Month: April 2024

We say goodbye to Thailand sooner than anticipated. It was in the Philippines we first realised that we had +40° heat to welcome us to mainland SE Asia, and we first started discussing contingency plans. Thankfully, in this part of our travels, we’ve been able to not plan things so far in advance. This means we’ve not only taken the decision to try and get to the middle of Vietnam as quickly as possible (where it should be a bit cooler), but also cut our time in all SE Asia short by a couple weeks in favour of adding a couple of weeks to our Japan stint. Originally we were going to head a bit further south of Thailand and visit Krabi and/or the Phi Phi islands made famous by The Beach film, but having done a good amount of island hopping around limestone cliffs and beaches in the Philippines, we decided our time, budget, and internal thermometers would be better off in Vietnam sooner rather than later. So we embark on our 28 hour journey up and across to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

We’ve met some really brilliant people on this leg, that have tempted us with other routes, plans, options and dives. I definitely know how easy it is to get stuck because you’ve found a good group, and maybe if we were ten years younger or at the beginning of our trip, we may have just succumbed to temptation. But we’re sticking to our guns. James can’t travel this long and have come all this way to miss Vietnam again!

Thailand is definitely a country I would come back to though, just maybe when it’s just a bit less hot, when it’s not burning season up north (which we thankfully missed by pure luck), and when we’ve got a stronger dive certification under our belts. This country is beautiful, with its nature and culture, but it’s really been the people who’ve made it. From the friendliest of locals who smile and help and don’t get mad at us not speaking the language or understanding anything, to the foreigners who’ve been not only great company but fantastic guides (under and above the water!). It’s certainly the people that can make or break an experience, and here they’ve only augmented an already wonderful country.

We’re not out of the 40° woods just yet though. Cambodia promises more time in the dreaded soup, and so may be our quickest country yet, but I’m looking forward to exploring Tomb Raider levels in real life, learning more about the culture, and the tragic history. Onwards!

Rule of Three

Highlights (Alex): James’ birthday (amazing dive seeing a shark and octopus, cake on board, back to the hotel with surprise fruit platter, flowers and cake waiting for james, then out to Hungarian place for dinner with the dive crew, getting completely soaked on the way, then up to Build market).  Peaceful lake times. Temple run in Bangkok

Highlights (James): being a tour guide for Alex in Bangkok and Khao Sok, scuba diving to see a shark, octopus and sea snake. Birthday celebrations featuring songkran.

Lowlights (Alex): Heat wooziness. Heat headaches. Less than desirable start to Khao Sok tour.

Lowlights (James): Bangkok sauna (let the sweat drip out of every pore). Surat Thani abduction fears. Setting up dive equipment on a crammed bouncing speedboat.

Takeaways (Alex): I really don’t understand how Google Translate can work with tonal languages, maybe it can’t and that’s why our attempts fall flat! Travelling SE Asia is so much easier than travelling Latin America, we can’t put our fingers on why. Very a la Cheers, there’s nothing like walking into a space and having familiar faces welcome you, especially when travelling and we’re always meeting new people, there’s something intoxicating about that camaraderie we got to experience that has been really tempting for the first time on this whole trip.

Takeaways (James): you never have the same experience twice, for better or worse doing the same touristy things again with a different guide or company can make a big difference to the experience. They say that Thailand is the land of smiles, are they genuinely happy people or is it the tourists money that brings out the smiles, personally I think it’s a bit of both. A moment to pat ourselves on the back, we’ve been travelling for nearing 8 months now, apart from the occasional speed bump we’ve not had any major roadblocks and we’ve packed plenty in.

Description (Alex): Cheap (food and accommodation, so cheap), super friendly even though we only know how to say thanks!, beautiful underwater and above the water

Description (James): Fun with a dash of crazy, seasonal climates, fantastic cheap food.

Entertainment

TV: Clarkson’s Farm

Books: The Drawing of the Three, Silence of the Lambs

Podcasts: [the usual], Who Trolled Amber?, Black Box

Where We Stayed

218 The Corner Airbnb (Bangkok): 4.5 ⭐️ huge, comfy bed, free supplies, great location, just half a star off for the bathroom being downstairs

Khao Sok Green Valley Resort: 4.5 ⭐️ another huge bed, brilliant breakfasts that we could order more than one from, lovely setting

Khlong Ka Lakehouse: 2.5 ⭐️ Bees for breakfast, toilet smells, unhelpful staff

The Palm Garden Resort Hotel (Khao Lak): 5 ⭐️ just bliss.

Cutting Room Floor

• The impressive traditional Thai dance show ending with “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”.
• Being so hot our knee pits were sweaty. Oh so sweaty.
• The humidity bringing a whole extra layer of melt to the heat, a weird sensation to describe, but it’s like your skin is this extra layer keeping the heat in, that creates this feeling of claustrophia in your own skin. It was hot in ,Central America, but this has been a whole new ballgame.
• Other countries we have been to have made as little sense as Thailand has. The difference here seems to be that whilst in those other countries, you just have to trust in the system and it’ll work out. Here that’s not the case. People telling us, oh just get this bus, it’s fine, and then finding yourself stranded with no onward travel, and them looking at you like this shouldn’t be a big deal, is a new one.
• We learn from Jack on our Khao Sok tour that it’s still legal in the UK to keep big cats as pets. We joke it seems harder to adopt/foster a pet cat, maybe we should have gone bigger.
• Ketch swimming in just his underwear despite having trunks explaining to us that it’s way more comfortable. Maybe for him, but not so much my eyes.
• Being told many times about his wedgies from the life jackets.
• The Midlands couple who came out here with 4 days’ notice after their kids did the trip themselves and then convinced them to do the same upon their return.
• Finally meeting some other travellers who have jacked in their lives for a year and aren’t working their way around.
• Pad TAIIIIIIIII, how our guide pronounced his name for us at each gathering point, and now how I pronounce it in my head every time I see it on a menu
• Pad Thai apologising to us quite often, but we weren’t entirely sure what for. Not knowing any better, he could have gotten away with whatever it was that went wrong, like not seeing any animals on the tour. But because he kept apologising, it meant we assumed he had some part to play in that, even if he didn’t. We’ll never know of course, but it was an interesting psychological lesson.
• In Khao Sok there is a Muay Thai ring with fights every Thursday and Sunday, and before each of these fights there is a recording promoting it as… “Real. Fight”. “Champ of the champ”. And if it was that same night, you’d get “Two-noite. Real. Fight.” In this accent that put the emphasis in all the wrong places, and seriously deadpan. Making us wonder how much we’re pronouncing this tonal language completely wrong every time all we say is ‘thank you’
• Accidentally crashing the leaving drinks of one of the dive company and managing to get a couple of free beers
• Hearing about a certain dive master’s ‘adventures’ in Khao Sok, meeting the ‘love of his life’, having an encounter that resulted in him getting kicked in the balls, but him still going back for more
• There’s a lot of Germans here. No idea why.
• Learning how much Brexit has screwed over European seasonal workers who would come and work the summer school season, but of course no longer can
• The orca boat crew being a family, dad driving, mum and kids on dive support, the kids sleeping in the kit bay during the journeys, and then one of the girls swimming around like a fish without any gear as us heavily clad divers went under
• The affectionate and sweet bond Viktor had with her. The dive guides must see these kids almost everyday, so it was really nice seeing this kindness where language didn’t matter, just a big and small kid playing around
• Trying to arrange James’ birthday surprise and the lady responding to my question of how much it would cost with, “oh cheap, not expensive”, and then when I did get the price it was not “cheap”, at least by backpacking standards. Thankfully at my request to rein it in a bit they ended up giving me it all for the original price of just the cake. Phew!

