Travel Diary: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Thailand

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!!!!! Thank you for all your messages on the blog!! 19 December Today we checked out of the awesome Dream Garden (too expensive to stay any longer) and checked into Seaworld Guesthouse. When we had been to scope out the room the day before it looked fine and the price was great at 600 baht (£12)! However, as soon as we had lugged our bags up the three flights of stairs and sat down in the smoke infused room we realised it wasn’t that great at all! The lights didn’t work for a start neither did the air con. They sent an electrician to fix the lights late in the afternoon and apparently we had paid for a fan room not air con!! After Shaun was told this he had an argument with the owner and told her we were leaving the following morning! Never mind, we’ve only paid for one night! During the day the weather was still really overcast but we decided to head to the beach anyway. Firstly, we went down to the see the monkeys at the end of the beach. There are hundreds of monkeys here all playing and even swimming in the water, they are awesome to watch! And what’s really funny is the gang of three dogs that chase the monkeys around. One monkey was even punching and kicking the dog in the face and then running up a tree – it was hilarious!! They are really like little humans! A few of them were even washing some coconut in the stream before eating it! And just then the sun poked its way through the clouds!! We quickly ran to find a spot on the beach and lay there until it started raining again a few hours later!! We have booked a day of rafting and ATVing for tomorrow – will be great to go out and actually do something! 20 December We got up at 7am and checked out of the horrible little room and checked in next door at TopView Hotel! We managed to get an air con room in a brand new hotel for 800b and it’s amazing!! Brand new bed and pillows, flowing water in the taps, a balcony with an amazing view to go with it over the mountains! We were picked up (in a very nice mini van) and taken an hour and a half to the rafting start point (the same as I did in March)! We were all geared up and me and Shaun had to be guinea pigs for the demonstration! The rafts hold 4 people and a guide and we were paired up with 2 lads from London. As it’s dry season (well supposed to be) there is hardly any water in the stream so they release a damn and as soon as the water comes your way you jump in the raft!! I hadn’t bigged up the rapids so much to Shaun so he was really surprised at how good it was! The 5km went by in a flash!! There were no people overboard (not mentioning any names from last time haha) and no one capsized as far as we knew. But we think we probably had the worst situation. We went the wrong way out of a rapid and got wedged between two massive rocks!! We started the ‘jumpy jumpy’ to try and unwedge ourselves but this hilariously resulted in a flood on one side of the dingy! The water filled up the dingy like that and the boys had to unhook their feet (to their dismay as one of the guys was petrified!) to get into the front section to weight the boat out of the rocks! This eventually worked after what seemed like half an hour and we were on our way with the water up to our knees!! The 5kms ended way too quickly and we were at the end of rafting for the day. After an awesome Thai lunch we were picked up to be taken to the ATVing!! To our delight there was only one other couple doing the hours ATVing. After a very brief safety overview and no instructions on how to ride we were off for our trial lap to show off our ability so the instructor could decide the difficulty of the course! The Malaysian woman was terrible and thankfully got on the back on her husband’s quad instead!! The ATV course was awesome!!!!!! We ended up doing the hard course over some really difficult terrain. Because there has been heavy rain the past few days the muddy puddles were huge which made it soooo much better (aside from Shaun trying to wheel spin all the time to try and soak me!!!). Just as we were back on the road thinking we were finished we were taken down a track which lead to the river ... which we went through!! It was brilliant fun! The water was way higher than the tires on extremely pebblely terrain and the instructor just told us to keep going or we’d stall! Just as we thought we had finished and pulled back into camp the instructor starting egging Shaun on to race him!!! He was in his element!! After a very quick spin we skidded into the bike park with huge grins on our faces and very achy thumbs (from holding the accelerator). Money well spent!! (Unfortunately, no pictures as we didn’t have the camera on us) Just as we were ready for a good rest we were picked up to be taken to Monkey Temple. There were literally hundreds of monkeys running around pestering the tourists for food outside the entrance to the cave! We paid our 20 baht and went into the ‘Light Cave’ where they have a lying down budda and then down into the ‘Dark Cave’ where (it stinks) and there is nothing but bats! We climbed up the carved steps to see what was on top which turned out to be ... NOTHING!! We couldn’t believe we climbed up the slippery steps to see nothing! Any way we went back out to see the monkeys anyhow! As we were standing there looking at the monkeys one suddenly climbed up Shaun’s leg and sat in the palm of his hand (I was too slow with the camera though)! 21 December As it is a bit overcast today we didn’t really do a lot today. 