Khao Sok National Park

Tuesday 7th Jan.

We got to Mae Nam, on Koh Samui in the late afternoon, after 2 hours boat ride. Luckily we found a place to stay really quickly after entering at the pier. We would only stay for one night, so we didn't have any special needs, just a bed to sleep in. The girls at the guesthouse helped us out with planning our trip to the mainland again. It sounded like they knew, what they were talking about, so we were happy to get some help. Especially because we read about a lot of scams and a lot of touts in Suratthani. So we wanted to avoid them or at least be prepared for them. 

We didn't get to see anything on Koh Samui, since it was already getting dark, so we only went out for dinner. Found a place with pizza party, as they called it. Basically just a buffet with pizzas and some wellcooked thaifood, for 100 bath (20kr) each. One of the most valued and cheap places we could find. And after that, we had the best massage we had on our trip until now!

Mae Nam Beach, Koh samui

Cosy atmosphere at the guesthouse on Koh Samui

Wednesday 8th Jan.

Woke up early to walk to the mainstreet and get a taxi to Na Thon pier. Every taxi is driving in that direction in the morning, so it's very easy to make a good price with them.
There's a few different boats sailing to Don Sak or Suratthani, so we had to figure out which one was the right one, and not take the one with all the scams etc. We bought a boat-bus ticket, so we were sure that we would get into the city center of Suratthani, and then we would avoid all the scams in Donsak. 

We got really lucky, cause when we got dropped of by the bus, to switch to another, a thai woman helped us find the busstop and buying the right ticket. Lucky day for us! By the way, the roads in Thailand are much more developed, than what we are use to, so the busdrives goes really smooth and there's almost no potholes, the only annoying thing is that they drive in the "wrong" side of the road. 

We got off the bus on the highway, close to Khao Sok Nationalpark. There was 4 guys, with big advertising signs about available guesthouses in the town, they all offered free transfer, so we really didn't know which one we should pick. Erik asked if they ever got in fight with each other, about costumers, but they pretended they didn't hear him. We didn't want to upset anybody, but it was the most laid back guy that won. 

He already left the little group, and just waited by his pick up truck. So it was our way to tell that we don't like all the stress, they put on our shoulders! 

We got to the Bamboo House and was first shown a remote bungalow, in the back of the garden, to only 300B, but after that being said, I wouldn't be comfortable sleeping there. There was big holes in the floor and that goes hand in hand with big animals at night, when we leave the light on for a bit. So no thanks, instead we choose a bungalow to 500B, with no visible animals. It was first later I realized that there was a bat living in the bathroom, but it left when I turned the light on. Sadly we couldn't close the bathroom door properly, so we appreciated the mosquito net that was provided in the bungalow, then we at least knew we were safe under that. 

We were happy that we only had to sleep there one night, but unfortunately we would sleep in worse conditions the upcoming day, when we planned a trip into the jungle, with trekking, 4 meals, a tent, a local guide, and a overnight sleep in the middle of the jungle.

This is where we lived together with a bat

Thursday 9th Jan.

We met in the guesthouse restaurant, where our guide packed all the survival stuff together, and at 10am we were ready to leave. We were a small group of the 2 of us, 3 french guys and 2 guides (dad & son). 

We walked for a while before we got off the tourist path, before entering the real jungle. We quickly discovered some monkeys (gibbons) playing in the trees, it's a totally other experience to see them in the wild than in a zoo. We felt really lucky! 

We had a lunch break, with fried rice and a quick svimming break in the river. After that the trek got really hard, and challenging. We crossed the river several times, sometimes through the water other times on slippery rocks, there was only a very small path to follow, and a few places they had put up a rope to hold on to, so we wouldn't hurt ourselves to much. A few of us got leeches on us, but they were small and easy to take off. 

Eventually we came to our camping ground, a small rocky "island", in front of a big waterfall, where we pitched our small tents. We spended time with catching fishes with small watermelon and pineapple pieces. The guides made a fire, put up their hammock and started preparing all the bamboo's, for our bamboo dinner. Everything was gonna be served, and cooked with bamboo, and they used it for everything. 

