you search down some backstreets you could find some markets but mainly it seems to be easier just to eat in the thousands of restaurants everywhere. A meal typically costs around 50-150 Baht depending (average around 2.50 pounds) and beer is super cheap and plentiful. The drink of choice though has to be fruit shakes. They're everywhere, and so cheap. Amazing sweet ripe tropical fruit... pineapple, mango, fresh coconut (sometimes served in the coconut with the fresh pulp poured over it, YUM). You can have three a day and not be sick of them. The North is way, way cheaper than the South, you can get your own really good bungalow for 200 Baht in the North while in the South it's around 500. Definitely go up North if you can, its very different to the islands of the South and so worth doing. An overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai couldn't be easier or more comfortable. Once in Chiang Mai, you can take motorbikes to the Golden triangle, be a hippy in Pai or just bike to villages. Everyone speaks English, everyone is welcoming it seems. Thailand could not be an easier or more comfortable place to visit, perfect for a relaxing holiday. An hour long massage can cost 2 Pounds! When you go out in the countryside its different though, more of the Thai essence but in my experience they keep themeselves to themeselves unless they're working directly with tourists. One funny thing I noticed too, in some places like on the South West beaches and in Pai, the guys really dress up like pirates and I know not why, but man they do it well. There's a guy in Pai who looks more like Jack Sparrow than Jack Sparrow. They even wear the white shirts and waistecoats with black eye makeup. I have no idea who started this trend or when, but these must be the best pirates out there!

To Delhi.

Here are the pictures.

Thailand: The South West 29Mar – 13Apr 12

The next stop for Mariaelena and I was the South West of Thailand via night boat and then bus. The night boat left Koh Tao at 11pm and we were there early, tired and ready for a good sleep after our outrageous last night out in Koh Tao. The boat had a huge ramp that great big trucks drove over and onto the deck to be ferried to Chumphon. We squeezed through the cars on the lower deck up some stairs and found the sleeping cabin, a room full of bunk beds that looked inviting. I was exhausted and very ready for a kip, and so squeezed my bags in between our two beds (people warned us of thieves in the night but we had nothing like that) and moved the rock hard pillow aside and was in la la land in an instant. Poor M couldn’t sleep though and was awake until 20 minutes before 5am when we had to get off the boat. She said at one point she went out on the deck to gaze at the dark ocean and couldn’t believe we had been dropped into an equally dark sea to dive just the night before.

The boat landed at 5am and we were taken to a cafe in town to get the connection minibus to Krabi, and had a chat to a middle aged man who was travelling for a year but seemed to dislike everywhere he’d been up to that point, while breakfasting on Lipton tea and warm bread rolls. We were the only ones to get the minibus to Krabi which must be because the season was calming down. It was nice to view the countryside in the day for once, lots of tropical greenery and palms. We stopped off and bought some fresh mangos cut up and put in a plastic bag, they are so fresh and juicy here they literally melt in your mouth. The ride was long and hot and I was glad for it to be over when we reached Krabi town.

We came to Krabi so that we could easily get to the South West islands like Koh Lanta and Phi Phi. I really wanted to poke my nose into these places that everyone raves on about to see what the fuss was. Krabi was a big dirty town and didn’t strike us as somewhere we wanted to spend any time, so after being dropped off at a random tourist office in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Krabi, we booked a boat straight to Koh Lanta, the more chilled out of the islands. I didn’t know much about it other than it had some great beaches and a good atmosphere, and wasn’t too much of a crazy party place. We waited a couple of hours and then got the bus/boat/bus combination to Koh Lanta. At this point we had been travelling for around 18 hours with all the connections and just wanted to get there badly, especially M as she hadn’t slept in days if felt like. Koh Lanta is practically a stones throw away from the mainland but you still have to get a little ferry boat with the bus to get there.

The ticket to Krabi from Koh Tao cost Baht 750 which included the night sleeper boat to Chumphon and then a bus to Krabi. We eventually got to Krabi at around 11.30am, so the journey is around 12 hours. The trip from Krabi to Koh Lanta was Baht 350.

