There's a gecko on my pillow! Koh Tao

After a ferry journey that seemed to go on for ever we arrived on the sunny shores of Koh Tao, you are met of the pier by all these people shouting "Taxi, taxi, but that's not our name so we ignored them . David had booked us into the Crystal Dive Resort, which is about two minutes walk from the pier, of course it took us about 15 minutes as we got lost! Yes I know , how can you get lost  when something is only two minutes away, it is a talent we have. 

After getting booked into our bungalow, which is mmmm shall we say rustic, but clean and that is the main thing we headed to the resort cafe where they actually do very good food, we ended up going there every day. As we sat down something caught my eye, I grabbed David and pointed at the sea, to discover it was a pretend turtle, look at the size of it . How on earth could I think it was real. 

The beach right beside us, we stayed at the Mae Head Bay, which is where the piers are and where all the ferries arrive. We arrived early enough for David to do two afternoon dives while I settled into the luxury bungalow! He came back all excited, he had seen lots and was pleased at how well he had done as he had not managed to do as many dives at home as he had planned , due to the weather or work 

Filling in his log book. 

In the evening we headed back to the cafe just as the sun started to set. 

It is very hot here and everybody is trying to cool down, this dog went for a paddle. We saw another dog , one of those little fluffy things that has a bobble in its fringe standing head first into a fan so it's hair was blowing behind it. It had a big smile on its face, really pleased with itself, I was going to take a photo but it's owner was right beside it. 

Anyone for tea, okay this is not what was being served up as you can see from the photo below it is alive and well. 

 

This is the bungalow from outside with the magic red flower bush. Everyday three different people would come at different times of the day and  dead head it leaving it totally bare, then the next morning it would have flowers again. 

 

David managed to get ten dives and he enjoyed everyone, he saw lots of different fish, many for the first time. He  also went down to a wreck and saw coral reefs.  Sadly he didn't see a whale shark which was what he really wanted to see, so now he wants to go to Mexico because apparently they go there. 

While he was diving I spent most of the time in the bungalow, it was so nice I didn't want to leave it, sometimes I would be brave and venture outside but it was often too hot. I kept myself busy reading, and even resorted to hand washing clothes to keep myself out of mischief. This island is lovely for divers but there is not much else to do, if we were to come back I would volunteer at the local school or animal shelter.  

 One day when I was in the bungalow I got that feeling, the I am being watched feeling. I slowly turned around and there was a gecko sat proudly on the pillow looking at me, I am sure it was smiling.  I managed to get a picture of it before picking it up and putting it outside. You might have to enlarge the photo to see it! 

 I let David take this photo to show I was actually on the island, I am striking my stunning model pose, wished I breathed in though!

On our last day we went for a wander and it just so happened there were two geocaches on the route we took! The first one we got really easy, then we set off for the second, David headed off into the trees to look beside this huge concrete turtle for the hidden treasure, when all of of a sudden there was this thumping noise, a coconut bounced off the turtle and rolled away , nearly hitting David. Then another came down and another he looked up and there was a monkey up there chucking coconuts at him, then David became aware of a man at the side who was shouting instructions to the monkey to get the nuts. Clever, don't you think, although at one point I thought David was going to be knocked out by a coconut and I wondered how I was going to explain that to the insurance! We beat a hasty retreat, no geocache find there. 

Night train to Chumphon

Right we could do this, we were being positive, we were going to do a night train all by ourselves, not as part of a group. To be honest, Bee from the Smile hostel had organised it all, train tickets, a shuttle bus from train stop to ferry and a ferry ticket. She talked  us through the whole procedure, times, what to look for at the shuttle stop, and I even asked her what the stop was before our final stop.  My main worry was sleeping in and missing our stop which would mean we would miss the shuttle bus and ferry. 

Once packed we made a sad farewell to Bee, I wish she was coming with us and headed off with our rucksacks on our backs. First off all we had to catch the sky train to the main train station. This was the first time we had used this station and visions of India came into my head, cows, people on the floor, rats, chaos etc.This station was calm, clean, well organised waiting area and a help desk as you walked in , with a helpful person who pointed the direction and told us the platform. We had left in plenty of time so sat in the large waiting area and even treated ourselves to a KFC to see us through the night. David getting restless went exploring and to see where platform 4 was, he came back and said the train was already in and we could get on it.  This was great because it meant we could get on leisurely, find our seats and put our bags away in a calm manner. 