We each got a bamboo cup, with a bamboo spoon, then they boiled water in a bamboo and served us tea/coffee. The dinner consisted of bamboo cooked rice, bamboo grilled chicken and a big fish (that our guide caught earlier), and green curry sauce with chicken and vegetables. It tasted surprisingly good, and we really enjoyed being out in the nature. It got dark while we ate, and all the animals started to make all their loud noises. We felt relaxed sitting there in the jungle and eating dinner out of a bamboo. 

We went for a night safari afterwards, it wasn't as creepy as we assumed. We saw a lot of big disqusting frogs, some spiders and a civet cat in a tree. We had hoped to see snakes, tigers, leopards etc. Better luck next time! Haha! The guide said he only saw a tiger once, and that was 5 years ago! Snakes are common to see, but we didn't find any. Oh well maybe we were better off. 

We chilled around the fire place and our sweet guide brought a bottle of rum that he shared with us. Time to get some sleep. None of us brought any matresses, so we pulled out the extra clothes we brought and tried to get a good sleep on that. It was quite a rough night, and the rain and the leaking tent only made the night seem longer. In the end of the night every part of our body hurt, and we used up all possible possisions to sleep in.

A beautiful place to write some blog

Friday 10th Jan.

The other tent with the 3 french guys in, had been leaking aswell, and our guide had been sleeping under the open sky, so we all had a rough night. 

We had some bamboo toasted bread with jam for breakfast, and then we packed the tent and our stuff together. Our guide told us that the trek this day was a lot of up and down. We started with walking up some steep narrow paths, and the adrenaline started pumping straight away, the only safety was a rope, and further up it became more rock climbing than trekking, and our safety was only tree roots. A little too dangeous and challenging from my point of view, but we survived.
On the top we struggled not to slip on the slippery rocks, and eventually we found a path in the jungle again, away from rocks and river. It was smoking hot and the humidity was almost unbearable, but it was fun and exciting to walk deep in the beautiful and peaceful jungle. 

We got back to the guetshouse around noon, and had lunch in the restaurant. Erik was in his sneaky mode, so he showed the manager a picture of our friend Leah, who checked in at the guesthouse the night before, and we recommended the place for her. The manager reconized Leah, and that's how we got a free transfer to the highway. Sneaky! 

The public bus was waiting for us on the highway, so we jumped right into it, and was on our way to Khao Lak. The guy in the bus tried to make us pay the "tourist price", 160B, sadly the round-eyed in front of us just payed that, but we knew the price, and only payed 200B for both of us. The messers become the messies. 

After a few hours we arrived in Khao Lak. Erik was a gentleman, for once, and left me at the busstop with all our luggage, while he walked around in the burning sun, to find a cheap place to stay. It was late afternoon before he returned and announced that almost every guesthouse/hotel/hostel was full. Damn it! He only found one place, but that was over our budget, but since we didn't have a lot of options we walked there and payed 700B for a bungalow, with free access to outdoor swimming pool. Sweeeet! 

We wanted to find a good deal with a dive center on a live-aboard trip, to dive around the Similan Islands + 3 other islands. Our first good option was apparently fully booked, but the second one (Scuba Adventures) was perfect, they made a REALLY good last-minute price for us, and we would leave with the boat the following night. We booked the "advanced open water" course on top of that, so all together it was 42000B, for 4days/4nights on the boat, for both of us, including dorm beds, 3 meals a day + snacks, all diving equipment and an instructor, for not more than 4 people. This was gonna be a great way to get some experience with the diving, and we were both super excited. 

Dinner was enjoyed at Mc D, which by the way is just as expensive as at home. To be continued!  

 

Jungle video

New years at Koh Tao, Thailand

Sunday 29th Dec.

