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Holiday Review

Best drink:
Danae> I would rate as the highest the Spark (the banana/vodka/something else yum cocktail I had whilst watching the sunset in Phuket, just before Chris proposed) and the Chocotini (a combination of baileys, vodka, hazelnut liquor and with choc sauce
around the rim) that I sipped at the Moon / Vertigo Bar, a swish establishment on the 61st floor of a top end hotel in Bangkok.
Ryan> The tower of beer at the Hippy Hi Bar, Bangkok.

Worst drink:
Heidi> Only 30 mins before the Chocotini, had some kind of overpriced curdled, nausea-inducing.... juice at a dodgy bar in Patpong, Bangkok. nausea-inducing cocktail of kahlua, coconut cream and pineapple juice. The only cocktail I haven't finished IN MY LIFE!
Chris> Full Moon Party buckets. Tasted nice enough, but there is something not right about that much Red Bull

Best Pad Thai:
Ryan> Some dodgey little eatery on some dirt road in a shack at Koh Phi Phi. I was completely drunken and it tasted awesome. It had ho-fun noodles.
Chris> I am not a fan of the Pad Thai

Best night:
Danae> The night Chris proposed to me was definitely my best and most memorable night.
Ryan> Full moon party, getting down and dancing to the trance music on the beach was epic.

Worst toilet:
Danae> There's a few competing for this title, but probably the one that was in the ferry carpark, on the way to Ko Pha-Ngan (I think), that had a substantial hole in the wall looking out to the carpark, and didn't lock, and was dirty as could be. No toilet paper of course.
Ryan> Chang Mai in the markets. There was no ass gurney and had only a tissue and a Muay Thai ad to wipe my ass.
Heidi> At the hot springs, Chiang Mai - the only squat toilet of my trip . I got off easy - after some of Danae's reports I just managed to hold it in!
Chris> Grand Inn Come Bangkok. The toilet was fine except Danae clogged up on the first night of the holiday.

Best street vendor:
Danae> The best street vendor was the pancake man at Ko Tao, where Heidi and I devoured a plate of crispy Thai pancakes of the tasty concoction of peanut butter and banana, with condensed milk drizzled over the top. It may sound revolting but it tasted divine!
Ryan> The fried chicken street vendors, its like KFC at every corner!
Chris> Sausage lady in Koh Tao

Best view:
Danae>The best view was from the viewpoint at the top of Ko Phi Phi. It made the very long and steep walk well worth it! Beautiful limestone cliffs cascading down into the ocean and a great view of all the island's beaches
Heidi> From the viewpoint up on the hill in Koh Phi Phi. The view from the hotel in Koh Tao runs a close second, especially since I wasn't nearly having a heart attack or sweating like a prostitute in church.
Ryan> Paradise view hotel balcony at Koh Tao, would have said Koh
Phi Phi lookout, but it was a complete bitch to get to.

Best memory:
Danae> My memories are all slightly fuzzy due to large amount of cocktails consumed on the trip, how could I go past the romantic evening that Chris orchestrated for the proposal? It began with cocktails at sunset on the beach (when I just happened to comment to Chris that I wished I had a cocktail to compliment the view, when a waiter mysteriously appeared - cocktail in hand - wishing me a happy birthday!), and then a romantic candlelit dinner beside the gorgeous Naithonburi resort pool, with numerous delicious and impressive looking cocktails, and finishing with the fantastic finale of Chris getting down on bended knee and asking me to marry him. Applause!
Heidi> Any of the times we were all sitting back at a restaurant on the beach with Changs and cocktails in our hands
Ryan> The third dive we did had some really awesome underwater life.

Worst memory:
Heidi> Possibly waiting at Chiang Mai airport waiting for a plane or any accompanying information that never came.
Ryan> Losing the passport.

Worst meal:
Danae> The crappiest thing I ate was an undercooked satay chicken pizza with too much base and not enough topping. The coffee and wine everywhere was also terrible.
Heidi> Noodles a la salmonella on Koh Phi Phi. Ironically the same day I had my only hangover, and right next door to the shop with the best pad thai.
Chris> The musim village in Ko Panyi. I didn’t eat the worst meals but I had to watch the others struggle de-shelling marinated prawns.

