I have spent the past three weeks island hopping in the south of Thailand. Five Islands and far too many boat journeys in just 21 days. I would like to be able to rant on about all the cultural experiences I have gained in this time but honestly the islands of Thailand are so popular for tourism now that the culture is fairly westernised and the general objective is towards accommodating backpackers in search of nightlife and cheap alcohol! For example I would say my two biggest discoveries over the past few weeks are the cheapness and ease of living on '7'11 cheese and ham toasties and the cost effectiveness of drinking alcohol out of buckets! Shameful really!!
After travelling for over 12 hours to get to Phucket to meet Holly we decided to spend 48 hours resting before heading off to Koh Phi Phi. When I say resting I mean we literally didn't leave the hostel, mainly due to the monsoon weather outside! I have never seen anything like it- it rained so hard that the roads flooded so badly we would have had to rent a canoe to get to the shop 200m away! The rain did ease one evening so we thought it best that we ventured out to experience the "delights" of the Phuckets nightlife strip! What a night! Ladyboys were flaunting themselves in crazy flamingo outfits, we were harnessed to buy tickets to Ping Pong shows, the whole street was so seedy..not to mention the blatant prostitution! After an hour or so of sitting in a bar which insisted we drank shots every time some drunken Austrailian rang a bell we gave each other "the look"and sought refuge back at our hostel. Deflated by our Phucket experience we booked our boat to Phi Phi in search of beautiful beaches, our fingers ad toes crossed that the weather would improve.