Rain Rain Rain......the island of Koh Chang, Thailand

Hello again :)

Before I start I will like to mention that we must have seen the sun for around 10 minutes in the 8 days we stayed on the island of Koh Chang. If anybody thinks Thailand is continuously hot and sunny, think again.....

Kayak not included in the price of a bungalow....

As mentioned in the previous lady-boy blog, we arrived to Koh Chang on an old looking ferry in the gloom of the monsoon rains and once we arrived on the island, had to endure a hour's drive along one of the worst roads ever, it makes gants hill roundabout or spaghetti junction in Birmingham look like a piece of p**s. We were staying in Lonely beach, we was surprised by how quiet it was, although we should have guessed by the name. I had read many good things about the place online, and consisted of an undeveloped beach area with a couple of dozen restaurant and hundreds of beach huts some of them as cheap as 3 pound a night. Some of the huts required a kayak to get to the front door in rainy season! Fortunately, we splashed out and paid 9 pound a night for our room and we were footsteps away from a secluded beach but wasn't able to take advantage of it because of the monsoon rains. We stayed at Nature Beach Resort which was located on the beach and had a nice bar and restaurant looking over the sea but as it was low season and as a result there was only a handful of people staying at the resort at the time we were.

Monsoon season on Koh Chang

We tried to make the most of Koh Chang although the lack of people and the weather was hampering us doing much during the day alongside the roads being too dangerous to rent a moped out. There was a party one night at out resort which was a good night which originally started as playing Connect 4 with the bar staff to drinking shots through a straw which I don't remember much of. It was one of them moments for Georgia when she wakes up the next morning and flicks through the photos on her camera to make sure she remembers everything. Judging by the pictures I got drunk and made a fool of myself lol.

After 3 nights at the resort we figured out it was pointless staying on the beach because of the weather alongside getting bitten alive by mosquitoes. We moved into a different hostel in the village which was more central and had a much nicer room and bed. 'The night before we moved the hotel's dog slept outside our door all night to find out in the morning he brought us a used nappy as a present. When he realised we were checking out, then followed us 15 minutes down the road to the new hostel where we were staying at. I felt guilty for leaving our dog as he was always around. I was trying to make the dog turn around so he wouldn't get lost but Georgia was secretly happy he was with us as he was our guard dog from the monkeys. There was a lot of monkeys on the roadside, and I can't say monkeys are Georgia's favourite animal that she has come across, especially after witnessing monkeys steal sunglasses and a Cornetto before!

Our days consisted of waiting around in the hostel waiting for the rain to stop and during the night trying different cuisine, I even had Danish meatballs one night, work that one out! I still was still in "protecting the dogs" mode and when we was in the Danish restaurant a small and timid ugly looking dog come in looking for food, it looked more like a cat to be fair. The European owner was kicking it back out onto the street but the dog came back and this time the owner picked the dog up and started stroking it. Me being a paranoid freak, thought he was going to kill the skinny dog and I was telling Georgia that we were walking out if they done anything to the dog. The owner had this evil looking mustache and an evil look, he spoke to his mate and he went out the back.He come back out with food and walked the dog 5 minutes down the road to give him food to make sure he didn't come back for more. I was so stupid, I must have though Danes like to murder dogs for some reason. Random story about dogs again, but I had to tell someone!

Ingredients for the Thai cooking School

Me and Georgia were debating whether to do any excursions and I was keen on treetop activity excursion and Georgia wanted to do a cooking school, so we agreed to just do our own thing especially as I gave myself food poisoning the last time I done a cooking school. I ended up doing the treetop excursion with a French family which included two young girls, so as the macho man I am, had to go first and had to set the example. It was much more fun than I thought it would be, there were zip wires, tightropes, had to balance on a skateboard whilst flying through the air and even sit on a bike at one point. The course was so high in the trees and must have been 80 feet of the ground and torrential rain started and I was stranded. My idea before I started that an instructor would help you around the course but I had a 5 minute training session and was left on my own. Stuck on a wire 80 feet up in torrential rain was an adrenaline rush borderline buying a new pair of boxers! Georgia ended up doing the cooking school on the own her own with a young Thai lady who showed Georgia how to cook 5 dishes including Thai curry and spring rolls.

We wanted to move on from Koh Chang but still had a couple of days to kill before we had to cross the border into Cambodia to start teaching. Lonely beach was too lonely for us so we decided to go to the more commercial and larger resort of White Sands which had more your typical touristy restaurant including an Irish bar. There must be Irish bars everywhere??? We stayed here for a couple of nights and the highlights was having a barbecue by the beach both the nights and watching football including having a sneaky bet on Everton to beat West Ham 3-2 to win 68 pound from 2 pound, Georgia is still in the process of going through the courts to try and claim half of the profit.

