We got back late the other night and decided we were still a little hungry. I went downstairs to our guest house but the kitchen was closed, so I went a few doors up to try and order some take away food from them.

The lady who met me didn't speak english very well and of course, I don't speak Thai at all. I didn't have the phrase book with me either. I got a menu and asked if I could "Take away?" which was met with a blank stare. Finally she went "Ahh! Taxi?". I said no and tried a few arm movements and saying "Take away" really slowly. She thought I wanted a tuk-tuk. I tried doing a mine of someone eating and walking. This was met with a look of what-the-hell-is-this-guys-problem so I tried again. This time I did a really good mime of sitting down, getting...

Last night we got back from two fantastic days at the Chiang Mai Elephant Nature Park. It was the most amazing experience, it's kind of hard to write about it and make it sound even a third as interesting and fun as it was.

It started when we were picked up from our guest house and went out to the market to load up bags of fruit (mostly watermelons, bananas and cucumbers) for the elephants morning feed. We were then driven the hour and a half out to the Nature Park! Once we turned off the main road and bounced along the pothole filled road, we saw our first elephant. It wasn't from the Nature Park though, it was from one of the elephant trekking camps a little bit down the road from the Nature Park. When we turned into the Nature Park there they were, elephants all over...

It's sort of hard to believe, but we've made it here to Chiang Mai. You'd think it would have been a fairly easy and boring trip, but that's not quite the case.

We arranged the Night Boat from Koh Tao to get us back to Surit Thani (this is a port on the mainland of Thailand), from which we could then get a plane to Bangkok and from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
We spent all of Tuesday hanging out around Koh Tao, wasting time, just as I wrote in my previous entry. We bludged in the Internet cafe for a couple of hours, then spent the afternoon in a nice cheap resturant where we just bought a drink every hour and lounged on the comfortable mats reading our books and planning our next few days. Eventually 8pm rolled on and it was time to and catch the Night Boat.

We...

We've got time to burn today, we checked out of our bungalow at 10am and aren't leaving on the night boat to Surit Thani until 9pm. That means we have a lot of walking around with our backpacks, we don't really want to keep them back at the bungalows because they'd be out in the open and we have no way to look after them. Once we get off at Surit Thani we're flying back to Bangkok, then to Chiang Mai.

We managed to burn up a couple of hours this morning, streching out breakfast at the bunglows out until 12:30, just sitting on the comfortable mats and reading our books. There's a lot of place here that'll take your old book and trade it (plus a fee, of course) for a new one, so we're taking advantage of that.

The night boat should be interesting, according to most people...

Woke up this morning with my sore throat even more clicky and weird than it was last night. Uh-oh, I'm coming down with a cold I think. All day today one of my nostrils has been running. But not the other one, which is a little odd. No doubt I have malaria or something similar, though actually I think we've done a really good job of keeping the biting nasties away from us. I check all the mozzie screens each night, put a mozzie coil outside the front door and spray the room with flyspray just before we got to sleep. I've had a couple of bites, as has Sarah, but nothing like some of the people I've seen walking around here who are covered in bites and marks.

We've done bugger all today, mostly on account of me feeling a bit off. I took the scooter back and managed...

Finally we have a nice sunny day. So nice and sunny it's so hot it's almost unbearable.
I went and hired a nice big 125cc dirt bike today, thinking it would be heaps of fun to ride around on. I was wrong, it was too much of a pain to drive (gears, clutch etc) so I took it back an hour later and swapped it for a scooter. Much more fun, easier to ride and we both feel safe on it, as opposed to the dirt bike.

[Edit: Be sure to read Sarah's story for today, very funny!]

We had a lovely dinner last night, right on the waterfront with lanterns on our table and stuck in the sand right at the waters edge. I wish we could have taken a photo, but it wouldn't have done the scene justice no matter how good the photo was.

Koh Tao is...

I'd read a couple of travel books that had said that Koh Tao was very remote and didn't have a proper power source, that power was provided by generators and only on at certain times of the day. Boy how things have changed since that was written, there's more Internet Cafe's here than on Koh Phangan.

Of course, it's STILL raining. Yesterday while waiting for the Ferry from Koh Phangan to Koh Tao the most intense rainstorm yet hit the Ferry Terminal. Then the Ferry arrived so we all had to troop out to get on the Ferry with the rain bucketing down. Wasn't a great experience but we've got really good backpacks so everything stayed nice and dry, especially because Sarah had a brainwave while we were backing to back everything into rubbish sacks.

The Ferry ride over was uneventful, shame that we were the last ones on (trying...

We're back at Thong Sala burning up some time until our Ferry for Koh Tao leaves at 2pm, it's only 12:15pm at the moment. Instead of writing up a blow-by-blow I thought I might write up some of the things that I've noticed and/or find interesting about the time we've spent here so far.

First of all, everyone rides motorbikes or large ute and 4WDs around. There's no cars (with the exception of central Bangkok). Motorbikes are the way to get around though, you see motorbikes going past with 4 people and a dog on them, groceries and bags balanced perfectly.

On Koh Phangan I love the massive lightning storms that I've seen, even though of course they mean it's actually also raining and thus making our holiday less fun. They're huge though, the whole sky lights up every 30 seconds or so with these brilliant flashes of light. Way...

It's still raining here on Koh Phangan and we're sick to death of it. Last night was the famous Koh Phangan Full Moon party but we didn't bother to go because it was pissing with rain all night. Instead I sat on the porch, had a few beers and watched the massive lightning storm as it boomed and crashed over the Island.

Tomorrow we're checking out of Ibiza Bungalows and getting on the slow ferry to Koh Tao. I'm not sure if we'll have any Internet there, so if you don't hear from us for 5-6 days that's why.

Tim

It's amazing how quickly you stop enjoying the cooling rain and get sick of it. It's SO annoying, Thailand is meant to be at its hottest and driest this time of year and instead we've had 4 days of overcast crapness and bucketing rain.

We haven't let that stop us from enjoying ourselves, even though it's annoying. Yesterday we hired a scooter (though here anything with two wheels is called a Motorbike) and fanged it around Koh Pangan. We decided against hiring them on Koh Samui because of how dangerous the roads were there, but here is a totally different story. There's much less traffic and drivers are much more considerate, slowing down and moving over to let people go past. Pretty much the complete opposite of Koh Samui.

Yesterday mission seemed easy enough: Aquire a kettle. We've decided that to help cut costs a little bit we can make...