Island Hopping – Koh Lanta, Phuket, Similan Isles, Koh Phangan

Wow a long time has passed since we last wrote, a combination of laziness, adventure and sickness. We spent a further 3 weeks island hopping, from Koh Lanta we crossed to Phuket which was a big shock to the system for us, full of bright lights and very different to the laid back lifestyle we’d been leading. There was even a cinema showing English films so on Valentines day we treated ourselves to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and some popcorn, it seemed just like we were back home at the cinema in Reading until we had to stand to salute to the King before the film started.

Safety First - Improving our motorcycling skills on Koh Lanta

Next is one of our favorite places of the trip so far – The Similan Isles, a national park of nine isands 50 km off the coast of Phuket, a true tropical paradise with turquoise water and pure white sand. Its also one of the top 10 dive/snorkel sights in the world so we were persuaded to do a two day snorkeling trip. The two hour speedboat journey there was a bit nerve wracking, and we were a bit disappointed that our tour group consisted entirely of middle aged women with abundant bodily hair, but it was well worth it when we arrived. The snorkeling was amazing, we saw what seemed like every kind of fish imaginable, and just so many of them, puffafish, starfish, sea turtles, and i cant remember the names of the others! After trying to avoid our tour group at dinner we camped overnight which was fun, apart from the lack of sleep - our tent was surrounded by gigantic bats that screeched all night long.

Dan enjoying tropical paradise on the Similan Isles

After another bumpy speedboat ride back we were meant to cross straight over to the Gulf coast on the way to Koh Pagnan but we missed our bus by about 1 minute and so were stranded in Khao Lak for the night, a bit of a strange place, its where the tsunami hit worst and was still like a ghost town. We set off bright and early the next morning but accidentally got on the wrong bus, the locals bus rather than the air conditioned VIP bus we’d planned on. It rattled along stopping every 20 minutes or so and by the end I had a thai lady asleep on my shoulder, but we did finally reach Koh Phangan. We weren't there for a full moon party but the place we were staying at had crazy pool parties every two days so we managed a few buckets of sangsom and redbull anyway. What a lethal combination, after the first one we found ourselves still wondering round the town at 4am wondering what to do next.

Watching the sunset from Sunset Rock

At this point we decided that a month of islands was enough and that we’d head north to Chiang Mai. We decided not to fly as it was too expensive but I don't think we fully appreciated that it was 1500 km away from Koh Phangan, this turned out to be the journey from hell! The first 6 hours on the ferry was fairly uneventful, and luckily we managed to buy the last two sleeper bunks for the overnight train to Bangkok (organised as ever we’d forgotten to book in advance) but this train turned out to be delayed meaning we missed our connection in Bangkok. After a night of no sleep we trudged to the bus station instead and sat on the coach for 10 hours, finally reaching Chiang Mai 32 hours after we’d set out!