Koh Phangan, Thailand

The dream paradise island...

Fed up with the insane prices proposed by taxis in order to go to the pier to catch a ferry for Koh Phangan, we take our chance and hitch hike. It is 11am and it is a scorcher outside. With our heavy backpacks we quickly sweat like being in a sauna and find some shelter below trees. Nobody stops except these silly taxi drivers offering a dissuasive fare: 500 up to 700 thb for the ride  when it should be around 60 thb. We refuse such a scam and keep standing on the side of the road until one "pick-up" style car stops. It is actually a foreigner living on the island and offers us to sit behind and to take us a little bit further. Unfortunately he was not riding to the pier so we have to try again... After 30min, a normal Thai guy stops and so kindly drops us at the Big Buddha pier. 
How lucky we were :-)

Weronika birthday

It is Weronika's birthday and Francois browses through the best rated restaurants around on TripAdvisor. And lucky us, we found the best restaurant so far from our trip in Asia: The Fishermen's. Amazing service quality in addition to delicious food. Francois books a table and we ride our scooter in the evening in our rain jackets and using our bags' rain cover to protect our legs since it is raining like hell and it does not seem to stop. We finally arrive in a nearly dry state and appreciate a pichet of red wine!

Diving

In our quest for the wind that we don't find, we back-up our activity plan with some scuba-diving. Nothing better than a day out diving from the boat. It is a great occasion to meet people and you really feel some kind of achievement at the end of the day. Each dive is always an adventure and even if we got saturated with our LiveAboard made in Australia, it is with pleasure that we resume it.

In the end, the visibility is  not so good (less than 10m) and the dive site is crowded of divers who just passed  their certification in  Koh Tao. The site is victim from its success. It is still however a nice day out. We meet two Swiss girls from Lausanne and we exchange our Facebook details to meet again around a drink in Swissland.

Windsurfing & kitesurfing

When there is wind, the tides are too low to learn kyte-surf in the lagoon, and when the water is high enough, there is no wind. Grrr!! We are so frustrated not being able to have the chance to start feeling what it is like to board with the wind power.

Desperate but still optimistic, we positive by renting a windsurf board just before the afternoon storm and despite the wind is rather low, we have fun sharing the board, taking nice footages with the GoPro in a lagoon where the max. depth  is up to our waist ;-)

Kitesurfing - or not actually!
We kept chasing the kitesurfing experience, we were after the wind that was not coming! ;(
We even got friends with some weird guy on the beach...

Kayaking

100 thb per hour for a double kayak. Great. Let's do it! In less than 10min, we are paddling to another island Koh Tae Nai. We paddle all around the island and go back to the resort after this one-hour workout, with some adrenaline as the waves were quite bigger out at sea, especially when we had to ride parallel to them in order to close our loop.. always a bit tricky..

Elephant

On the way to the wakeboard bay we pass an elephant that is in the jungle...spectalcular view to see wild animal, so big an majestic...

 Weronika quickly takes out camera to memorize the view! Thai guy shouts at us that it is dangerous as elephant may get angry and attack. She still takes her chances for a shot! Amazing moment!

 The thai guy eventually takes him out for a walk, using the spike to hurt him if he doesnt obey. That is so cruel. We hated it!

Wakeboard
More expensive, but still much cheaper than in UK-London, we figure out that there is a quiet bay - Chaloklum Bay to get towed behing a boat. The club is recommended in the Lonely Planet guidebook, so we give it a ride. The founder and owner is a young British citizen, very pleasant. Weronika never practiced wake jumps before and it will be the first time. After a few minutes of acclimatisation on the board steering left and right, Weronika successfully attempts her first jumps, both toe-side and hill-side. What a session!

Francois is fighting to correct his toe-side jump, lacking pop-up at the top of the wake in order to clear the other wake. Two sessions of 15min each and we are done. Completely different with the cable  park where it is possible to ride a longer time before getting really exhausted.

It is a great experience and we hope we will have more sessions once back in the cheese country.









Some last romantic moments on the beach paradise....

 

My lovely husband was posing for ME!
xxx










We were leaving the island by boat at 7am, so 6am departure, walk on the beach to the pier...

 

Boat - Bus - Boat Koh Phangan - Koh Phi Phi 7hrs

Koh Samui, Thailand

Koh Samui

How nice is it to get to a nice paradisiac island... let´s discover Koh Samui.

Full Moon Party at Koh Phangan

How lucky we are. Our arrival date on the island coincides with the well-known Full Moon Party attracting four times a year thousands of backpackers for one of the biggest beach parties in the world. Up to 5,000 people can rageously dance on the beach until early morning.

We initially got a bad feedback from a few people telling us that the Full Moon Party lost its charm and is now very commercial and touristic, with a host of teenagers/yougsters getting hammered and vomitting on the beach.