Early in the morning, before sunrise, we arrived to Chumphon pier and had to check in again, I still don't understand why, but they had to see our tickets for the bus-boat trip again.
There was loads of round-eyed people, mostly backpackers, and they filled up two big catamaran boats, with around 300 on each, and then we went out on the worst boattrip we ever had. The staff handed out small plastic bags, before take off, and we got seasick pills aswell, normaly none of us get seasick, but this boattrip was just undescribeable crazy and out of control. Over half of the people on the boat vomited during the trip, and even some of the staff had to sit down to control their seasickness. We could feel that sometimes the boat didn't even touch the water, we were just jumping in our seats, and the boat was being tossed from side to side.
We were all so tired from a ruff night in the bus, and those 2 hours was the longest we ever had. Finally we got to Koh Tao, and were totally knackered and hungry. After breakfast/lunch, we split up with Christian and Tanya, and went to sleep.
In the evening we pretty much just went out to eat, and then back to bed again. We really had two ruff days, so we were worth anything.

Walking to the horrible cataman boats

This is definately a boat to avoid, if possible

Monday 30th Dec.

I don't really remember doing anything particularly this day. I have been a week behind with writing blog, so it's hard to seperate the days, specially when we haven't done anything special. 

We've just been relaxing and swimming in the beautiful sea. Oh and for the first time in over a week we went jogging again. It was really hard to do in Bangkok, since every road is smoking busy and the traffic is crazy, so we didn't want to risk our lifes by doing it there. 

Erik & Christian talked a lot about diving, and how Koh Tao is the best and cheapest place in the world to do it. There's at least 30 diving schools on the island, so it's definately the main thing that people do around this place. 

Erik really wanted to give it a shot, and eventually he got me talked in to it aswell. I had a bad experience, with diving many years ago, so to be honest I wasn't happy about it. But we booked a discover scuba diving course for the following morning, and I prepared myself for giving it a second try. 

At night we went out for dinner with Christian & Tanya, and they took us to a ladyboy cabaret at night. Very entertaining and different. Watch the video and you'll see what it is. 

One of the beautiful guys (and also Tanya's friend)

Hanging out at one of the many beach restaurants

I had to pull Erik home, after his meeting with these gorgeous men :-)

Cabaret Video

Tuesday 31st Dec.

Christian joined us on the discover scuba diving for free, because he used to work as a divemaster and instructor at Big Blue diving. It started with an orientation about the fundamentals of scuba diving, so we could dive safely. Had a lunch break and then we got our equipment and was ready to go. 

When we booked the course they told us we would start in shallow water, and practise the initial skills, before we would go diving. All of a sudden the instructors changes plans, and said we were gonna go out on a boat and do the skills in the deep water. No one seemed to care about that, so we just went with the flow. When we got to the boat, our instructor actually wanted to start diving down to 7-8 meters, and then make us do the skills (3 regulator skills and a half and full flooded mask). We were definately not ready for that, so we made her change her plans, so then we did the skills just 20cm under the surface. Which was way more reasonable for beginners. 

We were only 3 on the team and when we started the actual diving, we should follow a line down. I got ½ meter under the water and then I started to panic, I wasn't comfortable with the equipment, and definately not comfortable with breathing under water. That's so unnatural, and I skipped out of the course straight away. So that's the second time that happend to me. 

Erik, Christian, the instructor and another student went for a dive. Erik had been really nervous aswell, especialy after I skipped out, but he managed to dive anyway. I waited on the boat for them, and they were all really excited when they got back again (even more frustrating and annoying for me). 

After a break they went for their second dive, I didn't even want to try it again. It was over for me - I was done with scuba diving. Erik really liked it after his second dive, and after a while he started considering, if he should take the "open water" course. 

At night Erik wanted a big steak, and after entering a restaurant with steak on the menu, we realized that 95% of the menu contained sushi, which ment that their steak probably wasn't anything special. Instead of leaving the restaurant, Erik decided we should eat sushi. I was shooked, but very satisfied with that suggestion. And to my big surprise he actually liked it. 

