Phetchaburi

The next day even after setting alarms we somehow managed to sleep in again and didn't get up until about 10. We went for breakfast then told the tuk tuk man we wanted to go to the bus stop to get to Phetchaburi so off we went when we got there my bag was instantly whisked off on to a bus, it was a proper locals bus with no windows it was amazing. We got the posh seats at the back which pleased me as it meant we had the biggest window space for air AND a fan over our heads. It was meant to take an hour I have no idea how long it did take but Kieran did have a lot of naps on this bus. When we arrived we weren't even really sure if we were in the right place but we were kicked off anyways. We started looking for hotels but it's not the most touristy spot so we were struggling so we started heading to some prison cells advertised in my bible (the lonely planet) on the way there I saw some laundry shack that offered accommodation right on the river so in we went, she showed us a lovely room with beds and nothing else other than a paper cricket which was a bit scary. And the bathrooms were outside and it had a fan it was like £4 a night for 2 so I was well impressed and signed up straight away. We got sorted and off we went on the trek for monkeys at the temple. On the way we were literally stopped by traffic police. I could tell on our way up to them they were excited to see potential English people and they shouted STOP at us. And then physically stopped us when we didn't haha. They were cool they loved Kieran's Che Guevara top and generally I think they loved him they called him handsome man, in Thailand the men love men and the women love the women, in Hua Hin the Thai hookers were always shouting sexy lady at me, I think they were aiming their compliments at the wrong person since I was with a man! Anyways after massaging the ego we were allowed to move on after we told them we were going to the temple in the mountains. On our way there we noticed a few cheeky monkeys hanging around which was cool; I was quite excited to see them… so silly. We totally hiked up this huge mountain and seen loadsa canny little temple things and loadsa sweet little monkeys. We were both starving up the mountain and it was so hot we were literally sweating our arses off. I don't actually know how we didn't faint; I was pretty close I think! We hunted round for some ice cream but found none of the water sellers had any. Of course they sold toilet rolls though?! So we started heading out of the temple, and came across 2 lovely children *disclaimer* who were teasing the monkeys by throwing things at them. All throughout the mountain temple thing it stated do not tease the monkeys they are crazy, they will kill etc. so obviously the signs need updating for the Koreans as they obviously didn't read them. One of the monkeys starts squaring up to this evil child who was about 5 years old. His mental sister starts laughing like a hyena, while I start massively panicking. It was so scary it started going into attack pose (if you don't know what this is I will demonstrate on request) and bearing its teeth and making all kindsa scary attack noises! By this point i'm almost in tears begging Kieran to let us go back to where I might have seen another exit. He was unconcerned as his plan was to push me at any animal as id had my rabies jab and he hadn't - never trust men from hull! The lovely kids ran off away as far as they could laughing their nasty little arses off and left us two to deal with their mess. I was shaking I was so scared of death by monkey. We started slowly walking past them trying to appear not scared I was clinging on to him for dear life, anyway the sweet little monkey aka evil monkey then started baring its teeth at us and making the evil noise at us too. I almost passed out for real this time which would have been a sure way for death by monkey. We did an amazing moonwalking dance back up the path away from the little b*****. I honestly can't describe how ill I felt by this point. My legs were like jelly, heart pounding. It was like we were being hunted…which to be fair we were. I tried again to make us test out the other exit theory - it turned out later on that my 'I'm so scared, there's another exit up there' routine really entertained Karl P its shame he didn't have sky 1 with him! We staked the monkey out until it moved away from our path and we made it past it I was so happy I almost cried although there was still a million other monkeys around us which really freaked me out. We then were on the last bit of path to escape this horrible temple mountain, when all of a sudden out of the blue another crazy monkey started proper running at me, it was literally just about to jump on me for real when I threw it my bottle of water which it then stole, opened, drank and ran off with while I almost pooed myself for the millionth time that day. I didn't calm down properly until I made it safely into the 7/11. When we were just leaving the site, this