I arrived back in to Koh Tao Wednesday morning and booked myself on to two fun dives that afternoon. I was shattered after these and when I got back to the room I went to lay down for a quick nap at 5pm and ended up waking up at 8am the next day!
On the Thursday I headed down to the dive centre to start my advanced course, spending the morning in the class room. After lunch I headed out to a great dive site called chumphon for my first dive, the deep dive. Here I dived down to 30m and the scenery was unbelievable. The highlight was definitely being in the middle of a barracuda swarm with hundreds of barracuda swimming round and the sun coming directly down on to us through the water. The second dive was my navigation dive where I had to go off with a compass by myself and find my way around a set of directions returning to the starting point. This went well apart from when I swam over a trigger fishes territory and it attacked me! A trigger fish is a couple of feet big and is very territorial, if you swim near it a fin flicks up as a warning, (like being given the finger!) I didn't see this though as was concentrating to much on the compass! Luckily I spotted him before he reached me so I could put my fins out in front and back off, so he only managed to chew them for a bit!
On the Friday I was up early and back down the dive centre at 7am for my morning dives. The first of which was diving with a nitrox tank, similar to a normal tank just with a higher percentage of oxygen, then my second dive was an advanced buoyancy dive. This involved a lot of buoyancy skills including swimming sideways in a hand stand position knocking over a little weight from the sea bed with your mouth regulator with out face planting! Friday afternoon was spent in the class room again and then Friday evening we headed out for my final dive, the night dive. This was awesome, the only light you can see is from your torch and there are a lot of different fish that come out at night and the corals look so much brighter. I was then awarded my PADI advanced diver qualification and we went out for a beer to celebrate!
Saturday was my last day in Koh Tao so I just chilled during the day, watched the rugby in the evening then jumped on the night ferry to Chumphon to start my border run to extend my visa! The standard visa is 30 days in Thailand, I was going to over stay by a week thus this run!
I got in to Chumphon on Sunday morning at 5.30am and headed for a van I crammed in to with lots of others, then stayed in that crammed position for 6 hours until we got to the Burma border! After going through Thailand immigration we jumped on a boat for a 40 min river run to Burma immigration. It rained the whole way so got completely soaked, great fun..! After a quick stop in and out of Burma we were back on the boat, an extra 2 week visa stamped in to my passport, then back in the van to Chumphon.
I had a few hours to burn here as was getting the night train back to Bangkok that night, so just visited a few bars before jumping on the train!
I got in to Bangkok at 6am on the Monday and jumped in to a tuk tuk to my hotel. It was to early to check in so I grabbed some Breakie then headed back to the Chinese Embassy, luckily this was 3rd time lucky! My 'letter of employment' worked a treat and I paid extra for same day visa and passport pick up just to be safe! I headed back to my hotel to check in, had a workout in the gym, had some lunch then headed back to pick up my visa. I then did a bit of shopping and headed back to the hotel for another work out before an early night as was up early Tuesday!
On the Tuesday I checked out after a 6am breakfast and got a taxi over to the Stray office who I'd be travelling North Thailand and Laos with. I checked in, met the guys who would be on bus that day, then we headed out for a beer until it was time to leave (at 8.30am!)
That afternoon we travelled up to Ayutthaya where we had some lunch then did a boat tour down the river to see the different wats. We had a quick swim, grabbed some dinner then headed to the train station to get the night train up to Chang Mai. The night train was a very drunken affair with us nearly getting chucked off the train in the early hours, but luckily managed to stay on!
Wednesday was spent having a kip, recovering from the train, then getting a massage, having a look around the city and having some dins before heading to a Muay Thai fight in the evening. This was great fun, but also absolutely brutal!
On the Thursday we were up early to head to flight of the gibbons. This is a massive zip wire park down through the Forrest! We went on 16 different zip wires in total, ranging from small ones, to double ones, to quick ones, to half mile long ones! Was awesome.
Thursday evening we had quite a large one.. It started off with a ladyboy show, then out in to Chang Mai experiencing many a bar and club! Great night!
