Koh Tao - lazy, sorry, lady of leisure

BEFORE...

As I'm not doing my TEFL now I've been trying to think of other ways to bide my time. I found a yoga class so hopefully I will become a guru there. I can get a monthly yoga pass for 3000 Baht - about 45 quid - which enables me to go 3 times a day, 6 days a week if I really want to. It will perhaps be the yoga that I didn't do at the ashram in India. Incidentally the yoga teacher did her training in the very same ashram so all-in-all a very small world!

Kieran's started his training today with an emergency first responder course (i.e., first aid) and enjoyed kissing the dolly, Annie. He said he used his tongue to clear her airway, ahem. Well yesterday, against all my advice and finally pleading, he had all his hair shaved off to grade 2 so now he looks like a scary rugby meathead bully boy. I'm a bit frightened of him now and certainly wouldn't let him near me in an emergency!

I saw an advert in the local booklet/magazine asking for volunteers for the local school so I thought "aha - this is what I can do" so I went to the school this morning and they informed me that this month, April and May are the summer holidays so no school so I'm back to being a lazy bugger, er, I mean lady of leisure.

...AFTER

Koh Tao, Thailand - Diving Mecca of Thailand

We are very happy in Koh Tao, a cool, hip and a beautiful beach, much more our style. Even the Internet cafe right now has Jazz (Nina Simone) playing in the background while half the computers have cushions on the floor to "Surf and Chill".

I signed up for my Padi rescue course, with Scuba Junction, so I will be hitting the books tomorrow: first aid response. Of course I will be doing this in a cool hip bar on the beach... shame! The owner calls him self K so I have asked for my diving nickname to be K2, not sure if he approves. The island is full of dive schools though and everyone is hard at work with their noses in text books.

El liked this rock for its phalic nature!!



We have checked into a hotel with a massive AC room with a huge bed for a month, the daily rate is 20 pounds a night, but as we are renting it for so long it is cheaper than most of the smelly beach bungalows, bonus! We are on the bottom floor but they have promised to move us to the top floor with a balcony so we can lay out our hammock that we just bought and have a nice view of the sea. We've not got a kitchen but at least we've got an enormous fridge and a wardrobe with no hangers!

El is now a lady of leisure and is not sure if she wants to sit on the beach all day, start a reflexology company on the beach or volunteer in the local school, (I think that she should do a divemaster course as well, so we can get cheap diving for the rest of our life :-), selfish I know). She had high hopes of finding a daily yoga class and becoming the guru that she never managed to be in India but as with everything it depends on the cost of the classes.

We randomly bumped into Louisa and James who me met in Varkala, India on the ferry on the way over - small world hey - and had a few beers with them in the local "girly bar". We discovered today that the local beer, Chang, is not to be messed with and we both had a pathetic hangover day on the beach moaning about the fact we only had 4 each... might move on to other drinks methinks! Still it was great to catch up with some people we knew - it is the first time we've randomly bumped into someone we know on the trip.

JAMES & LOUISA

It really is quite beautiful here and not at all resorty so I am glad that we don't have to look at fat lobster tourists all day, on the flip side there is no shortage of "hard bodies" here so I may have to join the local gym if I don't want El straying, as she bronzes herself on the beach each day :-(

Koh Phangan - Thong Noi Pan

We arrived on the island by jumping off the boat into the sea up to our knees as the beach did not have a pier and we had to make sure our bags were held high above our heads. Ben suggested this beautiful place as an antidote to Pattaya's madness and he was right in that it is an idyllic spot. Times have moved on a bit since he was here though as it is not so remote after all and the boat drops you off right at the heart of the village.



The bay is divided into two beaches, the one on the north (where we are) is slightly smaller but busier and slightly more lively; the south beach is more spacious but has a bit less atmosphere. There are fewer resorts here but there is still very much a feeling of people on a 2 week holiday here to RELAX on the beach. Which is fine but it means that prices are still much more than we anticipated. Even in the shops the beer is the same price as the bars and restaurants so 2 pikey travellers can't even have a cheapo dinner!

We've had a lovely time reading books on the beach but in all honesty we're pretty bored (and perhaps too spoilt for idyllic beaches - poor us: I'm sure your hearts are all bleeding!) and Kieran is keen to get on with his diving course.

So we're off to Koh Tao tomorrow, apparently the "diving mecca" for Thailand. We're hoping that Kieran will be able to find a good diving course and we can find a decent and cheap room and be able to unpack our bags for a week or two and take a few breaths and just STOP for a while. El is going to have to be a barmaid, if she can bear it, to help the funds. Or perhaps she could set up a reflexology mat on the beach...?