Once on Koh Lanta you’re dropped off in the main town bit which doesn’t feel like an island at all. We were approached by some guys offering accommodation, although not aggressively pestering which you sometimes hear happening in Thailand but which I was yet to experience anything of. We picked a place on Klong Kong beach which had a bungalow that we could share for Baht 500 and gave us a free ride there. We went down a bumpy gravel road off the main road and were driven into a resort which was slightly beat up and knackered looking, but that had a restaurant and pool area on the beach and had a good room for Baht 600 (the bungalows for 500 were a bit grim) with a huge double bed that we could share. It’s called Blue Andaman Resort and is an odd place in that it was on a strip of beach that cut you off in a strange way to the rest of the island so that the only thing you could see were the bungalows, the pool area with some massage therapies on offer, a restaurant and the tiny strip of beach directly in front of it. It was quiet just after the high season and had a mixture of families, couples and pairs of girls (most of them Swedish) so pretty laid back and not much of a raucous going on. Although there was a bar called The Sound Shack attached to the restaurant which sold happy shakes and bang lassis so at times I’m sure it got slightly fruitier around here. But hey, beach pool and food is all good with me, especially after our long journey. The food at the restaurant was quite expensive though, so if anyone is planning on staying here walk out the resort at the back entrance towards the main road and find some cheaper breakfast and stuff like water, it’s half the price just outside.

Sound Shack bar - Google image

We spent two nights at Blue Andaman and it’s a pretty boring place and a bit claustrophobic so actually I wouldn’t really recommend it (after seeing what the rest of the island had to offer). But we ended up actually having a really fun time after meeting two new friends Gustav and Karl on the first night in varying states of disarray at the Sound Shack bar. They were two nineteen year old Swedes on a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas style bender in South East Asia, starting in Shanghai, Philippines and now Thailand and were pretty much up for anything. How they ended up in such a chilled out place as Koh Lanta I wasn’t sure, but I was glad they did. We had some fun getting merry and wandering round the beach and pools one night, star gazing and watching storms, riding on the back of their mopeds (which are really cheap to hire here in Lanta, around Baht 200 a day) and one night went to the town centre to watch Gustav get his tattoo at Lanta Ink (who did a great job if you’re thinking of a Thailand tattoo, Baht 3000 for an hour with machine not bamboo). It is an ode to Bill Hick’s sketch ‘It’s just a ride’. I like!

Meeting Karl at the Sound Shack

Gustav getting his tattoo at Lanta Ink

After two nights at Blue Andaman I was keen to stay somewhere else so we found Lanta Paradise Resort on Khlong Nin beach and I’m so glad we did because it was so much nicer in every way. A crazy beautiful Swedish girl called Christina told us about the beach. We managed to negotiate a really nice bungalow for M and I at Baht 600 with two big beds, probably because it was low season. The pool, beach and restaurant here was so much nicer and actually cheaper, and we had some great food and drinks down at the Majestic bar on big rustic wooden tables on the beach, who had a slightly less frisky array of shakes on offer than the Sound Shack. If you’re ever thinking of staying in Koh Lanta, give Long Beach (unless you want tourists and parties and same same restaurants) and Khlong Khong Beach a miss and head to Klong Nin. The atmosphere is nicer and the beach much prettier. That night we bought some beers and sat on the beach watching the nightly lightning show by the ever present storms on the horizon, took a walk down the beach and then found a groovy little beach shack bar where an old weathered Swedish man was chatting to one lone punter and where we sat until the wee hours, playing with the cute kittens bouncing around. It wouldn’t hurt to learn Swedish in these parts, as most people are from there it seems.

Khlong Nin Beach

Khlong Nin beach

M and I hired mopeds from just outside Lanta Paradise Resort (Baht 200 for 24 hours, just leave your passport, no licence necessary) and we set off with the boys to explore South of the island. It gets really hilly and the beaches more remote, with beautiful views. We found a small beach which you had to climb down to get to, so we left our bikes at the top and went on down to the really pretty and quiet beach. We were straight in the water, which is so warm and inviting here, and watched the sun go down around the limestone cliffs. There was a small shack bar on the beach run by some local Thai guys and we went over for a beer, and ended up staying until dark with these really friendly awesome people, although they could hardly speak any English at all. A big storm rolled over and we had to huddle in the leaky shack with candles listening to some Thai pop tunes out a tiny radio and laughing and chatting until the heavy rain subsided, trying to have conversations but mainly failing and laughing. Such a fun night! Eventually after a few hours we climbed back up the rocky track to our mopeds and had an energising ride back home through the wet pot holed streets watching the lighting subside into the distance. Life!