It was now time to leave Koh Chang and we had stacked up on malaria tablets for Cambodia, sounds so exciting...... but we were looking forward to volunteering in Cambodia teaching children at a school. So after eight nights in Koh Chang we came to the conclusion it is such a nice place especially Lonely Beach, a true reflection of Thailand, although it was a mistake to go in monsoon season or to stay for so many nights.

P.S. We are slightly behind on the blog so I will post the next one in a couple of days so keep a look out!

Travelling continued.....Pattaya

After spending the summer back home, our plan was to work for a bit and save some money to go and do a working holiday in Australia, with a month away in Thailand and Cambodia. We were just going to work for some rubbish event company over the summer to earn the money but luckily enough we managed to find something we were both interested in. I managed to get a job as a Transport coordinator and Georgia worked over the summer as a domestic violence advocate so both of us managed to put our degree to use!

We started our travels in Bangkok Airport where Georgia flew from London, changing flights in India where she stated that she would never go again, but the flight was cheap so she cannot moan. I flew in from Hong Kong where I had spent a few nights with my family and was actually one of the best cities that I have visited. We also went to Dubai which wasn't as great as the busy and bright streets of Hong Kong. Our flights landed only 15 minutes apart, Georgia had endured her 18 journey and I loved my 2 hour flight from Hong Kong where I was upgraded to business class (had to include that in the blog), I am sure the check-in attendant felt sorry for me as I was the only white person on the flight! After a 2 hour bus journey from the airport we arrived in Pattaya late at night and had an early night.....

The next morning, well lunchtime by the time we woke up we had a walk down to the beach and the streets seemed pretty quiet and done nothing in particular as Georgia was jet-lagged. It was much more lively during the night though. When we have been to Thailand before there would always be a strip or a road where there would be a few bars full of Thai girls, like where we visited the ping-pong show in Bangkok, or on one of the Thai islands. But Pattaya is a huge city and there must have been hundreds, if not thousands of these bars full of local girls on the lookout for their middle-aged white men, or if they was lucky a hunk like me...Some of the bars would have Thai girls on one side of a table and westerners on the other, a bit like speed dating I should imagine, although me and Georgia didn't catch on to this until we wanted a quiet drink. It was raining so we ran into a bar and got a couple of beers and we ended up sitting opposite a 50 year old Thai woman looking for her future husband, she got us 2 instead! After sitting in awkward silence for ten minutes we decided to quickly finish our drinks and run off into the distance lol.

The rest of Pattaya was similar, full of bars or "special" massage parlors with dozens of girls outside each. Then there was Walking Street which was a lot less seedy with more bars and nightclubs alongside the go-go bars. A lot of the bars had a black curtain at the entrance which gave us flashbacks of the time we got locked in Bangkok at a ping-pong show but after a few nights we braved it and went in. It was a bar with a load of girls in their bikinis on stage all with a badge on, each having a number so if you wanted a girl you could book her by her badge number. The western men in these clubs were a lot younger unlike the men who would go to a go-go bar to find their future wife. Its not sounding good for me and Georgia right now but we only went there once out of curiosity! We ended up in the more traditional bars and clubs that you would get back home the majority of the time. There was even Russian strip clubs along the street that we may have ventured into one night.....

Pattaya was all about the nightlife and not too much too do in the day especially as it was monsoon season and it was usually raining and the cheap umbrellas that we had didn't stand a chance! Also, a lot of the excursions that was on offer such as elephant trekking and cooking schools wasn't worth paying for again as we done earlier in the year on our travels. A couple of the days we ended up going bowling and cinema because of the weather, but on the rare sunny day we took a boat to an island where we thought we would have a secluded beach to relax on. It turned out to be the busiest beach ever with about a thousand jet skis making a load of noise and a packed out beach full of large tourist groups. It was the complete opposite to a secluded beach so we only stayed for a couple of hours and took the ferry back to Pattaya and headed back to our hotel.

Our hotel was more like a guesthouse, with about 6 rooms run by a Thai family who would go out there way for you and would make you breakfast and lunch although it wasn't even included in the price.The majority of times Thai's are so much more friendly and welcoming compared to anyone else that we have been.

The food in Pattaya was very mixed as it was a huge tourist attraction so had the choice of western or local food. Georgia seemed adamant that she would keep having Thai food but I was still on holiday mode from the week before with my family and couldn't resist burger and chips!  Georgia gave in to Western food at 3am one night when we passed McDonalds, to her credit she has avoided chocolate and crisp since we have arrived and to be fair nobody can say no to a double cheeseburger after a night out!

After 5 nights in Pattaya, we arrived in Koh Chang via the Thai equivalent of the Woolwich Ferry through the gloom and the rain and finally made it to the hotel. The minibus had to go along the most dangerous roads I have seen with some of them completely flooded, I decided straight away that we wouldn't be renting a moped if we wanted to get off the island alive.

Until next time.......