Funniest joke:
Ryan> Saying "you forgot your boarding pass" at every airport, or any place that required some sort of ticket to get transport.
Danae> I found it very amusing that Ryan created the new reference to our growing "pad thighs" after the numerous pad thais consumed on the trip. It was pretty hilarious too when Chris set up a scenario where he "accidentally" forgot his boarding pass in the Chiang Mai airport, just so Ryan would have to say "don't forget your boarding pass".
Heidi> Hoo har diddly diddly
Chris> “The entirety of this journey”, “The heat bat”, “Caining the beers”

Worst transport:
Heidi> Air Asia, followed closely by the bus trip to Surat Thani which took almost 8 hours instead of the anticipated 2.5.
Danae> Our worst transport was the taxi rides in Bangkok - we nearly died countless times - they drive like maniacs, swerving all over the road in peak hour traffic including onto the other side into the path of oncoming vehicles and braking suddenly inches from crashing.

Worst or best ass gurney:
Ryan> One one Koh Tao, the seal at the bottom of the trigger leaked, so the water went everywhere when you tried to hose yourself off.
Heidi> The slightly overpowerful one at the hotel on Koh Tao - best or worst depending on what rocks your boat.
Danae> The last place in Bangkok because there was no ass gurney. I miss the gurney action now that I no longer have one at my constant disposal.
Chris> The one in Koh Tao was on the left side of the toilet!

Best story:
Ryan> I would probably remember a good one if I wasn't drunk everytime there was action going on.
Heidi> The engagement - not really my story but one that will be told for a long time.... at least until the wedding :P
Chris> When we were waiting for a not-so-overloaded Sawngthaw to take us to the Full Moon Party, Glasson called Ryan and told him to come out to Home nightclub in Sydney.

What you wish you knew for next time:
Heidi> Timetables, prices, lane markings, rules and laws are merely rough guidelines.
Ryan> What you wish you knew for next time: Air asia and Bangkok taxis should be avoided at all costs, spend as little time in Bangkok as possible.
Danae> More thai
Chris> Don’t take two pairs of jeans. Thailand in the hot season is bloody hot.

If you had to cut anyone from the team who would it be:
Ryan> Me, so the others wouldnt have anyone to poke fun at. That'll learn them.
Chris> Ryan. All he wanted to do was cain beers for the whole holiday.
Danae> I actually enjoyed the company of everyone in the team and wouldn't have cut anyone out.
Heidi> Everyone at some point. Kidding - it wouldn't have been the same!

Best massage:
Danae> The best massage I had was a Swedish oil massage in Ko Pha-Ngan. The traditional Thai massages were a bit too intense for my liking.
Chris> Chang Mai, 120 Baht.

Best or worst purchase:
Ryan> Probably the fitted suit I purchased.
Danae> Worst purchase was probably the handcrafted umbrella - I bought it early in the journey and it proved awkward for traveling and I really don't need it.
Heidi> My snorkel. It broke before I used it, so I had to share Ryan's. The only other time I went snorkeling was on Koh Tao where they provided one anyway. Doh.
Chris> Best purchase were the big stubbie coolers.

Best deal:
Heidi> Danae's mini tub of monkey balm for 4 baht???
Danae> The best deal was in Ko Tao when we got accommodation and Chris' scuba course for 8000 baht (the course alone would cost 8000 baht), and only had to pay a little bit extra to get an air-conditioned room.

What you will miss most:
Ryan> Cheap beers, drink promotions, lack of
responsible service of alchohol and some crazy maggie sauce that I put
on my scrambled eggs and omlettes.
Heidi> The lazy days of eating and drinking by the beach
Chris> Ass gurneys. (although won’t miss having to put toilet paper in the bin or brushing teeth with bottled water)
Danae> Thai Food

Worst nights sleep:
Danae> Worst night's sleep was on the plane on the way home. I slept well every night, and during the day (wombat woman).
Heidi> Either the flight home, or one night spent staring at the ceiling worrying about Ryan's passport. Well someone had to I guess.
Ryan> I think I slept pretty well, nothing really outstanding, but the beds were hard as.

Most amount of toilets ruined in one day:
Ryan> 5, this was probably only slightly above average for the trip.

Worst beating taken from the heat bat:
Heidi> Bangkok - the car fumes gave it more sting
Ryan> Doing the climb at Koh Phi Phi

Is there anything else you would like to mention to the blog people?
Chris> You are very lucky I forced the others to do the blog. They just wanted to relax constantly.
Heidi> Just wanna say thanks to everyone I know that read this blog. I think that's just you Mum :P
Ryan> Haven't they had to read enough?