The Beach Shack

Our awesome friend for the night

Another night we had the most delicious food at the Greek Taverna run by really cute Greek expats. After eating fried rice and Thai curries for days it was so nice to get some different food and flavours, and man it was delicious. Greek salad with genuine feta cheese (the biggest treat out here, no cheese anywhere!) and some huge chicken wraps with tzitziki. Everything was yum and served with love, I recommend for a treat on Lanta for sure, it’s the best food I had on the island. Their little boy was first sat at a table wrapping feta in buckets and then playing outside finding huge beetles on the trees. Afterwards we made our way to Mong Bar, which is specifically and generously set out for those indulging in Thailand’s array of psychedelic shakes. It’s down a dark leafy street and projected on the trees and palms are some really trippy lights, with a fire burning and sprinkles of lasers and various otherwordly things hanging in trees. There were a few people sat around the fire gazing wide eyed at all the dancing light when we arrived, wobbly, smiley and bright eyed chatting nonsense. This scene of Thailand’s underground activities is very funny to witness. 

Greek Taverna, Mariaelena and Christina

Mong Bar - Google pic

After four nights on Koh Lanta it was time to for all of us to move on. M and I to Phi Phi for one night before she set off for a flight from Phuket to Indonesia and the boys also to Phuket for some rainbow Thailand craziness. M and I were picked up in the sweltering morning for a squashed ride to the Koh Lanta pier where we thought we’d be on the same boat as them, but turned out we weren’t which was sad as we didn’t even get to say goodbye properly. But we did get to wave at them from the top deck as we saw their boat whizz by. The boat to Phi Phi was around an hour and half and cost Baht 350. We sat on the top deck with the big yellow sun beating down and watched islands appear and disappear into the sea, hanging our feet over the deck getting splashed by the warmest water and getting very sunburnt noses. We were really hot and bothered arriving in Phi Phi which is chaotic, loud, busy and annoying to say the least. The pier leads you into a claustrophobic warren of streets which block off any view or site of the island itself, and is just a bunch of tourist shops and bars piled on top of each other. I wanted to go over to the other side of the island away from the main pier but there are no cars or bikes on Phi Phi so it would have been a long walk, and we were so hot and fed up that we just found accommodation from someone on the pier and let them ferry our bags in a cart around the cramped streets. It was still around a 15 min walk around the madness down some dirty back streets and up a hill which was thankfully set away from the main drag. The place had some palm bungalows which were quite cute and very basic, with a small balcony, mosquito net and bathroom for Baht 600 a night. There was also a good deck in the reception and small bar overlooking the bay so you could see all the madness on the beach from a perch. I think it was called Sunrise View Resort but I can’t remember now. We dragged our bags into the tiny bungalow and were straight in the cold shower and then down for a hot sleep. I was feeling a bit grumpy and hot that day, really out of sorts and when I heard my darling friend Emma’s brother had passed away it just sapped out any will to leave the bungalow and do anything at all. We went down to get some food but it was just so cramped, busy and claustrophobic everywhere that I just went back to the bungalow and sat on the deck watching the sunset and then a mad storm, being munched by mosquitoes and chatting to an Israeli guy who was telling me all about his break up which I wasn’t in the mood for at all, but that I was too tired to oppose to.

Boat to Phi Phi, Farigo in the middle :)

Deck at Sunrise View

Phi Phi fire show - Google pic

Very soon into the evening the music started from the main beach and I could watch the action from my viewpoint up the hill. They had some cool fire shows which I watched for a bit, but because we were up the hill it was creating some kind of acoustic trap, so every bar’s music was amplified and banging, all mixed together and focussed on shaking the walls of our bungalow. Phi Phi is beautiful, and somewhere I’d love to explore but if you’re not into annoying banging parties, litter and millions of tourists in the main area then it is not for you either. The natural beauty has been ravaged sadly, although I do know that away from the main pier there are still some really beautiful parts. You can also take a boat trip to Phi Phi Ley which is its smaller sister and where no tourists can stay. Personally I couldn’t wait to get off the island, and so the next day after I waved bye to my lovely travelling companion Mariaelena who went on to Indonesia, happily packed my bags and got on the boat to Railay Beach. It was around 2 hours away and cost Baht 400.

I had heard from a few people that Railay on the South West coast (near Krabi) is a great place, especially if you liked limestone cliffs and rock climbing. It’s not an island, but has beautiful beaches and is on a piece of land that juts out so it feels isolated like an island. As the boat comes in you can see turquoise water, golden beach and rocky green cliffs rising out the water in every direction, like the postcard view of Thailand that I had seen. The ferry boat lands in the bay and then a longtail comes to collect you and the luggage and takes you onto the shore as it’s really shallow with extreme tides. I landed on West Beach, which is where the more expensive resorts are and the prettier beach. This was so different from Phi Phi and so exactly what I wanted so I had a big smile as I made my way through the water onto the beach. I was headed for East Beach which is supposed to be for the budget backpackers. I read about a really cheap resort with bungalows for Baht 200 a night, so I hoisted my bags over my shoulder and made my way through the jungly and haphazard path with electrical wires and half finished building work, as is the way with Thailand’s building techniques.

