Vietnam North West: Hanoi & Halong Bay 13-18 Apr 12

Arriving at Ha Noi airport I was instantly struck with how different it was to Bangkok. It was small and cold with clinical decor and with everyone in a straight line. The people coming off the planes and standing in the queues all looked exactly the same which I know can’t be possible but somehow was true. The same dark coloured trousers or jeans, with the same white tops, screaming formality. Bangkok airport was warm, colourful, and vibrant with a spectrum of people never before seen. The flight on Vietnam Airways was only an hour and a half unbelievably. I missed Thailand already. But, what a country awaits me in Vietnam! A new and totally foreign place for me to get my head around always makes me happy. I was also glad to have a travelling buddy in Stu for some time in Vietnam, who I met up with at Bangkok airport for the flight over. It makes sharing transport and other bits cheaper, easier and safer in a county like Vietnam if you have a companion too.

Enquiring at tourist information revealed that the only foreign currency exchange place was closed (change it in the city she said, its much cheaper) even though it was only around 9.30pm. A taxi to the Old Quarter would be $30. But when we asked outside at the taxi stand it was $16 and waiting were an Australian couple ready to share with us. The legitimate taxi’s here run on meters, so sometimes it’s better to just go with what the meter says before agreeing on an over inflated price beforehand which happened regularly to me. They metered taxis seem to be cheaper than what you’d expect.

Everything is quoted in USD here, but you can pay in VND Vietnamese Dong which is around $1 = VND 21,000. When taking out $50 you’re getting around VND 1m. Get your head around that.

The driver took us on a (unusually for Vietnam) leisurely drive through the streets of Ha Noi while cars, trucks, motorbikes and bicycles whizzed frantically within inches of us to get by. The busy roads were lined each side with crumbling, tall and thin French colonial buildings and then some newer ones squashed in amongst them. Hotels, karaoke bars with crazy disco lights and signs, restaurants, houses, all jostling and tumbling and vying for space along the main road. We had no idea where to go other than the Old Quarter, so eventually the driver stopped the taxi after much confused and frantic gesturing and set us down smack bang in the middle of it all.

Hanoi Old Quarter is an architectural and cultural mashup. It’s all old crumbling French and Indochinese architecture covered in thousands of electric wires haphazardly gathered together around poles, sometimes layers and layers of old and new wires being weighed down by vines and all sorts.  Every doorway, archway and street facing building is a shop of some description selling cosmetics, shoes, snacks, tourist niknaks, clothes, every plastic toy every mass produced, musical instruments, jewellery, stamps, paintings, tools, you name it! All spilling out over the pavement on to the street. Squeezed inbetween these shops are restaurants but not as we know them. Every man, granny and their dog has their cart out with a pot and a fryer, making Pho noodle soup or some other kind of fishy and fragrant dish. Around the little cart or stand or box where the cooking is going on there is a ring of tiny plastic chairs and tables, the kind you would have out for a two year old tea party, and tons people sitting with their knees around their ears slurping and gurgling whatever happens to be on offer. 

Lady on the street selling tea with a chat

People relaxing (?) at a cafe on the corner watching the world go by

Pic by Stu Bishop

Some food places are actual restaurants with a kitchen, but what goes on there or what is on the menu you have no clue. You walk in, hold up your fingers to indicate how many bowls you want of the stuff and they bring you whatever it is that happens to be cooking that day. It’s tasty and weird and surprising. Two people can eat for around $1.50 (USD) Although I wouldn’t recommend going this menu-less route if you’re a vegetarian or have any food allergies, as you have literally no way of knowing what it is unless you can speak Vietnamese. If you’re lucky you’ll find a Bia Hoi place (Bia Hoi is home brewed beer with no preservatives or chemicals, made to be drunk instantly. Quality and strength may vary but usually it’s pretty darn good) that does food too. In which case you hold up two fingers for two glasses which cost around $0.25 each, and then point to whatever food looks tasty from another table. You can drink Bia (Beer) Hoi and eat to your heart’s content and it could cost around $3! 

Hundreds of tiny plastic chairs and tables pile all over the pavements and streets, and this coupled with the shop wares and thousands of motorbikes parked means you have to walk in the street, where you’ll probably have to play dodgems with the traffic in the minute and windy roads. And that brings me on to... the traffic.  The traffic is like giving some hormonal teenagers a dose of crack in their morning coffee and asking them to play bumper cars with some scooters. Add to this some taxis, rickshaw, bicycles, ladies with baskets laden with fruit, sweet breads or hats balanced on their push bikes,  the odd rich person’s car, pedestrians, dogs, children, shop wares and eating punters spilling out of every corner and you have a bit of a hot, intense circus. Although, somehow, it works and the traffic just keeps on flowing. Some people find all this exhilarating and exciting, and others hot and stressful. I was in the former camp for about half a day, and then I needed to go inside somewhere cool and quiet and close my eyes to stop myself from spinning.

