Due to the tour I booked down to Singapore being cancelled, I booked another one with Intrepid that was very similar although it did mean that I would go Back to Kao Sok National Park for a couple of nights (see previous blog).

So my last tour started with another overnight train down to Surat Thani then a minibus over to the park. Since I had so much fun last time, I convinced everyone we should go tubing down the river again. Didn’t see many snakes this time but we did stop off at the monkey temple again. We found a little cool bar that was ran by English guy selling large 750ml beers for 50 baht (£1) so spent the evening there getting a little tipsy with the Irish couple Steve & Maria.

I decided to spend the next day by myself just chilling out in the jungle, had a little wonder in the stream and watched the wildlife go by. I was really impressed that they had Wifi, so spent a large part of the day sitting on my porch playing on the internet. We went back to the same bar for dinner and a few beers; it was pretty cool having English style chips again with brown sauce.

The next three days we spent in Krabi which is a beautiful area full of islands and beaches (they actually filmed The Beach one of the islands) it’s also really overrun with Tourists. We did spend one day touring all the islands and lagoons on a speed boat and snorkelling around all the coral. I’ve never snorkelled before and it took me quite a while to get used to breathing underwater. Matters weren’t helped by the guys on the boat throwing bread at me causing the fish to go into a feeding frenzy around me (even having a little nibble at my fingers). We even stopped at a beach that was inhabited by a tribe of monkeys (that seemed to like coke). It was a really amazing day that I’m not likely to forget in a hurry.

We arrived back in Bangkok bus station without any real plans on what we were going to do for the last few nights before Pam flew back. We decided on the Patpong area because someone had recommended it and it was close to the skytrain route. Patpong is quite a touristy area famous for it’s night market, pole dancing bars and ping pong shows. Since we only had a couple of days before Pam flew home we opted for a slightly more upmarket hotel (one with hot water, AC and a slightly lower mosquito count), which compared to the accommodation we’d had during our previous few weeks was real luxury.

Pam was quite keen on seeing more tigers so we booked a one day tour up to Kanchanaburi; home to famous bridge on the River Kwai and the Tiger Temple.

We were picked up from the hotel at an eye watering 6am and driven the 3 hours north/west to Kanchanaburi where we first visited the Commonwealth Cemetery for the POW’s that were killed during the construction of the “death” railway followed by a visit to the WWII museum. The museum was a little bit poor, I don’t want to take anything away from the horribleness that went on during the war, but it surely deserves a better memorial than that, there are very crudely made models and murals and a few original cars and bombs. We were given two hours to visit the museum and bridge and we must have done it all within one hour. Next we went for lunch at a very cool floating restaurant, the food was quite simple but the view of the river was quite breathtaking. We were bundled back in the bus again and taken to waterfall that the kids were using as a waterpark. It turns out that it was national children’s day in Thailand and I guess it’s the day that all the kids get to go out and have fun. It was really interesting to see how little heath and safety there was, they just don’t have the same blame culture we have.

Finally we got to the tiger temple or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua to give it’s proper name. It started out as an animal sanctuary with a few orphaned tiger cubs. Tigers are now the mane focus of the place (although there’s lots of other animals wondering around) and certainly a huge tourist attraction. For 500 baht (£10) you get access to the temple and can have your photo taken with about 5 different tigers (only by yourself). If you feel like splashing out an extra 1,500 baht (£30) on top of the entrance fee you can have a “special photo” in which you lie down with the tiger’s paw around you, or its head on your lap and you and 4 more people in the background. It felt like a really crazy system. It was nothing like the tiger experience in Chiang Mai where you got 20 minutes in the cage with the tigers and could actually play with them. This felt like a conveyor belt of people being taken between the sleeping tigers, snap, snap, snap and you’re done. To be fair there was a little area with a few tiger cubs that you could go and stroke but overall my experience of the day was a little disappointing.

We didn’t realise it but because there was an election on the Sunday, the government suspends all alcohol sales (as if you’d get drunk and vote for the wrong person) which put a bit of a dampner on Pams last night, luckily we had a minibar in the room from which we managed a few bottles of beer and a bottle of gin.