Photos

When looking at best places to scuba dive, one place that kept coming up was Thailand, and in particular, The Similan Islands, just south west of Khao Sok. I convince James we should do it. After Thailand, we’re unlikely to be finding further opportunities to dive, so let’s go out with a bang. With a ridiculous array of options to choose from, I eventually give up and go with a package deal from Sea Bees Dive Centre. The package includes five nights accommodation at their resort, pick-up and drop-off in the area, and three days of two-dives-per-day. Staying in one place isn’t something we do often, so this is a real treat we’re both looking forward to, and it falls on James’s birthday too, even better!

Therefore, when I find out I’ve told them to pick us up from the wrong accommodation in Khao Sok, my heart sinks. Thankfully, the Green Palm Resort isn’t too far from our Green Valley Resort, and we are soon on our way, in a private van no less. So this is how people with money do it!

We arrive to the resort and are happily impressed with our latest lodgings, including a big pool of varying depths, palms, hammock, and aircon, sweet sweet aircon! We head out to a local eatery for lunch, and then come back to test out the pool. The deepest part is 3m deep to allow for people doing their scuba training to do their confined dives in here. We use it to practice swimming down to find and grab a coin.

Sufficiently cooled off, we relax some more, knowing the next few days are taken care of, bliss. A little frog even comes to welcome James.

I’ve calculated that we’ve stayed in over 70 different accommodations so far, add in the logistics of getting to and from each one each time, and you’ll get a bit of an idea of why it’s so nice to not have to do this for a few days.

That evening we have dinner at a vegan place, but this is no ordinary vegan place. On the menu is cottage pie! I can’t resist, even if it is vegan, and James goes for an impressive burger. The best thing about my meal is the gravy, oh how I’ve missed you gravy, and I get to eat an abundance of potatoes. Something that’s hard to find in the land of rice paddies.

Our diving adventure begins tomorrow, so it’s early to bed.

Pre-‘Honeymoon Bay’

We’re picked up at 8:45 from the resort and are shuttled 15 minutes south to the pier, where we are herded to a group of about 20 tourists. Some of these people have clearly already met each other previously, others seem to know what’s going on, we stand there confused and clueless. Eventually our names are called and Toni tells us we’re with Viktor, along with Fergus (an Irishman here on holiday), Ben (a German holidaymaker), and Theresa (a German who has lived in Tenerife most of her life and has such a perfect British accent I would have bet money on her being British. She’s travelling about for four months). Toni and Viktor speak in Spanish together and I guess they’re Spanish but I’m only half right, Victor is half Spanish, half Venezuelan. It’s nice to hear Spanish again! He and Theresa converse in Spanish whilst she also converses with Ben in German and us in English without a second thought. Impressive!

As we board the boat, one of the divemasters loudly laments the loss of a beloved breakfast 7 Eleven toastie, berating the staff responsible in front of the paying customers. Luckily our man Viktor is friendly, welcoming, and tells us what is going on. Phew! Maybe he had an extra 7 Eleven toastie to start his day off right 😉 There’s going to be about 14 divers plus three guides on this little speedboat, it’s going to be a tight squeeze! We’ve clearly been spoilt with the Bangka boats of the Philippines with ample space to setup your gear (if the crew hadn’t done it for us) and chillout in between dives. Here we’re trying to get to know our latest equipment, assemble everything and do safety checks without elbowing our neighbours in the ribs, and doing it whilst the speedboat bounces across the waves. I’ll be honest, it’s probably been the worst start we’ve had to a dive trip. However, Viktor comes to our aid and checks we’ve got everything sorted. He’s really kind, doesn’t make us feel stupid (which is important with something like this), and ensures our safety, the most important thing to have the most fun when you’re talking about diving. The last thing you want is to be too scared to question something and find a serious issue under water, so we’re really glad to have Viktor get us settled in to the new setup.

It’s a bumpy couple of hours ride to cross the wavy Andaman sea and get to Island 4 of the Similan Islands.

The reason why these islands are meant to be so great is because they’re out in the sea, but with the islands near by creating the conditions for reef to form and wildlife to make home or swim on through. We don’t get many photos from these dives as the visibility isn’t great, but it’s a good time being back in the water and seeing new sites and wildlife.

Our first dive is to Honeymoon Bay and shows us lionfish galore, and also unfortunately-faced moray eels. We also see a smooth flutemouth, indian ocean sweetlips, speckled sandperch, huge sea cucumbers that look like Dune sandworms in miniature. Some are smooth all over, others have flappy bits, some are all black. They range to being over a couple of feet in length, their weird feelers/legs moving them across the sand. We also see our first halityle cushion starfish, which looks like it’s name, so much so that I first wonder if it’s a starfish at all!

Here’s some Google-provided photos:

The second dive is to West of Eden. This one has huge boulders beneath the surface rather than corals, and we have a swim around the formations that marine life here calls home. We get to see butterflyfish, longfin banner fish (or moorish idol or both?!), blue ring angelfish, black blotched porcupinefish, the redtooth triggerfish, and all the Christmas tree worms.

Unlike the Philippines, there’s no sea squirts, just the Christmas tree worms everywhere you look. They retract into themselves if they sense you near, it’s like a Mexican wave when you swim by:

It’s been a good day getting back under the water. James has managed to control his breathing so we’ve been able to eke out 53 minutes compared to the 30 in El Nido, and I haven’t flown to the surface with an empty and bouyant tank. Maybe we’re getting a knack for this now.

That evening we decide to check out the night Market nearby, Bang Niang market. It seems to be a market specifically setup for tourists, so it has souvenirs, street food, and all the elephant pants and tiger balm the foreigners could need. In addition, there are an array of waterpistols and super-soakers to arm everyone for songkran this weekend. Some kids (and grown foreign adults) are already practicing by shooting passing tourists, but just a little hit here and there. We can handle this! We grab some bites to eat by way of corn on the cob, spring rolls, fried chicken and a kebab. Somehow this all costs more than two meals in a Thai restaurant. Gotta love that gringo tax!

For dessert we try some cold stone ice cream. This is where they pour cream over a freezing cold stone (or metal in this case) that turns it into ice cream. Our man chops our chosen toppings into the freezing cream, check out the guns!

It tastes even better than it looks. Over to James for the next few days…

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Go With the Flow

We return to the harbour and await our assignment for day two of diving. I give Viktor a wave and expect we’ll be back with him on the bumpy speeding sardine can that is the Orca. I am wrong. Today we’ll be led by the lovely Sam from Belgium (originally South Africa). We will also not be on the Orca but instead on the Runaway. It’s around twice the size of the Orca with half of the amount of people on board. It goes half the speed, has a flushing toilet, a shower, breakfast, a chillout deck and you can even buy cold beers! It feels like a cruise ship after the vomit inducing experience of yesterday.

