Hi!

 

So, we arrived in Koh Phi Phi, after a ferry from Phuket, around lunch time. Whilst Phi Phi is over run with tourists, mainly English twenty-somethings, there are no cars, just lots of small cobbled laneways, so it's very cute. We ended up in a mixed dorm, of 16 beds, with 2 shower/toilets that did not encourage you to feel clean....The next morning, fresh from our snore interrupted sleep with the free bed bugs, we looked a little harder and found ourselves a private room, with private bathroom and unfortunately the bed bugs weren't free, so as with most things that we have to pay for, we passed on them.

 

 

Sadly, our hotel here didn't come with a pool. The 5* hotel down the beach however, did. Perfect. We made ourselves at home in the pool for a couple of afternoons after a long breakfast, before a long dinner.

 

And this was the view from the pool. Not bad for $0 a night!

 

One day we took a coastal walk from the main bit of Phi Phi to a beach called Long Beach (of course) It took us about an hour, up and down some steep slopes, and past some cute little beaches. We spent the day there, eating, reading and sunning, waited 'til nearly sunset and walked back.

 

 

We took a day trip on a longtail boat around the smaller Phi Phi Leh island which is uninhabited.

 

 

The biggest beach, Maya Bay is where 'The Beach' was filmed, so that was the main sight to see and we got dropped off there for about an hour. Just enough time to imagine how great it would have been if Leo was there. At least we were touching the same grains of sand as him.

 

We also saw 'Viking Cave', which is funnily enough, not for Viking's, but where the Thai's gather whatever ingredient it is, that they use to make Bird's Nest Honey, an Asian delicacy.

 

 

We swam in Phileh Cove, which is a very serene, sea lagoon with bright green, clear water.

 

A couple of nights, we also joined the mobs that hedonistically party with their buckets on the beach, reserving no concern for the locals. Some of the time, we semi-soberly people watched, which was more fun than people dodging. No photographic evidence of these nights was taken, sorry!
 

Then it was time to say goodbye to a very chilled time in PhiPhi on yet another ferry...

 

And cross our fingers that our bags make another journey like this, successfully!

 

Lots of Love,

 

Lu & Kate xxx

 

Hello!

 

 

So we got to Phuket just after lunch and found 2 really nice rooms, (with air con for the boys and a treat for us!) which were seconds from Naiyang Beach. We wanted to be near the airport so we didn’t waste time going to meet the boys who arrived at separate times.

 

 

View from our front door.

Naiyang beach was completely different to other beaches we’d been to in that it offered deck chairs and umberellas, something of a luxury!! In Phuket, which is actually an island although doesn’t feel like one, I think you would struggle to find a secluded beach. However, if you can visiulise the bays without all the umbrellas you can see how beautiful it is/used to be and there were still parts that were really empty.

 

We spent the afternoon having a long lunch and settling into our new rooms and then went to collect Glenn and Sean from the airport, which was very exciting!! We spent their first night going for dinner on the beach, ordered lots of dishes to share so the boys could try our fav dishes and drinking yummy cocktails (and not letting go of their hands unless completely necessary!)

 

We did lots of this...

 

A little of this...

 

And obvs a bit of this...

 

We spent the next 2 days chilling on the beach in the day drinking rum, having long dinners on the beach (and buckets of more rum) at night and doing not too much else, which was perfect!

 

 

Lu also proved herself to be the queen of the hoola hoop.

 

But Glenn gave it a really good go!!

 

After a couple of days at Naiyang beach we made our way down south to Patong (the capital) and the boys (very, very kindly) treated us and booked us into a beautiful 4* hotel right in the centre of the town. On arrival in our palacial rooms (we would soon find out it's pretty hard to then go back to staying in slum-like accomodation) we ordered champagne room service and had an excitable few moments, which basically consisted of us jumping up and down on the bed while the boys looked at us like we were insane for being happy with a standard English matress rather than our normal 3 inch foam on plywood.