Write your own question and answer it here:
Ryan> Why are holidays so short? Because our god is a vengeful god.
Danae> What were some of the silliest moments? Amusing times were when Chris lost one of his thongs and replaced it with a random thong for the rest of the holiday and Ryan forgot his passport after telling me how careful he is with it.
Heidi> Who wants to go again? Me.
Chris> Why do the others hate me so much? Because I am a meany

The end...

Posted by Chris

So sad, it is the last day of our holiday :(

At least leaving the craphole of Bangkok makes it easier to do than if we had to return to home direct from one of the awesome party islands. Danae and I woke late today, even Ryan and Heidi beat us up. We had the very average breakfast and headed outside for another death-cab ride.

As expected, the driver was driving like a complete idiot. We thought it was going to get really bad when, after 10 minutes of crazy driving, he put on his seatbelt. Lucky he didn’t do anything completely crazy and he even took the seatbelt off again after about 2 mins!?!

We arrived at MBK shopping town again where Ryan and I left the girls and went to collect the suit. We took the trusty SkyTrain but as usual, when we arrived at the suit shop at the scheduled time, the suit wasn’t there and they had to call up to get it delivered. Fifteen minutes later the suit turned up and Ryan fitted quite well into it.

We caught the SkyTrain back to Central where we met up with the girls for lunch. I had KFC, Danae had a maccas burger and Ryan and Heidi shared some Japanese. We caught one of the least death-like cabs back to Khao San as no cab drivers know our hotel by name and they speak no English. We got back to the hotel about 1:30 to find out they had cut the power to our rooms as checkout time was at 1pm. We quickly packed our bags and checked out before they charged us for another half-night room rental for being late.

Death-cab time again, but lucky we got a relatively sane driver for the trip to the Airport. Although he didn’t take the toll road making the journey take much longer than it had to be. At the airport we had a few hours to kill as our flight had changed to TG993 and was now leaving at 6:15 instead of 5:30 (apparently is it a bit too hard to tell people when you change their flights in this country).

I spent a good hour or two just trying to find a blank notepad so we could do some handwritten blog entries on the plane, but I couldn’t find anything and eventually settled for some customer feedback forms for some airline service. Meanwhile Ryan and Heidi were enjoying very expensive but delicious tapas as we were all trying to spend the last of our Baht’s.

I needn’t have bothered trying to find any paper as once we had been through an abnormal amount of security and bag checks, we boarded the plane to find out we had the best in seat entertainment I have ever seen. All seats had a personal TV of about 9 inches big, with heaps of on demand movies, TV shows and games to play. Ryan beat me at a game of pong but then I beat him in a game of “Mole” pong. The mole seemed a lot like he was on my side despite his supposed randomness. The meals on the plane was the usual crap airline food, but Ryan and I enjoyed the movies “Shooter”, “The Breach” and “The Departed” while drinking the plane of all its supplies of Chang and Heineken.

We landed at Sydney airport and stocked up on the maximum amount of duty free booze, then did the customs and quarantine queue thing. Danae and I got put in a stupid long line while Ryan and Heidi luckily were waved through. Ryan thought that Danae and I had run off, so him and Heidi joined the cab line and were unreachable by the time we were out. We never got to say goodbye :( Oh well, we made the virgin blue flight back to Brisbane, feeling like death, where my parents and sister were there to greet us with Champagne and balloons. My parents sure are excited about Danae joining the family :)

A final rundown of holiday highlights is coming soon…

Ordered chaos

Posted by Heidi

Friday morning we woke up to incoherant ramblings from a megaphone in the street, and had the hotel's included breakfast. It was nothing to write home about, although the room temperature milk was the most plentiful it had been the entire trip, and we were each given a small carton worth, rather than the normal thimble size. Ryan had an appointment with the suit guys to check on how it was coming along so we all hopped in a cab. This ended up being our most scary ride of the trip, and our closest call with death. The cabbie was a wannabe race driver with a bad case of road rage. He weaved in and out of the traffic without indicating, drove on the opposite side of the road in front of oncoming traffic, and swerved side to side to intimidate/take revenge on fellow cab drivers. Without seatbelts in the back you can only hang onto your seats for dear life, literally.