We won’t be heading to the Islands today but to another wreck close to the mainland. After an hour of gentle cruising and inhaling banana bread and creamy coffee, we’re given the dive briefing. Sam will lead us, Tim from London (but born in Hong Kong), a German and an Austrian. Tim has a huge camera rig and zee German has a Go Pro, I think we’ll need to invest in an underwater camera of our own before long.

We put on our gear, take a giant stride into the water (much easier when the boat isn’t rocking in huge waves) and descend down the line towards the wreck. It’s pretty darn sandy down below and visibility is low at best. Still, there are plenty of fish down here, using the wreck and murky water as a natural barrier from the current and a hiding place from predators. We saw many moray eels yesterday and here at the wreck we find their black and white cousins, the honeycomb moray. On top of that we spot the poisonous lion fish with their graceful but deadly spines. Other highlights are many porcupine pufferfish casually sat bobbing about between large shoals of yellow fusiliers and then the occasional giant pufferfish floating through the water like a huge zeppelin. The stand-out experience of this dive is being able to swim through the huge schools of fish that couldn’t care less about us, they barely move. The huge porcupine puffers just hover and watch us with their big, wide, smiling mouths, forward eyes, and little fins waving back and forth with apparent bemusement, “these silly four-legged seals blindly flapping away“. No matter how panicked we get about getting close to them due to surges of current, not once have we seen them puff up.

Thanks to Sam for the photos below, hard work guiding people through this visibility let alone taking photos!:

It is a challenging dive as we navigate a wreck that was split into four (unstable as Sam warns us) chunks by a tsunami in 2004. The visibility means you can just about make out the fins of the diver infront of you and the bubbles of the diver behind you. Quite how Sam managed to keep track of the five of us I’ll never know. Then there is the current which drifts us from one end of the wreck to the other without us moving our limbs at all. It’s not the most enjoyable dive we’ve done but a bit like skiing on a snowy day, it’s a different experience and may well make us more confident divers when the conditions are better.

Returning to the cruise ship we feast on lunchboxes, no buffet lunch today but you can’t have it all. There are more lunchboxes than divers so Alex and I help ourself to extras, much to Tim’s amusement who jovially berates us like we are greedy pigs. We are just poor backpackers, we eat as much as we can, when we can! That’s how the stomach works, right? Tim has dived over 400 times, all over the world, since retiring and giving it a first go in 2009, he isn’t desperate to see anything in particular, he just loves diving as a retirement hobby. He tried golf, but it wasn’t for him. Good for him. We discuss whether diving or golf tourism would be a more expensive retirement hobby.

After our lunch has gone down and our dive computers tell us it’s safe, we descend once again. If anything the visibility is slightly worse and the current slightly stronger. There are still some giant fish down here not bothered by such trivial matters. There is the titan triggerfish, deserving of such a title, it is a monster. Plus schools of trevally, Longfin bannerfish and blue ringed angel fish. We also spot some huge jellyfish a safe distance away, cruelly it looks like they are being eaten alive by various hungry fish. I’m not a fan of the stinging buggers but that is a pretty grim existence. On our way back up the line, after our dive computers tell us that’s long enough at 18m down, a group of large bat fish socialize with us with their grumpy faces as we make our three minute safety stop.

Back on the boat, Tim shows us a picture of a black and white sea snake he saw and the rest of us totally missed. He advises us to stay towards the back as you usually see more. Advice that will pay dividends on the dive tomorrow. Alex asks Tim for some photos of the day, at her suggestion of one of the batfish, he can’t contain his laughter at a request for a photo of one of the most common fish ever. I guess we’re still in the phase of being happy seeing even the most common animals!

I relax on the boat whilst Alex chats to Sam about life as a travelling divemaster, he’s a tourist here too! Him and his girlfriend Anna are travelling around, working a couple of months diving to earn money, then moving on and travelling some more for a month, then starting the cycle again. It seems a pretty decent way to earn money and travel as you go. Getting paid to dive and experience this wonderful underwater world seems a bit of a dream. However, it’s a lot of responsibility to look after a bunch of strangers in this relatively risky environment, no guarantee the people in your care can be trusted, adjusting to having complete noobs in your group and/or people more qualified than yourself. It would certainly make an already varied job very variable!

Getting Caught in the Rain

In the evening we decide to head to the beach front to catch the sunset. It’s a race against time and as we rush through the street market we’re set upon by locals with buckets of water… The Songkran celebrations are in full flow and there is no avoiding the buckets, water pistols, hose pipes and super soakers pointed in our direction. We try in vain to keep the backpack dry but before long everything we have is soaked through! Rumour has it this tradition started with the monks blessing people with water to celebrate their New Year and it has turned into a giant multi day water fight! It brings a wicked smile to the locals faces as they spot fresh gringos to soak, especially the kids, it must be their favourite time of year.

Eventually we reach the beach, just in time to crack out the rum and coke before sunset. As we try and find a nice spot on the sand, the heavens open and the weather joins in with the celebrations with a huge downpour of rain ‘blessing’ everything in sight. We hide in the shelter of a palm tree and finish our drinks while the storm passes.

We figure it’s best to go back to our lovely hotel to dry off and change before dinner.

As we walk along the busy road home we are heckled by the dive masters and a few of our fellow divers from the last two days. “It’s that Mancoonian, don’t let ‘im in ‘ere” says Johnny in his broad Lancastrian accent. We let on and pass by to go and get changed.

Alex is of a socially nervous disposition but I convince her we should go and join the dive guys for a beer before dinner. Indeed we do and we join them to celebrate Paulo gaining his dive instructor certificate and enjoy a few beers (on the house) which is very welcome.

For dinner we head to the highly rated Mae Pa restaurant where I order my first Thai Green Curry of the trip. It’s very tasty and pretty hot with some massive red chillies popping up in the coconut milk. It’s one of the rare occasions in my life I can’t finish the meal and I roll home bloated and fit to burst!

We’re going to need a bigger boat!

It’s our third and final day of diving, quite possibly the last time we will dive on this trip and it’s also my 35th birthday so let’s hope we see something cool! We start the day off the right way with fried potatoes, bacon and stuffed omelette for breakfast. I read a few well timed Birthday wishes from back home and before long we’re back at the harbour. Today we are reunited with Viktor and Theresa from day one, Sam will also join the boat though we’re not in his group this time. We are back in the sardine can but today I’ve taken an anti-sickness tablet and the journey does not feel as bad. Our destination for the day is Koh Bon, it’s meant to be one of the highlights of the area so that is also well timed.