22 December Today we are doing the 4 Islands boat trip by long tail boat. We were picked up at 9 and taken the 5 minute walk around the corner to where the boats depart on the beach. Our boat was a massive wooden junk with a huge iveco lorry engine strapped to the back!! The weather is absolutely perfect for a boat trip today with glorious sunshine and no wind! Firstly, we went to Lupa Island where we did some sun bathing and snorkelling and saw a few fish! Then we went around to Chicken Island where we jumped off the boat and did some awesome snorkelling where we saw hundreds of fish and even swam with jelly fish. Throughout the day we saw 34 jellyfish and this after I had heard a little girl ask if there are any jellyfish and got a negative response!!! After this we sat at the bow of the boat and ate lunch and fed the fish at the same time. Just as we were leaving Chicken Island we turned around and saw why it’s called Chicken Island – it looks like a huge chicken!! We then went off to Tup Island where there is just a huge patch of pure white sand which looked almost surreal. Our last stop was Phranang Cave where we discovered the cave with hundreds of wooden carved willies - we think this is the shrine of fertility!! We saw a man in the distance diving off the cliff into the water. How could I say no? I climbed to top and met two blokes daring each other to do back flips but in the end only one of them did it. I did the legendary bomb shell (photo sequence looks awesome!). (This is Shaun again by the way.) We got dropped off at Au Nang just as it started to drizzle! We walked back to our hotel and got a quick shower which revealed how sunburnt we were! And then headed back to the beach to watch the sunset. For our last meal in Krabi we decided to go all out and have another seafood feast with huge tiger prawns, squid and a red snapper – yum yum!! 23 December We were up at 5 am this morning to pack up and catch the bus and ferry to Koh Samui. The mini van was actually decent and the 2/3 hour journey was uneventful so nothing to report there! We are well adapted to long term travel now and 2 hours is nothing! Our joint ticket included the Rang Ruang boat to Koh Samui (just as bad as the SongSerm) which took another 2 hours but the seas were calm so it was an easy journey again. After an incredibly long ride in a tuk tuk to Chaweng in Samui we were dropped off at AKWA Guesthouse where we have booked 5 nights on the net. WELL ... So first off we had to pay the remaining half of the booking fee and were then shown to our room. On first glance it is all very nice with funky furniture and pictures but that musty damp smell is unmistakable! And yes as soon we had a look the whole of the back of the room is leaking from the ceiling! (By the way it is torrentially raining here where we had to walk across the road in water nearly up to our knees! I can’t believe we just left beautiful glorious sunshine in Krabi to come here to major floods!) Anyway, we got one of the guys to check out the leaks and he suggested putting a few towels down. No way are we having this for Christmas - our Christmas treat since we are paying well over our budget and over the odds for the room in the first place at 1300 baht! We went to ask the manager if we were able to move rooms but since it is full he declined. So we asked if we could have discount on the leaky room again he declined. So we asked if we could have a refund and move hotels and again he declined and was quite actually the rudest guy I have ever spoken to! He said that he is not God and cannot control the weather and that we really just wanted discount as we were happy to stay in the room and he was a complete ******!!!!! Shaun was about ready to knock his block off but kept calm and said his bit! But no way was I going to let that guy get away with it that easily (learning from the best) we had a stand off and he schizophrenically changed his tone and offered to fix the room tomorrow and we could move into a deluxe room on Christmas and have free breakfast everyday in his cafe! That’s better but he is still a ******! 24 December This morning we woke up early to go and have our free breakfast! Then we went for a stroll along the main road in the surprisingly beautiful weather where there are hundreds of restaurants, bars, tailors, beauty salons and 7/11s! We recognised bits of it from when we came here 2 years ago. Then I started feeling really ill again with achy bones so headed back as Shaun continued down the 7km strip. In the evening we went to an Aussie restaurant where Shaun had an all you can eat hog roast, and boy did he eat all he could eat!!! 25 December – Merry Christmas!!!! Unfortunately, Santa didn’t find us this year! And we didn’t even get any pressies for each other so it just seems like any other day! We had our free breakfast and then moved rooms. We checked out of our damp room, into a room which looked like it’s from a totally different hotel as it’s so nice! We went down to the beach for a bit for a little sunbathe and a coconut and everyone was in Santa hats! After we had done all of our Merry Christmas Skype sessions it was 8.30 pm and we hadn’t even had a drink yet today!! Very disappointing since everyone at home is 7 hours behind us and they are all on the champers! We headed out to find a Christmas Dinner but as it was so late we couldn’t find anywhere so settled for the same restaurant we ate at the previous night! I had a rib and chicken all you can eat and Shaun had an Australian fillet steak and tiger prawn one! He must have eaten at least 60oz of steak! Not only did he have 5 portions of steak he even had a repeat order of mine!! Animal! Midway through our meal there was a blackout on the entire street so for about 10 minutes we had a romantic candle lit dinner! And to apologise for the blackout we each got a free beer! And just as we were about to leave the waiter gave us a free tequila shot each! Bargain! After dinner we headed to bar street for a bucket session! At about 3am we decided to go to the beach for a dance ... but to our surprise it was dead and all the music shut down! We can only assume everyone one went over to Koh Phangan for a party on the beach because it has been dead all night! 26 December - 27 December We haven’t really done a lot over the past few days just chilled out and tried to find Christmas find without any luck! Lots of love Jo & Shaun P.S. Please leave us some comments so we know you’re still thinking of us! And by the way you can get an auto email when we post a blog if you subscribe somewhere on the left of the screen!