Despite having this mitigated view, we had nothing special planned in the evening so we just give it a go to see how it tastes like. So we find a deal and book a combined return ticket "taxi-speed boat-taxi" to cruise late at night to Ko Phangan where the Full Moon Party usually takes place.

Anecdote: at the pier while waiting for our speed boat, we meet 6 young Australians with the same transportation pass as us, but with a big "VIP" tag. We curiously ask the benefits of having such a pass. And we got told that you have exclusive  and priority boat transfer without queuing. Fair enough for 600 thb more in addition to the 800 thb standard fare. In reality, the Australian group embarks first and then other fellow travellers just follow them until the speed boat is full. The VIP pass is a joke, a scam to avoid and eventually these young people did not have nothing more than what we got with our standard pass...Bad luck for them. :-( We felt so sorry for them.

Once arrived at Koh Phangan in  Haad Rin, we already hear the bits and see everybody painting their body using imaginative colourful shapes. We buy a painting kit and draw crazy drawings on our arms, face and legs... That's the Full Moon Party spirit.

Once on the beach, it is crowded of people in swim wear, dancing, drinking and shouting sometimes using the big podiums in front of each main bar. Each bar is playing a different music, from Goa trance to more house style, or more typical dance/techno music.

Anecdote: Francois did not hold the backpack on his front but went through the crowd by having it on his back and Weronika following suddenly and awefully realises that it is open. Her new Mulbury handbag purchased in Bangkok and new Iphone5 are gone. Speachless, upset, angry and tired, we just want to go back home and walk back to the pier at 1am to take a speedboat as soon as possible...

Bad night.

Muay Thai training

By hanging out in town, we pass by a ring with  some foreigners training. Curious, we stop and we actually meet a group Polish doing a MuayThai training camp. 

These people were actually already practicing MuayThai at home so they were all quite pretty good at it. We decide to give it a go so we schedule two group training sessions, each one of them of two hours. 

 We have fun learning new movements and overall utilise our energy into something that utlimately make you fitter ;-)

Swim-Run-Swim

Serious beach training. Francois pushes to alternate between swimming and running on the beach.



So we get our swim goggles ready and go! Crawl to the boyle, then reach the other boyle and ride back to the beach. Quick! Quick, out of the water! Time to run, go, go go! Warm-up and then 30s-30s intervals doubled with 1min-1min. When we start to be tired, we finish off the session with the same swimming route as we started with. Time for stretching and to relax. Now we can order good sea food and rest ;-)

In the evening, we have a nice dinner on the beach and got entertained by fire junglers, creating nice light effectsnwe must say. amd all this with a tech/Goa-style trance/techno music as a background.

Beach ball game

Staying at the beach without doing anything but laying down on the relaxing seats, reading a book or a magasine is simply hardly possible (not to say impossible) in the Krafft world. So as soon as we reach the beach with "nothing to do", we got the idea to play beach ball with these wood rackets. That is so cool especially with the feet in the 30C sea. We still need more practice if we want to do more than 4-5 exchanges. Hem.



Scooter trip to local waterfalls & elephants :)

Market poll dancing girls & lady boys
Evening time. We go by scooter to the old town market to eat some good and inexpensive street food and we notice that there are multiple bars in a "round" shape (like 4-5m diameter) where people can seat anywhere around. In the middle of each of these small bars, there were some polls with sexy Thai girls trying sexy moves attract tourists to seat and buy drinks.
We also got hooked by some tall and slim "lady boys", proposing us to watch a cabaret spectacle for free. These near to perfect converted boys into girls still were not able to fool Weronika's eyes, immediately noticing their male features. Sorry for you lady boys... you still look like a boy.. :-(

Leaving Koh Samui: the adventure

We leave Koh Samui with a little adventure. We checked the collective taxis (a pick-up style car with benches behind) from the hostel and the drivers only propose unsane prices to transfer us to the pier where our ferry departs to Koh Phangan. After multiple taxis checked, we got upset to be tourist victims and pay 10x times more  than the normal price based on the taxi meter. Se we decide to hitch hike on the side of the road. 

After 15min, a pick-up car stops and a local foreigner offers  to give us a lift further, but not at the pier. So we throw our bags on the rear of the pick-up and climb behind. Around 10kms after quite cooling down with the fresh air outside, we got dropped at another junction. This time, we wait even longer (about 30-40min) until a car stops. Some collective taxis stop but they offer a price sometimes even higher than the price from our hotel. Damn them!!! So we wait for more luck.

Eventually, a local normal Thai stops and hurra! He so kindly drops us at the pier. We are glad to arrive

Boat Koh Samui - Koh Phangan 1hr, 20 km