Welcome to my Paradise... Ko Samui!

Chaweng Beach... with fresh pineapple

Ko Samui is what I've been waiting for this entire trip: white sand beaches, tourquois water, and palm trees all at Thailand prices!
So far all we've done is beached it up and zoomed around on our bikes. And I think that's all we'll do for the 4 nights we're here. We've been eating well as well- the boys usually getting stupid big seafood platters, myself sticking to amazing thai currys. Mmmmm.

Some volleyball

Our matching bikes

After a day at the beach we decided to go for a little ride on the bikes. We ended up finding the Big Buddah. We also ended up running over a huge drill bit and popping our tire. You would not believe how big this thing was. Luckily there was a bike shop just past the place where we hit the drill bit... or was that a set-up?

Big Buddah

A gorgeous Ko Samui sunset

The drillbit we ran over

Seafood platter... this was part of a 950B meal for 2 people (thats about $30CAD)

One more thing... today at the beach a small child, a one year to be exact, started playing with our volleyball. Shortly after his dad/caretaker came over and started talking to us. It started out normal enough telling us the kids name etc and led to him trying to sell us weed, fair enough, but after we refused that he, in all seriousness, offered to sell us the baby for 1 million baht. No thanks. Picture of child for sale to come.

Return to Thailand... the Epic Journey

Crossing the Mekong back into Thailand

After another night in the big city it was time to say Goodbye to Lao and head back to Thailand and allllll the way down to Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.

The first leg of our trip was a minivan to the border. At the border we went through the Lao check point and hopped on a ghetto thai bus to cross the bridge over the Mekong. Since it was a beautiful day we saw a lot more going over the bridge compared to the way into the country when it was rainy and gross. Off that bus and through Thai immigration and then the search for a lift to the Udon Thani airport. We thought we could catch the same airport operated shuttle that we took there but there were none to be found. Instead a few taxi guys approached us and we quickly agreed on a good price for the one hour drive (cheaper than on the way there, point us). Our ride ended up being a ute (pick up truck) with an extended cab, but only so much extended that 4 of us could sit inside, the other four eagerly got to sit in the back with the bags. They weren't the happiest 3 after that hour of 100km/h speeds. Since this leg of the journey went so smoothly we arrived at the Udon airport almost 3 hours before our flight and had to sit around an hour before we could even check-in, and then another until we could go through security (small airport: 2 gates). BUT the plus side to this was the DAIRY QUEEN in the airport. The ice cream even tasted like real DQ soft serve, amazing!

Back seat riders

DQ, that's what I like about Texas, I mean Thailand...

Eventually it was time to fly and our flight was on time and short. We arrived in Bangkok, got our shit, and went to find a taxi or something to the train station. We ended up getting the Airport Express bus for pretty cheap and our driver was like bat out of hell. Weeeeeeeee!
Once at the train station thins started to take a turn for the not so good. First we learned that the last train that night, at 10:50pm (it was almost 8:30 by this point), was not a sleeper aka it only had seats no beds! Also, this train got into Surat Thani after the last bus had left to the pier so if we took it we'd have to find our own way there. The train people told us to go to this travel agency and try to get the bus which would take us straight to the pier. We did and they told us the bus only had two seats (we're a group of 7) and then tried to sell us a 1500baht (about $50) package of train and fast boat to Ko Samui. Fuck that we said and went back to get train tickets. The train ticket guy tried us to take this fast boat for 1500B as well but we told him no and got the train and slow boat for 1180B. Sorted.
We spent the next 2 hours finding dinner (the KFC attached to the station was out of chicken! so the boys took tuktuks to a MacDee's but of course the tuktuk driver took them to Seafood restaurant b/c like the suit places if they bring customers they get free fuel vouchers. They eventually got their big macs) and waiting. The train was a little late but only by about 15 minutes. We border and drank the beer we'd brought on and then tried to sleep in the uncomfortable seats.
At a little after 6am the train stopped at our station: Chumpon, and we got off and tried to find our boat company who would take us to the pier and put us on the boat. Well we found him and he had more bad news: our boat had been cancelled due to big waves in the gulf. His english was poor and he didn't seem quite legit, he wanted 150B ($5) from each of us to get us upgraded to take the fast boat, so we ended up squeezing on to a tuktuk with some other people. We arrived at the pier for the fast boat and were told the same thing by the people there: pay another 150B each to get on this boat. We thought this was bullshit; the company that ran the slow boat should of paid for our upgrade b/c they'd cancelled our boat, but that company's representative was long gone. We grudgingly paid the money since we really had no other choice, unless we wanted to spend a day in Chumpon, but we had a reservation at a hotel in Samui. On the positive side the fast boat to the island would get us there in about half the time.