I only saw the Old Quarter of Hanoi so I have no idea what the rest of the city holds, and I’m sure there is much more to it than my description. I felt safe walking around but was warned of bag snatchers, scamming taxi drivers and pick-pockets. There was a definite hiking up of the price to as much as didn’t seem ridiculous of anything you’d like to buy, so haggle it all down until you think what you’re paying is worth the item. Don’t worry; it will still be four times more than the actual price so you’re more than likely not taking any shirts off backs. Vietnam is really cheap even with the overinflated prices from street vendors. Most of the back road, authentic Vietnamese eateries don’t seem to overcharge though, and if they do a tiny bit it’s still dead cheap to eat and totally worth the 80p or whatever you’re paying them.

I only saw one temple in Hanoi, Ngoc Son Temple which sits on a little island on the North part of Hoan Kiem Lake which is dedicated to a general who defeated the Mongols in the 13^th century. It’s small and cute and has a huge replica of a turtle that came from the lake. One night we went to the Water Puppet Theatre on Hoan Kiem Lake. It’s an hour long and cost $3, they have around four to five shows a day but make sure you book tickets as they sell out fast from bus loads of mammoth Chinese tour groups. The puppet show as really sweet, based on old folklore but the best part about it has to be the beautiful Eastern instruments that are hundreds of years old being played by professional musicians who have to go through quite a gruelling selection process to be able to play at the theatre. They had guzheng, sao (flute), trong (drums), dan bau (one stringed instrument). So beautiful! The women play the instruments so elegantly almost as if they’re doing a dance themselves. I ended up watching them most of the time.

Water puppet theatre orchestra - Wikipedia pic

There are a lot of expats living in Hanoi, mainly teaching English and also some NGO’s. We met a cute girl who was half Vietnamese half Cambodian, but grew up in Canada after her family was displaced when she was born in the 70’s because of all the turmoil in the area around that time. She has no idea when her birthday is as her mother used the Eastern calendar and didn’t know the Christian calendar date. But she thinks it may be in January. Imagine not knowing when you were born? We went out for some drinks with some other travellers from the May De Ville Hostel. A group of us walked for about 20 minutes to an expat bar and I had some real white wine from Chile, the first in months and it was heaven, and some chocolate cake. It was only $4 for the wine but that felt so expensive, like I was splashing out.

The main thing to do when you’re in North West Vietnam is to visit Halong Bay. It’s a really popular destination with all travellers including both Vietnamese and Chinese during their summer holidays. It’s a ‘dense cluster of over 3000 limestone monolithic islands topped with dense jungle rising from the ocean. Wiki: To assist Vietnamese in defending their country, the gods sent a family of dragons as protectors. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. Numerous rock mountains abruptly appeared on the sea, ahead of invaders' ships. After winning the battle, the dragons were interested in peaceful sightseeing of the Earth, and then decided to live in this bay’. Halong translates to ‘descending dragon’. 

It is insanely mystical and beautiful, especially with its continual mist and moody light in spring. You set out on a boat or ‘junk’ and spend one or two nights out amongst the islands. The biggest island is called Ca Ba, and around it is a national park which stops the boat traffic entering sensitive areas. You can sleep on Ca Ba, it’s a tourist haven with karaoke bars and all the rest along the shore front, or you can just kayak around the national park if you stay in Halong Bay on a boat.

I booked the tour through the May De Ville hostel. There are thousands of tour options through hostels, travel agents or people approaching you on the street. You should research a good tour, apparently they can be pretty horrible if you go too cheap or with a dodgy one. Some tourists died last year after their junk sank in the bay while they were all sleeping. A Two day one night tour they had was $95 and three days two nights was $145 which is pretty much what you’d expect to pay for a decent boat with good food. I did the three days two nights though as I thought I might as well properly soak it in. The tour was ‘Halong Party Cruise, no fun no pay’ (ha) and was run by Vietnamese operators. It was pretty funny because they obviously were trying to latch on to the backpacker party style (like the Hanoi Backpacker Halong tour) but didn’t quite get it. We were taken on the ‘party bus’ for four hours to Halong City, while the Vietnamese guide ‘Lucky’ gave us a very long winded briefing about how much fun we were going to have. Everyone just wanted to snooze though as it was early in the morning. The buses all take you through the same tourist shop cattle market on the way there with overpriced snacks and curios. We got to the boat and at every opportunity Lucky would give us another briefing about what to expect from the day which you could barely understand, bless him he did try hard but just talked and briefed way too much. It was like ‘okay, 1pm lunch. 2pm cave. 3pm beach. 4pm walk up mountain. 5pm back on boat, jump off boat into water. 6pm get ready for party time. 7pm party time. 8pm dinner. 9pm more party with karaoke. Argh, seriously leave it out! We just wanted to chill and drink some beers on the deck and maybe if the mood took us we’d get a little rowdier later on.