I humphed my big rucksack on my back, put my small bag on my front and walked towards the train, we were looking for coach 11. We walked down seeing the coaches and figured out that number 11 should be next but kept walking until we saw it written on the side, yep, there it was. So we kept going down to the next door and I got on, squeezing my bags through the doorway then turned into the narrow bit between the carriages to go back into number 11. The door was locked so I told David who was behind me that we would have to go back and he headed off, I turned in the small gap and got wedged! I couldn't move and David had disappeared off into the distance, I wiggled and squirmed and eventually managed to get my small bag off which released me from my trap, at this point David returned with a quizzical look on his face, wondering where I was. 

We found our seats easy and they were so roomy and comfy that we immediately felt  happier about this night train. What did confuse us was that our seats were seats not beds like on the Indian train, so curious as ever I set about fiddling and realised bits slotted out and slid together to create the lower bed while the upper bunk was stored up like the storage things on an aeroplane and dropped down when needed. As I fiddled a man came who was going to be in the bunk above me, he was from Thailand and was to prove helpful for translating things as the journey continued, because he turned up I stopped fiddling but couldn't slot the base of my seat back in properly but thought it wouldn't 

matter as my sitting on it would keep it still and steady. So I was sat on one seat facing him and he was on the other seat facing me, both seats would collapse to become my bed. 

David meanwhile fiddled with his seats and made his bed, which really he shouldn't have done because that was a job for the bed man who made the beds! Chuffed with his handiwork David relaxed with a celebratory bottle of coke.

There are only two layers of bed on this train, not three like the Indian train so there was room to sit up on your seat even if the person above was sleeping. 

In this picture you can see the two seats facing each other , there were also curtains, which gave a bit of privacy. Eventually the train started and we moved off very slowly and then it chugged a bit and then there was  a sharp judder and my seat with the wobbly bottom shot forward, nearly decapitating the Thai man at the knees, I slid it back, smiled weakly at him and the train chugged forward only to  sudden jolt again this time I newly ended up on his lap. Again I slid it back, but the train kept jolting all over the place so I ended up bracing my leg up against the Thai man's seat which luckily he found quite funny. David on the other hand was terrified he thought we were all doomed. Such a drama queen! 

After about 15 minutes we had gone about the distance you could walk and then we shuddered all the way back to where we started, back to platform 4. The guards were walking up and down the carriages briskly so the Thai  man asked what was going on and apparently they were going to get us a new engine as the other one was broken. 

Once we were on our way the bed man came, he unlocks the upper bed and up there is the mattresses and bedding for the beds, he then makes your bed, first of all by dismantling and sorting seats and then he also puts the covers on for you and hangs up a curtain. Me and David were directly across from each other so could make faces at each other all night. By our calculations the train was suppose to arrive at 4:13am so we set the alarm for 3 am, but of course now the train was late and we didn't know if it would make up time or not. I struggled to go to sleep and was still awake at half ten, I must have nodded off then and was awake by midnight and that was me for the night, I couldn't sleep. With the curtains drawn I didn't know if David was awake or not but about half two he pulled the curtain open so I crept over to his bunk to hatch a plan. Cunning eh, he was going to go to the loo, I had already been and was not doing that again! No matter how nice trains are their loos are never pleasant. While there he would find a guard and ask them what time we were expecting to arrive at. Well, the doors at one end were tied up so we couldn't get out them and at the other end there was a sort of latch hook thing shutting the door and the guard was fast asleep between the two carriages, with the door in between us and him. that scuppered that plan, so we had the name of the station which was the one before ours and knew what time we should be there so kept a look out for that. What a carry on trying to catch the name of stations as we went past and sometimes we just stopped at random places for a while then would set off again! Then at about half five, the guard wandered up, David was asleep again, looked at me and David and said "Chumphon", I said "Yes", and he replied " Time to wake up." Honestly, really if I knew we were getting woken up I would have been able to sleep! We arrived at about 6 am, it was amazing to see what some people  were struggling off with, one guy had a dismantled quad bike on a metal trolley which was propped beside his bed, he struggled to get that out of the door, and in his rucksack there were all these poles sticking out which was a shower for a friend of his!  

