09/10/08

Me Helen, Coops and Emily (a friend of Pats we randomly bumped into in the hostel) decided to go to a Thai cooking class for the day. Such good fun, chose 6 dishes each to cook, cant really remember what I cooked, but I do know how to make some spicy curry paste. Everything we cooked had to have fish sauce in it for some reason even though we were told that you cant taste it anyway, seemed a bit pointless to me. Helen chose a dish that included ear mushrooms, they have to be the most rubbery mushrooms ever, and they look exactly like ears, fowl! The woman that taught us in the morning was really helpful, but the bloke showing us how to cook in the afternoon seemed to have no faith in us at all. Me and helen were constantly being told to use different utenstils than the ones we were using and 'Safety comes first', we couldn't stop laughing and he def didn't see the funny side of it. But it was an interesting day out. In the evening we chilled out by the pool and ate at the hostel, I had a really good plate of fried rice which was so much better than anything I'd cooked all day. Later in the night Pat and Burns decided to take the immitation Billabong shorts they bought at the market back to get a size that fits.

10/10/08

Woke up fairly early and had breakfast at the hostel, I decided to go for a sandwich and break the rule of only eating Thai food, which helen and coops managed to break the other night after having burger and chips! We all just chilled out by the pool at the hostel for the morning, me and Pat had an epic game of Black Jack in the pool with his waterproof cards, making sure we turned 90 degrees each round to avoid burning on one side. We got the 1450 train from Chiang Mai back to Bangkok, spent most of the time playing cards, I didn't get much sleep. The train got in at 0630.

11/10/08

Booked a bus/ferry from Bangkok to Koh Samui which didn't leave until 1900 so we went to the closest floating market we could find in the morning, watched a few of the locals set up their stalls and checked out the abundance of what i think were cat fish in the river, there were literally hundreds of them.

Spent the rest of the day on Koh San Road wandering up and down. I was persuaded to buy an Optimus Prime T Shirt. Spent a few hours in a pub and played the worst game of pool ever because burns was stifling the play, he was shoving all the balls into one corner making it impossible to do anything. Some weird bird tried to teach burns a game of cards and called him stupid for not understanding, and we told her his name was james, lol. Went to a place just of Koh San Road called middle eastern food or something, recommend it to anyone going to the area, was really chilled out. Went to the train station and sat around for a few hours playing cards waiting for our bus to arrive.

12/10/08

Spent the night on the bus, got a fair amount of sleep so didn't feel too tired when we arrived in Surat Thanni in the morning. Got the ferry to Koh Samui and then to Koh Phangan, the sun was so intense, i ended up applying sun cream constantly and still managed to get burnt. We passed through an well heavy rain storm on the way, it came down so hard it felt like hail, but was still quite warm. Got a pick up from the pier on Koh Phangang to our resort, the driver just bunged about 20 bags on the roof and drove off along the bumpiest roads without securing them at all. Chilled out on the beach for the afternoon, went for a swim in the sea, so warm, its like body temperature, awesome.

Got a taxi to the local town to find somewhere to eat in the evening, the whole place was deserted, turns out most people stay nearer the full moon party. When we got back and decided to turn in i caught burns and coops sweeping sand from their beds on to mine, b******s, so i had a nice gritty night sleep.

13/10/08

Got up at 8 and dove into the water, met a load of new people that are staying for a few weeks doing an overseas teaching course. Just been chilling out all day, on the beach. Lounged around in the nearby bar and read a few book, they played a few sublime songs. Great.