Our junk: 'Halong Party'!

View from the hill

Original fishing boat

The deck was really nice, you could see all the islands floating by like some kind of mystical sea dragon which was beautiful, and then the pumping Lady Gaga party tunes start up and you’re like, nooo. Haha. The rooms were really good though, you get your own cabin with bathroom, and the food was great, they laid on huge lunches and dinners. The group included around seven Argentinean girls who were well up for a boogie to some Spanish pop on the blue lit up dance floor in the dining room, two groups of very different to each other Canadian guys and a group of British eighteen year olds on their gap year. 

We jumped off the highest point of the boat into the water (around 15 meters) as the sun was going down which was great fun, and did end up having numerous beers into the wee hours of the morning despite having the party bone knocked out of us by Lucky.

 A little later on in the night we noticed that when something disturbed the water there was some incredibly bright luminescent plankton making glowing ripples in the water. So we started throwing drops of water overboard trying to disturb the surface from where we stood on the deck to watch this awesome site on the dark water. Eventually it all got too exciting and Stu and some others decided to dive into the water to make it light up like crazy. So, on the stroke of 12 they jumped in the water, the nutters, and gave us a luminescent light show. It was so crazy to watch, you could even see the fish making trails of light under the water. So the party boat delivered in its own weird way.

The highlights of the trip included seeing Hang Đầu Gỗ cave which is huge and beautiful (if you ignore the disco spectrum of lights) with stalagmites and stalactites, evidence of prehistoric human beings have been found here from tens of thousands of years ago. The views from the island mountain we did climb were really beautiful, and the eerie mystical magic of the thousands of islands really struck you there in the silence. Also the kayaking in the national park area was a real highlight, cool clear water where you could see the bottom, and mad caves that you could kayak through to the other side to more islands and caves.

Inside the cave

Although it’s an exquisitely beautiful part of the world, there are some downsides to the Halong Bay cruises. There are thousands of tourists and boats every day, so you’re swamped with them especially on the one day tours. With the boats come the rubbish and the pollution, and the water is practically a plastic oil slick in some corners which is really disheartening. There are some clean beaches and areas of clean water though to lift your spirits. You float past fishing villages that literally live on the water and move around with boats like on the movie ‘Water World’, which is so interesting to think about. There were even some dogs walking around on the floating houses and going for rides on the boats, it’s so strange to see people living with no land at all around them. Unfortunately though there is no proper waste disposal for these villages so everything just gets dumped in the water, and you see poor little fishermen wading through it all to catch their daily wares. You’d think they’d know better though, that the reason there is dead fish floating around is because their village is chucking everything into the water.

House in the fishing village

If you’re going on a three day two night tour, make sure there are a variety of activities lined up that you’d be into. The second day we did some kayaking in the morning around Ca Ba national park which was beautiful, clean where no boats could go with some cool caves and you can go exploring, but that only lasted for about two hours and then after that we were stuck on a smaller boat which was taking only four people out that day, from 11am to 6pm. All there was to do was sleep and ponder at the yucky water as the boat made its way painfully slowly to the pearl museum and factory which is quite sweet but is mainly set out for you to buy pearls which I wasn’t interested in. You’re basically trapped for three days in the bay and so bring a good book for sure. Also, they outrageously overcharge for drinks on the boat, even water so you end up spending a bomb. I was actually happy to get off the boat in the end, and in hindsight I would have gone for the two day one night option, if only because of the amount of money it ended up costing.

Hanoi Backpackers in the Old Quarter (the new one) is the fun standard hostel to stay at, I spent a day there hanging out with Emily on the couches in the living room and you’ll definitely meet up for it backpackers there. It’s $5 a night. I stayed in May De Ville hotel which was $6 a night for a dorm bed which was amazingly clean and comfortable with a great bathroom and a free breakfast that was fit for a much more expensive hotel. The staff there are really friendly and helpful, I’d definitely recommend it if you don’t mind there not really being a chillout area or bar to meet other travellers in.

If you need to exchange money go to a jewellery shop, their rates are so much cheaper than banks. And if you need to buy everyday stuff like shampoo go to a supermarket, you’d think they’d be cheaper from markets or little pokey stores but they way overcharge tourists, supermarkets can’t change the price tag.

We got back from Halong Bay at 5pm and then was straight on the night bus for 12 hours to Sapa in the North East mountains where we were going to meet up with my friend Emily from London and do some mountain trekking and motorbiking, good times ahead...

Here are the pics.

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.