We got out shakily at the suit place, unexpectedly in one piece, and vowed to not get a Bangkok taxi again. After Ryan tried on his suit (he looked very dashing, even though it was only half made), we hopped on the Skytrain to get around town, which was a helluva lot safer than in a cab down on the roads below. We stopped for some cute mini cupcakes (and a beer for Ryan) while Chris swapped over his pants (he was a bit big for the ones he'd bought the day before, probably due to his excessive eating during the trip (Chris: I blame the dodgy Thai factory workers)), and travelled down to Saphan Taksin station on the river to get on a ferry up to Chinatown. The river was quite brown, similar to the Brisbane river, so I'm told (Chris: bloody Ryan, the Brisbane river is blue now!). We got off at Ratchawong Pier, and explored Chinatown. It was complete mayhem - crowded streets, constant traffic, horns beeping, traffic cops blowing their whistles incessantly, and in the thick of it was a maze of little alleys full of people and little shops selling absolutely everything. We tried looking for a bar where we could stop and try and get our bearings and work out where we should have lunch, but there ain't no bars in Chinatown. You've just gotta keep shuffling along at all times. So we pulled to the side and our trusty Lonely Planet recommended the Shangrilah as a good dining spot. We retreated upstairs in the safe, clean and air-con environment... we ate lots of steamed dumplings and yummy duck. We headed back out in search for an egg tart for Danae, but we couldn't find any.

We hopped back on the ferry to Chang Pier and walked back to the hotel in the sweltering heat through an ugly park swarming with rats with wings ie. pigeons. We were pretty happy to have made it back to the hotel without having to get a death cab. Unfortunately the 7-eleven next door to the hotel had a random rule where they didn't sell alcohol between 2 and 5 pm (we're still not sure why it's OK to buy it between 11am and 2pm though) so the boys had to go without Changs for a couple of hours. We were planning on going to a restaurant called the Flying Chicken that night, a crazy place Danae had read about where apparently BBQ chickens are flung through the air and caught on the pronged helmet of a child sitting on the shoulders of a man on a unicycle, or something, but it turned out it was going to be over an hour away, and we valued our lives too much to spend more than 2 hours travelling to this place in a death cab.

We decided to stay closer to home and catch a cab a shorter distance. We took another crazy cab ride into town. The taxi driver suddenly didn't know where we wanted to go so dropped us in the vague area, near Patpong. We found a bar to take the edge off the latest cab ride, and Danae and I had our most expensive cocktails thus far. And I can honestly say it was the worst cocktail of my life. it was a mix of Kahlua, coconut cream and pineapple juice, but something had gone slightly amiss with the coconut cream and it started to curdle. It resembled miso soup and then settled into 2 distinct layers, and remains the only cocktail I haven't finished in my life. As I waited for the food poisoning to kick in, we set off for the Banyan Tree hotel so we could go up the to the Moon Bar on the 61st floor. The most direct route there seemed to involve walking through the ER of Bangkok Christian Hospital for some reason, but anyway. We finally found the hotel, and went up to the top level which is the highest al fresco bar in the Asia Pacific. It was very plush, and the drinks were very expensive, but the view was amazing with sweeping vistas over the whole of Bangkok by night. Danae and I had a chocotini, the trip's best cocktail, and the boys had Johnny Walker Green Label.

After soaking up the view for all it was worth it was time to get back down into the thick of it again. On the way back to Patpong, Chris took a photo of Ryan in front of the Australian Embassy (where Ryan was gonna have to get a replacement passport), and was almost arrested by a Thai cop who grabbed Chris' wrist and got his supervisor. Despite proclaiming we were just Aussies, he had to delete the photo. We wandered through Patpong, a pretty seedy but touristy district full of a mix of restaurants and sex bars. There was lots of hassling in this district, and after stopping Ryan from following a man up an alleyway behind a van to "a good Thai restaurant" we found a safe air-con place for our last dinner. The food was kind of average, but we had a good time reflecting on the high and low points of our trip.

From there we walked back through Patpong, and the boys succumbed to a go-go bar for a "cultural experience" that they could tick off in their book so they weren't considered poofters (apparently). Danae and I opted for margheritas instead, although we were pretty amused and curious about the whole thing. The boys haggled their way into a bar for a cheap price and saw all sorts of wacky and very unsexy things which they may or may not choose to remember. All I know is that the following was involved, in no particular order: lady boys, picking up of bangles, egg show, fat Thai women (I didn't know there were any?!), sucking up of water in a Coke bottle, and disppointing ping pong tricks. Anyway, by the time they came back Ryan seemed quite disturbed and sat on the ground hugging his knees and rocking back and forth saying over and over "There's no place like home, there's no place like home". It was pretty late by then so we got another death cab back home, which is a lot less scary when you're very tired and have just had margheritas. We made it back safe again, and got dropped near enough to our hotel. We found our way back, and the boys got rejected one more time by 7-eleven coz it was after midnight so they couldn't buy a beer before bed. It's quite ironic (and inconvenient) what rules Thais actually take seriously. We were all dead tired anyway so we hit the hay for our last night of the trip.