The fast boat pier at Chumpon

On the boat we all slept most of the time despite it being a gorgeous day and at around 11am arrived at the pier on Ko Samui where we then negotiated our final leg: taxi to our hotel at Cheweng Beach. Easy as. About 20minutes later we were checking into our hotel- Laem Din Hotel, the nicest one yet- and unpacking our bags. The next four days will be spent doing nothing but beaching it up!

Our hotel room at Laem Din Hotel

Back to the Capital

Because we had a flight to catch back to Bangkok our time in Lao was limited. That meant we had to get from Luang Prabang back to Vientiane in one shot. So that meant a 9 hour bus ride. Of course the day we did this was the most beautiful we’d seen in Lao yet- it hurt a little to drive through Vang Vieng and know it was a perfect tubing day. The good thing about the bus was that Andy and I had front row seats in the top level of the beast and our driver knew how to go fast. Lunch of Lao food at a roadside eatery was included and it was surprisingly good. I enjoyed most the drive, there was so much to look out at, be it beautiful scenery, village happenings, Lao children doing something funny, or animals blocking the road. Back in Vientiane we got a hotel and went to eat and spend the rest of our kip, the Lao currency. You get a bad exchange rate on it if you try to exchange it back into something else so the best thing is to just spend what you’ve got.

Luang Prabang

We spent 3 nights in LP and sun only came out on our last day. It was freezing without the sun! I could see my breath! The first day a few of us went to see the big temple on the top of the hill and then took a tuktuk to Kuang Si Waterfall. Everyone else was sick with bad stomachs and most likely TD. Luang Prabang had a cool night market that I went to a few times and a bowling alley! Hahaha. Because it was so cold we all kind of went into hibernation mode and wanted to huddle under the nice duvets of our beds. I was going to do an elephant safari/ride type thing but I would’ve froze and not enjoyed it.

Kaung Si Waterfall... not the big part

Dumpling... maybe the best thing ever.

Part of the temple on the hill in LP

More Temple

Going up the hill to the temple

Six and a half hours

Both nearish to Vang Vieng

After Vang Vieng we headed to Luang Prabang in a minivan. It took 6 and a half hours. Our driver sucked. He would coast as much as he possibly could to save fuel, even if it meant we were going along at 20kmh. It was a beautiful drive though, all through the mountains and past many small Lao villages.

Vang Vieng: The Happiest Place on Earth

Our "VIP" bus to VV

On our second day in Lao we took the afternoon “VIP” bus to Vang Vieng. It’s only about 150km but it takes 3 hours, especially when your “VIP” bus looks like it’s about 100 years old and all the baggage is strapped on the roof. We found a hotel and chilled out in preparation of the coming 2 days.... of tubing!

Tubing in Lao is a little bit like the Texas version. Same in that you pay money to rent a tube and get a ride to a point further up river. Different in that you are barely on your tube and can see the end point from the beginning; there are bars all along the river; the bars all have a zipline, rope swing, or slide into the river; and well that’s it really. So we did that 2 days in a row. The weather was unagreeable, it was overcast and since Lao is in the Northern Hemisphere and it’s November no sun = not warm. The second day we all shivered our way down the river but luckily most bars have a big fire warm yourself at. 3 of our group pussed out and didn’t come the second day, but Ben and his g/f showed up and came instead. We spent a lot of that 2nd say at the bar with the monkey. It was a little gray monkey with a long tail and really creepy looking eyes. We ended the last day at the big slide. This was a mistake. I landed funny and knocked the wind out of myself and felt like a walking, talking bruise for the next days… but looking back I still would’ve done it.

View down river from the first bar

First zipline of the day

The first bar later on...

The slide on Day 1- didn't hurt.

Day Two

First Beer Lao of the day... 1pm

Monkey trying to drink free whiskey shots... he succeeded but I wasn't fast enough with the camera

Mud volleyball

In the mud pit... it was almost 7ft deep!