The following morning we said our goodbyes and Pam got a taxi to the airport and I headed to a nearby hostel called LUB*D which sounded a little ominous but tuned out to be quite nice and modern.

I spent the rest of the week getting lost around Bangkok, didn’t have a lot of energy and didn’t really feel like socialising too much so I spent a lot of time chilling in the park watching the lizards trying to catch birds and managed to get to the cinema three times, the movies weren’t really up to much (Madagascar 2, Quarantine and The day the earth stood still) but I did see 2 of them in the IMAX theatre which really was breathtaking. The cinemas in the Siam shopping centre are really good, probably better than most of the one’s back home, but there is one very strange tradition that seems to catch a few non Thai’s out. Before the movie starts they play the national anthem and show a little video of people going abut there lives with pictures of the King in the background. During this you’re expected to stand, but there where always a few westerners nearer the front who sat through the whole thing – oblivious to the dirty look they were getting from the Thai’s.

Whilst I’m on the subject, there are photos of the King everywhere – every shop, home, even by the roadside there’s one of about 6 different photo’s of His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great in various poses. The Thai’s truly love him, you’re even warned in the guidebooks not the insult the royal family. I think he’s seen as a semi-divine figure, chosen by god.

My last night in the hostel was a bit of a nightmare, somehow the room had become infested with mosquitoes (or maybe it was just 2 or 3 very big ones), a few people actually left the room. I woke up the next day covered in bites. I must have at least 50 on my body and I counted 17 on my face alone.

For my last day in Bangkok I treated myself to another foot massage and insisted on getting the strongest looking girl in the shop to do it (the last one I had was a bit pathetic). I felt like I was walking on air afterwards.

I’ve joined my last Intrepid group now that will take me on the last leg of my journey down to Singapore. They seem like a good bunch but there’s a bit of a sex imbalance with 9 girls and only 3 boys. But because the other to guys are in couples it means that I get a room to myself every night, so I’m not complaining.

We arrived on a very wet Koh Samui around lunchtime on New Year’s Eve and as we looked out the windows of the bus we could see rivers of rain pouring down the road. The prospect of spending New Years Eve on a wet beach wasn’t really getting us in the spirit.

Our rooms on Koh Samui where basically a terraced version of the bungalows we had in the jungle although the mosquito count was a lot higher, we had (some) hot water and the walls were paper thin.

The weather managed to settle down a bit that evening and because it was New Year all the hotels force you to go to their overpriced dinner and party. The food wasn’t too bad, but once we had our fill we headed out to the beach for cocktails. As we walked along the beach, all the resorts had a bar on the beach and maybe a band playing, all was going well (and getting more blurry) until about 20 minutes before new year when we sat down outside quite a posh hotel and ordered drinks. No drinks came and when the countdown started some of us were a little angry.  It seemed to really halt the flow of the night and after another 30 minutes we were walking back to the hotel.

We got a minibus to one of the bigger beaches (Chewang) on New Year’s Day, it was quite touristy and we had people trying to sell us things all day. It didn’t actually rain, but the threat was always there and no sun managed to peak through the clouds. We spent the evening playing pool and drinking cocktails (I seem to have gotten a real taste for cocktails, especially tequila sunrise).

The high-speed catamaran to Koh Tao was an experience I wouldn’t like to repeat – it jumped about 10 foot in the air across the waves for the duration of the crossing. At least half the people aboard were sick (me included) but the stewards where always ready to pounce on you with a supply of sick bags and tissue paper. All of this whilst a dodgy copy of The Dark Night was playing on the screen above us (although you couldn’t hear it above the groans of people being sick).

The worst 2 hours of my life over and we arrived at our resort on Koh Tao. The sun still wasn’t quite out, but it was certainly trying. Koh Tao is the diving capital of Thailand and is a lot more chilled out the Koh Samui. I quite enjoyed the atmosphere on the island and Pam was definitely ready for some lazy beach time. We didn’t really get up to much apart from walking along the beach, eating great Thai food and watching fire shows with a couple of cocktails (maybe a few too many on the last night judging by the state we were in on the last day).