After some hot trudging and getting sidetracked by watching climbers scale the vertical cliffs, I found myself in Railay Cabana (which was supposed to be the cheapest place to stay with bungalows for Baht 150 according to Travelfish but actually are more like Baht 400). It was really quiet and relaxed with some bungalows dotted around in the jungly hills and a bar playing reggae tunes. The only bungalow they had free though had two beds and was Baht 600 which was way out of my budget on my own, so I decided to wait for another lone traveller to come along to share with me. I had a beer at the bar and had a broken conversation with the Thai Rasta guy running it, when two friendly people appeared. Sophie, a cute bubbly girl from Essex in the UK, and Yannis, a hippy from Greece with incredibly long dreadlocks living in one of London’s posher house squats. And so another travelling friendship trio was formed. Yannis was looking for a room so that worked out great, and off we went to East Beach to have some dinner and see what it was all about.

Ice coffee on West beach

East Beach definitely is cheaper to stay in, but isn’t very nice. The beach is covered in mangroves so there is no swimming, and the seafront is crawling with restaurants and bars and crazy concrete paths and everything piled together un-aesthetically. But there are some good places to eat that are quite cheap and  few things going on. They had set up a stage for Muay Tai fights just outside the Bamboo Bar so we watched a fight for free in the open air which was cool. The MC came on first and gave a really funny introduction to the fight and he had such funny phrases. ‘Oh my Buddha!’ By the way, on East Beach there is no wifi other than in the resorts. The only place is the Bamboo Bar which is the most unfriendly place, charging Baht 40 for some soda water and not letting you plug your laptop in even for a few minutes. And since they seem to run all the small places around the bar like the tattoo place and burger place, they told them all not to let me plug my laptop in. Won’t be going back there!

Sophie frolicking at Cabala

Jungle man Yannis and Essex cutie Sophie

Muay Tai fight outside Bamboo bar on East beach

Yannis told Sophie and I about another beach close by called Tonsai, and I had heard about it too. It’s where all the climbers hang out because of the awesome rock faces there, and you didn’t have to ask me twice to go there. We went to check it out by climbing over some rocks from West Beach and we dropped into Tonsai beach on a beautiful sunny day with the water inviting and blue and the cliffs looking cool and green. All of us instantly felt at home, this is the real travellers beach and what we had been looking for. They had some chill out bars on the seafront, but only one or two. It was relaxed, quiet, no hassle and just seems like a place where likeminded Thailand travellers could spend a few days in the beautiful sea and cliffs. Yes please! We wandered into the jungle and found a little resort called Paasook, with bungalows for Baht 200 and some really nice ones for Baht 300. There was a lot of walking and climbing that day to get all our bags over from East Beach. Lovely Yannis took my heavy backpack for me, and we set off into the pitch black with our torches to find our way back along the longer path to Tonsai, as the tide had cut off the way we had got there earlier that day. We walked straight into a deserted resort in the jungle and couldn’t find the path for ages, and eventually we did. It was uphill and craggy and my flip flops broke a few times, but eventually after about an hour Tonsai revealed itself through the trees.

Finding Tonsai beach for the first time and swimming

Tonsai was the most chilled out place I had been to in Thailand and I know that many people felt the same. It was an effort to get there and once you were you didn’t want to leave. There were no proper roads so no motorbikes or cars. There was a chill out bar with a deck right on the beach with cushions and a shady tree and instruments dotted around with the Thai guys working there picking one up every now and again to give us a seventies rock rendition. The tide came right in and out every day so sometimes the blue warm sea was lapping at your toes and other times it was right out revealing a golden warm beach. There was cheap food, amazing fruit shakes of every flavour like watermelon, dragon fruit, papaya, mango, coconut, pineapple. There are lots of very fit and ripped climbers everywhere but also loads of people just wanting the some Thai beach flavour. When you looked at the beach from the sea, all you saw was a couple of boats, the beach and thick jungle. You would never suspect the small community of travellers inside hidden amongst the cliffs. There are interesting little places inside the jungle village, one of them offering free barbecue with a beer so you could even eat for free. This had to be the cheapest place South Thailand, if you shared a bungalow it was only Baht 150 a night. I was only planning on staying here for a couple of nights and then going North to Chang Mai but like everyone in Tonsai I ended up staying much longer than expected, eight days in total. You could climb over the rocks during low tide to West Beach to use internet and get some civilisation if you needed it, but we hardly even did that. There is only electricity in the bungalows from 6pm to 6am, so at around 6.05am you woke up in a sweaty haze as the fan had gone off, and there is no sleeping in that heat!  A good way to get you going early.