Near the end, about to go on a rope swing

Goodbye Thailand, Hello Lao

Ben and Andy: Random Reunion

We had to get up at like 5am for our flight from Bangkok to Udon Thani. We decided to fly there because 1. It cost only a little more than the sleeping train or bus would be 2. It was within an hour drive of the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge at Nong Khai and Vientiane and 3. It saved us about 2 days of travel time by flying.
We said goodbye to Rob at the airport, his flight to Kuala Lumpur was just before ours, it was weird losing one of group members.
The flight was short but bumpy and we were all amazed we made that landing, haha. There was a Thai kid sitting next to Andy and I who had a big fancy Nikon camera. He took about a dozen shots of the wing of the plane. Then when we were about to land he pulled out a few sheets of paper stapled together; they contained his flight itinerary, and then photos of the next places he had to go! I only knew this because I’d seen the pictures online when I was figuring out how to get to the border from the airport. I guess you had to be there??
Next we hopped on a minibus and were taken to the border, went through the Thai checkpoint, took another bus across the bridge that goes over the Mekong, and then waited for our Visas on arrival. I had to pay the most- $42USD! Come on Canada, improve your Lao relations already! Lao is making a killing on Canadian travelers paying that extra $7USD, the English and Italians only had to pay $35! No fair! We can speak French for fuck’s sake!
Yeah, so we got another minibus into town and asked to be dropped off near the centre of town. Our plan was to get some food and see about bus times to Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang, we had a bit of a dilemma on our hands since the Air Asia website fucked up our booking: two of group ended up not being on the same flight as us and weren’t going to arrive in Udon Thani until nearly 6pm, meaning they wouldn’t even make it into Lao until like 8pm. We didn’t really know what we should do- should we spend a night in Vientiane or just meet them at our next destination? After only a couple minutes after being dropped off in town the answer to our problems was instantly solved… we ran into Ben! Like literally, ran into him. We’d just come around a corner and BAM! There he was. It was unreal. I’d been facebooking with him earlier in the week to see if our paths would cross but it looked like they wouldn’t, but then in a last minute decision we and his g/f decided they’d spend a few more nights in the Lao capital and try to meet up with us. Of course he wrote this on my facebook wall after I’d left my last internet connection so I wasn’t going to get that message until much later, so it was really by chance that we ran into him.
As soon as we saw him we knew we’d be staying the night so we dumped our stuff in a hotel room and went out to get on the Beer Lao. That’s how the rest of the day and night went. The other two in our group arrived with their only problem being a dumb Lao taxi driver.

Pattaya

Holding a snake in a bar in Pattaya

When we finally arrived in Pattaya and found our hotel I knew I liked it already. I felt like Waikiki, and a little bit of Florida, and Bali all rolled into one. Really busy all the time, good and bad smells coming from every direction, people trying to sell you everything. Craaaazy! Plus we had a corner hotel room with giant windows taking up two walls so it felt like being on a boat or in the penthouse.
We went for some food at Andy’s favorite place to eat in Pattaya: The Pig and Whistle. It was like entering a different world when you stepped in- it was totally a traditional English Pub inside, except for the Thai staff, and had traditional English food on the menu as well.
That night we grabbed a few slices of pizza for dinner and then started drinking.
We went to a couple bars that night, the first being Boomerang Bar where Andy knows the owner. We played some pool and watched the people go by and sales people come in. There were a few guys going around with a Polaroid camera and either wigs and funny sunglasses or various types of animals (pythons, iguanas, slow loris!) offering to take your picture for 150B ($5). We would take pictures with out own cameras and sometimes give the person like 50B if we felt like it.

Boomerang Bar

Walking Street

Jennie Star Bar... a ladyboy bar

Later we caught a Pattaya style tuk-tuk (a pick-up truck with benches and a roof in the back) to Walking Street- the craziest part of Pattaya. Of course Andy took us into a ladyboy bar first haha. We danced in there for a bit and then went into Marine Disco, which was pretty cool, with lights under the dance floor and shit like that. By this point we’d all split up so Andy and I both squeezed onto a scooter taxi that took us back to our hotel. Andy then had two kabobs and we went to sleep.
The next morning it was down to the Pig and Whistle for breakfast, well lunch, and since everyone was pretty hungover we all had a quiet day. I walked along the beach for a bit taking in the sights. That night we went to a bar with live music where you could request the songs they played. Andy and Danny even got up and played an Oasis song the band didn't know. We also went back to Boomerang and that’s when I fell in love with the slow loris.

Dan and Andy taking the stage...

Me and a SLOW LORIS!