We jumped on the ferry and overnight train back to the mainland and Bangkok where we had a bit of a dilemma. The tour ended once we reached Bangkok train station so we had 5 more nights to fill before Pam returned home so we had a choice of going back to another resort or staying in Bangkok. We took a taxi to the Eastern Bus Station and before we knew it we were headed down to Koh Samet.

Koh Samet is a real tourist island about 3 hours south of Bangkok. I didn’t mind too much, I was quite happy walking up and down the beach or listening to audio books whilst Pam tried to get a tan. Because there’s not much traffic on the island we hired a moped to get around which I think is probably the best thing we’ve done so far. Driving around the pot holed dirt tracks of the island was probably quite dangerous, but so much fun.

After our Chang Mai trekking experience we headed back to Bangkok before we stated the second part of the tour to Southern Thailand. We had the majority of 2 days free so first off we went for a well deserved massage then a spot of lunch before we said goodbye to Clare and Taryn who were heading down to Phuket for a few days of sun. That evening we met up with the new group and guide who from the start seemed a little incompetent. He started the meeting before everyone was there, he forgot to introduce himself or any of the group to each other or organise a meal which resulted in only a few of us going out for dinner that night.

The following day Pam, myself and the Finish couple Katja and Jukka hired a longtail boat for an hour that took us around the maze of canals around Bangkok where we saw loads of houses up on stilts and kids swimming around in the water which I suspect may be mainly raw sewerage.
On the way back to the hotel we passed a red t-shirted protest (I don’t really remember the names of the groups but I know its yellows Vs reds and the yellows have a penchant for airports). We quickly hurried past them as I’d heard that there’d been a few times grenades had been tossed into the middle of the protests.

That evening we boarded the third overnight train of our tour down to the jungles of Koh Sok National Park which proved to be really good fun.
We spent our first afternoon relaxing down the river on giant inner tubes. The guy who organised it and joined s down the river kept pointing out the various snakes and birds along the river but unfortunately it was too wet to take my camera.

The Bungalows we stayed in where really basic but cool, you don’t get any hot water, but you do get monkeys playing on the roof and porch. I know which I’d rather have (although we did have to keep checking everything for snakes.

We spent the next day hiking around the actual national park although our fitness levels and the humidity proved to be our downfall again and we only really saw the most accessible parts of the park, only a few monkeys and waterfalls. We spent the afternoon playing in the river and on the rope swing.

The next morning was New Years Eve and we had to get up at 5am to catch the ferry to Koh Samui. It was soon apparent that the big black clouds in the sky were here to stay and the next 5 days we had planned beachy islands might not be as sunny as we’d hoped.