Bangkok, land of the smog cloud

Posted by Ryan

Heidi and I woke up and went strait to the luscious brekky awaiting us. There was a menu card to fill out and the breaky was cooked up fresh. I was very excited as it was the first peice of decent brekky bacon I had on the holiday. We wondered over to the brekky smorgesboard and among the cheeses, baked savoury treats and other gourmet delights there was some tomato juice, worcestershire sauce, tabasco, celery sticks and a bottle of absolute vodka. Yes that's right, Bloody Mary's for breaky, I immediately mixed myself one to enjoy with the rest of my meal.

We caught a Sawngthaw to the airport and paid 300 bahts. The hotel offered to take us for 250 baht each. The Samui Airport was a private one and was kind of just a really nice looking shack, all open where we checked in. After the checkin we caught a bus/train thing down a road to the gate shack. They wouldn't let me take my beer through as it was a security risk which was highly annoying as the security guard kept smiling and asking if I wanted a beer and I was thinking, "No I don't want a beer, I just like carrying them around wrapped up in my bag for fun!" The airline was touted as a boutique airline and it offered free chocolate, tarts, juices and other snacks, but I was too full from breakfast to indulge. Of course the girls made the most of the free food on offer. (Chris: The nice check-in lady even put us on an earlier plane than our scheduled plane)

After some nice treatment on the plane, moist towels, ice creams and lunch, we landed in Bangkok and this time took a metered cab to the hotel. This guy didn't have the best suspension in the world, but still did about 120kph on a dodgey freeway, passing other cars like they were parked. Little did we know, this guy would be one of the best cab rides we'd have in Bangkok.

After checking in we caught an even more crazy cab to the Emporium shopping center. It was near where we could get a good suit according to the lonely planet. We walked around to a few places to get some quotes. One of the suit pimps yelled out "WHAT'S WRONG?" in disbelief when I went to leave after getting "his best price" despite telling him that I was just looking around. Got measured up at the last place as they all seemed to be about the same price for the quality I wanted, for 5000 of the bahts.

We caught the sky-tram to the MBK shopping center, which is like a Westfield, but everything is fake and or dodgey. Did about an hour of shopping, then had to wait close to an hour for the DVD shop to burn us some DVDs even though they told us they'd only be 20 minutes. After this we waited for a taxi at the rank and were rejected by quite a few cabbies, because us pointing at a map of Bangkok's inner city that's in Thai and English is a bit too hard for them. We got sick of it and just got one to drop us off at Khao San Road, the backpacker district that wasn't too far away from the hotel and walked back.

That night we headed out to Khao San road, this is in the film "The Beach" too. Very popular area for backpackers. I bought some fried grasshoppers from a street vendor, the sauce it was in tasted good, but one of the long spikey hind legs got stuck halfway down my throat and I choked on it. One of the locals informed me that it's a good idea to rip them off and they were a lot easier to eat after that. Everyone tried them except Danae.

I needed to find an eatery to get some beer asap, those grasshoppers were dry and salty as. We found a place called the Hippy-Hi Bar that did a mean Local Curry, although I think I've had it in Sydney and it's called a Jungle Curry. The Hippy-Hi bar offered towers of beer, a 3L plastic tower that sat at your table. It was some good work for us to drink it before it went warm. I even got to wear it as a hat after! In good spirits and full of beer we headed home and Chris decided it would be hilarious to hassle the hustlers on the way home.

Ko Samui

Posted by Danae

Our final day in Ko Tao unfortunately; I was really enjoying my time on this island - there's so much more to do than just go diving. Chris got up mega early for his scuba diving 7 o'clock trip to the pinnacles, of course in the process waking me up and I couldn't get back to sleep. I wasn't due to meet Heidi until 9.30am for brekky, but as it turned out my watch had stopped during the night and there were no clocks in the room, so I ended up getting up and eventually going for a wander down to the beach with my book to the pass the time. When we met at the AC Restaurant No 2, we had to wait a ridiculous amount of time for our breakfast of cereal and fruit (Heidi) and scrambled eggs (moi), nearly an hour, despite us being the only people there. Luckily the eggs were worth it. It was strange because everywhere we'd been, including this restaurant, so far had had impressively quick service even when there were loads of people there.