We expertly prepare our kit and descend to around twelve meters underwater. The visibility here is much improved and we feel more confident that we don’t need to be so close to our guide when it’s this good. Viktor leads the general direction but Alex and I float around looking for some hidden gems. It feels like swimming in an aquarium, there is so much life and colourful coral all around us, totally unfazed by our presence. We’re big game hunting today, we’ve seen many amazing and beautiful scenes underwater but we’d love to see something to write home about. Around 10 minutes into this dive we find just that. Viktor makes the signal for octopus and points to a large rock, doing a little underwater dance in celebration. Inside the rock, some strange blubbery flesh pulses and squirms. It leaves it’s comfy nook to shuffle on top of it’s rock and sits atop of it with the look of a proud home owner. It’s definitely aware of us but puts on a show and poses for the camera as we circle by a couple of times. It expertly transforms itself not just in colour but texture to blend into the rock underneath it, camouflaging itself so that as soon as we look away, we can barely tell what it was we were looking at.

We enjoy looping around and spotting many of the old faithfuls. Viktor has told us that lionfish are actually an invasive species in the Atlantic, and are a menace to underwater life as they have hardly any predators. He’s done work before of being paid to hunt them down in Florida, getting paid per fish, and trying to promote them as a potential food source as people are (understandably) too scared to catch and eat them (although they’re apparently very tasty!). The reason they’re found in new and unlikely places? People buy them thinking they’d make a good addition to their aquarium, only to find they kill everything else in there. The owner then chucks them into the sea, probably thinking they’re returning it to its home, but actually starting a complete wipeout of marine life instead.

After this exciting experience, we continue towards the edge of the reef, Viktor communicates that the current is very strong and we change course. As we do, I notice two divers in another group ascending the line, I assume they had some issues and has to ascend early. I later learnt that because of the strong current they exerted themselves so much that they used up most of their air in 19 minutes! We continue to cruise the shallows and admire the serene views. Towards the end of the dive, following Tim’s advice, Alex and I are lurking at the back of the pack. An unusual shape catches my eye. It’s a large sea snake sleeping on the seabed, black and grey and at least two meters long. Another one for the logbook.

As I’m seeking some shelter from the sardine chaos at the back of the boat, Viktor announces there is an important dive briefing at the front of the boat? As I make my way outside I’m serenaded by a beautiful chorus of “Happy Birthday” and Alex presents me with a cake! A very thoughtful gesture and another special memory to cherish ❤️

Once the cake has had some time to digest it’s time for the final descent. There are rumours of sharks in this area but Viktor doesn’t want to make any promises. We’re just enjoying the visibility and glorious surroundings when he raises his hand in a flat palm on the crown of his head, the signal for a shark… We look into the deep and spot a Blacktip shark around two meters long zagging through the ocean. It’s a bit blink and you’ll miss it moment but we can definitely tell it is a shark and consider ourselves very satisfied with the sightings today. Viktor makes a mime of blowing out candles on a cake under water, it’s a nice touch.

Having had two epic spots, the pressure off, we meander around excitedly pointing to this and that, including many new spots. Thanks to the German couple providing these amazing pics:

Alex is chuffed to have spotted one of the most dangerous creatures under the sea, the scorpionfish, can you see it camoflaged in the rock?

Other spots are some new kinds of starfish we didn’t get photos of, so thank you Google for the Crown of Thorns photo. Alex wants to start a cushion range of starfish! There’s also another big Titan Triggerfish digging away at the sand

We finish the dive crossing the blurry thermocline barrier a few times. Even though the difference in temperature is only a couple of degrees, underwater the difference is a hot bath compared to an ice bath.

Whilst I enjoy the sea breeze and sunshine, Alex chats with Sam’s partner Anna on the way back. Finding out that if you photograph a manta Ray that hasn’t been registered yet, you get to name it! In the three months they’d been diving in the Maldives, they got to name three. Apparently the pattern on their underside is as unique as a fingerprint. Same as shell designs or the sides of their necks on turtles. They’re completely unique. Hopefully one day we’ll get to see a manta for ourselves.

Happy Songkran to me!

On our way home from the dive, all hell has broken loose. The celebrations have escalated and there are now pickup trucks loaded with barrels of water and over excited children. There are battle stations dotted all along the road home and we’re in a open back taxi with the shutters up. A loud smack of water slapping our passengers in the face makes us all jump and from here it’s like passing through a warzone as we drop everyone off. Some take it slightly too far and pour ice cold water down our backs or throw water with ice cubes in at us at full speed. For the most part through it’s a heck of a spectacle and locals and tourists alike join in the chaos on this roasting hot afternoon.

We arrive back at the hotel soaked to the bone. As I enter our room I (eventually) notice that the birthday fairies have visited and left a nice surprise for me on the bed. Alex is curiously missing but appears a few minutes later with armfuls of cake and fruit! More treats 😋

We spend the next couple of hours relaxing by the pool and making the most of the happy hour cocktails. I call Lottie and my folks while eating cake and drinking Mai Tai’s. It’s been a pretty good birthday so far!

In the evening we head into town (in swimwear and with water proof bags this time) to join the bedlam. We find our clan in the midst of battle and pick up some water guns to join in the fun. After a couple of beers and a lot of water fights we make our way to the Hungarian restaurant next door. Schnitzel is the highlight of the menu and it just so happens to be one of my favourite meals, it always reminds me of skiing holidays. It’s a very good schnitzel with a side of fried potatoes with garlic, onion and bacon. The perfect Birthday meal.

We agree to meet the gang up the road as (slightly concerningly) they’re riding scooters while we walk it. Not quite sure where to meet them we walk past dozens of market stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful things. By this point, anyone holding a water gun is fair game and it brings a huge smile to the local children’s faces when they see an armed gringo they can engage with. We buy a Chang from the roadside and watch the closing stages of a local concert with water sprinklers soaking the crowd.

As we contemplate calling it a night we spot Sam and his partner Anna arriving on their bicycles (probably the only people in town with bikes rather than mopeds) and cross the road to meet them. We gather outside a bar/nightclub and get another round. The rest of the group arrives and we have a good time in good company. Paulo provides most of the entertainment, continually telling us he’s going on stage to sing next and for some reason, constantly providing the singers with 100 Baht notes. He is in his own world and having the time of his life God bless him.

Around midnight we finally decide enough is enough and say our goodbyes to these brilliant people who have made the last few days and my birthday feel very special indeed. There’s no other way to finish off a perfect day than to get a 7 Eleven toastie on the way home and that’s exactly what we do.

Hanging On

Not very much to report from today. As you can imagine we are both a bit delicate. A hangover in this heat is quite something so we spend most of the day in air con and dipping in and out of the pool. In the evening I treat myself to a massage with some birthday money and then Alex and I go to Pita Stop for some Greek delights to try and cure our sorry states!

That brings an end to our diving expeditions and my bday celebrations. Both have been epic and very memorable (despite all of the booze). We’re rushing back through the country towards Bangkok and then onwards to get to our fourteenth country… Cambodia. See you on the flip side.

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Adventure – experiencing some of the Similan Islands, beachside-sunset-downpours

Excitement – octopus! Shark! Snake! Empty boat. Birthday surprises.

Trauma – ice bucket straight to the face, no visibility and some over zealous divers, crowded boat

Khaos ok?