There was parties all along the beach side, and every single restaurant and bar was filled with party people, at one of the bars some locals had lit fire to a jumping rope and the young kids was jumping into it several times, and most of them got burned. 2 days later we were told, that the local guys swinging the rope gets commision from the hospital, for burning tourists, so the hospital can earn some money. Crazy world we're living in! Except for that it was an amazing atmosphere, with fireshows, fireworks, and people wishing for good luck while they lit up lanterns and sent them up into the sky. Such a different and great way to celebrate new years eve. We hang out at Big Blue's bar with Christian & Tanya most of the night, and when I couldn't walk straight anymore, Erik took me home. What a sweetheart! 

The little mermaid

Drinking buzz buckets to only 400B together.

Christian bought champagne, and I took advantage over it. Thanks CK.

 



Koh Tao Video

Wednesday 1st Jan.

In the late afternoon, when we finally got out of bed, we walked to town to get some junkfood. It was litterally a ghost town, very few people was hanging out in different restaurants, and we could tell that everyone was having breakfast, eventhough it was around 4pm. So that made us feel better. If you're allowed to suffer from a big night out, it's absolutely on the 1st of January. 

So the day went by with chilling and relaxing. We didn't even see Christian & Tanya that day.  

Ghost town

Thursday 2nd Jan.

I was tired of doing nothing, so we decided to walk to the south of the island. Koh Tao is only 7 km long and 3-4 km wide, so it's a small island. Walked along the beach as far as possible, until we reached a bunch of expensive and fancy resorts, then we found a little isolated private beach, that we actualy should pay to visit, since we didn't live on one af the resorts. So we didn't stick around for long, before we returned to the backpacker world again, of course without paying! 
I was still annoyed over my failed diving lesson, specially because Christian said that it wasn't normal to take people out on the deep water to begin with. So I couldn't help blaming the instructor for my failure. They should have started out slowly, as written on their homepage, and as they said. What they did was wrong and against normal procedures. 
We walked by a sign that said that you could try diving in a pool for free, to see if you were interested in diving. So I tried that and didn't have a problem with the equipment there. It felt safe and comfortable. Now Erik took the decision, to walk back to Big Blue and explain the situation for them. Several instructors at Big Blue, said that it's definately not a normal way to start discover scuba diving on. We asked if I could get a one-on-one diving course the next day, and if that didn't went well, then we at least knew that I tried it the right way, and that diving wasn't my kind of sport. It was the only right thing to do, since I was still annoyed over it, and Erik was as well! Now I was excited and of cause nervous, but nervous in a good way. Now I wouldn't feel pushed or rushed into during the skills as fast as others, and I could take it easy and learn it slowly.
Erik already signed up for the open water course, and he was suppose to start in the afternoon, but now he wanted to wait and see if I had better luck this time. So if I managed to do it, we could do the open water course together. We enjoyed dinner with C & T, and in order to be ready for the next day we went to bed early.

Trying diving again, but in a safer spot than the ocean

Christian just wanted to look good in the picture, but all they thought about was his leftovers. Haha! 

Friday 3rd Jan

I was gonna meet my instructor at 12pm, but she didn't show up, and the waiting time for another instructor made me more nervous. But when he finally came, I pulled myself together and convinced myself that I could do it. Kept thinking about that everyone else is doing it, so why should I have such a big problem!? 

My instructor was young but experienced, he showed me slowly how to set up the gear, and then we walked out in the shallow water to do the skills. The half and full flooded mask skills are definately the worst, but unfortunately mandatory. The instructor, Oli made me feel safe and relaxed, and after the skills we went for a dive, just starting slowly from the beach and further and further out and down. It was amazing and I really enjoyed every second of it. We dived out to a boat, where we followed a line down, to go on our second dive, maximum depth of 9 meters. 

It's a totally other world down there, so amazingly beautiful, awesome and peacefull. I was so thrilled and overwhelmed of happiness, because I managed to do it, and no doubt that I wanted to take the open water course, together with Erik. Yeah, I did it, and actually enjoyed it!! 

Erik had been doing exercises meanwhile, and when we meet up again, he announced that Leah (a girl we meet already in China and travelled with for a week), was coming to Koh Tao, to take the open water course the same place as we intended to do it. We signed up for the course, and just as we were hanging out around Big Blue diving restaurant, Leah approached and was already signed up. A perfect timing, and now we could do the course together with her. 