When we got onto the station there was a man waiting to sort all the people out onto their shuttle buses which were more like army trucks and we set off for the harbour just as the sun started to rise. It was like Dawn of the Living Dead on the ferry all these people sprawled all over the place fast asleep, even me and David nodded off. 

Odd bits and bobs.

A few things that I may have forgot to mention.

One of the times me and David were in Lumpini park in Bangkok, the place where they do all the exercising a strange thing happened. Picture the scene, the runners that come out in their hundreds were running around the track that goes through the park, the Zumba class is in full flow, and David was rooting about for a geocache! I meanwhile am trying to act casual and that David ferreting about in trees is normal when I become aware that everybody is standing still, the runners have stopped , the exercise class has stopped everyone just standing, I hissed at David to stand still, he is shouting "What" repeatedly at me so I gestured towards the human statues. It was like a scene from a horror film, then a whistle went and they all started moving again. When we got back to the hostel I asked Bee and NId what it was about and apparently twice a day they stand silently for a minute in honour of their king, 8 o'clock in the morning I think and 6 o'clock at night, every day!


On the Indian trip we were talking away as a group when Daniel from Germany said the people who speak the best English, the ones who are easier to understand are the Indians, to be fair the British people on the trip were from Scotland and Wales!


When we were in Nepal, me and David were walking up the road when a man walked up to me and said " Excuse me" I replied "Yes" and he said " I just want to tell you that you are a beautiful goddess". Mmmm I muttered while David said "I'll have a pint of what you're on!" Now to be fair I was looking gorgeous that day, it was the first time I had worn my shorts, so had tanned arms, white legs it was also a couple of days after I had fallen down the stairs so had a scabby knee and bruises up one leg. Obviously a look that suits me! 

Smile Society Boutique Hostel Bangkok

Every now and again you come across a little gem and that is what the Smile Society Boutique Hostel is, we really landed lucky when David came across it on a booking site and this place made our visit to Bangkok extra special.  That is why I would like to share it more with you.

For a start we only planned to stay in Bangkok for a couple of days,  do what we needed to do and then head out, cities are not really our type of thing with all the hustle and bustle. In the end we stayed for 6 days and only left because we had other things planned that needed to be done to fit in with our schedule.

As soon as we booked the place we got easy to follow directions on how to find the hostel, so easy we didn't get lost, everything was done step by step. This helped to keep my stress levels down, and made carting my rucksack around Bangkok so much easier, as I wasn't wandering around aimlessly with it on my back.

The hostel is in the Silom area very close to the railway and sky trains so made travelling around thereafter very easy and very cheap. David liked that and it meant no bargaining with tuktuk drivers or worrying if taxi drivers were fiddling you. Although taxi drivers are better regulated now in Thailand and need to use a meter.

Although the hostel is off a busy street which is excellent for street food, restaurants, market stalls, shops and pubs you wouldn't know it from the hostel which is quiet, serene and a little oasis in a concrete jungle. The outside has been planted up with beautiful flowers and has fish bowls on the porch, this area also doubles up as an area to chill out or to smoke.

On entering the building we were met by Bee, who runs the hostel with her sister Nid. Bee was lovely and welcoming and soon had our room organised, she was to become a great friend and asset over the following days.  Bee helped us to become orientated with the city and gave us ideas on where to visit and how to get there. There is also an area in the foyer where ideas, events are displayed, such as the Saturday street market.  There is also information in the foyer telling you what to be aware of, such as local scams, pricing of tuktuks etc.

Our hostel room was lovely, I could have cried at how nice it was especially after some of the rooms I have been in and they were hotel rooms! The rooms were tidied everyday and there was a very good wifi service, which you got in your room. Breakfast every day was more than enough and I couldn't eat it all, an added bonus was you got a decent cup of tea, something I have really missed on my travels.

Bee and Nid were lovely to chat to and were always willing to help or to answer questions, through them I learnt so much more about Thailand, it's people and it's culture. They even put up with my daft questions such as " Why are the cat's tails so short?" They were very accommodating and really made us feel at home.