After a brilliant but sweltering few days in Bangkok it’s time to move on to one of the highlights from my previous visit to Thailand, Khao Sok lake. To get there we must take a ten hour bus from Bangkok to Surat Thani where a minivan will await us to complete the journey to Khao Sok town, or so I am told.

We’re up early at 6am and inhale breakfast to ensure we’re at the South Terminal in Bangkok in plenty of time. On arrival we’re guided by the friendly locals pointing to where we should go next. Although spending the entire day on a bus isn’t ideal, it is air conditioned and comfortable, a welcome relief from the 40+ degree heat and humidity of Bangkok city. We’re even given a snack box and drink, luxury travel.

After a few hours we stop at a huge roadside canteen. A tanoy announcement conveys some screechy Thai message to everyone. We walk past a lady handing out cartons of water and feel overwhelmed by the amount of food options. As we wander around aimlessly, a kind lady informs us that we need to show our bus ticket to the water carton lady and we’ll get a voucher for a free meal. Brucey bonus. Still overwhelmed by the bustling chaos we settle for a simple chicken and rice dish. Too scared to try and ask for something more exotic.

After a few more hours on the bus we arrive in Surat Thani. Although I’ve been told by our accommodation there will be a minivan taking tourists across to Khao Sok, we’re pretty much the only non-locals on the bus. It’s early evening when we arrive and it’s looking pretty quiet. Not another tourist in sight. Hmm. A man approaches us and asks where we’re going to. We tell him Khao Sok and he beckons us to follow him. He makes a couple of calls and we wait outside a minivan office. Ever the optimist, I assure Alex it will be fine and a van will turn up shortly. “No van. Tomorrow morning. Here.” Our man delivers the dreaded news. Oh crap. He advises us that the only option is a taxi that will be around 2000 baht (£45) the van tomorrow would be 700 baht. We have two nights accomodation plus a tour booked so this is a real spanner in the works. I message the hostel owner and he says to try the Grab app for a taxi. I do and it suggests a taxi should be around 1100 baht IF anyone will pick us up for this three hour round trip. Almost immediately someone accepts the fare. Result.

We hunt the car down just along the road. A big modern pickup truck. A friendly looking lady hops out and shows us a translation on her phone. “Grab is too cheap, I can’t do it for that price”. *Expletive from me*. I type in “how much will you take us for?” … “1200” hmm ok, not as bad as I was expecting and only 500 more than a shared minivan. Seems like a good option as we’re a bit desperate. We agree and she cancels the Grab fare. If anything happens to us now, it’s on us, Grab won’t help. As we set off she shows us another translated message on her phone “Can I pick up my girlfriend?” … As mentioned before, I’m optimistic and probably too trusting but at this point even I’m starting to wonder what we’ve gotten ourselves into. Is her “girlfriend” a man with a gun waiting to take all of our belongings and leave us stranded? Will we be chained to a desk and made to perform scam calls for years to come? Are we going to be served as kebabs from a street food stall in a few days’ time? Judging by the way she has interacted with us, her appearance and the car she has, I figure we can take the chance and accept… “Ok thanks, I need her to keep me awake on the way home” comes the translated message. That makes sense and is somewhat reassuring.

We drive five minutes out of town to a modern housing development with people walking their dogs and watering their lawns. Doesn’t look like a people trafficking factory. She lets onto someone across the road she calls “Papa” and a friendly looking woman jumps into the front seat. One more hurdle passed. We then set off towards Khao Sok. About ten minutes into the ninety minute drive our nerves finally settle down.

Just after 8.30pm we arrive in the quiet, petite town of Khao Sok. I translate a message of gratitude to our driver, she really saved our bacon (and didn’t turn us into bacon) and I hope that the fee has not doubled. It has not. We pay the agreed 1200 baht and check into our hostel for the night. After such a long, tiring day and sick of rice, we treat ourselves to pizza and beer and crash out. We sleep like babies in another large comfortable bed in a sleepy hotel.

Jungle Jaunts

After a breakfast surrounded by monkeys at our hostel, a minivan collects Alex and I along with Fem from the Netherlands and a couple from Germany (we think). Along the way we pickup Jack and Aoife from Ireland, and Ketch (and his large suitcase) from England. As Ketch boards the van he curses “shit I was meant to pack a change of clothes wasn’t I”. We’ve met a few travellers like this on our trip that make us wonder how they’ve made it this far.

I’m very excited to be doing this tour again having enjoyed it so much last time I was here, especially as it’s somewhere new for Alex which is, quite frankly, a bit of a rarity! After we’ve collected everyone we pull up outside a local market and have twenty minutes to look around. This wasn’t part of the trip last time and like in many other places, it seems to be shoehorned in to the excursion to encourage people to spend more money. I don’t mind if that money goes towards local sellers who would greatly benefit from a couple of dollars a day. Unfortunately most of the foreigners pile into the 7 Eleven to buy Coke, Fanta, Lays crisps and form a huge queue to buy from international brands 🙈

Our next stop is thankfully the proper start of the tour where we’re introduced to our wonderfully weird guide for the next two days, Pad Thai, yes like the famous noodle dish. Imagine him as a drunken Jack Sparrow who now speaks in a Thai accent. He tries his best to explain the itinerary but with broken English and strange annunciation, most of our group looks perplexed. Having done this before and picking up the odd word I end up as translator for most of the group. Basically on tours like this, just follow the guide and everything will be explained three times. It’s a relaxing trip staying on a lake, we’re not climbing Everest here. Thankfully this tactic works even when your tour guide starts yelling instructions to a different group of gringos.

All eager to get going, we eventually board the boat to take us to our floating accommodation. Or so we think. Pad Thai announces we must make an extra stop to pick up some booze as it’s not officially allowed by the park guards. We sit and wait in the baking sun for ten minutes while Pad Thai and his mates load crates of beer, cigarettes and rum onto the boat. I’m sure it’s a nice little earner for them to make a bit of extra money on the side. We’re extra hot as we’re all forced to wear life jackets by the same park guards. I don’t mind, we’ve met a surprisingly high amount of people on our travels that can’t swim but are sometimes too ashamed to admit it infront of a big group. I would suspect that these rules are enforced for grim reasons. With our contraband loaded we’re finally off on our hour long journey across the lake and how beautiful it is too.

Stepping onto the floating dock which connects all of our accommodation huts, Pad Thai confuses everyone some more and we’re eventually checked in to our rooms. Alex and I are slightly miffed that we’ve paid a bit extra to have a ensuite hut and the one we’re given is right next to the floating toilets for everyone to use. Not an ideal location considering the smell. We try our trick from Victoria Guesthouse of asking to switch rooms, but we’re met with confusion and indifference. All of the rooms are booked up and the reception can’t be bothered with the admin to move us to any of the rooms which currently sit empty. I suppose you can’t win them all.

Lunch is a buffet of fried chicken, green curry, veg stew and of course a huge vat of boiled rice. Alex and I are starving and gobble down three platefuls each. Over lunch we speak to Fem who’s also just attained her PADI Open Water AND Advanced(!) and we enjoy sharing diving stories. She also tells us her boyfriend from Sheffield is currently adventuring in Peru on a monkey bike, look it up, it’s hilarious. Pad Thai disappears off with a bucket (of booze I suspect) and entertains himself with a guitar for a couple of hours and tells us we have ‘free time’ now. We remind Ketch he’s still wearing his life jacket from the boat trip.