 

 

Whilst in Patong we spent lots of time chilling at OUR pool ("oh my god, we've got our own pool and we dont have to sneak in and pretend we're staying here!!") and wondering around the 24 hour markets. Glenn pretty much bought Patong out of their entire DVD offering and Lu finally found her ideal pair of Nike Runners, after picking up and looking at up to 80 pairs, according to a very patient Glenn!

 

On the last night in Patong we had dinner out (obvs) and then wondered around the centre for a while. When you wonder round the centre, you're basically trying to duck and weave in and out of the lady boys, prostitutes and lady boy prostitues, who are very persistant in attemping to get you into some kind of strip club/ping pong show environment. We'll circle back to ping pong shows! Anyway, en route around town we came across people holding little creatures called Slow Loris', which are tiny sloths. Glenn and Kate couldnt resist a little cuddle with the weird things but unfortunatly as soon as the below pic was taken, Glenns new friend decided it was safe to let a little wee out all over his shoulder and down his back! Nasty!!

 

 

 

Red wine is a new luxury!

 

 

After a while resistance was futile and we attended one of the famous Ping Pong shows. Lu and Sean had already been to one of these shows but as Glenn and Kate were none the wiser it simply had to be done. As we made our way through the seediest strip club in the world, lead by our lovely prostitute tout, Glenn and Kate began to understand what was about to become of them. Having been seated and then immediately charged we were then all shown (by a team of show girls/post op lady boys) where babies come from. Apparently lots of other things can also come from this place. Personally, we witnessed ping pong balls, needles strung together, cigarettes and our favourite, a live budgie. Yes that's right! It was the weirdest, most horrific and hilarious thing imaginable but a total experience. We lasted about 30 mins and then ran away, scarred for life!

After 2 nights in Patong, we headed back up north to Naiyang , where the next day we had to say bye bye to the boys, who were flying back to England and Australia.

Phuket was loads and loads of fun and the boys will be back to join us at the end of April in Vietnam so we're all really excited for that!

We stayed there on our own for one last night and then headed off to Koh Phi Phi on the ferry, which we would end up staying in for a week.

Phi Phi blog following as soon as possible!!
 

Lots of Love, Lu & Kate

xxx

　

 

 

 

`

 

Hello!!!

 

Sorry for the lack of blog again, we had it all ready to go, clicked on the post button and the internet cut out and it's been hard to get hold of wifi since!! So we are a lot of islands behind with the blog, this is about our time in TonSai Beach, Krabi, which we travelled to after Koh Lanta!

It was absolutely fabulous and not so fabulous at times, but defo our fav place so far and will be interesting to see where beats it, nothing else has so far! It's a little cove next to the much more famous Railay Beach, with not much to offer... to the unsuspecting traveller...for the first 5 minutes. Ton Sai is definitely rough around the edges, but a lot of fun if you can deal with that!

 

 

 

We got dropped off onto the beach via long tail boat taxi and from first glance, there is a couple of reggae bar shack things (obvs), very optimistically put together, and 3 accommodation options, one expensive resortyish place, one that's constantly full and one that isn't worth 500baht a night for the cobras /rats/mosquitoes/monkeys etc that are able to enter through the holes in the bamboo hut, again, very optimistically put together!

This is a Cobra caught in someone's "bathroom", killed and then hung onto a stick for people to look at!

 

 

 

After some help from the friendly locals, we ended up back from the beach, along the main/only, road/dirt track that is not obviously seen from the beach, in the jungle with the monkeys in a bungalow that was far below anything we'd stayed in before, or wanted to stay in. As you can see from the below pic, it was pretty basic to say the least! We managed to stay here for 3 nights and then enough was enough and we moved to a slightly more expensive but more acceptable room.

 

 

Except for a very sick Kate for 24 hours, which put off one of our attempts to leave, and our first few nights accom, everything else was amazing and far beyond any expectations, making our planned 3 days an actual 12 days. There's loads to do, such a chilled, community vibe and we met some amazeballs people. We were lucky that they were locals and long timers, who had been here for months and/or returning year after year.

On one of our exploring days we walked through the jungle, passing random bits of local Thai life like cars that had been abandoned and left to start growing their own jungle and little wicker huts on stilts, until we came to a jungle village. It was crazy to see how the Thai's manage to escape from the tourists in such a small place and it felt quite invasive of us to walk through, although they didnt seem to mind too much. We carried on walking to one beach, Railay West, then another beach, Railay East then along a path through the rocks, until we reached PhraNang Beach, which is the best of all 4 beaches we visited.

 

 

 

Just before you get to Railey from TonSai, you also pass a huge bat cave, which we explored one day.

 

 

There were hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling all screeching at eachother, which was pretty disconcerting since there was only one way out! The inside of the cave was awesome though as you can see from the pics.

 

We also ventured to the lagoon, which is in the epicentre of a rock/cliff/mountain. Its a pretty tough climb up and then down again using ropes and absailing in parts, causing us to have sore thighs for about 3 days!

 

When you climb to the top you reach the viewpoint, which looks out on the main cove and the different beaches. It was a pretty unbelievable view.

 

(sweat central)

 

The far beach here is TonSai.

 



 

And then came the descent down to the lagoon in the centre of the mountain/big rock (whatever you want to call it!) Some parts of the climb were literally vertical, with just a rope to absail down and the terrifying knowledge that you will at some point later in the day have to tackle how to get back up!!

 

However, the climb was worth it. When we finally made it down to the lagoon it was pretty surreal. There was only one other climber down there at the time we were there so it looked completely untouched.

 

 

We then had to get back up the mountain/rock again and climb down the outside of it back to the ground. Needless to say we were pretty pleased with ourselves when we were done!!

 

As we were staying in the Jungle there were lots and lots of monkeys around all the time. Unfortunately, we have both decided that we are now terrified of monkeys and their scary resemblance to humans and unpredictability, which has led, on several occasions, to us doing a u-turn and taking the long walk round to where we're going just to avoid the monkeys in our path!

 

On Phra Nang Beach, mentioned earlier, is the 'Penis Cave'. It is believed to be inhabited by the fertility Gods spirit so the Thai women believe that by placing statues of penis' inside the cave, it will increase their chances of conceiving. Due to how it looks, it has obviously now become a hilarious tourist sight!

 

Getting lunch on Phra Nang Beach!

 

One day we walked to Phranang Beach and then swam round the headland (with some bodyguards) to Railay West, which was a looonnnggggg swim!

 

The headland

 

 

In the pic below you can see Railay Beach and then the rocky headland sticking out, which we had to swim around. This was us watching the sunset...with a Chang!

 

 

 

We wanted and planned to do a beginner rock climb lesson as TonSai is famous for being one of the best places in the world to climb. However, due to Kate "pretty much having malaria" for a few days and then a spell of rain we, unfortunately, never made it.

We spent most of our evenings chilling on or partying on the beach, which in Thailand often includes a bit of UV paint!

 

 

 

We just so happened to be there for a once a year festival called TonSai Big Cleaning Day, where everyone gathers in the day to clean the beach and then at night there are live bands on stage and a fire throwing/breathing competition and all the bars and restaurants along the beach close down and then each have a tent by the stage instead. It was a pretty big event considering how tiny TonSai is and everyone was partying together, which was fun!

 

 

 

You see slack lines all around TonSai and Railey as they improve your balance which is important for climbing. It is basically a bouncy tight rope that some of the guys can do fancy tricks on. We tried to learn to at least walk along it, mostly under the influence, so not successfully, but we were getting better by the end. Below pic is one of the bar workers, Maxxy, very patiently trying to teach Kate(who gave up after a couple of falls!)

 

Sawadee Bar, where we hung out most of the time.

 

TonSai was so fun, with lots to do but mostly such a favourite with us because of the people we met. It was nice to feel at home somewhere and not move for a while and actually have people to be sorry to say bye to at the end!

 

Departing shot of TonSai Beach!

 

From TonSai we got a long-tail boat to Railay and then from there a bigger boat for about 3 hours to Phuket, where we would stay for 7 days.

Post for Phuket to follow soon!!!

Lots of Love, Lu & Kate

xxx