Dragon fruit from the shake stand

Yannis playing with one of the many Tonsai kittens

The beach and cliffs of Tonsai

The day after settling in Tonsai beach Gustav and Karl came from Phuket to spend some time there too, needing somewhere cheap and relaxing before heading home via Bangkok to Sweden. We had such fun meeting random characters and living the beach paradise life. They included a guy from Detroit, Patrick who while we were there got ‘why f**king not’ tattooed on his chest. ?? There was a Canadian guy Ryan who gave up his job as a financial adviser to become a hippy traveller. Yannis, a Greek nomad with the longest dreads I’ve ever seen looking for some property to buy in Thailand and live the island paradise forever. Sophie, a girly bubbly Essex girl who was a totally unlikely candidate to be sitting on this no frills beach, who arrived at Bangkok airport in six inch stilettos and who was travelling alone for eight months like me, and was such fun. My two cutie pie Swedish buddies who were going back after the trip of a lifetime to decide what to do with their lives in the ‘real’ world. Some Thai sea gypsies who worked in the bar playing music and learning five languages each from talking to so many foreigners. Such a diverse group from different countries and ages with different backgrounds, connecting with them all in this strange way, knowing you’ll probably never see them on their completely different path to your own again, is one of the nicest things about travelling.

Gustav, Ryan, Patrick and Karl working hard

My Baht 300 room at Paasook, there were kittens living on my porch

Our beach home

Sitting on the beach at night you could see the most incredible skies. The limestone cliffs framed the sky perfectly so it was almost set out as a stage for skygazing. Stars, clouds, full moon, billowing layers of clouds with electrical storms giving us the most insane light shows. You could spend weeks looking at that night sky and ever changing elements of wind, light, with the landscape and the water. WOW. And the weather and sea always warm and inviting.

We went kayaking around the cliffs and islands to beautiful secluded white sand beaches with turquoise water. One day Yannis, Sophie, Gustav, Karl and I went on a nine island tour for Baht 1000. You got on a longtail boat with about fifteen other people and they take you around to some of the beautiful small islands dotted around, some with white sand beaches and some remote where they drop you in the ocean for some snorkelling. The day started out sunny but soon became rainy and stormy so we got wet through, but it was still really fun sitting at the head of the longtail and being splashed and then soaked from above. We ended the day on a strange island which seemed to be a picnic destination from Krabi, but was totally empty with hardly any visitors just an old restaurant where someone was waiting to charge us for going to the toilet. We stood on the beach and watched thousands of bats flying silently and purposefully making their nightly journey from the islands to the mainland to feed on fruit and small children who had been naughty. We ate some shrimp noodle soup with rice for dinner and then got back on the boat for the best part of the day, the night snorkel. This was made special by the phosphorescent plankton in the water which light up when disturbed. We went round to a dark island, switched all the lights on the boat off and then jumped into the deep dark ocean and everywhere you looked were sparkles, it was so amazing! If you looked under water with your snorkel you didn’t see a person but an outline of electric sparkles, and we were doing deep duck dives and splashing around like crazy to make the water light up.

