Beach Break

It has been some time since I started looking forward to my "break" in Thailand. A break from what you may (or definitely will) ask? Well, time away from the hectic touristing, the perpetual photo taking, the cultural experiencing, the constant moving from hostel to guest house to bus to train… It was planned to be a relaxing time spent snoozing away the sands of time on the tropical beaches of the south Thailand islands. And how did we set the tone? In the most manic way possible. Obviously.

It began with a journey - no, I will call it a life experience - of epic proportions. A journey to end all journeys. How hard could it be getting from Siem Reap to Koh Samui? Well, very hard actually. It really only took one bus and one minivan to get to Bangkok, including an excruciating 2km walk in the 40° midday sun. Doesn't sound so bad, but if you were within 5 miles of the smell of my t-shirt you may think differently. No problem, this was to be followed up by a civilised, air conditioned comfort of the Thai railway night sleeper. But no, that was booked out almost a week in advance, so instead we took the cheap bus option. And it was cheaper in every single way possible. A bus with the worst seats around (thanks to Harro and the girls!!) with zero leg room, no aircon, a drop off in the middle of nowhere at 4am and a 7 hour ferry departing at 7am to follow.. We did, in the disaster of it all, try to make the most of it. Who can say they watched the sun rise off the Thailand coast with a pot noodle in one hand and a Chang in the other?

I guess, alls well that ends well - we did arrive, we did get a place to stay (at 3 times the budget) on the beach and the holiday was finally up and running. Unfortunately (and this may have just been for us), Koh Samui was a massive disappointment. Don't get me wrong, of course it is a beautiful island with splendid beaches. But what we ended up with was a beach covered with petrol spilled from jet skis, large german folk covered with the bare minimum speedos sporting the latest fashion in young thai girls/boys and no nightlife whatsoever (other than a wonderful cabaret after party bar filled with a few ladyboy-american combos). So, without hesitation we ventured further (backwards in our case?!) to Koh Pangan - home of the hippie, druggie, crazy infested full moon parties. We missed that. What we got was a beautiful, tranquil island getaway, a funky room (it had a giant boulder in it...) at a good price, a pristine beach with cerulean waters and a crowd large enough to sustain nightly beach parties and to consume vast numbers of the Pangan bucket - the little plastic devil. Still filled with daily fireball shows from the hippies and sunburn a-plenty, this was the paradise we were looking for. We lazed in the pool, lazed at the beach, lazed at the beach party, we even lazed in the room with the aircon on.

And then we moved on. Even paradise gets boring eventually and the call of the Andaman coast was getting louder, so we packed our bags with sweat-stained clothes and headed to the west, with a stop off at the Kao Sok National Park. Despite another (now rather common) disaster travel story, we arrived in Kao Sok only to be eaten alive by mozzies and left severely ripped off by the local tour companies for our one day trek into the park. Once I got past the money I spent for the tour (did I ever get over it??), we had an awesome time. The highlight was without doubt a foray into the deep, dark and wet cave (its an underground river) on the trek. It involved us having to walk through luminous-coloured spider infested caves, guarded by squeaking bats and boasting frogs, swimming along 10m deep river sections and watching Harro bump his head at every given opportunity. It was tough, cold, dark and scary and I would do it again at a heartbeat.

With our adventure requirement fulfilled in a single day, we were ready to head back to the beach for some more serious rest and relaxation. To do this, we picked Railay. Not technically an island, Railay is cut off from the mainland by two ginormous limestone Karsts. It is right up there with the most beautiful natural places I have been - stunning mangrove beaches, limestones cliffs, holiday feel and unparalleled sunsets. If it wasn't so pricey we may have stayed longer, but some time listening to the local one-man band in the reggae bar was enough to satisfy after a perfect day spent at one of the worlds most beautiful beaches at Phra Nang. I even managed to convince Harro (again) to man up and plunge into the see from a 4m cliff - the second time was a little dicey with the tide going out, but what could a few ragged rocks do from a 4m cliff jump anyway??

And that left only one more thing to do - the Phi Phi tour. It was a tourist stampede, but the day was worth it - the beauty of the island archipelago is awe inspiring. We visited Maya Beach (that of the movie, The Beach) which I guess was beautiful, but was hard to see past the few thousand tourists there at the time. We also did some snorkelling around Phi Phi Don - and by snorkelling I mean snorting salt water through my eyeballs and nose constantly while tailing a few electric coloured fishes swimming harmlessly by. The giant speed boat almost broke some ribs on the way there through some fairly choppy waters - some part of me did enjoy the moments of weightlessness, but maybe not the crashing back to earth part quite so much.

From our comfortable and cheap base at Krabi we endured our last un-enjoyable minibus ride to the tourist mecca of Phuket. Now, Ive thought of these words carefully, bearing in mind the throngs of people who have ventured here and loved it. But in the end the best recommendation I can give the island is to avoid it as if it were the plague… infested with the Ebola virus… spread via airborne transmission. Of all the (quite large number of) places I have visited on my trip, Phuket was truly the worst. It has a world beating lack of character, sky-high prices, un-friendliest Thai people on earth, and a night life that would make George Michael blush - it's a poor reflection of the extreme beauty and friendliness of Thailand in general. Personally, I am glad it is there to filter out the package tourists and Russians and leave the rest of Thailand for travellers. We did our best mind you - consuming more "yummy" buckets and playing a significant amount of hammer and connect4 games while trying to decipher whether it was a boy or a girl... and then crammed three of us on an over-priced motorbike taxi to get home at x-oclock in the morning. And that my friends, is Phuket in a nutshell.

With hangover firmly in tow, it was time to be ripped of one last time getting to the airport and leave Thailand and my "holiday" behind. As you can see, the dream of three weeks lying on one solitary beach, soaking up the sun didn't materialise. It was a holiday filled with haphazard travel, stunning scenery, grand beaches, crazy fun nights, enticing company, epic journeys, grand adventure and a flickering desire to go back again someday.