The next morning Andy and the boys tried to wake up to watch the Cotto-Paquaiai fight at 8am but weren’t able to get up. Luckily, it didn’t start til 11 so they didn’t miss it. We watched it in the Pig and Whistle and had some food.
Then it was zoo time. The Million Years Stone Park and Pattaya Crocodile Farm to be exact. It was both cool and sad at the same time. Cool because you could pay a bit extra and get your picture with baby tigers, big tigers, bears, crocodiles, and elephants. And feed the big scary crocs. Sad because some of the animals were confined to quite small cages. There was a Crocodile Show as well where this crazy thai guy plays with some crocs, sticks his head in their mouths, puts his hand down one of their stomachs and brings back up some stomach bile, then eats it, and other shit like that.

Baby crocs

Feeding some crocs

BABY TIGER!

The Crocodile Show Arena

Posing with a croc

After the zoo we went to the International Snake Show. The show consisted of a few guys playing with snakes. First this one guy brought out a pair of cobras and teased them for a bit. Then this made one of them bite into cling wrap over a glass to prove it was still venomous. The next guy brought out a python or something non-poisonous and taunted it a for while. Then the other guy came back with a viper. And finally they brought a big Burmese Python out of a burlap sack and made it angry, then got people from the audience (there were 10 of us only haha) to come get pictures with it around their necks- I did it!

Cobras

Schmoochie Schmoo

Autisic monkey

After the show we wandered around the ‘grounds.’ They were scruffy as shit. There were some dirty aquariums containing more snakes, a few caged squirrels, an autistic monkey, a chained up elephant, a few cocks who’d obviously recently fought, goats, pigs, and turkeys. It was dirty and weird. The people who ran it lived amongst it. There was laundry hung up and kids toys scattered about.
Back to the hotel where Rob finally showed up. He hadn’t been feeling well and went to a health clinic. They took some blood and told him he had Dengue Fever. He’d had enough and I helped him book a flight home to England that night. Our spirits were a little subdued at this point so we just went out for some food and then called it a night.
The next morning we slept in til just about check out time and then got a minibus back to Bangkok… no Khao San Road this time though- just an airport hotel since we had an early morning flight the next morning. Getting there was easier said than done. Our driver spoke little English and took us to the airport first. We told him, no, we want this hotel- the one on the sheet of paper we’d given him, address and all- and boy did that confuse him. We spent probably another 45 minutes driving around looking for this place (I’d found it online at some last minute hotel website). We finally pulled down a dirt alley and low and behold there was our new looking hotel at the end of it. Sure we had to pass by a swamp within a derelict building and we may have been the only people staying there, but shit, we’d found it! Haha
We ate at the restaurant and then went on an unsuccessful hunt for a 7-11 but found a minimart instead for beers. Then we played poker, 20baht buy-in, and I somehow won! Ha!

Bangkok

Some Thai culture earlier that day in Bangkok

So later that night in Bangkok… we went to a bar to have a few Chang and play some pool in preparation for the Muay Thai Fight. When it was finally fight time we made our way down to Khao San Road to find some tuk-tuks and stopped at one of the food stalls for a scorpion for Rob. He enjoyed it; said it tasted like pork crackling. The stall also had cockroaches, giant grasshoppers, crickets, grubs, and a few other insects. These things are all over Thailand.

Fried locusts

After that brief snack we found tuk-tuks and they took us to the Boxing Stadium- one of the biggest in Thailand where a lot of big fights happen- our fight was pretty sweet as well. There were actually 10 fights that night with the fighters getting older and sometimes heavier as they went on. The title fight was number 7.

Ring side seats at Muay Thai

We were there for a few hours and quickly figured out that beers were cheaper outside, so we were in and out quite a bit. Since we were ringside VIPs we got to go get photos with the winner (of the title fight, for the belt) afterwards. Unfortunately, (or fortunately?) there were no knock outs that night.

The new Champion

The next morning we got up and Andy went to have his jacket fitting. As we waited inside the tailor shop for the fitting they offered us a drink, we got cokes in the glass bottles. Since the fitting only took about 5 minutes when we got up to leave we were going to take the cokes with us. The suit guy told us no way, those bottles are worth more than the coke inside them; you can’t take the bottles out of this shop. Weird. Back on Khao San Road we arranged with a taxi guy to get 2 taxis to take us to Pattaya (about 150km Southeast of Bangkok). Then we checked out and were on our way. There were 4 people and all our bags smooched into each taxi… it was an uncomfortable 90min drive to say the least.

Tattoo Army

The Phuket Inkings...

Rob

Tommaso

Gianluca