Our morning wasn't particularly remarkable: we had a last wander down the streets of Ko Tao, enjoyed a cocktail (or three) at another beachside restaurant, surfed the internet and then met the boys post their diving courses, proudly sporting their SSI certificates (and fortunately no lasting ear damage).

Chris' day had consisted of going to 7eleven and after much effort (due to language problems between him and the staff) bought a nasal decongestant. This unblocked his ears and made his diving day a lot easier. The trip to the pinnacles was about 45 minutes. During the briefing from their instructor, Lorenzo, Chris and Ryan learnt the sign language for "big fucking shark" which was pretty amusing. Next stop was the twin peaks, where Lorenzo and the class did their best to avoid the fish that had been swimming into their ears the day before. They did some compass things, and then went for a bit of a paddle and swam through a hole created through two rocks leaning together. They arrived back around midday and did their tests, which of course they passed with flying colours.

We had a quick bite of lunch and then caught the catamaran (the best and quickest boat we had been on) in airconditioned comfort over to Ko Samui. There was a French movie showing with Thai subtitles which seemed to involve lots of men shooting at each other, beating each other up, etc. and not much else. At Ko Samui pier, we got a free minibus to the Buri Rasa Hotel at Chaweng Beach. This was a pretty impressive hotel, right up there with Naithonburi in terms of the luxury factor. I was very pleased with our room, which faced out onto a beautiful courtyard which included a dip pool and fountain. I would like one of those in my dream house thanks! Unfortunately Chris and I felt like we had wasted 50 bux upgrading to the nice room, as Ryan and Heidi were upgraded to the same style of room for free - understandably they were very pleased though. I particularly liked it how you were given a bowl of fruit (in a half coconut shell) and a little tapioca pudding snack on arrival, and you could burn incense to make the place smell really nice.

I didn't waste any time in getting my togs on and going into the impressive horizon pool which looked out on the beach, and was expertly designed with little seats to sit on and jacuzzis for your back - ohhh yeah. Then back to Ryan and Heidi's dip pool for a quick refresher and a couple of vodkas (Ryan of course had a Chang tallie - Chris was trying to get in the in-room wireless internet working so he could do some blogwork).

Chris and I decided to go out for a romantic dinner by ourselves, so we left the others and walked a fair distance down the beach before stopping in for a cocktail / Chang at a beachside restaurant. The food didn't excite us much and the prices were significantly more than what we'd been paying, so we walked up to the main street to find an Italian restaurant. We dined at La Taverna, obviously owned by an Italian ex-pat but serviced well by several Thai waitresses who were very attentive and even spoke Italian to us. It was pretty cool to say 'Grazie' and have them respond 'Prego'. I thoroughly enjoyed our thin-based pizza, huge glasses of delicious Italian wine (finally, some decent wine!) and then the dessert of chocolate mousse and panna cotta. There was a huge table of girls and one bloke who were singing raucously what sounded like university anthem songs very enthusiastically. It turned out they were nurses from Iceland, and the bloke was from somewhere else and was trying to pick one of them up (unsuccessfully it would seem, given that they went in separate directions at the end of the night) and they were very apologetic for their noise and if they were ruining our romantic dinner - we didn't mind at all, it was highly amusing.

On the street (as had been the case with the beach) there were hawkers touting their wares, smooth-looking tailors trying to shake your hand and people with snakes/monkeys/large birds trying to get you to take your picture with said animal/reptile (for a price of course) what seemed like every 5 metres. We headed back for a blissful nights sleep in our lavish room at Buri Rasa. I really didn't want to leave Ko Samui or the hotel - I could have easily spent a couple of weeks there, but for the cost which was definitely more touristy than other places we had been.

Nitrogen Narcosis

Posted by Chris

Danae and I got up at early and we went to the Flower Bar to meet Ryan and Heidi for breakfast. We later realised that as a part of the cool scuba dive package, breakfast should have also been included for free. Heidi didn’t mention it yesterday, but instead of paying for the originally organised accommodation (which was very nice and had a great view), Danae and I decided to stay in the free accommodation that you get if you sign up for a SCUBA open water course. We had to pay 500 Baht per night for Air-Con but it was a great deal and quite nice, although no view. The SSI course was 8000 baht – much cheaper than at home, and also Koh Tao is the home of SCUBA so you have to do these things (apparently in the high season you will have lots of trouble trying to find accommodation if you don’t sign up for SCUBA dives).