After a somewhat difficult night’s sleep aboard the overnight train to Chang Mai we arrived at the hotel around 7:30am. We had decided to do a Thai cookery class which involved a trip to the local market to buy all the ingredients then to the cookery school and we were shown how to cook phad thai, green curry, tam yum soup and sesame prawn toast. The class was a lot more fun than I was expecting, I might even give a few of the recipies a try when we get back home.
That evening we visited the Chang Mai Night Bizarre which is a 1km square market which sells everything imaginable although it is mostly to tourists, I didn’t see too many local Thai’s around the market stalls. I ended up getting a new pair of sun glasses and a pair of board shorts for a couple of pounds each. Pam has been quite keen on getting a tuk-tuk since she arrived in Thailand but I’d heard the ones in Bangkok where all out to rip you off, but the ones in Chang Mai seems a lot more reasonable so we ended up getting one back to the hotel.
We started our 3 day hill tribe trek early the following morning first off visiting an amazing waterfall then starting the trek properly with a good 45 minutes uphill climb in under the midday sun. It quickly dawned on Pam and me that what the guidebook described as a moderate fitness level that was required may have been a little more strenuous than we were anticipating. It took about 5 hours to get to the village we were staying the first night in, but it was well worth the effort, we had a quick tour round the village and shown a few local trades and customs. The village was a lot bigger than I was expecting and our guide Pun-Pun explained how all economy works with all the villagers sharing any money that is made like a big happy socalist family. We spent most of the evening sitting around a campfire singing Christmas songs to a very out of tune guitar (with thanks to music maestro Taryn). We stayed in little Bamboo huts that where up on stilts and were a lot more comfortable that they looked, that is until about 4am when all the animals ain the village decided to sing us a song lead by the cockerels.
Our second day of the trek involved another 4-5 hour hike through the jungle. The first couple of hours where quite good and mostly flat, it wasn’t until about 3 hours in that we were faced with another massive uphill climb and then an equally difficult decent. The last hour of our trek was made a lot easier by the cunning use of elephants. We had a lunch of 2 minute noodles and got strapped into the seats on top of the elephants. I say strapped, what I mean is a very thin piece of string. The guy sitting on top of the elephants head didn’t seem to have much control over it as our he just seemed to do whatever he wanted including getting incredibly close to the edge of a cliff just to get at some bamboo.
Our elephants dropped us off 10 minutes outside the village we were staying in that night, this one a much bigger community although by the time we got to our shared hut some of us were a too exhausted to go for another tour of the village and instead opted for a swim in the nearby river followed by a few games of cards. We spent our Christmas Eve very similarly to the previous evening with another bout of campfire karaoke this one helped along by a bottle of local Thai rum which we’ve both got a bit of a taste for.
We were given an option for the last day’s trek (Christmas Day): we could either do another 6 hour trek or pay 300 baht and take a bamboo raft the 40km downstream. All but one of us opted for the rafting which may have taken the villagers a little by surprise because they had to add 4 or 5 more bamboo poles to strengthen the raft. Even with the strengthening the raft sat about 3 inches below water level and once we got in the ‘rapids’ it could go down to about knee depth. Aside from the rapids the river ride was quite relaxing and we saw a number of animals including water buffalo, elephants and somewhat surprisingly a king cobra.
The ride back to Chang Mai in the back of a pickup truck was quite difficult with about an hour of bumping around on dirt tracks then another couple of hours on the road back to the hotel for a well earned shower and couple of hour’s kip.
That evening was the last real night we had together with that group so we headed into Chang Mai for Pizzas and maybe a few buckets, we found a restaurant and bar up on the roof that helped with all our needs and ended up in a tuk-tuk with flashing lights and happy hardcore blasting out speakers.
We had most of boxing day free before our overnight train back to Bangkok so a few of us headed over to nearby Tigerworld, which basically has a number of tiger of varying ages and for 300 baht (£6) you can go in and play with them for 15 minutes. We opted for the 7-9 month old cubs, it’s something Pam’s always wanted to do and despite one of them nearly taking my arm off, it was a pretty good experience.

Like I said in my last post, I had a week to fill before my next tour started so I headed down to Ko Phanganfor a little bit time on the beach. Ko Phangan is an amazing almost Paradise like island that is host to the infamous full moon party, because of this 5 days either side of the party all the prices double of everything. It’s understandable up to a point as I was there on the 5th day after full moon and was the only person in the entire hotel. I just felt I was being ripped off a lot, especially during the times I was by myself and had to pay £20 for 8 seater taxi to take me 20 mins across the island when in other parts of Thailand the same ride would cost around 80p. Inventive local pricing aside, I did have a good time on Ko Phangan.

Eating out in Ko Phangan is a little strange; all the restaurants show the Simpsons, Friends or Family Guy all day, then movies at night. It makes for the most antisocial restaurant experience but I guess it’s more for kids resting there hangovers. We also went down to the beach where the full moon party is held and I tried my first bucket which consists of a bottle of Rum (that they call whiskey), a really thick red bull syrup and a can of coke all mixed into a little plastic sand castle type bucket which you drink through a straw. I left the group after 1 of these, but somehow ended up in a bar singing along to Oasis songs with a totally random bunch of people. Then got incredibly lost trying to find my way back to the hotel and found myself in a police station trying to get directions. It was really hard saying goodbye to the Matt, Sarah, Casey and Maddy. We’d spent the past 3 weeks together and I think you sort of get used to travelling with people, especially with guys as great and friendly as they were.
I ordered a ride back to Bangkok through one of the hundreds of travel agents on the island which sounded like a bargain. For £17 a taxi picks you up from the hotel and takes you to the ferry landing, from there it’s 4 hours to the mainland then a coach takes you overnight back to Bangkok. You have to wait at a mosquito ridden bus terminal for 6 hours and the overbooked bus to Bangkok smells worse than a sewerage farm. I also got my phone pick pocketed which didn’t help matters.
I arrived back into Bangkok at 6am and checked into the hotel, luckily they had a room available so I crawled into bed and didn’t really leave it for the rest of the day.