There is also a lovely park about five minutes walk away, Lumpini Park, where we visited several times and took a picnic, it has a lot of varied wildlife to see but also a lot of activity and things to watch. There is a running track with people of all ages running around it, a cycling track, people practising dancing and martial arts and even Zumba type classes that you can join in for free. There is also tai chi for free in the mornings.

There is a communal area upstairs in which a lot of the younger residents hung out, chatting, eating,
using the computers and making new friends. Security in the place is excellent there is a key card to get in the front door, another security door at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the communal area and rooms, and we also had a lock on our room door.

Bee also helped us to organise other things we wanted to do in Bangkok, she sorted out our trip to the River Kwai and Hellfire Pass and arranged our overnight train and ferry to Koh Tao. Things that we needed to do but she phoned up the right people and did it all, saving us time and stress. She even talked us through the procedure of the night train something I was particularly worried about after my Indian experience.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay here and would like to go back even just for a chat with Bee, she was a good laugh and so nice to talk to, she even taught us a bit of Thai,  I would recommend Smile Society to anybody who is thinking about visiting, their email is

SmileDThailand@gmail.com
www.SMILESOCIETYHOSTEL.COM

Kob koon kha   To Bee and Nid and all the staff of Smile Society

Keep smiling! 

Jim Thompson's House. Bangkok

On the advice of Bee who runs the hostel we are staying in , we decided to visit the house of Jim Thompson, and we are so glad we did as it was absolutely beautiful to see and we also learnt more about Thai culture and beliefs. 

Jim Thompson was an American who was born in 1906, he was an architect before World War II and as part of his military service he was sent to Asia. He was sent to Bangkok as a military officer and there he fell in love with Thailand and decided to live there after leaving the army. 

He became interested in the silk making industry and helped to develop its growth and worldwide recognition. He decided to build a house close to the Muslim community which made the silk, I say build a house but what he did was to combine six existing Thai style houses from around the country and bring them to the one spot. Most of the houses were at least two centuries old , they were dismantled and reassembled to make up his house. 

Before moving into his house Jim had an astrology chart made up to see which would be a good day to move in, this chart told him a date but also said that he should be very careful in his 61st year. The house and his art collection attracted a lot of attention so even in his lifetime the house was open to the public, at that time only for two days a week. 

In his 61st year , he went on holiday staying with a friend in the Cameron highlands of Malaysia. While there he went for a walk one day and he has never been seen since or any remains found, to this day it was a mystery as to what happened to him. 

We were shown around the house by a guide who was very informative and spoke very good 

English and she explained a lot to us. 

The traditional houses have a raised bit at the doorways this has two purposes, one it stopped babies crawling out of the area but also they believe in bad spirits that can only go straight along the ground , when the spirits meet the raised bit they are stopped from entering. Every door has this raised bit not just the entrance to the house.

This is the living room, there is a day bed in the centre. 

The house on the left was the kitchen and the one on the right was the garage. 

The main living quarters.

This is Oscar the fish he is a bit mean and will bite, maybe that is why he is in a bowl by itself. 

The woodcarving on the wall is actually a printing block, bits of wood can be removed to add colour. The pottery in the front has designs on it which are replicated on the wood. The big vase type one are all over the place in the house and are used as fish bowls. I mentioned this to Bee and she showed me ones outside the hostel which were full of little fish, she said they were good for keeping mosquito numbers down as the fish eat the mosquito grubs. 

The smaller pots either side are stools, these have holes in the pottery and  when it is cold, burning charcoal is put in the pots to warm the seat up. Good idea! 

Then we saw the silk making process.

Silkworms, these were all squirming around.

The cocoons, these have a yellow cocoon some silkworms have white cocoons. 

Here the cocoons are soaked in hot water to get the threads.

This is a little house, which is a house for the guardian spirits. Offerings are made to it of flowers, water and food. 

Another fish bowl.

A turtle in one of the ponds. 

Hellfire Pass

After our visit to the elephants we had lunch and then headed off to Hellfire Pass. This is a place where the prisoners of war had to manually cut through the mountainside to lay down the railway track. Nowadays it is a beautiful museum, with information well laid out and a short video describes events that happen. There are not many exhibits as most of what the men had rotted away in the humidity of the jungle. 