crazy woman started trying to ask us if we were going on the cable car but there was loadsa monkeys round the entrance freaking me out so I said no then ran across the road in front of about 7 cars but we figured to be ran over would be better than being attacked from a monkey. There is still monkeys on the path away from the temple entrance, some where climbing on the cables so I was hoping for a bit of monkey electrocution to be honest but it didn't happen. We got to the 7/11 I got a mars bar for fright however I think vodka might have helped more. We then decided to get a tuk tuk to the caves, we had to drive past the scary assed monkeys again which again got my heart racing, they could see Kieran was eating crisps too and they were well watching the food. Then after a nice drive through some road markets and normal people and no monkeys we approached a forest type area and gues what was there, everywhere to be seen… only more flipping monkeys!! I was proper panicked again like 'we're gonna have to go back' I can't take it. Tuk tuks are all open to so I was very concerned they would be jumping in to attack us. I then realised why the tuk tuk lady was asking if we were wanting a 2 way tuk tuk ride, as the caves appeared to be in the middle of monkey hell/forest land. So all the way up to the caves I was practically hyperventilating which I'm sure was sooo entertaining. I think Kieran was scared too but by this point he was probably more scared of me having a panic attack!! All the way up we went past hundreds of evil monkeys. When we got there a nice man met us off the tuk tuk and told us there was no taxis here so we went need to tell the tuk tuk lady to wait for us so of course we did that. He then tried to sell us corn for the monkeys but I had no intention of going anywhere near them, as soon as we got off the tuk tuk there was a big square full of monkeys. They all appeared to be eating food from the ground which made me happy as when they are eating and raping each other humans are safe! I asked the nice Thai man if there were many monkeys in the cave and he said yes lots but they are nice monkeys here. I wasn't so sure I believed him but anyway we were there so I had to make the effort to go inside the cave for at least 1 minute, the nearer we got to the cave the monkey numbers got less so I felt happier, we figured monkeys don't go inside the cave as it won't be warm enough, so on my way in I was still a bit apprehensive but it turned out there was none yeeeeey! But on the way down the stairs inside Kieran noticed a massive*disclaimer* snake on the steps! How exciting, I just love a good old near death experience. We danced past it and went on inside the cave, it was totally beautiful, full of Buddha's and temple things, every time you went round the corner there was another Buddha of some sort, it really was amazing, it was so peaceful and it was cool which was lush as Petchaburi was sooo hot that day. We didn't come across one monkey either so it was a major bonus of feeling cool and not on edge. On our way out we looked for the huge cobra again and it was in the same place but proper squared its neck like how they do when they attack. Luckily we only had to hit it with a stick to protect ourselves from death… really we just walked past it as we figured the Buddha's would protect us. On the way out of the cave we saw some monkey rape which again cheered me up as if they are doing that then they aren't attempting to attack me!! They all pretty much ignored us, not even a glance. Maybe the Thai man was right and they were nice monkeys in this part. We got in our tuk tuk and she took us straight back to our 5* hotel. Where our fan room was actually cool!! We had lovely cold showers in the outside (the room) toilets and then headed to the hotel restaurant overlooking the Phetchaburi river for some tasty tea. It was literally soo cheap that we figured if we got horrible food we would just keep ordering until we got some good stuff. We managed to get prawn crackers and they were homemade and quite good, they came with something that I think was meant to be chilli jam but it looked like tar from a smokers lung and tasted of nothing. I was feeling really brave and got Thai coconut soup with chicken and galangal. I had no idea what galangal was, I've since found out that its part of the ginger family which I did pull a few chunks of ginger out of it but the thing that was worrying me was like pieces of tripe! I swear I have no idea what this white stuff was but I'm sure it was stomach lining or something sick like that, I ate a bit of it and it tasted ok but the texture was worrying me so I then ate round them bits. There was loadsa it whatever it was. (I have actually googled tripe and it was definately tripe! Uuurrrrggghhhh) We then ended up drinking around a million bottles of beer, we drank so much Leo there they ran out of it then I ended up on the Singha then we both ended up drinking Heineken. Next thing you know we're demanding