Thailand - Koh Samui, nice but too posh for us!

So we escaped Pattaya and flew straight to south Thailand to an island, Koh Samui, one of three in the gulf of Thailand.

The small village we ended up at was very nice with the beach hut resort, in north Koh Samui, sitting straight on the beach. The beach itself was great; lovely sand and palm trees and a huge improvement over Pattaya.

It was a little upmarket and the price of food and drink suddenly was raised by over 100% over what we were use too. i.e 1 pound for a G&T and a meal , so we knew that we could not stay here too long, but it was so nice we sat on the beach for two days and tried to figure our ongoing plans for where to stay for two months, for the Divemaster course I would like to do. I was looking forward to doing this in the resort hammock, strung in between two palm trees, visons of G&Ts and a gentle swinging came to my mind, but some fat German tourist broke it... right that's it... the last straw.

We hired out a scooter and checked out the main town where El could transfer her TELF course to, as a possible place to stay, but apart from reminding me of Pattaya it also had a drain problem so not only did it look unappealing it also smelled pretty bad as well!

One Island down two to go, onward and upwards, off to Koh Phagnan we trotted on the middle morning ferry.

Pattaya - fat old German dude's sex heaven (but not the place for us)

We decided to go to Pattaya as Kieran could do his diving course and El could do a TEFL course at the same time. We knew it was gong to be seedy, that it was the most famous sex resort in Thaland, but we thought we could handle it.

We arrived and had all our expectations shattered. Pattaya is split into two beaches: Pattaya proper and it's cheaper, crappier wannabe neighbour, Jomtien beach. The dive shop was at Jomtien, which is basically just a long road by the beach with high rise flats and condos where fat, balding, middle-aged white men sit around in pubs and on the beach with nubile young Thai girls. It wasn't seedy as much as deeply wrong and rather depressing.

Our accommodation with the dive course was a bit dingy, although clean and spacious, but it had no kitchen to speak of, not even a cup or a kettle so our dreams of cooking lovely Thai food were also shattered.

As the day wore on El became quite convinced that we'd made a big mistake and should leave and Kieran came to the same conclusion. So we are admitting defeat, sacrificing a chunk of non-refundable money (the bastards) and getting the hell away from here.

We did venture to Pattaya beach on our hired scooter just to fully explore before we left and found the Pattaya we were expecing - go go bars, neons signs galore and full on in-your-face sex tourism but somehow the Jomtien fat-arsed quiet "girlfriend" tourism is still worse.

We thought we should go to see a ping pong show or something but to be honest we lost our nerve when a fat old lady showed us a "menu" with girl on girl, lap dancing and rat in pussy!

Thailand, Bangkok - where's the ping pong then?

The journey to Bangkok involved two flights totalling 7 hours so the obvious thing to do was try and drink as many G&T's on the plane as we could get from the air hostesses. We lost count at 6 and unsurprisingly turned up in Bangkok at 12.30 am feeling utterly broken and wth no hotel booked.

We headed for Kao San Road - the classic backpacker place and had extreme culture shock as it was all McDonalds, Starbucks and stupid drunk English tourists.

It was Kieran's 30th birthday when we woke up the next morning and we made the most of the day by having coffee in Starbucks, going on a canal boat trip, having a wonderful massage and finished the day by taking in "Thailand's most spectacular show" - a big costume-filled extravaganza with a bit of history and a bit of fantasy and some cool special effects includig a river on stage and a rain storm.

We found Bangkok to be a bit like a cross between Hong Kong and Delhi - no culture anywhere, although thee were a lot of brand new gleaming wats, and plenty of tourists with dreadlocks and eating steak and chips and not really being in Thailand at all. We knew we had to leave the next day as Kieran's diving course was starting but we really didn't realise what Pattaya had in store for us.

We never did see any ping pong shows in Bangkok by the way, we chickened out!

Ubud, The West Hampstead of Bali

Classic Bali paddy fields and palms

We rocked up in Ubud a few days ago knowing it is the old hippy center of Bali. It is inland so no beach here so naturally enough we sought out a hotel with a swimming pool! We met a lovely Canadian teacher on the bus, Nina, who recommended a great place. OK it doesn't have a pool but we have a balcony on 3 sides, views over palm trees on one side, and the volcano in the distance on the other, with an amazingly ornate carved wooden four poster bed. Kieran was almost ecstatic when he saw the bed (it even has dragons on it), and as the hotel next door allows us to use their pool for about 65p each we feel like we've hit the jackpot!

Ubud is very swanky with a million art shops and clothes shops selling some lovely things but all at really extortionate prices! And that's not just the pikey in me; even Kieran agrees they are overpriced. It is where all the rich middle-class westerners come on holiday and our hopes of buying some nice things have been dashed by all the pesky tourists who pay those prices.