Hopefully you can enlarge these pictures to read them. With more and more prisoners dying or becoming too weak to work, work fell behind on the railway, so the Japanese employed romusha, who were Asian labourers  to help. The Romusha were promised high wages and good conditions, some even took their families with them but in reality they were treated worse than the prisoners and thousands of them also died.

At the museum you can get a free audio guide and walk along part of the railway and through Hellfire Pass. It was called Hellfire Pass by the prisoners who had to work through the night to get it done, to do this it was lit up with torches which they said looked like the fires of hell. 

Nowadays it is very beautiful, calm and very atmospheric. As you walk along listening to the audio guide you get a real feel of what the situation must have been like, especially in the sweltering heat and mosquitoes flying around. We felt the heat just wandering the route, without doing any physical work, we had cold water with us, sun hats to shade us and could stop when we wanted to. 

This is right in the pass, as walked this bit the audio guide was explaining the ceremony that is held here on ANZAC day every year. Family and friends walk though the pass at night carrying torches to the memorial place at the end, as they do so bagpipes and a bugle play from lookout spots above the pass. At that, on the tape the bagpipes started playing, was quite moving to hear. 

A broken drill bit still in the rock. A hole would be made and dynamite placed in to blast the rock which would then be carried out by the men. Many men were injured during this process and their wounds would become ulcerated and infected in the damp, hot weather.

If the men were lucky they had these carts to help them shift the rock, if  not they had to carry them by hand. 

The stone at the memorial spot.

We carried on after the memorial spot and did some more of the route, sadly we did not have time to complete it all as we had to join up with our tour group. 

If you look closely you can see a snake on the rock, it slithered over the path in front of us. 

A view from one of the points on the route. At this point on the audio guide, there was an ex prisoner telling his story and he said that he loved the beauty of the place and it was that, that had got him through the experience.

There were many ex prisoners recounting their experiences and most of them told a humorous story of what had happened while they had been there. It was basically the comradeship between the men that helped the men who survived. A great deal of respect was shown towards the doctors who often took a beating for standing up for the patients by saying they were too ill to work. 

Hellfire Pass from above.

A railway carriage from World War II

We really enjoyed our visit here and would like to visit it again to do the whole walk. 

Elephant rides and bamboo rafting

As part of this trip we did bamboo rafting and went for a ride on an elephant.

I thought for the bamboo rafting we would get a raft made from bamboo and an oar and be allowed to 

basically muck about on the river, great fun. No, that is not what happens, you all go on one big raft, a motor boat drags you up the river, the motor boat then drives off and you float back down. Well it was alright, calm and very peaceful once the motor boat had left but it was not what I was expecting. Hey ho! 

David looking down the river. 

One of the bridges we went under. 

The boy in charge of the boat, at times he would slap the water with an oar! I think he was bored.

What the bamboo rafts look like. 

The boats took us down to where we were going for our elephant rides. We both felt uncertain about doing this as you hear so many horrible stories of how the animals are treated. I looked very carefully around the area and although I could not see any signs of cruelty I still felt uneasy.  Some of the elephants were chained up but the chains were really long, our mahout did not use a stick at all, just shouted commands, the two other mahouts had sticks in their hands with a metal spike on but I didn't see them using them. 

We got off the elephant as soon as possible and were back at the starting point well ahead of the others as we declined offers to get photos done etc. Once we were off we had the  option of tipping the elephant,  this I did gladly buying him two baskets of bananas which I fed to her. 

I did not tip the mahout, I do not think he was impressed with us , maybe he could feel our  uneasiness. As we got on, he asked us where we were from we told him Scotland, at that he looked totally confused, one of the other workers there understood and said it again to him and he sort of nodded. Then half way through the trip in which he had ignored us, but played with his phone, he swung around looked at me and said " Where are you from? " I replied "Scotland" he shrugged and turned back, so we said "Joined to England , near Wales, Ireland, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Europe" there was no response, suddenly he turned around to David and said" and you, same same" pointing  between me and David. David said " Yea , Scotland too" at that he just grunted, turned around and the conversation ended. He was not impressed! We just smiled at each other, no tip from us, mate!