Anyways, we had a nice enough breakfast and the girls left as they were going on an all day snorkelling tour around the whole of Koh Tao. Ryan and I stayed at the hotel doing our homework using Ryan’s “Knowledge Sharing” technique – where I do one chapter, Ryan does another, then we swap answers (sounds a bit like cheating).

We wondered back to the SCUBA school to wait for class to begin and ran into the girls. There were lots of people going snorkelling today, probably about 25 people. As the girls left I had a very close call to death. A pair of drunken idiots on a motorbike came roaring past and almost crashed into the garden and me, lucky they just missed. Koh Tao has a huge party every night with pumping music on the beach until the sun comes up. I am not sure who attends these parties as most people seem to be here for the SCUBA. Actually, we later saw a drunken reveller asleep under one of the bar decks on the beach so some people must be going.

School today was short, with only an hour of theory before a 2 hour break for lunch. There was no power today for some reason, so no air con, which made learning difficult. The power supply on Koh Tao is really dodgy and some places have a daily blackout from 6am to 10am. The highlight of today’s lesson was when Ryan had to desperately leave the room to go use the bathroom after his morning coffee.

During lunch we enjoyed Ryan and Heidi’s view while doing the answers to chapter 5. Back at the Phoenix dive school, we loaded up a longtail boat for the short trip to the SCUBA boat. There was a crap-load of gear and a lot of people so the longboat was loaded to absolute capacity. It was a waste of time though as 4 people couldn’t fit on the boat and the longtail had to come back for them.

Our first open water dive spot was at the beautiful Mango bay at the north end of Koh Tao. We suited up, did our buddy checks (Bruce Wills Ruins All Films) and jumped in the water for the first time. We descended to about 6 meters where we all did our training drills and then followed a coral outcrop down to a bottom depth of 12 meters. The Swedes took a little while to get their buoyancy control right, but Ryan, Cy and I were cruising along like pros immediately.

Next dive spot was at the Twin Peaks, right next to the beautiful national park island “Koh Nang Yuan” (Such a beautiful island you can’t take any sort of bottle or even flippers to this island, there is even a 100 baht charge just for landing there). As we decended, my ears were hurting and I was having trouble trying to equalise the pressure by blowing through my nose.

We finally finished the decent and stopped on the bottom for drills. I was completely freaking out because I felt some very sharp pains in both my ears within a minute and I thought my ear drums were exploding (something quite common and very painful that can happen while diving). I was ready to surface and indicated to Lorenzo that I was having sharp pains in my ears, but he didn’t seem overly concerned.

We swam about under the sea for about 30 minutes which was very nice but I couldn’t enjoy it as I was too worried about the rest of my life without sound. I really can’t emphasise enough how concerned I was about my ears. I have previously had ear problems from swimming/surfing, and my ears hurt even when I swim to the bottom of a pool.

Once we finished the swim and were getting ready to surface, we did some more drills on the ocean floor. As I was watching Lorenzo a fish tried to dart right into his ear. The largish fish, that grow to about 25 cm, must have thought his ear was a cave with bubbles coming out of it, and tried to get in. I thankfully realised that maybe the sharp pains I had been feeling during our first drills were these same fish.

We surfaced while doing an air sharing exercise and Ryan confirmed that he too had felt the fish going into his ears. It was a relief that the sharp jabs were not my ear drums exploding, but it still didn’t change the fact that I was feeling pain while descending and I couldn’t equalise properly (Actually I just found out that as a child, a doctor said I had narrow Eustachian tubes).

Back on dry land we found the nicely glazed girls in the AC2 bar, drinking cocktails with two friends from the snorkelling tour, James and Anette (during the snorkelling trip, Danae and Heidi landed on the national park island of Ko Nangyuan and drank cocktails there, instead of snorkelling the Japanese Gardens – so norty). James was a single English dude who the girls were hoping would hook up with the gorgeous South African Anette, but Anette ruined those hopes when she revealed she had a boyfriend back home. I thought she might have just made up the boyfriend on the spot, but we checked out her Facebook and her story corroborates.

We had an early night, after BBQ and Pad Thai dinners, as Ryan and I were quite tired from the SCUBA. Despite my tiredness, I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, wondering if my eardrums would survive the decent to 21 meters tomorrow morning.

Paradise View

Posted by Heidi

The next morning Ryan and I arose, second as always to Chris and Danae. We had our last meal at Morning Star Resort (another pancake chock full of fruit goodness for me) and then took it easy for the morning. We hopped on the back of a ute to the pier and caught the ferry to Koh Tao. We paid an extra 20 of the Baht to be given the honor of spending the journey in the VIP room. This meant we had air-con and got to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (and yes, again we arrived at our destination before the end of the movie).

The coastline of Koh Tao looked absolutely beautiful as we approached it - amazingly blue water and beautiful green hillsides with lots of coconut palm trees. We got another ute to our hotel – View Cliff Resort. Ryan and I checked in there, but since the boys were gonna do a dive course Chris found a cheaper deal and stayed with Danae at AC Resort just down the road. View Cliff was beautiful – our room was called Paradise View and that it was.

Chris and Ryan signed up for a 3-4 day dive course and immediately slipped into a class to watch some diving videos. I read on my balcony sipping a vodka and enjoying the view. Life sure is tough sometimes. The boys got let out after an hour or so with little study packs in which they had to complete homework hahaha.

We were staying on Sairee Beach, the “main strip”. It’s a very laid back beautiful strip along the beach lined with open air bars and restaurants. We watched a beautiful sunset over the ocean as we had some cocktails, beers and dinner. Kebabs and barbequed seafood are the specialty around here. Mmm mmm. There were some fire twirlers down on the beach in front of us and later on a couple of lone fireworks went off. We then retired to bed to the sound of techno music pumping on the beach until the wee hours of the morning.

Into the deep blue (pool)

Posted by Ryan

Day 2 of Koh Tao we started off with a stroll down to get some breaky. I had an omelette and an instant coffee. About 10am Chris and I went to another theory lesson for diving with our dive instructor Lorenzo a 44 year old Italian “farang” covered in tats. Our class of 5 students also had a Canadian bloke called Cyrus or Cy and a Swedish couple called Pavlo(I think) and Sandra. The morning’s theory session pretty much consisted of him telling us if we ascended or descended too quickly or did anything wrong, we’d die of some horrible nitrogen related illness. Then we got measured up for our wetsuits, fins and other diving gear that we’d use over the next couple of days.

We had a couple of hours interval before our first “confined water dive” ie in a pool, so we decided to find the girls and have some food. God knows it had been at least 2 hours since we’d last eaten and we were starved. We headed back into the main town where we got the ferry in. The day was pretty hot, so I decided to have a spicy duck soup to really get a good sweat going. After all of us were sweating like hookers at a church, we had a quick look around the town, I grabbed a decent coffee and we headed back.

That afternoon Chris and I turned up at the dive center, ready for our first SCUBA dive. After a brief run down of the equipment and checks we plunged into the pool. I think at that point the group was just more excited about getting out of the heat and being submerged in cool water.

We did a few drills, a couple of which involved taking off the mask and putting it back on. I made the mistake of opening my eyes with the mask full of pool water, which seemed to consist of 9 hundred thousand parts per million of Chlorine. Insert Mc Baine joke “Ze goggles zey do nothing!”

For dinner we went to one of the local BBQ joints and Heidi and I shared a BBQed squid and chicken kebab with sides of fried rice and spring rolls. We were going to hit up the Maya bar for some party on the beach, but then it started raining really really hard, so had to move in off the beach. Boooo. On the way home I had some fried chicken from a street vendor that was very delicious, or which tasted very delicious after several tallies of Chang beer. Awww yeah.

Too many Red Bulls

Posted by Danae

We woke up very late and had brunch at the bungalow restaurant, still feeling pretty seedy from our ridiculous intake of red bulls the night before. (We later heard that the red bull in Thailand is 12 times stronger than the UK equivalent and the one in UK is banned in Denmark and some other countries – crazy stuff). We didn't feel like doing much, so spent the day lazing by the pool, reading and surfing the internet.

Late in the afternoon I decided to go for a walk, which wasn't so great a plan considering after 5 minutes I was dripping with sweat and thirsty, but soon enough happened upon a refreshment stand where I had some water and a cheeseburger (very tasty – and much better than McDonalds, despite them using exactly the same logo as Maccas on the streetstall. I don't think they care much for copyright laws here!).

I also chatted with a German bloke who shared my view that the Full Moon Party was pretty wacky and fun, but perhaps we were a little too old for it. We saw a accident where 2 girls and a toddler on the bike turned too sharply into a side street, resulting in a horrible screech of brakes and the bike falling to its side and them falling off. Thankfully, no-one seemed badly hurt but it scared the hell out of me. I walked back to the hotel and cooled off in the pool, before settling in for more laziness with the others including watching 'The Wedding Crashers' for the upteemth time.