We spent the first day basically lounging around the pool and window shopping. The second day we went to a museum and then went to the pool (again) - to be honest it is really too hot to do anything else. The last day we managed to get our shit together and hired a scooter and had an amazingly cultural day. We started by visiting an art gallery by a Spanish dude called Antonio Blanca who is "The Dali of Bali". Do look him up as his art was very interesting - mostly as all the frames are part of the art. Then we went to the local Monkey sanctuary and got gooey over monkeys. We went for a great drive around the centre of Bali, and admired some old cave temples (although the waterfall that some old dude showed us round the corner was kinda more interesting). On our way home we stumbled upon a huge crowd of identically-dressed women taking offerings to a temple - pyramids of fruit piled precariously on their heads - and finished up by having an Indonesian feast in this dirt cheap but amazing warung (restaurant) that Marigold recommended.

All in all we have loved Bali. The Indonesian people aer the most friendly people we've met so far and their infectious giggles have us in hysterics every time. The food is delicious but light and (Kieran says) the Bintang - the local brew - is pretty good too. Speaking of which we have one waiting for us in our amazing hotel to help us toast our last day in Bali before moving onto Bangkok for Kieran's 30th birthday on the 13th March. It promises to be a ping pong happy day...

Padangbai - Ferry and White Water Rafting

Padangbai is the first stop after the ferry from Lombok. We were a bit tired after being spoiled by the Perama boat on the way to Gilli T, that had its own beach on the upper deck (complete with beach mats) that went direct to the island. (The Captian allowed me to drive the boat for a while so he could light up a big spliff and tell me how he fell asleep at the wheel one day and the passengers woke him up, then the boat started to go around in circles, got to love these people!).



Getting the public ferry on the way back was a bit of a shock. We took a boat at 8am from a local dive shop to Lombok then a bus to Sengigi, where we got off and were planning to hire a car to tour Lombok. After talking to about 5 people and the same jeep turning up, we realised that there was only one car in the whole town to rent and it was double the cost of the same car in Bali. Bugger this we thought and ran (as fast as you can with a massive backpack on your back) back to the bus stop.

Lucky we did decide to leave Lombok as the ferry stopped running the next day for four days due to bad weather and the lorries were lining up 3km outside of town waiting to get there, so we would have been stuck on Lombok with our flight in Bali. We found the Perama bus had left for Bali but the guys at the shop were really nice and arranged a car to take us to the next stop where we picked up the original bus. I think we held up the bus as we had lots of backwards looks. So after catching the public ferry and being very nervous as we had had horror stories about it (thanks Mari - made us really paranoid and it wasn't so bad, talk about putting ideas in our head! - El), not to mention two ferries sinking (one a few days ago) and three planes crashing over the last few months.

The ferry turned out to be OK, just hot and long.

Padangbai turned out to be a nice and sleepy town, so after a day we decided to do a white water raft. You should have seen El's face as we walked down a beautiful slope to the river and were presented with two 6-ft drop rapids right at the start. LOL (laugh out loud).

The event turned out to be more peaceful than scary, with the occasional WEEEEEEE! but still really nice to float down a river for an hour or so! The guide was lovely with a big Bali smile and he would keep on shouting out crocodile and slapping the water with the paddle, scaring El every time and shouting out BOOM every time we hit the side of the canyon.

Sit-com: The Honeymooners - Indonesian TV stars are born

On our last day we took a lovely walk around the island - a mere 9km diameter. The white sand was only slightly marred by the amount of dead coral caused by El Nino, but we still enjoyed it. The walk culminated in a short hike up the hill in the middle of the island with panoramic views over the whole place.

We sauntered down the hill and took up our usual posts in the swanky hotel's pool where the dive shop is based (see previous entry) and spent a sunny afternoon reading, swimming, topping up our tans and generally having a lovely relaxed day. Then two girls came up to us. We had noticed them doing some filming around the pool and had thought that they were going to ask to leave so they could get a clear shot. We couldn't have been more wrong.

They were from an Indonesian national TV company, they explained to us, and were making a news programme about Gili Trawangan and it's popularity as a destination for surfing, diving and honeymooning. Unfortunately, no-one at the hotel was actually ON their honeymoon so would we mind PRETENDING we were so they could interview us and film us doing some romantic stuff. Both of our freebie senses started beeping and so we had no hesitation in hastily replying, "sure, where do you want us" and putting on our best camera smiles.