The open water course takes 2½ day, and is very challenging. In the afternoon we went to an orientation meeting and watched some diving movies, which got disturbed by power shot downs 3 times, during the 2½ hour. At last the teachers gave up, excused for the terrible power and let us go, without watching all the information movies. We were excited for the following days, and just wanted to have a good and long rest before 2 long days, diving and studying.

Thanks to this guy, I finally learned to enjoy diving.

Saturday 4th Jan.

We checked out from our guesthouse and moved to Big Blue diving resort, where we could stay for only 100 bath each, since we were doing the open water course there. 

We met up with our instructor Oli, at 8am, we were 6 in the group, unfortunately Erik was the only guy, except for the instructor. After an orientation about all our equipment and how to set it up, we were ready to go in the water. We started out in the shallow water with a lot of different skills, like regulator skills, more mask skills, than the day before, removal and replacement of BCD west and weightbelt. Then he took us out on deeper water, around 3 meters, and we had to repeat some of the skills and practice some emergency situations under water. 

After 4 hours of practicing in the water, we got quite comfortable with almost everything. In the afternoon we had academics for some hours. We really struggled to be concentrated and tried our best not to fall asleep, not because the teaching was boring, but after being in the water and sun all morning! 

We couldn't go home and sleep, cause Christian & Tanya invited us to a steak restaurant, and who can reject that offer? We had a really great and tasteful dinner at Hippo's, and after a few glasses of wine, we were ready for bed.. But we had to do some homeworks first. The diving course is really intense, because we need to learn it all in 2½ day. Normally it takes about a week. 

Reunion with Leah

No complains about this beautiful sunset

 Sunday 5th Jan.

Meeting in the restaurant at Big Blue and had our final academics and the exam. The exam was quite easy, 50 questions and 4 answers to each question, and we all graduated with at least 92% correct answers. 

No more studying, and now we only had the fun part left - diving of cause! After lunch we sailed out to a beginner dive site, where we should do our 2 training dives, including more skills. Especially me and Leah hated the mask skills, they're really terrifying and scaring, and this day we had to do it on 9 meters depth. Lucikly we also went for a normal dive after, and the amazing life under water made us think that it was all worth the effort. We had 2 good dives and really enjoyed it. 

At night when we got back to Koh Tao, we were in for a treat, so we enjoyed worldclass pizzas at Farango, together with Leah. Unfortunately Oli (our instructor) told us about the mask removal and replacement that we all should accomplish the day after on our dive. That made me sleep really bad and I kept waking up with nightmares about that rediciolious mask thing. I just made it so much worse in my head, than it actually was, but I couldn't help it.



Longtail boats along Sairee beach

Monday 6th Jan.

Waking up way to early, and meeting at Big Blue at 6.30am. We were really excited (and nervous) for our dives today. We had a cameraman with us, so we wanted to look good and act cool. We started out with a 18 meters fundive, just to feel comfortable again. Nice dive with a lot of things to explore. There's some certain rules about diving time and surface time, that we need to follow to avoid decompression sickness and nitrogen narcosis. So after our first dive we had to wait for a few hours, before we were allowed to dive again. Second dive included  buoyancy and the mask skill, on 10 meters. Only because I had been thinking too much about it, I paniced while doing the mask skill, but Oli & Erik pulled me down and I finished the skill, that I hope I'm never gonna have to do again. Erik was totally cool and even had the energy to look in the camera and wave. Finally time for fundiving again! We were already back at Big Blue around 11.30 again, and luckily we all passed the tests and skills. Now officially open water divers. In the night we all met up again and watched the professional video together, and luckily we got it copied from Leah who bought it. See the video below, and maybe skip the intro from Big Blue! We actually wanted to celebrate our diver license, but after dinner with Leah, we were all too tired, and didn't bother going out. 

Colourful fishingboat

Tuesday 7th Jan.