song requests and we make the man who owned the placed get all of his cd's out. They even had atomic kitten. We sorted loads of cds out for him to put on and made him turn it up. He then took loadsa photos of us and I got a photo of him with Kieran but I can't remember doing this. We then were heading back to the room in some drunken mess and found loadsa snorkelling equipment hanging up which I instantly put on and Kieran put on my glasses and a straw hat they had hanging round. It was like fancy dress corner. I have no idea how loud we must have been but I'm pretty sure we were the only people in the whole place apart from the family who ran the place so it's fine. We then had a party in the room with blasting music, oops. Either way I think we were their favourite guests ever, we got up really late the next day surprise surprise, then went for breakfast and the nice lady who ran the place gave us some fried banana as an added bonus bless her, it was lush too. I then realised I had been nailed good and proper from mozzies or some kinda bugs. In the middle of the night I had been cold from the fan and got in the bed cover which was obviously a Thai Prison blanket haha which must have been full of all kindsa animals as when I woke up my legs and one side of my arms basically everywhere my body had touched the bed I had been bitten to death bloody all over. Oooops! We then went and found our way to the bus stop to get the bus to Bangkok we got on straight away then they tried to charge us for our backpacks cheeky b*****s so we just put them on the floor, all the way there it kept raining which we had both being dying for so we were happy to see some but gutted at the same time as we weren't stuck in it. When we got the bus the people we got the tickets off agreed to take us to khaosan road so then 2 hours down the road we started dropping people off here there and everywhere and then eventually we were the last 2 people in the minibus and we ended up at the Bangkok bus station which was not khaosan road! This of course led to Kieran refusing to get out until they took us there, a woman who could speak English and a man tried to tell the bus driver that's where we were wanting to go but the bus driver was having none of it. Then the woman gave Kieran the phone and said 'it's for you' haha how on earth anyone had tracked him down to this crazy woman's phone number was amazing. He was like 'I don't know who you are' haha It was hilarious. He was demanding we weren't getting off the bus until we were taken to where we bought tickets too. Eventually the bus driver just got off the bus so we admitted defeat and got a taxi there as we had already been in the mini bus arguing for around 2 hours by this point…maybe 15 mins. We got there Kieran booked into his room for one as I was leaving him that night, the woman behind reception insisted I gave my passport to her to be held hostage until I left the hotel to go to the airport incase we were pulling a fast one and were trying to save cash by booking a one bed room. We spent the rest of the day shopping for gifts I managed to buy 2 whole presents for people. Maybe one for my sister and maybe one for little Lily. We then went and got some food, when I realised my bites has gotten bigger and I thought they might have been actual measles but they were just bites of course. Although I do now wish I had tried harder to make the authorities keep me in Thailand. On the last night we went for a few beers in a nice bar where there was a lovely Asian man doing a nice little acoustic set, he was doing all the best songs ever so it was lush, I had my 7/11 top on and I was drinking Beer Lao as they had that so it was nice being very Asian on my late night. We then went to a rooftop terrace bar for my final drink in Thailand; I had a coke as I didn't think I could manage another beer before my flight. There was a band on there too and they even did a Robbie Williams song which really upset Kieran as he hates him as he loves Oasis (loser). We then went and showed the hotel lady I was really taking my backpack as I really was actually leaving the country and not trying some weird move to not pay for a bed for the night so actually got my passport back - dammit. I then went and got my sad little airport minibus and said my farewells to Kieran and Thailand. Bad times indeed!! It has been amazing though J every single. Even the moments when I went to the toilet and discovered it was another squatters one. I think I can officially call myself the best white Asian ever for sure now!!

im sure when i leave the country again i will continue with this blog as it has been quite enjoyable to write, and also so much happens so its a good place to remind youself of everything. i have def missed out so much from this however inlcuding michelin thai boy (remember him janine), the secret diaries of course and so much drunken gossip that I havent quite remembered yet.... much love all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx