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Travel Notes |
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Sat May 18 12:53:06 2002 (rr) Book: Footprint Thailand Location: Bangkok We took a long ferry ride to Chumphon, north of Koh Tao, but on the mainland, and took a smoking fiery bus on the couple km journey to the train station. Seems to A/C caught on fire. Not fun. ANyway, we got the front door open and some fresh air inside. Had a few hours before the train, so we went to the night market for dinner. Great market, lots of stalls with a wide range of food. We started with mango and sticky rice, moved on to skewers of mystery meat we decided not to finish, had fried chicken and spiced rice, a mangosteen apiece, and some jello-like sweets. Then we hopped on the train for a night of people smoking right next to our bunks (we were at the end of the carriage) and bright lights. Well only for those of us in the Upper bunks. However, I had kept British Airways lovely present of eyeshades. Hard to sleep on the train. Also stayed up late finishing Margaret Atwood's book The Blind Assassin. No sense of time with lighting on all the time and no window. Very tired when we got in at 7 this morning. We stowed our stuff, walked forever to a skytrain, hopped it to some other part of town (silom? ) where we found breakfast and the travel agency with our tickets to Bali. Lots of french-style cafes there. Starbucks too, of course. Starbucks doesn't seem to have any weird drhinks designed just for the Thais. We like to check out the menus of Starbucks and McDonalds for this reason. No Durian Frapuccinos. Oh well. McDonalds did offer the Samurai Pork Burger, and some sort of item that looks like a hamburger, but instead of buns you get rice patties. And it may not have been a burger in between, maybe just meat-colored sauce. Who knows. The wording was only in Thai. after breakfast at a non-starbucks cafe, with some strong coffee coursing through our blood, we wandered around a few malls, looking for sme new clothes. no success. Then taxi to train station, got packs, taxi to part of town we wanted to stay in, drove past the King's Palace and the Horse Racing Tracks. Now installed in shanti lodge, with a fish aquarium in our room. Great lunch there. Roasted Eggplant Yum (spicy salad, really Yam but pronounced Yum) -- should be a raging hit in the US, its kind of like Baba Ganoush but with Thai spices and seasoning. Sat May 18 12:37:37 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: Footprint Thailand Location: Koh Tao So just to give you a feel for Koh Tao. It is a very small island just a k accross and maybe 5-7 north-south. It is almost completely a town with peirs and one long long beach fringed with coconut palms, resturants and bars. Outside of the stip it is rocky shores or clifs, and hidden very small 20 meter beaches with one or two diving operators. It is almost all divers. Which mean deserted beaches. Everyone young and single. Which means the bars are open late and the beaches are free till one pm even of the non-divers. It is all westerners - mainly brits and germans. They have good taste in music though, and interior design. So we had a few pleasant drinks. in pleasant beach bars, watching what would be the sunset if the clouds didn't always hang on the horiszon The beaches are clean , a big change. And they are the best we have seen since the South Pacific. It was a good place.. Sat May 18 12:27:50 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: Footprint Thailand Location: Koh's of southern thailand So after kayaking around the andamans we took off to Trang, and discovered there was no way north on the train, without at least one, preferably 2 days advance booking. We don't do overnight buses, nor puddle jumpers if we can help it as they are expensive, relatively. So we decided to minibus to suritani, and boat jump from there to Koh Pa Ngan, to Koh Tao, then to Chumphon, where last night we caught the overnight train to bangkok. [Which was disappointing, the same train from Penang to Surithani was quiet, the section of track toward bankok degrades badly. Loudly.] So we took an nasty minibus-bus-boat to Koh PagNgan, which we grossly overpaid for [not only do I hate tipping , I HATE bargaining] checked in to our second choice bungalow, the first being long closed. The place turned out to be good. Good food, cheap rooms, and CD play we could listen to our CDs on . Plus satellite TV so there was always a movie with dinner. The first day we took a very exhausting 2 km hike straight up and over a peak to the next , much nicer beach. We had lunch and caught a longtail back. We were tired, we didn't even look at the beach. Even 2 K can be really nasty in the tropics. The next day we lazed, I caught a bit of a cold (which I still have , just a sniffly nose, and lowered voice) and wasn't into high impact days, so we didn't see any waterfalls -- which had been the main draw, 'cause we left the next day. The Taxi was late and the boat office was a little optimistic about the departure time , but the two hour crossing was pleasant , we sat on the deck in the sun, well SPFd though. We hiked across the main beach, to our hut. A little more expensive here, but every thing was. This place has really only one beach, is very small and well touristed , mainly by divers. Which was as it turned out cool. There was good music, good food and empty beaches. We hung. The second day with me still sick , Rachel decides we should kayak the 22k around the island. It was fun, but 20k would have been better, and at the end, I was both with a cold and a sun burn. Still it was probably the best possible way to see this very little very up and down boulder covered island. We hung for the last day and 1/2 and then up to bangkok. The islands were fun, much cooler than we expected. Also thailand is very very tall. It takes a while to get north. We should have left more time. Sat May 18 12:18:57 2002 (rr) Book: Footprint Thailand Location: Koh Tao Koh Tao is a happening island these days, as is Koh Phangan, but we didn't stay in the happening areas of K.P. We did in Koh Tao however. The western side of the island is a long stretch of beach. Lots of trees lining the beach, obscuring the bungalows and restaurants crammed in together. We headed to the north end of the beach to a bungalow operation footprint recommended, Blue Wind. We got a bungalow, though not with a beach view, but well shaded by lots of trees. The bungalow was a little nicer than that of