We checked out, and spend most of the morning in the restaurant, researching and planning our next step. Unfortunately there wasn't a nightboat to Suratthani, as we were told earlier, so we took the Lomprayah catamaran to Koh Samui, and arrived around 5pm. This boatdrive was much more pleasant than our last experience with this company. It was only a one-night-stop at Koh Samui. So the story will be continued in the next update.

Dive Video



Christmas in Bangkok

Monday 23rd Dec. 

Had the best and nicest sleep for a very long time, we just wanted to stay in bed, because it was so comfortable.
Anyway, we had to go to the hospital for tropical diseases, to get our last injection for Hepatitis A & B. First we forgot our vaccination cards, so after two stops with the train, we had to go back and get the cards, then when we got to the hospital we realized that it hadn’t been 6 months since we had our last injection (it was only 4), so we couldn’t get the last one now anyway. We'll have to wait another 2 months. So that was a waste of time and money (on the train). To little research and too little thinking!
But the good thing is that we actually are coming back to Bangkok in 2 months, because recently Erik’s mom and stepdad announced that they would come and visit us. So we will meet them in Bangkok and get the injections at that time.
We read about a huge duty free mall, which should be near by the hospital, so we walked to check that out. And to our big surprise there was test samples on all kinds of candy, crackers, chocolate and dried fruits. So after walking two rounds around the food area, it sure felt like Christmas in our stomachs.
When we got back to the hostel we got in contact with Lluis (one of our travel friends). We arranged to meet up for beers with him, and his friend Lucy, in our area and taste a little bit of the nightlife in Bangkok. This area (Sukhumvit Road) is apparently the biggest area for prostituted in Bangkok, so we saw a lot of them and some dodgy bars. One place was just filled with old dirty fat western men, and their young sexy beautiful asian girls. It's a more common sight than we ever thought it would be. It's really disqusting. And I'm not sure who's the smartest one, the girl or the guy..!? Of cause there was a lot of ladyboys aswell, and I never thought it would be that obvious, but they're really everywhere.
Bangkok sure has EVERYTHING! We celebrated christmas in one of the many street bar vans, that opens up every night and creates a good and cosy atmosphere.


The organized mess in the reception area..

A wolkwagen transformed into a street bar.. What a great invention..!

Showing off in the bar..

Tuesday 24th Dec.

We were really tired and lazy after our night out, we got out of bed in the late afternoon, and forced ourselves to eat something, before we were going out for christmas dinner.

In that way we would be able to eat more at night, and we really wanted to take advantage over the food that we've been looking forward to eat, for a long time.

At 7pm we had a reservation at the danish owned restaurant, Stable lodge, where they served the traditional danish christmas food. We were impressed of how well it tasted and the service was brilliant. The place was very nicely decorated and it felt homely with all the danish people there.

It was the most perfect christmas eve that we could imagine us, when we're that far away from home. We got very full after all the delicious food. We brought home a doggy bag, so we could eat leftovers the next day, just as we would do at home. A nice christmas eve.

We skyped with my family who was all together, so I got to say hi to everyone of them. Really nice and a good way to end the day.

The greatest food is eaten at the most dirty places

Christmas at Stable Lodge

A big and nice dinner is ready to be served

Danish style appetizer

Wednesday 25th Dec.


The end of our glamoures days in the nice hostel was over, and it was time to move into Khao San road, that never sleeps and where all the backpackers are.
It took us ages to reach the area, with the bad public transportation. First a train, then an hour boat ride and then we walked around the area for ages, to find a clean place for reasonable money. It was almost impossible. And the more places we saw, the worser it got.
Eventually we gave up and was tired of walking around. So we took a crappy wooden room (300bath), with a simple hard bed, and a shared dirty bathroom, that haven't been cleaned for several months. Such a rathole. We were happy that we had a mosquito net to hang up, so we wouldn't be eaten up during the night.
We checked out Khao San road and the near by area, it was actually more relaxed and easy-going than we thought, and filled with round-eyed. Compared to Nam, Laos and Cambodia, it's really expensive here, like 4 times the prices we're use to. So that's kind of frustrating and annoying.
We had some great streetfood, and realized how much we missed the bigger cities, where they serve street food everywhere, it's amazing and the best food you can get.
We asked on a few hotels about price and availability for the upcoming days, since we didn't want to spend more than one night in the room that we found. We found a available room, to a reasonable price, so next morning we would swop room.

