Thai rack

STATS: Day count=19; Current Illness count=0.5 (sunburn now rife after failed attempt to reduce the ‘tourist red stripe’ effect, Em’s cold abated, some blisters from kayaking for 3 hours, numerous mosquito bites and a claimed “really nasty” red ant bite on Em’s arm); theft count=0; rip-off count=0; tourist screw-up count=0.7 (+0.2 for kayaking straight past the cave we set out to see); Chris’ photo count=225; Emma’s photo count=7

Thanks for the comments on the blog so far. We really like reading them (and the emails), so keep ‘em coming! Any suggestions for places to visit (or avoid) are most welcome – as you can see, we have no firm plans, and advice from people who have been in this area before, or just heard about places, would be great! Thanks Andrea & Wim for the suggestion to avoid Phuket – we had come to a similar conclusion and with your affirmation of that I think we’ll definitely give it a miss (assuming we can get to Bangkok for Chinese New Year – if not, Phuket may be an interesting lively alternative)

I believe South-East Asian countries have a conspiracy going. All their towns seem to have night markets, with, according to our so far limited experience, varying degrees of interesting stalls and offerings. All of these market stalls have, I believe, conspired to place their awning poles and electricity cables at the perfect height to eye-gouge, forehead bash, garrotte or even just to embarrass people of slightly above average Western height. It does make visiting these markets a challenge – what with trying to negotiate the narrow gaps between the stalls, look at what is on offer, say hello to every other passing person who seems to want to practice their “Hello” with you and then to duck every other step. All good fun.

We safely reached Thailand a few days ago (been out of easy internet access for a while) – border crossing very straightforward and the visa we got was valid for 60 days, which is great as they definitely do only give you a 15 day stamp at the crossing otherwise – something that somewhat ruined the plans of a couple of Aussie travellers who were on our bus too. After about 7 hours in total in a minibus with a few stops at the border and Hat Yai (big town, didn’t look like anything special) we arrived at Trang. This is a small town near the west coast, refreshingly ‘small and local’ after the bigger touristy places of KL and Penang. Found a great hostel/hotel which, for just a couple of £ more than the last place in Penang (I think we’re paying about £7 a night for this one) has a nice sized room with en-suite and even a balcony (not much to look at, but useful for drying clothes!). Only the cockroaches playing in the bathroom at night make it slightly less than perfect! But even the cockroaches are clean, so we don’t mind sharing.

Chilled out in Trang for a couple of days – exploring the markets, back streets, fruit stalls (still not tried durian fruit yet), avoiding the none-too-humane pet shops and smiling at, and talking to, the friendly locals (tourists are still the least friendly people we encounter!). Hired a moped for the day and, with Em on the back, pottered off to the nearby beach and countryside, which was great. I managed to cultivate that most British of camouflage – the “T-shirt-and-shorts-outlined sunburn”. I worked out that the guy in Penang was right – it is a good idea to wear a jacket (either way round) in the heat of the day on a moped as you cant easily put your arms in the shade when riding! Doesn’t explain why they don’t seem to do it in Thailand (or why they still did it in the evening in Malaysia) but my red arms would have loved to have been covered up, I think!

They drink out of bags here. It’s a great idea – the bottles have refundable deposits, so the shops put the drink into a bag (thus keeping the bottle) with a straw and, if you’re lucky, some ice, tie it up with a rubber band, and off you go. I’m not sure it’s always a good idea to ask a random Thai shopkeeper for “a bag of coke” as that could be misinterpreted, especially with the language difficulties!

Managed not to crash the moped, visited a nice waterfall and later a hot spring where you could take a bath in the spring water (which was probably well needed after the cold-water-only showers of the last 3 hostels!) and wondered at the number of people the Thais manage to fit on a moped. The maximum I counted was 6. And they didn’t even look uncomfortable.

We took a trip out to a nearby island beach for a couple of nights. Considered just taking a day tour around some of the islands, but that was pretty expensive and a bit too ‘regimented’ to fit our hippy, travelling lifestyle, man, so we opted to just travel out to an island and stay there for a bit. We got to Ko(h) Mook island and booked into the cheapest accommodation we could find there, which turned out to be a tent set amongst the bungalows that everyone else was staying at! Was fine though for a couple of nights and the beach was very quiet, even though this was supposed to be high season. The staff at the place we stayed were really friendly and we finally managed to learn how to say “thank you” properly in Thai! (it’s not as simple as we thought – you’ve got to get the tones right as well as the actual words. And all our guide books spell it differently, as it’s a phonetic translation).

There was something for everyone on the island. Emma had monkeys chase her down a path just because she looked at them for too long and they took offence (they later threatened us both when I tried to prove that Em was exaggerating the episode and did the same – three came after us that time!), I managed to find a massive spider next to the path near our tent, which I wasn’t overjoyed about (snakes – fine, cockroaches – no problem, rats – love ‘em, but spiders…). It was big and nasty and I’m sure it would have eaten either one of us had we strayed into its web. The picture shows the remains of the last person to stray off the path. There were also big monitor lizards, fast but stupid beach crabs and slow and stupid hermit crabs and loads of cute geckos.

We took a couple of sea kayaks out for an afternoon to find a famous cave (the “Emerald Cave”) and managed to go straight past it without realising (well, we saw it, but thought it was something else). Managed to catch it on the way back but the tide was still high which meant you couldn’t kayak all the way through it (to an ‘inland beach’ the other side, apparently).  Sounded really impressive inside the cave though – you could hear the echoing waves crashing the other side of the rock wall and it was pretty much pitch black, so was awesome to listen to.

Having spent a couple of days on a beach getting (almost) every part of my body a different shade of red (Em just seems to get bigger and more numerous freckles), we then returned to Trang before heading northward again. Now we have just arrived in Krabi – a small town on the coast near to some nice islands. Apparently most people just pass through here on the way to an island but we fancy staying here and seeing what the place is like.