Islands

It has been a while since we have updated the blog but we have been so busy travelling around the islands! We started our island hopping on Koh Chang! Koh Chang is in the eastern region of Thailand so the journey from Chiang Mai was pretty hefty... Roughly 27 hours.

Koh Chang was a beautiful island, we stayed on Lonely Beach in a tiny bungalow not far from the sea. Lonely Beach is known to be the backpackers destination so there was lots of bars around and it was pretty noisy.
When on the ferry to Koh Chang we recieved a text off Za and Roger 'Guess where we are!?' we knew straight away that they too were on their way to Koh Chang! It was so lovely to see them again!
We didn't do much on Koh Chang, we swam, ate, sunbathed, saw a fire show one evening, canoed to a deserted island and spent a day on the resort Roger and Za were staying on which was pure luxury! We really enjoyed our stay on Koh Chang but were really excited to head down south!

In order to get down south we had to endure a 32 hour trek to Phuket we travelled by coach, red truck, minibus and tuk tuk. It was a horrendous journey, alot of the time we had no idea where we were or when we were to arrive at our destination. Also for a large chunk of the coach journey we had a cheesy foot poking through. When i say cheesy i mean stinking bishop cheesy.
We did eventually arrive in Phuket we were basically dumped at a bus station where we picked up a tuk tuk to take us to a hostel in Phuket town called Phuket Backpacker. The staff here were so friendly and helpful it was a relief to experience some proper customer service! There is a picture below of melted chocolate buttons which we treated ourselves with! The button had travelled us all the way from Uganda! We were given bed in a 4 bed dorm with a chinese man, he was a individual to say the least. We did not do much touring in Phuket town, we decided to use the time we were there to sort out accomodation and plan the remaining 3 weeks of our trip.

From Phuket we got a ferry to Koh Phi Phi! We had heard a lot about the island and were excited to see it for ourselves! On the ferry over we met a group of Australians and Americans who were all in Thailand for a wedding. They gave us some priceless advice on where to stay on the island. There are two sides to Phi Phi the party side and the pier side. We stayed in a bungalow on the pier side which was much quieter than the party side but still only a 15 minute walk away from the clubs and bars.
In Phi Phi we spent a lot of time on the beach which was stunning. We visited the view point which was postcard perfect, i dont think the photos do it justice. We also experienced a Phi Phi night out with our Australian/American neighbours which was pretty messy. We saw Thai boxing and even Sophie got in the ring! We got home at 4am, it was a good night out!
The next day we had to be up for 8am to go on an all day snorkelling boat trip! we had an amazing time visiting all sorts of surrounding islands such as bamboo island, mosquito island and monkey island! We also went to Maya beach where the movie 'The Beach' was filmed we attempted the photo but it wasnt that great! The beach was stunning. After the boat trip we did a spot of shopping again!

The next morning we left for Koh Lanta, an island we'd heard was on its way to being the new Phi Phi. We booked ourselves into a resort which has two pools and its own beach! Sorted! We are still in Lanta now and leave for Koh Jum on the 12th, we plan to do lots of relaxing here! There is a photo of our bungalow below its so big!! Livin' the dream!

Just been caught in a thunder storm, first rain we've seen here!

Bye bye Chiang Mai!

After our 14hour coach journey we had an eventful red truck ride to our hostel. We feared for our lives because there is no back to a red truck, we had bags and cases flying everywhere as the driver swerved in and out of traffic!

Our hostel, Aoi Garden Home was lovely, the garden and room is pictured below! Aoi was great, one of the first things she said to us was 'my name means sugarcane, but i'm not sweet i'm spicy' you can imagine what kind of character she is!

Within a matter of hours we'd made friends with an American backpacker, Tracey. We decided to go and see the temples of Chiang Mai together. There are a lot of temples in Thailand, it seems that majority are in Chiang Mai! We are completely templed out now!
The temples are beautiful and are great to see, there are a few of the 100's of photos we have of them below.

After visiting temples we got a tuk tuk to the night market or locally known as the night bazaar. This was a more touristy version of the one we visited in Surin. Let's just say we did a bit of retail therapy here...

After the night bazaar we went back to the hostel and shared backpacking stories with people from all over the world. It was really refreshing to swap stories!

The next day we were booked on a trekking tour. We have few if any photos of this to upload due to not getting to a computer, sorry.
Our tour started off at a butterfly and orchid farm.. This was a disappointment all the butterflies we saw were dead and once you saw the orchids there was nothing else to do...
We then went on to the hilltribes. We saw the Karen village of the long necked women. This was an interesting experience, we were unsure of how we felt about the women. Children of 5 were being made to wear the coils around their necks. It was like they were only doing it for tourists and that it was a dead tradition. We both felt very strange after visiting.

We then got to feed elephants bananas, they have such characters and definitely know what they want they'd budge and blow at you with their trunks when they wanted more. We then got to go on an hours elephant trek where Meg got to ride on the elephants neck and be a mahout! We did think we were going to lose her a few times! Especially when going down hill!
We enjoyed noodles and tofu wrapped in banana leaves for lunch and were given nothing but chopsticks so should be experts at using them by the time we got home!

We then walked off our lunch with an hour long trek into the jungle to a waterfall in the midday heat! We were very thankful to find a freezing cold pool of water at the bottom of the waterfall. Where we swam and showered, it was perfect!

We then went on to do white water rafting and bamboo rafting. However with less of the white water as it is dry season here so very little water in the river. It was still great fun! We kept getting seriously stuck on rocks, sometimes even our guide didn't know what to do!
After the 'rapids' we got on a bamboo raft. This was extremely amusing, we're unsure if there were too many of us on one raft or our Uganda weight gain was larger than we thought, we spent most of the time sat on the raft partly  submerged in water.

The next day we went for a head, neck and back massage opting out for a Thai massage because they are known to be pretty rough. However it seems that head, neck and back massages are pretty rough too... We are both still recovering! The massouse sorted out our knots for sure!
That afternoon we took part in a Thai cookery course. We were taken around a market to buy the ingredients. The course was held at a farm a bit out of Chiang Mai it was a beautiful setting. We prepared so much food! Thai food is so quick! We ate everything we prepared and then had to rest in the hammocks before letting a latern go. It was a relaxing experience and we learnt a lot! We also were given a cookery book containing recipes we cooked and others!

That afternoon we went to visit a temple on a mountain. It was really on top of a mountain. The red truck journey was horrible. Imagine a really windy road and make it 100 times windier. The temple was stunning. All gold!

Today we visited Tiger Kingdom! It was an amazing experience, we had heard about it when we first arrived in Chiang Mai and weren't sure how to feel about it. After doing some research we decided to visit. The tigers were happy tigers and weren't drugged, the little ones especially were extremely playful and energetic. We came to the conclusion that if the tigers are well looked after, happy and breeding then its better than them becoming extinct.

Just waiting for our tuk tuk to the bus station to go to Koh Chang! Goodbye Chiang Mai, hello beach!

Sawaadeekaaa Surin!!

At the end of our stay in Surin, we've had an amazing week thanks to Roger and Za who have looked after us so well! They well truly have shown us the real Thailand!

This week have done 4 days work experience, Sophie was in Surin hospital in the labour ward while Megan taught English in a Thai school. It was an amazing experience we both saw new things such as Sophie saw many births and a c-section while Megan taught a class of children who didn't speak a word of English!

We visited a night market where we saw more food than we could have ever of imagined! We went to a green market where there was lots of beautful Thai silk and traditional Thai market stalls. As you can imagine we couldn't resist treating ourselves to a few things..

We visited the elephant village which was incredible! Never seen so many elephants in our lives (over 200 on one site!). We fell in love with them, they have such characters! We got picked up by elephants , rode on the back of one, showered with one and got covered in elephant goo and mud!
(see photo of Sophie's bum below)

Za has tried to give us a taste of all Thai cuisine. We never had the same dish twice however we didn't touch the surface! We're definitely not going to lose our Uganda podge here, the food is just too good!!

We also experienced our first Thai beauty treatments. We had massages, nails and eyebrows done all for less than £12!

We have had such a fantastic time, it's all down to Roger and Za! We'd especially like to thank them for doing our washing and taking some stuff back to the UK for us! (hehe)

Can't wait to get on with our backpacking, starting with 12+ hour coach journey to Chiang Mai tonight!

P.s sorry the photos are all jumbled, captionless and need rotating. We're using a phone app which is quite restricting, we hope you get the idea of what we've been up to!