After lunch it’s time for a swim. There’s a bit of a breeze and it’s slightly cooler than the sweatbox of the capital but it’s still touching 40 degrees. Amusingly it’s compulsory to wear a life jacket but they’re all XL and half the straps are missing. Henceforth everyone wears them like a nappy or a floating armchair. We take turns to jump off the makeshift diving platform, each jump has to be unique and receives a mark out of ten. Even my front flip with a backslap scores highly. Alex and I swim a bit further out and are put off by big splashes of water from the large carp like fishes swimming with us in the lake water.

After we’ve dried off it’s adventure time as we depart for a jungle tour. Pad Thai tries his best to explain the local geography and some information about the jungle fauna and flora but most of it is lost in translation. We gather from parts of his talks that he’s from this area and his family have been living here since before the dam was built and the lake was made. He tells us how the jungle is their medicine cabinet, just like in Tikal with our Maya guide! He cackles and humours himself with who knows what, seeming to have the time of his life whilst the tourists stumble and trudge along the path wondering what on Earth we’re doing here. We do a horseshoe route and end up back at the boat. No tigers or elephants were spotted this time (except for the video Pad Thai shows us on his phone).

Our next stop is a large cave system I visited last time I was here. Oddly, this time the entrance outside the cave is covered in water, it was bone dry last time I was here.

How it looked four years ago:

And how it looks now:

We see many bats within the cave, one flies at me and makes me jump out of my skin. Apart from that there is just a large spider, so big that one of our group jokes that it has its own social security number. Outside of that there isn’t much to report that we haven’t seen before.

Bats in the belfry:

Returning to the boat we all practice our acrobatics getting into the wobbling vessel. After we’re all aboard the captain makes his way to the back to set off. He loses his balance and takes a tumble into the drink! The poor guy is soaking wet and a little embarrassed as he climbs back in and takes his seat to continue the journey.

Pad Thai in a reflective mood:

Snail eggs:

We spend another half hour on the boat, partly looking for animals but mostly just enjoying the beautiful scenery all around us as the sun sets on another day.

Dinner is another spread of local food, massaman curry, steamed cabbage, one of my favourites fried tilapia fish and of course, buckets of rice. During the meal I get talking to a couple from Nottingham who have four children, all of which are either studying medicine or are qualified doctors somewhere along their career. One of which did her training in the Philippines where she was encouraged to film brain surgery on her mobile. I wonder where those videos end up!

Last time I was on this trip, after dinner the group and guides sat out on the floating dock and drank buckets of alcohol and played guitar. This time will be a slightly more romantic version as it’s just Alex and I sitting at the end of the dock looking up at the myriad of stars above us.

I just don’t know what to do with myself

Once more, an early start, we’re on the boat at 6.45 for a morning safari. We try a few spots but apart from a false alarm with some sort of buffalo, we don’t see anything. It’s not surprising as we’re in a large boat with a giant motor engine, any animal would hear it coming a mile away and run for cover. Thanks for the spotter Fem we do see some dusky leaf monkeys performing acrobatics in the morning sun. Pad Thai spots a horn billed toucan way up in the trees but it’s hard to get a good look at it from the boat. No matter, we had toucan tv in Costa Rica.

Returning to base we’re presented with fresh pancakes, honey and watermelon. Yum yum. There are a couple of bees buzzing around as we take our seats. Then a few more arrive… Then they invite their friends… Before long there is an entire hive of bees swarming around us and our food. A few people make a run for it but the bees follow them to wherever they take the honey. It’s pretty hilarious and luckily no one is stung. You would have thought they’d serve something else if the honey causes this much chaos but they must enjoy this circus every morning.

Alex and I then take a kayak out to spend some more time on this beautiful lake. We don’t spot any elephants but get very close to a large hawk-like bird of prey.

We collect our belongings and prepare to return to Khao Sok town. On the way back we stop at the famous site of “Three Brothers” rocks apparently meant to represent the local people here.

Pad Thai drops us back where we began and immediately goes off to lead another tour group, his third in three days (at least). Strange guy, quite funny (most of the time unintentionally) and kind enough, but not exactly a guide, more of a comic relief character.

We’re herded into a large coach and driven five minutes away to enjoy a viewpoint and lunch. Everyone is going in different directions after this tour and asks the driver how they get there and what time we’ll need to leave to make connections. He seems slightly annoyed to be bombarded with questions and simply tells people to enjoy the view and come back later. It is a very nice view to be fair.

Once we return, we’re advised to get into a minivan to take us back to Khao Sok. Except our bags are in the big bus. The door won’t open and the driver is trying to fix the engine with just a pair of scissors. “PRESS BUTTON” he shouts when we ask him to open the door. We tell him we tried that and he rolls his eyes and comes to do it for us. Of course it doesn’t work and before long three of them have to force and hold the door open while we squeeze inside to grab our belongings. Ketch and his big suitcase join us and we’re off back to Khao Sok. Hilariously when we arrive at the bus stop the driver asks Ketch where he’s going and he responds “I don’t know?”. It seems like we are much more organized than some of our fellow travellers!

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Adventure – Revisiting the beautiful Khao sok lake. Trying to translate Pad Thai’s ramblings. Meeting interesting and diverse travellers, some are here for two weeks, some a few months and another couple doing at least a year.

Excitement – Realizing we haven’t been kidnapped. Another comfortable stay in Khao Sok town, like a hotel for hostel prices, me likey. An evening of Western food, the food of Thailand is lovely but there’s only so much rice a person can take.

Trauma – No minivan waiting for us. Potential kidnapping. Not sleeping well next to a giant floating toilet. Bees for breakfast.

Bonus: Finally trying mango and sticky rice for dessert. It’s pretty mid fr.

Thailand has been one of those countries that so many people I know have been to but I haven’t. Usually it’s the other way around! So it’s always been on a bit of the wishlist to finally go here. James started his travels of 2020 in Thailand back after we first met, but he’s agreed to retread old ground with me, no doubt to be a very different experience to the one he had as a single, solo backpacker fresh from cold England those four years ago.

It’s with a huge sigh of relief that we make it to Bangkok when the ferry gods were against us. So much of a sigh that we are caught by surprise at a final thwarting to our plan. There are no Grab taxis from the airport, buses apparently stop running at 4pm or 9pm depending on the website, and you need Thai Bhat to pay the waiting taxis. I try and ask Tourist Information, but am met with nods of agreement and replies of “yes… Grab… yes… door 3” despite these not being answers to the questions I’ve asked. Oh how I miss Spanish-speaking countries. Now we have the added fun of an alphabet we also can’t read. Thankfully James can get on the airport Wi-Fi and installs Bolt (the Russian version of Uber), and a taxi quickly appears at our sides. Damn. I guess we’ll be funding the war on the other side. We wonder once more how this all worked before the Internet, but I suppose the answer is doing airport currency exchanges and having to haggle with the locals. It’s nearing 11pm when we get to our Airbnb, 31 hours since we left the Airbnb in the Philippines, and jump onto the huge, comfy, hotel-esque bed, and whack on the air-conditioning and fan. Sorry pachamama. Despite how late it is, it’s still over 30 degrees. No time to rest though, time for that New Country Admin! We head to a cash point and it’s time to pay the maddenning ATM fee of £3.50 a go. Oh sadness. We laden up on supplies at the 7 Eleven, including some famous 7 Eleven toasties that make James’ dreams come true, and then hit the lovely, fluffy, white, airconned hay.

