Hello again!
Our first stop in Thailand was to the island of Koh Samui, one of three popular islands in the Gulf of Thailand . The island itself had the same kind of dilapidated air as Nusa Lembongan in Indonesia, but there was much more traffic, and crime seemed to be more of a concern than our beloved Nusa. We saw warning posters about mugging and were lectured on locking our rental scooter properly.
We took a walk out on our first day and were disappointed to find that access to the nearby Chewang beach was impossible unless you were staying in one of the expensive resorts. A little disappointing to be honest! We rented a scooter and took trips to Fisherman’s Village, which was more bustling and had numerous shops and restaurants. We also visited ‘Big Buddha’. The name pretty much says it all. It’s a big gold Buddha statue…! Other than that, snorkelling and scuba diving are pretty much the only things to do on the island. As we’d already booked a diving course on Koh Tao that we’d be starting in a week, we actually ended up a little bored!
One of the most amusing incidents to happen on the island was when Rich decided to go for a haircut at a place just up the road. ‘Massage parlours’ line the streets in Koh Samui, usually with two or three scantily-dressed Thai girls lounging outside. When Rich and I were together, they would occasionally offer massages but otherwise take little notice. When Rich ventured out alone for his haircut, it was a different story! He came back looking traumatised with uneven, patchy hair and a sheen of sweat across his face – “That was AWFUL!!” . Apparently, the massage parlour girls had seen he was alone and had blocked the street off, trying to force him inside for a ‘massage’. After extracting himself from the girls, he then sat through a haircut done by a woman who had clearly never cut a man’s hair in her life. When she whipped out a razor blade to do the edges, cold fear took hold, hence the sweat! I thought the whole thing was hilarious! It seriously is kind of gross though. We’ve seen so many single men here who seem to be on the island solely to frequent these massage parlours. Sex tourism is massive in Thailand and it is really quite depressing to see the evidence up close. In conclusion, Koh Samui was not our favourite and we definitely won’t be going back!
Learning Muai Thai on Koh Phangan
Our next stop was Koh Phangan, which was a short ferry ride from Koh Samui. Although there was a little more bustle here, the majority of restaurants appeared to be run by European ex-pats which made it feel a little less authentic. We booked in with a local training facility to learn Muay Thai, a traditional sport which is kind of like kickboxing. We rocked up in our gym wear and were taken through a two hour baptism of fire where we learned to punch, kick, elbow, knee and block opponents. Every ten minutes or so there was a ‘break’ in which we had to do 10 push-ups and grab a slurp of water. Towards the end of the session I could barely lift my arms and was pretty much just flapping uselessly against a punch bag waiting for it to be over! All in all it was a fun experience and the local instructors were great and very patient with us. There were even two other girls at the session which made me feel a bit more comfortable. We won’t be taking up Muay Thai anytime soon but it was definitely an interesting morning!
Learning to dive on Koh Tao
Despite its murderous reputation, Koh Tao was definitely our favourite Thai island. There was a lot more going on than the other islands and it was much busier too. We booked in to get our SSI Open Water Diving qualification at Big Blue, one of the larger dive schools on the island. Learning to dive was really different to anything we’d done before. We started off in the pool and spent a whole afternoon underwater, learning how to deal with all the equipment and handle things going wrong. Some of these included losing your mask underwater, or running out of air (scary!). The following two days we were let loose in the ocean and did similar tasks underwater. I can tell you that removing your mask on the ocean floor is not fun. Both Rich and I ended up inhaling salt water. It’s so hard to fight the urge to swim to the surface when you panic! We got our qualifications successfully but we both agreed that snorkelling is way more fun, less dangerous and requires far less equipment and expense than diving does! I guess we will be snorkelling from now on!
Chiang Mai
I’m not going to lie to you, but we had experienced a little bit of ‘travel exhaustion’ before we reached Chiang Mai, a city in the north of Thailand. Constantly being a tourist and trying new things whilst living out of hotel rooms gets pretty tiring, and we both knew that it would be tough at times. We had purposefully booked an apartment in Chiang Mai for this reason. Our little Airbnb flat in the heart of the city was the perfect break from monotonous hotel rooms. It allowed us simple pleasures like having toast and cereal in bed in the morning, brewing proper tea and coffee whenever we wanted and just having a bit more space to live in.
We spent 10 relaxing days in Chiang Mai, which is a compact and chilled city surrounded by a big moat. As expected, Thai food is fantastic and we gorged ourselves most evenings in the Night Bazaar on 80p Pad Thai and Mango Sticky Rice. Rich developed a passion for Massaman curry and we both drank our weight in fresh fruit smoothies. We booked to go on a full day cooking course whilst in the city and learned to make Pad Thai, Papaya Salad, Massaman curry, spring rolls, Thai tea, Mango Sticky Rice and Tom Yum soup. The cooking school was run by the friendliest people and was in the middle of a beautiful organic vegetable garden. They even gave us a cute little recipe book to take away which was packed full of authentic Thai dishes. If it survives the rest of our journey we will be cooking up plenty of Thai delights when we get home!
Whilst in Chiang Mai, we visited a few computer markets and after much deliberation bought a cheap Lenovo laptop for Rich to use to do some free online courses. The great thing about buying it here was the amount of free software we got thrown in or were able to purchase at remarkably low rates (I’ll not go into too much detail…!).
Our last stop in Thailand was Bangkok. We took a bus there which was a rather epic 13 hour journey. Bangkok is absolutely huge! We only had a couple of days there but we went to see the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (again, self explanatory) and spent some time on the bustling Khan San (backpacker street). We even got a chance to watch the new Star Trek movie which was awesome. Interesting fact about Thai cinemas is that everyone has to stand up before the movie starts to watch the King’s song which looked like a short film about what good things the King was doing. It was…different!
I mentioned in my last post that we’d had another travel epiphany recently. It was to do with the fact that to be happy, we both need to be DOING things. Like actual active things like hiking, surfing, snorkelling etc. One of the questions we’ve been asked about travelling for so long is “Don’t you get bored?”, and the answer is YES and it sucks. We can’t afford to be doing ridiculous excursions every day and even if we did we’d be exhausted. As a result we do have a lot of downtime. We were our absolute happiest in Bali and we think this was solely because we surfed every day and went to bed exhausted! We’ve both tried to keep fit throughout the trip so doing exercise helps a little on the down days but they are still pretty dull sometimes. That’s why we decided to buy a laptop and a yoga mat in Thailand. When we have spare time, Rich usually does courses that will be useful for his job when he gets home and I do yoga or I draw (it sounds less useful but I have big plans for both). We decided to make life a little easier for ourselves by getting a decent laptop that Rich can use instead of peering at a tablet and getting an actual mat for me so that I’ll stop sliding around and falling into things when I’m practising yoga. I haven’t mentioned on the blog yet that I’ve booked to do my 200 hour yoga teacher training in Bali in October so I need all the practice I can get!
So our month in Thailand ended with a flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. I particularly loved our chilled out time in Chiang Mai and our experiences learning to dive on Koh Tao. The weird massage parlours are a bit gross and the people on the islands we found to be less than friendly for a country named ‘The Land Of Smiles’ but we really enjoyed the majority of our time there. The food especially was absolutely amazing and I absolutely loved speeding around the cities in tuk tuks; they are my favourite type of transport hands down!
So that sums up our experience of Thailand! Next stop, Cambodia!
Jess & Rich
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- chiangmai
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- kohphangan
- kohsamui
- kohtao
- mangostickyrice
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- Thailand
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