On the Friday we headed to Chang Khong stopping off at Chang Rai first. Here there is a massive temple called the white temple, which believe it or not is all white. This temple is stunning and its a new age temple where it's designed to add western culture to a temple. So inside the walls are painted with good and bad, portrayed in syfy and action hero characters. The whole project, including many other temples to be built, wont be finished until 2070! We got in to Chang Khong in the evening where there wasn't too much to do, so drinking obviously followed again!
Saturday morning we were up early and headed down to the Thailand border where we checked out, grabbed a two min boat ride across the river and went through Laos immigration before stocking up on beers ready for the boat ride that afternoon! We were on the boat (drinking) for 6 hours before stopping off for the night in Pakbeg. This was just a tiny village on the river bank, so after checking in we met for dinner then carried on the drinking!
Sunday morning we were back on the boat at 8am and everyone was very hungover so sprawled out and went to sleep, however I was still a little drunk and couldn't sleep, so I got back on the beers with one of the Loas guys on the boat! After another 6 hours (drinking) on the boat we arrived in Ban Lad Khanoune where we would be spending the night with the locals. This was a very very basic local village, 3rd world living conditions who weren't used to seeing westerners so were very intrigued! The toilet was a hole in the floor and the showers were a bucket of water. The locals were awesome though and very accommodating to us. They made up the best beds on the floor they could and put mosquito nets over us. The villagers gave us a tour around the area where the local children followed, then they took us up to a river we all jumped in and played around in with the local children. That evening they cooked us dinner which was actually amazing! Then we joined in to a local ceremony called baci. This is where they tie white string around your wrists and its gives you protection. After this we did some drinking games with the locals and the local home made 'whisky' called lao lao which was horrendous! Some local dancing then followed, all great fun! Everyone then went to bed, but I stayed drinking with the locals, even though they couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Laos, by that point it didn't seem to matter and we understood each other perfectly!
We were back on the boat at 7.30am on the Monday and I felt absolutely horrendous. A week straight of drinking and limited sleep had caught up on me in a massive dose! I tried to sleep on the boat, but an hour in to the journey we stopped to go round some Buddha caves, which were awesome, and then it was only another hour and a half before we arrived in Luang Prabang. Luckily the hotel was only a short bus trip away and after checking in I got some much needed kip! I still felt pretty poor that evening when we met up to head out for a meal and didn't want to go near a beer, but it was the last night I was with an awesome group of girls I had met in Bangkok who had been on the trip with me, so ended up having a beer with the meal! The food at this restaurant was amazing, I had fondue which was sooooo good! After the restaurant we headed to another bar so decided to have another beer here, but knew I'd be in bed soon as all the bars closed at 11pm so would be fine! This wasn't the case though... In luang puang a sporting venue isn't classed as a bar so we all headed down to a local bowling ally and ended up getting very drunk and bowling all night! I managed to get to bed at 6am, before my alarm went off at 6.30am to get the 7am bus... Seriously bad times!
The next 6 hours were spent in a van along ridiculously bumpy roads, possibly the worst 6 hours of my life! We arrived in Vang Vien in the afternoon and all I wanted to do was get in to my bed and sleep for a day, but Van Vien is famous for tubing which had been planed for that afternoon and I definitely wasn't going to miss out on that! Tubing is where you get given a rubber ring, get driven up to the top of a river then jump on your tube stopping off at different bars on the river banks either side on the way down getting drunk! So after a shower and some food, I maned up and headed out with others from my bus and got in to the river on my ring! This was awesome, and after the third beer I felt ok again which allowed a few more beers and shots down the rest of the river!
After finally finding our way back to the town at the end of the river we showered and then headed out for diner, luckily everyone was shattered after the days drinking so I managed to be in bed for 11pm and get a decent nights sleep for once!
Today is Wednesday and I am currently on the bus on route to Vientiane, half way through my travels of Laos. I have absolutely loved this country and the local people so far, have seen some awesome sights, experienced new things pushing my comfort zones further again, had class nights, and once again have met some amazing people to share it all with! The next two weeks will involve the rest of Loas, before travelling down through Cambodia and back to Bangkok. Speak soon! x