Temple Run

With only two days in Bangkok, we’ve got a lot to get through. Thankfully I have my very own tour guide who has been here before to maximise on our time. Guide Collins has set out today as temple day, and we’re starting early to try and get as much done as possible before the soaring 40+ degree heat wipes us out. Our first stop is the Grand Palace, and Grand it certainly is. As the most important palace in Bangkok (although we find every temple says it is the most important) they are very strict on the dress code, and so James dons his Groot pyjama bottoms to get in. The only appropriately ‘modest’ clothing I have is my cotton dress saved for ‘smarter’ occasions. We make a pair!

After a bit of an absense of culture and history from the Philippines (due entirely to our own planning), I’m loving being here. The temples are beautiful, ornate, intricate, delicate, and impossibly clean. How they keep each tiny mosaic and tile and fragment clean in this vast, hot and polluted city is a marvel.

Surrounding the main complex is a huge mural with the history of Thailand, according to guide Collins.

We meander through and around the various temples, stupahs, sculptures and cloisters making our way to the main temple housing the emerald buddha. Here, you aren’t allowed to take photos or sit with your feet facing the buddha. Two rules the soldiers present are strict to pull anyone up on, including children, ensuring photos are deleted before their eyes. One rogue tourist caught in the act defiantly asks “Why?”, and the soldier simply replies, “respect“, clearly a concept this tourist does not understand. The rule that is less policed is one of silence, as tour guides explain the importance of this place to their herds. We sit here for a while enjoying the relative cool temperature out of the Sun, and admiring the immense work of art in front of us, wishing we could understand just 1% of what we were looking at. There’s so much going on (in a magical way) it’s like a Where’s Wally of buddhas of various sizes and styles, and ornate decoration in gold and silver, gold on the left, silver on the right. Today, the emerald buddha is wearing its summer outfit, a golden shawl. Each season the outfit is changed by the King. Three monks come in and sit in a separated corner from the masses in silent reflection, ignoring the now growing din of guides’ explanations.

After the temple we do another lap before heading to the starting point of the free English tour. It’s now 10am, and the palace grounds are filling up with tour groups and tourists, and the heat is sweltering. Guide Collins hands over to our Thai guide, who is dressed in military regalia and a face mask. Under his khaki uniform, he is wearing a t-shirt. James and I are dripping with sweat through our thin clothes, wondering how he is wearing two thick layers without a bead of sweat on his forehead. Our man doesn’t understand gringo skin (or likes to torture his visitors), and makes the group stand in the blazing sun as he talks through his mask with a thick Thai accent. Whether it’s the heat, the mask, or the accent, I find it incredibly hard to understand, and we don’t seem to be the only ones. What we can understand seems to be exactly what’s on the free map, so there’s not a huge amount lost in translation, although there’s also not much I remember to relay here. It’s impressive how much the heat shuts down the brain!

Our tour finishes in “Area 2”, with more huge, ornate, architectural marvels, that really make us understand why so many are disappointed by the UK equivalents.

By this point, the air has turned into soup, and in attempts to not be boiled alive we venture into the two available museums that provide some much needed respite by way of blasting cold aircon. No photos allowed inside again, but we get to see some of the original structures of the temples pre-restoration. Some of the pieces from the roofs are huge when you get to stand next to them and really the scale of these buildings. There’s also an exhibit on the queen and queen mother’s clothing, which are really beautiful and stylish, somewhat similar to what our stylish monarchs would wear.

We brace ourselves for the heat once more as we head to stop two, the reclining Buddha. Except by this point I’m starting to feel faint from the heat. Expertly, my guide ducks us into a highly rated eatery with aircon and a recently vacated table so we can rehydrate and rest. It’s 11:30 in Thailand, but we console ourselves that in the Philippines it’s 12:30, so as good a time to have lunch as any. James gets to have his first pad-see-ew as I have a chicken with cashew curry, and we share some spring rolls.

The experience is made even more impressive by realising that this was all expertly cooked by one older woman in a corridor-come-kitchen of maybe 1.5m length x 50cm on each side. The same corridor everyone uses to get to the bathroom, so constantly interrupted to boot, and of course, no aircon.

Refreshed with as much ice as I can siphon from my drink into my water bottle (much to the confusion of the wait staff), it’s time to get back into the firepit. It doesn’t take long before my body wants to give in again, but there’s buddhas to see. Our next one is a huge reclining buddha in a building that seems far too small for what it is. In fact, you can barely see it all in one go save for two spots at either end that jut out for tourists to get their photos.

The feet are expertly decorated in mother of pearl, with scripture and even prints on the toes.

Outside of the small building housing the huge buddha, there are more temples and sculptures and trees to admire.

However, there is also more sun and heat, and my body has really started to give in now. The real feel is apparently 46° so even Guide Collins agrees to hide out the next few hours in aircon.

No rest for the wicked though, our Palace ticket includes a traditional dance show just down the road from our Airbnb. I’ve read that it has aircon and is a good way to hide from the heat, so we hop from shadow to shadow making it to the freezing auditorium.

The show gives us little tasters to the different styles of dance from across the ages of Thailand and across the different regions, including some shadow dancing, and part of a famous masked dance called a Khon. The costumes are incredible, and the dancing is also magnificent, so different to anything Western, as I struggle to tell if their hands are up or down due to their amazing dexterity. Of course no photos are allowed of the performance, but here’s one of the end. Apparently these shows are funded by the Royal family to keep showcasing Thai culture. Not a bad idea!

With a few hours of respite from the heat, it’s time for our final temple of the day, The Golden Mount. Finally somewhere Guide Collins hasn’t been, but he expertly leads the way so we can make it in time for sunset. We climb the stairs through greenery, flowing streams, rocks, buddhas, gongs, bells and curious sculptures all around.

The view from the top shows us a totally different perspective of Bangkok, as we pick out temple after temple from the skyline, whilst the sun creeps down towards the horizon.

Up here, a cool breeze keeps us cool and tricks us into thinking it might not be so hot anymore, that maybe we’ve adjusted now and it’s not so bad at all. And then the breeze drops and you realise you’re still in the soup, even after the Sun has set.

Khao Son Road

I had extremely low expectations of Khao Son Road, expecting overt prostitution and old white men with underage girls on their arms, so I’m pleasantly surprised to find your typical tourist hub, of eateries, bars, tat, and an extra sprinkling of open-air massage chairs and cannabis shops. As I’m starting to melt again, I demand of Guide Collins that we eat somewhere with a fan, anywhere, so long as there’s a fan. This rules out almost all street food, but there’s plenty of eateries catering to the melting ‘just-off-the-boat’ tourists, with stylish decor, abundant arrays of fans, and amplified prices. It’s only after I’ve cooled down that I can take in the beautiful setting around us with a pond full of fish.

