Saturday 22 February 2014

Widgets

Northern Koh Phangan Island, Thailand

Hi friends! 


Well, it's been a few days since I've had any wifi connection, so you're about to be bombarded with a couple of blog posts all at once. 


It's like Christmas come early, n'est-ce pas? I thought so ;)


Bags piled high on the ferry ride to Koh Phangan

Anywho, we spent an awesome day on Koh Phangan Island (also written Koh Pha Ngan...seen them both equally as much, so I don't even know which one is correct and which ones not...) 


We took a ferry from Big Buddha Beach Pier on Koh Samui Island early-ish in the morning, and we even saw some of the friends we made at the full moon party. Kind of like we were switching places. 


We did a pit stop at the sunrise beach, Haad Rin Nok, where the party was so I could take a look in the off chance that I could find my glasses. 


I asked a couple of guys if there was some sort of lost and found, and they started laughing. 'I think what's lost is now stolen, ya?' 


Le sad trombone. 

I wandered up and down the beach a bit, and then decided to call it quits. We jumped into a taxi truck going towards the north side of the island. The island is way bigger than I expected, with lots of hilly roads with little towns and palm tree groves on either side. Totally stunning. 


Ridin' in the truck


We made it to our hotel in about 40 minutes, dumped our stuff and high-tailed it to the beach. We wanted to see the little Koh Ma island, which you can walk to on a sand bar from the beach. 


We hadn't eaten since breaky, so we stopped off at the cutest little restaurant - Grandma Langs. 


She told us Koh Ma was 'maybe 1km' away, which seemed manageable. Except it was all uphill. I kid you not. I'm all about the hiking, but we decided to flag down a couple of people on scooters so we could make the most of the remaining sunshine on the beach. 


We hitched a ride with twins from Argentina, who were with other friends. We made it to Koh Ma in no time - and it was beautiful! 


We walked over to the small island and hung out for a bit with our Argentinian friends, then we got a ride back to Thong Sala to check out the night market. 


My phone was dead at that point, so I didn't snap any pics, but Cyn and I wandered about - we've learned to do a full tour and take in all our options and then choose instead of going for the first delicious thing you see (I mean, it all looks awesome). We settled on a full fish ( head and fins intact, just the way I like it), some curry and rice. We also tried some Thai desserts, we took a Thai girls advice who was also buying some. Interesting textures, but good! 


We walked around the market some more, looking at the different stalls selling clothes and trinkets, then hopped back in a taxi truck. The people who were already inside were stopping at Amsterdam bar, so we begged our driver to wait 5 minutes while we went to look around. 

Amsterdam Bar is supposedly the best place to watch the sunset, and it's true: it's on the top of a mountain (a trek and a half to get to) and there's an infinity pool that overlooks the whole top of the island. 


We asked our driver to meet us back at 7:30am the next morning, and he seemed to understand - there was a lot of head nodding involved - but he was a no show this morning. 


We started to panic a bit - we had been told to show up to our ferry to Koh Tao early since they will leave as soon as they are full enough - and finally begged a passing truck to take us to the pier. 

Gotta love the kindness of strangers sometimes. There had been nothing but scooters passing by us that early in the morning, and every one had two passengers. I hope life is kind to that man, he was a life saver! 


We're on the Sea Tran ferry now (I would recommend taking Lompraya instead - there were about 3 of those that showed up and left while we were waiting for ours, late as usual) en route to Koh Tao to do our diving courses! I convinced Cyn to do her open water, and I'm getting my advanced :)

Excited to go diving again, and this time in even warmer water...swoop!!

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