I went to meet Pam at the airport the next morning, I was a little worried because her flight time had changed and I wouldn’t get to the airport until after she had landed but we seemed to find each other without too much hassle. We spent the rest of the day wondering around the Ko San road, having massages and getting a little drunk on cocktails.
The following day we had to meet up with the tour group in the evening, but had the day to ourselves so I showed Pam the water taxi, sky train and park that I’d been to previously then went to meet the group.  Everyone in this group was under 35 and there was a good mix of couples and singles, we ended up on the Ko San road again for dinner and a few drinks in a bar just outside the hotel.
We where catching the train at 6pm that evening so we had the day to fill. Our guide Pun-Pun (pronounced Pan-Pan) took us for a little walking tour of the city, which was mostly through markets and a little dull but we did go to Wat Po, which is home to the famous golden Reclining Buddah. We were going to try and see the Grand palace as well but we didn’t really have much time.
The overnight train wasn’t nearly as bad as I had envisioned, each carriage has about 3 seats that convert into bunk beds when you ask the porter. They are fairly comfortable but could do with a little more legroom, but I guess they were designed for the slightly smaller Thai people. There was even a party car that was full of westerners.

It took most of the day to get from Battambang to Bangkok via a fairly painless border crossing , I’d heard it could take a couple of hours go get across, but we seemed to get through in around half an hour.
We dumped our bags in the hotel and headed down to the infamous Ko San road for our last night together as a group. The Ko San road is exactly what I expected it to be, hawkers selling everything from Suits to fake ID’s along with food stalls with slightly questionable hygiene standards. There was also a guy selling deep fried insects, I thought it was mostly a tourist thing now and was quite surprised to see a few Thai people buying bags of silk worms. I bought a bag and a cricket for everyone for a little under ฃ1 and most people managed to eat them. The good thing about the Ko San road is that it’s quite easy to buy cheap drinks (50p for a can of chang beer) from the 7-11 and walk around with them, you only have to pay for the more expensive drinks f you want to sit down somewhere.
The following day we all went our separate ways I found a cheap room not too far from the Ko san road for about ฃ8 a night, there was a room for ฃ5 that had no windows, hot water or AC, but I thought I’d spoil myself. The room was above 2 bars both or which had a band playing until 2am, so it’s lucky I was so tired.
The problem I’ve got with Bangkok is that it’s really hard to trust anyone. It constantly feels like everyone is just out to rip you off. My friend Keith took a Taxi from the Grand Palace to the Hotel which is about a 20 minute walk and the taxi driver refused to turn the meter on and then tried to charge him 4000 baht (ฃ80) he managed to escape the taxi (whilst it was moving) but not before paying 160 baht which is twice what it should have cost him.
I decided to spend a day using public transport. I took a water taxi all the way down the river for 25p than the skytrain up to the MBK shopping mall for 50p then down to the Lumpini Park. I spent most of the afternoon in the park watching locals exercising and wondering around all the lakes. At one point I was sitting on a bench on the edge of the lake when I heard a splash next to me, I got the shock of my life when I looked over and saw what I thought was the back end of a crocodile slipping into the lake about 10 foot from where I was sitting. I jumped up and followed what turned out to be a 4 foot long monitor lizard. Once I seen that one I started noticing them everywhere, they just roam around the park like squirrels chasing after the birds.
I’ve since flown down to Ko Phangan to meet up with some of the guys from the tour.