I order a non-spicy papaya salad, and James gets salt and pepper fried pork, clearly missing all of the pork he ate in the Philippines. I’m feeling more human again, and ready for hitting Khao Son proper.

Loud music comes at us from all angles as much as staff with placards shouting “Happy Hour” trying to lure in the next white person ambling down the street. Intermingled with them are South Asian men holding out catalogues of suits selling their offerings of tailored suits. I wonder who is getting drunk and deciding a tailored suit is what they need most, but then recollect Hez getting a hideous one without even needing a beer down him in Hong Kong, just Ben egging him on, and a girl called Amelia he wanted to impress.

Instead of the seedy atmosphere I expect, the street is full of families with children of all ages weaving through the crowds, on foot, in prams and atop parents’ shoulders. The seediest thing I see is an array of wristbands with comically offensive sayings and words embroidered into them to make the tourists laugh, which we do. Sadly of course, there are also children being directed towards tourists to sell knick-knacks in their baskets. The final bit of comedy offerings come by way of insects on sticks, including scorpions, snakes and even tarantulas. Having already had one scorpion’s head bashed in in Nicaragua, we decide not to add insult to injury of the scorpion population by eating a skewered one, and wonder who it was that found this niche market of ‘gastronomy’. Maybe the same one who realised you can charge tourists a lot for splayed guinea pig in Peru.

We enjoy a few beers in front of more giant fans and chat some time away, before heading back to make sure we can be up early again before the heat wipes me out. On our return, the crowds have picked up, and we’re met with literal walls of bar touts trying to entice us in, we can’t understand how any of this can be profitable (or enticing to tourists) as the different bars seem to compete with just who can have the most amount of staff out front.

A Tour of Asia

Our second day here inadvertently takes us to three different parts of Asia in one city. First off, we’re checking out a floating market.

The market is by no means floating, but it does have a glorious array of Thai food to tempt us, even so soon after breakfast. The stalls are setup under a big roof, more akin to a farmers market than anything else. As we head to the river, we see some boat tours that tempt us in.

Guide Collins hands over to a Thai lady, who whacks up the volume of her loudspeaker, making her enthusiastic screeching even more difficult to understand. The elder lady in front of us puts earplugs in to mute the sqauwks. This isn’t helped by the Thai language being particularly squawky, for want of a better way to describe it.

All we can understand over the din of the motor and the indistinct kaaaa noise is “EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY… [indistinct squawking]… right… [more indistinct screeches]… left…” as we presume she is explaining what each thing is as we pass on by on the boat, with little ability to understand what it is we’re taking photos of. Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful tour down a winding canal with homes at the water’s edge in varying levels of quality. Some are half collapsed into the water (but still occupied), others look like the ones we walk pass on the way to Shoreham. I can only imagine how happy these residents are to hear the passing shrieks of tour guides cutting through their relative peace!

We stop somewhere to pick up fish food as big fish splash around by our boat desperate for a boat and crashing into one another and the boat trying for a bite.

Our next stop is to a temple. It’s a far less well cared for temple than the main touristy ones we’ve been to so far, but it’s still pretty impressive, as our guide tries to explain certain bits to us and encourage us to donate money for this or that, “Lucky lucky, good for you”.

We return to the boat and our guide is now really loving life, as she starts singing in between her descriptive squawks. It’s hard to be annoyed at someone so happy and confident in her own skin and we just laugh along as she makes the ride all the more memorable.

Just as we think things can’t get anymore surreal, a line of boats with musicians and monks comes down the river in the opposite direction. We have no idea what’s going on, maybe it’s to do with Chakri day or Songkran upcoming… soon enough a hand-held fishing net is held out towards our boat, but it’s far too small to catch one of those fat fish that were being fed earlier.

It all becomes a bit more clear when the lady at the front tries to hand over some money to one of the guys on the boat passing the other way, tries and fails as the guy almost falls in trying to grasp it. What is this boat ride?! With everyone in stitches, we near the starting point. The icing on the screeching cake is as we pass under the bridge above, a train comes across, and our guide yells “TAKE PHOTO, TAKE PHOTO“, and then sings a familiar song as we pull into the pier. The awaiting masses for the next tour must have thought they were onto a winner as we all bundle of the boat in stitches, no clue what was about to befall them. All credit to the lady, she really did try her best to make the tour amazing, and she certainly made it memorable, if maybe for different reasons than intended.

Very much more awake than before, we have a very early lunch again. We gorge on the snacks and foods at the market, trying some new things out.

Bangkok is heating up again, and without the breeze from the boat it’s time to hide in aircon again. Except after a bit of a cool off, we decide to go on a mission. What better time to go try and find a Fitbit charger than the middle of the day in 46° real feel? With the ‘help’ of Google, we try a few malls, which specialise in different things. One in particular has swaths of fabric and women’s formal attire. Another specialises in Japanese manga and anime merchandise, toys and games. There are watch shops, but no sign of smart watches. There are chargers, but only for phones. We somehow find ourselves in what is seemingly little India, as the cuisine, attire, and ethnicity all shift to South Asian, but still no dice. Defeated, we head back, grabbing some of the best and biggest gyoza we’ve ever had on the way.

I hide out in the aircon and do research whilst James heads off for a Thai massage. He comes back still in one piece and smiling after being wrestled and folded up into a pretzel. It’s time to visit another part of Asia for dinner, China town.

Before long, neon signs display Chinese characters instead of Thai ones above us and the streets are full of tourists and street food again.

The road is also full of cars, making this a somewhat more stressful experience than Khao San Road, as tourists stop for photos and menus which backs up the single-file human traffic behind them. We lurch out of the river of humans to a side street and check out the food stall options. There’s some tasty looking meat-on-stick kebabs that we go for, not realising the lovely sauce she is lathering them with is spicy. Already dripping with sweat from the climatic temperature, the spicy sauce heats me even more and I have to give in as I’m overheating inside and out. The rest of the food options here aren’t all too different to the rest of Bangkok, but the setting is something else, so we grab some plastic chairs and get ourselves some noodles, fried pork and wonton, alongside some satay pork and a beer.

It’s pretty hot still and we have another very early start so we head back to the cool sanctuary of our Airbnb again. We think we’ve done pretty well racking up over 40,000 steps over the last two days in this heat! We repack and get set for the 10 hour bus journey out of Bangkok the next morning. Sadly, the sleeper train sleeper carriages are fully booked, with the only options being benches in a carriage with one small fan. We decide an air-conditioned bus will be a better choice. Let’s find out!

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Adventure – Exploring palaces, streets and canals. Fighting through the dense crowds of China Town.

Excitement – Making it! One of the best beds we’ve slept in. Free water, snacks and pot noodles. 7 Eleven toasties and Thai massages being back on the menu (James).

Trauma – The heat, dehydrating headaches no matter how much water I drank.