First they set us up in front of the beach and interviewed us about our "honeymoon" - what it meant to us and why we had chosen Gili Trawangan ("well, it's a slice of paradise'" I plagiarised from the Lonely Planet (can you plagiarise vocally?)). Then we were taken to the luxury honeymoon suite where Kieran had to carry me over a flower-encrusted threshold where he deposited me on a very fancy 4-poster bed and we had to be romantic and slushy without being dirty (this is quite hard for K). In fact Kieran had the girls in hysterics with his naughty antics and it took a number of takes to get a clean and decent shot where he wasn't trying to get his leg over (but he is very good at being slushy and romantic).

Then we went home to change for our dinner. And what a dinner: a candlelit table on the beach with pink bunting, red roses and a whole bottle of real wine - A WHOLE BOTTLE (ok it was a bit sweet and shitty Bali wine but still) with a 3-course gourmet chef-cooked meal and ALL FOR FREE!!!!!! The envious plebs who weren't on their honeymoon were sick with jealousy as they watched the whole thing from the bar!

All we had to do was let them film us eating, and do the occasional slushy thing like feed each other food, hold hands, and kiss (in a restrained and non-tonguey way)!! It was just brilliant and a great way to mark our last day. But it wasn't quite over yet.

We then went for a few drinks with Chris (dive instructor) so we could brag about it to him and his friends for a few hours. Then there was the mother of all thunder/lightening storms and by the time we walked home, drenched, we had to wade through a road buried a good foot under water - what an amazing experience and a wonderful day!

Gili Trawangan, Lombok - a slice of paradise

If any of you want to go on holiday to a beachy palm-fringed island, where G&Ts cost 40p and the biggest decision you have to make is whether to have another scrumptious banana pancake or go snorkelling in the reef that surrounds the island, then look no further than Gili Trawangan.

The "Good Book" calls it the party island so there are tons of restaurants and bars to cater for your every whim, but as it is low season (it rains quite a lot, although we've had geat weather) it is almost empty - perfect!

We met some lovely lads - Charlie & Martin (gappers from London, both lovely guys) - on the boat on the way over and we followed them to their hotel where we met a smashing couple - Stu & Chantal (Fantastic people who lead the good life 6 months working and 6 months traveling (plus Stu can make sheep dance, thats right dance - check out England's country shows if you don't belive me... well he is a Kiwi (sorry Stu couldn't resist))) - all of whom made our week in Gili T a fantastic laugh (and probably all contributed to our state of near-constant inebriation - seriously I had more hangovers that week than in the previous 3 months!!!).

El decided to splash out (no pun intended, ok, maybe it was) and did her Open Water PADI (beginner's scuba diving) and Kieran did his Advanced (next level up). He did a night dive which Chris, our instructor, said was one of his best night dives ever! We saw white and black tipped reef sharks, giant parrotfish, turtles, triggerfish, lionfish, frogfish (very rare) not to mention amazing coral - what a wonderful place to learn to dive! Our German instructor, Chris, was patient, funny and very professional and an added perk was that we were able to use the hotel where the dive shop was based's idyllic swimming pool, salt water but it had a waterfall how cool!

The food was yummy - Anna's every night for gado gado, the drinks were cheap and
plentiful, the locals were funny and friendly, the company was excellent, even the magic mushrooms were an experience (but you'll have to ask Kieran about that as my mushrooming days are over!). All-in-all a perfect and wonderful island and I can't think of a single thing to bitch about it...

Trying to shower in the rain - the only fresh water available

Erm, well there was salt water in the taps so showering off sea-water was a bit pointless but hey, it was well worth it for such a great time. (This even was quite fun as instead of rain being a bad thing everyone looked forward to it and raced home to have a fresh water shower from the stream that came off the roof, the locals must have thought us all mad! - Kieran.) It was sad to see all our friends leave and once they had we also decided to go, but not before our karma gave us a little fun...(read next entry)...

Kuta, Bali - what a stinker!

We touched down in Bali in amzing humidity and quickly found ourselves a nice hotel complete with swimming pool. We strolled down to the beach and went for a paddle and then realised there was this odd, white sticky stuff on our feet. It wouldn't come off. It was all over the sand and in the water and then the smell hit us - rank fishy nasty...stuff. UGGHHH. We beat a hasty retreat and looked on incredulously at all the people - including young kids - who were frolicking on the beach and in the sea, seemingly oblivious to this vile stuff. It was so bad that I had to throw away my trousers as it didn't come out in the wash after 3 attempts!!

So after a lazy 2 days lounging at our hotel swimming pool and listening to all the dubious adult-oriented 80s rock (picture blokes with lycra trousers and big frizzy mullets singing big anthems with shoulder pads to match) and we knew we had to follow Marigold's advice and get the hell out of the hellhole!

El reading Marigold's advce