Kayaking

Longtail nine island boat tour, Yannis Sophie and I

Longtail nine island boat tour

The most interesting and intense part of my stay in Thailand had to be when the earthquake struck Indonesia and everyone believed there would be a catastrophic tsunami. Our gang were sitting on the deck watching the beach and sea in the sun, and the day could not have been more relaxed. There was a breeze blowing and I was lying on my back watching the tree, a flag and windmill ornament spinning and flapping about in the wind. Everyone was laughing and chatting when one of the Thai guys came up to me and said, you need to run up the hill now because a tsunami is coming. I was like, what? I thought he was joking at first. Then we looked around and saw everyone gathering up their things and coming up from the beach with looks of panic. He said again, that there would be a tsunami in the next hour and everyone sat up now in real concern. A tsunami? There had been a 8.6 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, exactly the same as when the 2004 tsunami hit. Everyone was heading up the path to the hills, but the Thai guys working there stayed so we all wanted to stay too to watch the early stages. Personally I’d much rather see and know what it is I have to fear than to be waiting up a hill somewhere knowing nothing. The atmosphere changed instantly, the beach and decks emptied. Soon there wasn’t a soul to be seen other than the few kayakers who were making their way back and climbers or walkers who were waved to hurry off the beach. Gustav started getting text messages from Sweden, where apparently it was all over the news that a major disaster was about to happen. We then heard there was a second earthquake also at 8.6. Things were getting more intense and serious by the minute. But we stayed, knowing that with a tsunami the water gets sucked out and then about 20 minutes later the wave comes, so we got ready to run when that happened. We stayed on the beach because we knew we had a hill path right next to us, and also the situation of Railay beach allows you to see really far out of the horizon. During this time the water was doing really weird things, looking all jagged as if a huge speaker was blasting sound waves through it. The wind completely dropped off in an instant, and it became really thick and hot with humidity. The cicadas started up in the trees for the first time, and we saw all the monkey’s running along in long lines along the cliffs away from the beach. My stomach was in a knot, and everyone was wide eyed and silent watching the beach. Then all of a sudden a huge black cloud came drifting overhead and cracks of lighting and thunder boomed down. It was like Armageddon! The air and light and everything changed so suddenly, but we still stood on the deck in the rain and waited and watched the sea. People started heading off one by one until really only a small group of us was left, but I was going to go when the Thai islanders started looking worried, and they weren’t leaving yet. The storm blew over us and we could see it disappear in the distance and then the most beautiful light washed over everything, pink orange filling the clouds with the sunset. Still no wave, and still we waited in eerie quietness. We waited until it was dark, and then the electricity came on and we were able to see from the news that no wave came. This was because of the way the tectonic plates moved in the earthquake. Instead of up and down like before, they moved side to side which had never happened before. So we really sidestepped a serious and deadly tsunami. What an experience. That night people started slowly coming down from the hills and out their cabins, and food stalls opened and everything went slightly back to normal.

Pre tsunami warning

Storm blowing over deserted beach, waiting for the wave

Amazing light post tsunami warning

The next day I was leaving for Bangkok with Karl and Gustav, them to go home to Sweden and me to catch my flight to Vietnam. It was such an effort to get everything ready and packed and to get the boat off Tonsai, you could almost feel it hugging you and pulling you back with warm water and sun. I was worried about getting a bus to Bangkok as it was their new year festival starting that day on the 13^th and thousands of people went there, also Phuket airport was closed due to tsunami warnings. All the buses were booked so we thought we’d try our luck and get a longtail taxi to Krabi and then a taxi to the bus station and stand longingly at the station hoping for the best. But as is the Thailand way, the taxi driver from Ao Nang beach took us to his friends tourist office where they managed to find us a night bus to Bangkok for Baht 1200 (really expensive, but our only option). We waited in Krabi for a bit trying to gather our thoughts and brain cells after so much heavy relaxation, and after boat/taxi/minibus/bus we finally made it at around 10.30pm to the crazy psychedelic light show that was our sleeper bus to Bangkok. The bus was totally nuts, with neon lights inside and bright pink and disco lights on the outside. At 5am it dropped us off on a roundabout in the middle of Bangkok and it was so disorientating to be in this huge city after our days of island life! 

Crazy Bangkok night bus

Good morning Bangkok on Apr 13th

Everywhere were cars and bustling and people, even at that time. And it was very hot already. We found a hotel to have some kind of resemblance of sleep before trying to face the day and me getting to the airport. The Thai new year water festival was on so after we left the weird old hotel we took a tuk tuk where we got buckets of water thrown over us every time it slowed down, which is actually quite nice in the heat. After I took the train the boys went into town into the thick of the crazy water party, where Gustav’s waterproof bag was slashed open and his phone stolen, with three months of photographs from his epic trip. How horrible is that? All memories gone, poor thing.

Getting the train into Bangkok airport and being there I couldn’t believe I had been in Thailand for twenty five days, it felt like I was right there less than a week ago. Such a haze of colour and laughter and beautiful nature, I had an amazing time and I will definitely go back again, this time to see the temples and culture of the North.

My good friend Stu was waiting for me at check in which was awesome, he flew in from India on a connecting flight to Vietnam so we were on the same flight and we were going to do some very different and very awesome travelling together in that amazing country...

Here are the Koh Tao diving pics, and here are the South West island pics.