Koh Samui, Krabi and our "journey" to the border

Under normal circumstances I would be writing a blog in an internet cafe in the middle of the afternoon when it's too hot to be walking about but tonight is an exception. It's 2AM and I have gave up trying to sleep as we are staying in a hotel with paper thin walls (and ceilings) and there is a 18-month old baby next door either running around or crying which her parents don't care about. The walls are literally cardboard, plus the room says it comes with air conditioning which is not really the case. We have been provided with a portable air-conditioning unit that pumps out my hot air out the back of it than the cold air out the front.....I don't know how this hotel has an 8.2 out of 10 rating online, I will be the one responsible to make that rating go down. Rant over!

After leaving Koh Tao, we headed to Koh Samui which is the largest of the Thai islands that we have visited but we had a couple of days free before my parents arrived. We booked into a nice room on the North of the island in the middle of nowhere, but it was cheap and we didn't mind because it had a pool and a restaurant and was in the countryside. It turned out that one of the owners was from Birmingham and there may have been a Thai bride involved somewhere along the line. The hotel was nice but the man who either ran or owned the hotel had the intelligence and social skills of an ogre(couldn't think of a better word) but to be fair wasn't unfriendly. We wasn't there for the service or location, just a nice big air-conditioned room with a swimming pool that we can lay around and detox for a couple of days after enduring the previous 2 weeks of staying in fan rooms and drinking too much beer! 

The 4th April arrived and my Mum and Dad had booked me and Georgia into a nice 4-star hotel on the beach with them which we were looking forward to.....and obviously seeing my parents for the first time in 11 weeks! We checked into reception and was told our room was next door to reception which wasn't too much of a problem, just meant we had a better Wi-fi signal lol. We met my Mum and Dad on the hotel beach and spent the day catching up and having a bit of lunch.

Beach hunk

Over the next few days we seemed to have breakfast as late as possible as it was included with our room until 11AM and was served in these individual wooden bungalows scattered along the front of the hotel on the beach and the breakfast was a 3 course meal! Having breakfast on the beach was the best thing about the hotel. After laying around the beach or pool we would then go out for dinner and have a few drinks and buckets, the drinks sometimes come in actual buckets that you would find on the beach and were usually better value than getting a glass. We were staying on Chaweng beach and was completely different to anywhere else on our travels, it was so developed you could mistake it for being somewhere in Europe. You knew it wasn't Europe because of all the ladyboy shows that were advertised and the endless amount of Thai girls known as Go-Go girls hanging around the bars, although there was a Russian strip club! Don't worry my  Mum put one of the girls in their place after talking to my Dad haha. The resort was just one-long road around 4 miles long so it was impossible to walk down all of it unless you jumped in a taxi or on the back of a pick-up truck.

Me and Georgia decided to rent a moped out for the day to explore the island but I stupidly decided to go through the mountain roads and not stick to the flat wide roads. As a result, our small moped was not powerful to make it up the hill so we had to turn back which was annoying but the worse was yet to come. On the way down the steep hills, the front brake broke leaving me with only the back brake coming down the steep hills. In the end I had to use my feet to stop and my flip-flops are now literally burnt out!

We all visited an "Ice Bar" one night and were given coats, hats and gloves to try and keep us warm from the freezing temperature. The "glasses" were made out of ice and there was even a tuk-tuk made from ice which was impressive. We was only in there for 30 minutes but was worth it as I have always seen it advertised in London but for some reason have never been. We also went to a night market which takes place once a week when the road is shut off and stalls open from early evening into the night with stalls selling everything from Buddha's to Spring Rolls! It was so hot as the steam and smoke was coming from the food stalls and was so busy it became impossible to walk down the market. After my Mum bought a few souvenirs including a couple of Buddhas we jumped back in the taxi back to our resort. The next night we headed to a lady-boy show, a little bit similar to the one we previously saw on Koh Tao but it was a bit more professional which almost took the fun out of it because the show we saw before was quite amateur-ish and was part of the fun.

Six nights later we parted ways with my Mum and Dad and we jumped on a boat back to the mainland whilst they got on a plane back to Bangkok for their flight back to London the following morning! Seven hours later we ended up in Krabi which is probably one of the least touristy places we have been to, its more of a stop-over to get to the other islands in Thailand rather than people visiting Krabi itself. After finding a travel agent and booking a bus to Malaysia we realized we had 7 pound between us to last 2 nights so we made it last until we got to Malaysia to withdraw their currency. We just ate toasties out of 7/11 which is the equivalent to a Tesco Express and had some street food for dinner at the local market which included a fake KFC stall and a stall selling hot-dogs wrapped in pancake? By the end of it we had 1 baht left (2p) and felt a sense of achievement and planned on stuffing our faces the next day on hopefully a something bit more Western.
 

We were picked up the next morning at 06:30 to go to Malaysia but we found out this would involve switching mini-buses in the main city in the South of Thailand just before the border. When getting dropped off by the first minivan we were told by the young Thai lady at the travel agent that the next minivan to Malaysia is not due to arrive for another 90 minutes and we should head into the centre and grab some food! We left our bags at the travel agent and went in search for food but on the way we noticed so many people on the street with water guns.....it was Thai New Year which is known as Songkram.  As a way of celebrating the new year,the Thai tradition originally started by people throwing water over each other as a blessing and a sign of good luck for the new year but has slowly become an excuse for one huge water fight. We found out this out as the locals would threw buckets of water over us, and squirted us using huge water guns. We had to either run or just stand there and get drenched as we wasn't prepared and had no ammunition to fight back.  After being soaked by kids, adults and the elderly lol, our eyes lit up as we saw a McDonald's sign and we ran to cover and tried to dry-out whilst eating chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers. We knew that we were only one block away from the travel agent to get onto the next bus and had 20 minutes to do so which wasn't really the issue, it was trying to dodge the locals and keep dry! We failed miserably. A passing truck with ten people on the back squirted me with water pistols and as I tried to run my flip flop gave way and snapped which gave them more time to soak me until the traffic lights turned green. We made it back to the travel agent wet but we didn't mind because it was so hot and everyone was having a city-wide water fight and all in a good nature with people having a laugh. Our minivan arrived on-time thankfully as we made our escape from the water fight headed to Malaysia for refuge.......