Christmas "party" with leftovers from christmas eve. 

Mae Nam Chao Phraya river 

Thursday 26th Dec.

We tried in vain to find a taxi that would drive us to the famous snake farm, on the taximeter, but apparently it's impossible to find a driver that wanna drive on the meter, particulary around Khao San road.
One driver told us that he didn't want to drive us that far, because of the political protests. He was affraid of getting into troubles, and risk his life. So fair enough, we didn't want to risk anything either, so we took the public boat down south, and then found the metrostation.
In Bangkok the public transportation is really complicated and takes a long time. But eventually we got to the snake farm. This is runned by the thai red cross institute, and produces anti-venom serum, for snake-bite-victims nation and worldwide. They even do a demonstation of how venom is obtained, from snakes to make the anti-venom.
The farm has a wide variety of local snakes in all sizes and colours. Everyday they do a show where they inform the audience about the different snakes, their habitat, the different dangers and so on.
It's very usefull information, and it's nice to know more about the local snakes, since we're in a risk to meet then every day.
After this we went to a near by park to relax and wait for the sun to set, then we wanted to go to State Tower (the tall and fancy hotel from the movie Hangover in Thailand) and watch the sunset from there. We heard it should be amazing, and a fantastic view over Bangkok. We got to the hotel and went up on 64th floor, and first then we were told that there was a dresscode; closed shoes, nicely dressed and knee and shoulders should be covered. We didn't have any of the mentioned, so we barely got out of the elevator, before we were on our way down again. Damn it!
We felt gutted and went back on the noisy streets again, trying to find our way back to the public boat, so we could get back to our guesthouse, and have some dinner. We had a quiet night.

Khao San Road, at daytime!

Khao San Road, at nighttime!

Royal Pyton

The sign speaks for itself 

Transportable ATM machine.. ohh yeah Bangkok has everything!!

Bangkok Snake Farm Video

Friday 27th Dec.

We were suppose to go to the weekend market, and buy some new clothes.
It's so unusual not to have shopped for several months, and after wearing the same for ages, we actually really needed some new clothes. Apparently the weekend market isn't on before saturday, so we got really annoyed, both for the reason that we wouldn't get any new clothes, but also because we got up early to get to the market before everyone else. Oh well, we will shop when we get back to Bangkok later on our travels.
Now we had time for a little nab, before we would meet up with Lluis and go and visit Diana & Marco (that we met first time at the great wall in China, and second time on Cat Ba Island). They invited us for dinner & drinks.
We got there around 2pm, and catched up during the whole afternoon, a great reunion and we continued drinking on Khao San Road afterwards. We celebrated Erik's birthday and had a late night.

If you look long enough you will be able to see a man behind all the trash

Saturday 28th Dec.

Since we're not 20 anymore, we woke up with hangovers, so who are we kidding, of cause it gets harder and harder to get out of bed, the older you get. We sure felt old in the morning, but after checking out and getting some breakfast, we started feeling better.

It was time to celebrate Erik again, so when his uncle Christian & Tanya, his girlfriend, arrived, we started drinking again. Oh yeah, the beers tasted good, and we pubcrawled around Khao San Road with Lluis, Tara, Christian & Tanya. A great and funny day with loads of laughter and silly conversations.

Erik's biggest wish was to eat dinner at Burger King, and we didn't make any protest. After that we lined up for check in, to a bus to Chumphon and a boat to Koh Tao, that we booked in advance.

It took ages to check in, and after that we waited for another era for the bus to arrive. Eventually our numbers was up, and as soon as we hit our seats in the over-night bus, we got tired and slept most of the night.

Tara, Lluis, Christian and the birthday boy

Waiting for the bus to arrive

Bangkok Video