Koh Phangan, but also twice as expensive. Thatched walls, ceiling, larger bathroom. More windows, so more breezes. However, electricity only from dusk to dawn. I had started longing for some tortilla chips and salsa, so we went all out and splurged on a Tex-Mex meal at El Gringo. Not bad. The chips were exactly what I wanted -- freshly made, nicely salted. The salsa was a bit sweet, but quite acceptable. The food was ok, but not quite right. The spicy sauce on the enchiladas was not spicy, somewhat surprising considering that we are in Thailand, and something termed "spicy" on a menu usually means it. The rest of the time we ate lots of Thai food, most of it quite good. Especially at New Way. Great food, especially the green curry that comes with really good squash in it. Yum!! I miss it right now. Our place, Blue Wind, had a bakery which cranks out some great apple pastries, and one with coconut and cinnamon that even Nathan and I, both shredded-coconut despisers, enjoyed. immensely. the chocolate cake was rather dry though. To work off excess calories, we went on a little kayaking trip. It started off as a simple innocent trip to a nearby tiny island known for good snorkelling. We paddled into the beach and hung out for a few minutes on the powdery sand. Nice sand. WHen we decided we should kayak out to where the water was actually deeper than a foot to snorkel, I stepped on a piece of sharp dead coral. OWWWWWW. Fortunately kayaking does not involve my feet. The cut seems to be healing up nicely though. We chekced out the snorkelling potential, which was up to me due to snorkel mask prescrption/contact lens complexities for Nathan. I determined the snorkelling was lame for a jaded snorkeller like myself. Only a couple fish, poor visibility, dead coral, etc. We decided to paddle north around the top of the island and find somewhere remote to eat lunch. The first bay didn't really have anywhere to land, and it was now either all the way back to our beach or to move on farther south. Of course, once we got to the next bay we would be half way round the island and might as well see the whole thing. Unfortunately the headwind was much stronger, and probably took a lot longer to paddle as a result. Choppier water, too. Probably not the best thing to do to Nathan with a cold. Sorry Nathan. I told him I would paddle us and that he could sit there and take a nap. SUnny too, which of course led to sunburn. We eventually powered our way to a cove with a beach (so many coves without anywhere to land!) and had lunch. ALso exellent food. Ta Note Resort -- try the pad thai and the green curry. (I could, and often do, eat green curry every day. In Seattle, I recommend Noodle Ranch's.) We set off again, and slowly made our way south around the island. We saw cool rocks that make up the sides of Koh Tao. We saw waves hit these cool rocks and make big splashes. We got splashed by these waves as well. My legs started turning red. The end of the paddle was hard, even though the wind was starting to blow our way. I felt the paddle was a few kilometers too long. The first thing we did when we got home was to pull out the map and measure the distnace we paddled. It was 21 kilometers, or 13 miles. The woman at the kayak rental place was shocked that we went around the island. We were nonchalant, even though our arms and back were about to fall off. Needless to say, we ate and slept well that night. The next day we did nothing. There is a beach bar, called The Dry Bar, which promoted itself on its sign as having cool drinks and the finest tunes. We walked down to investigate into this matter, and indeed, they were playing Kid Loco's Darling Jesus (whatever its called) album. Sat down on the wooden decklike platforms and leaned against those prism shaped cushions so common around beach resorts here and listened to the fine tunes. The next day, after the kayak trip, would have even finer tunes. Various music I didn't recognize and a good deal of Andrea Parker's DJ kicks album, which I didn't put nearly enough of on my Mini discs. Sat May 18 12:07:44 2002 (rr) Book: Footprint Thailand Location: Koh Phangan Sepnt a number of pleasant sunny days on two islands in the Gulf of Thailand, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. We stayed way out of town on Koh Phangan on a bay filled with fishing boats and longtails. The guesthouse was quiet and laidback. We went on a grueling hike one day; did nothing the next. The grueling hike involved occasional thoughts that we might run out of water and still be miles to go uphill at midday, plus the thought that maybe we should've eaten lunch before the hike. Our map of the highland marked the trail as Steep and it didn't lie. Eventually, we hit the top of the hill, were treated to a great view of our now distant bay that we had hiked from, and it started to rain, which cooled things down and didn't rain so much as to make the trail slippery. Eventually we descended down the hilll to Bottle Bay, which was quiet, filled with bungalows, and had great white sand. We sat down, watched the rain suddenly start to pour and drank lots of water. And ate a feast of a lunch. Then we caught a longtail back to our beach. We also watched some movies during dinners at the guesthouse (which is called Try Thong, by the way. We recommend it.): Charlies Angels, Keeping the Faith, and the second half of Galaxy Quest. We also commandeered the CD player one quiet afternoon, listening to Royskopp and Thievery Corporation while trying Kloster beer. (ok, Nathan tried Kloster, I had Singha). The next day, Nathan caught a cold. (which I amazingly did not catch...at least yet.) We hung out on our porch and later watched giant hermit crabs on the beach. On both days we wandered into the nearby village, which was very tourist driven and somewhat surprising at first. I kind of expected a fishing town. Anyway, we wandered into town to explore, then later for more concrete needs: Chocolate ice cream, water, lunch. We ate lunch at a small place., more in someone's house that became a lunch joint in the daytime. Thai men sat around drinking SongSerm whiskey and Chang beer. We ordered lunch, which was a very complex, and amusing, operation. The men laughed hysterically. We had thought the ordering was giong well. We'll never know what we said or did. |
nmcfarl.org email us email Rachel email Nathan See the pictures. Palau Pictures Yap Pictures Hawaii Pictures Taiwan Pictures View the original itinerary
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