A few lovely things for a very rainy night in Cambodia.
A few lovely things for a very rainy night in Cambodia.
The funny thing about Koh Lanta is that even though it was one of my favourite islands, it was so chill and relaxing that I took almost no photos the whole time we were there.
It was super quiet, we maybe saw 10 other tourists the whole time were on the island, and our guest house was right on the ocean, so we had the whole place, and the pool to ourselves.
We rented a moped because tuk-tuks were 200TBH each way, and you could rent a moped for an entire day for that much. I was a bit nervous since they drive on the opposite side of the road than we do, and also drivers there tend to be a bit erratic, passing each other constantly, even when other drivers are coming, so there are quite a few near misses.
On our first night, we set off on our moped, looking for a restaurant on the southwest side of the island where we planned to eat dinner. Over an hour of cruising later, we realized we had hit a dead end. It was starting to get dark outside, and we were clearly lost, so we turned around and headed back the way we came. When we finally found a map on the side of the road, we realized we’d taken a wrong turn, and had ended up on the complete opposite side of the island from the restaurant we were looking for.
Other than that little incident, it was pretty much smooth sailing. Quite a few of the restaurants on the island were closed because we were there during the low season, but the island was so gorgeous that we weren’t too upset.
We did visit the national park at the very southern tip of the island, which was crazy-gorgeous, with monkeys and monitor lizards running around everywhere, a lighthouse, and a nature hike that takes about two hours to complete.
One tip if you are going to visit Koh Lanta, we liked being there in the low season because it was cheaper, and it was nice to just relax after a few days of partying in Phi Phi, but the one downside was that some of the islands near Koh Lanta are designated as being part of the national marine park, and they aren’t open during the low season in order to give the reefs time to recuperate.
There are lots of diving, snorkeling and tour trips to the other islands advertised everywhere, but you can’t go during the low season, so keep that in mind when you’re planning your trip.
There is tons of information about traveling in Thailand all over the internet, but here are just a few things that I learned along the way, that would have been really helpful to know beforehand.
1. Bring Deep Woods mosquito repellent, with a high concentration of deet. We brought only one bottle for some reason, that was 100% feet, and it worked really well. I didn’t have a single mosquito bite for the first two weeks, but once it ran out, we had to buy stuff from here, and most of it is only 15% deet. Once we switched, I had 300% more mosquito bites. It is possible to find higher concentration, but it takes quite a bit of looking, and it’s more expensive.
2. Change your money over to Baht. I read over and over again when we were getting ready to leave for Thailand that you don’t need to change your money and that American dollars are accepted everywhere there. That was not my experience at all, it was almost impossible to find anywhere that accepted American dollars, and if you were traveling to a remote part of Thailand, money exchanges are few and far between, so it’s best to change your money when you’re in Bangkok, or another larger city.
3. Keep your ticket stubs. I saw this happen over and over and over again, to us, and to many other travelers. If you book something through a travel or tourist agency, or even your hotel, make sure you hold on to your ticket/receipt, even after you think you’ve turned it over to the right people.
Often people will get picked up via mini-van, and transported to ferry/bus terminals to go to other parts of the country. The ticket has confirmation that you’ve paid for all legs of the journey, not just the mini-van, but often the mini-van driver will take your ticket when he picks you up, and then either lose it, or sometimes the drivers switch out mid-way through the trip, and he’ll take your ticket with him, and then you have no way to prove that you’ve already paid, even if you are traveling the whole way with the same travel company.
Show the driver (or hostel, etc) your ticket, and then insist on holding on to it. I’ve met a lot of people who didn’t, and missed connections, spent hours fighting, or worst of all, had to re-pay.
4. Bring all of your lotions from home. Lotions are readily available at every mini-mart on the street, but 98% of the ones sold there are whitening, to make/keep your skin whiter. You can usually find sunscreen that isn’t, but it’s definitely true for any face creams or lotions that you have. I ran out of moisturizer in our third week and ended up having a 20 minute Who’s-On-First type debacle with 3 different ladies at a store trying to figure out if one of their products was whitening or not.
5. Beware of Sea Lice. This tip is going to be more relevant depending on what time of year you are visiting. We were there in June, during the peak time for sea lice, and it was a big problem for me. Sea lice are basically tiny jelly-fish larvae that float on the top of the water. I first encountered them as I was coming up from a dive in Phi Phi, everywhere my wet suit didn’t cover it felt like I was getting burned, it really hurt.
I asked one of the guys on the dive boat, and he told me about sea lice. I did some more research when we got home that night, and sure enough, I woke up the next morning with a red itchy rash on my elbows, and down the fronts of my legs. Sea lice doesn’t affect everyone, many people can be in the water when they are present and not feel them, but some people are affected badly. I encountered them again in Krabi, only for a few minutes at the beach one day, and then again on our third day in Koh Samui, swimming in the same spot I’d been swimming at for the last three days.
In Koh Samui they were so bad that I couldn’t stay in the water, but people all around me were swimming and having a blast, completely oblivious. I checked into it a bit, and you can buy repellent for them, I couldn’t find it in Thailand, so I’m not sure if it works for me, but if you are sensitive to sea lice, and will be there (or any other warm climate beach) during the summer months, it might be a good idea to order some and bring it with you, just in case.
6. Bring anti-itch cream. See tip number one, and tip number five. Because I had a lot of mosquito bites, and also had a reaction from the sea lice, I was basically an itchy mess, and it was really hard to sleep some nights. Luckily I had packed a little first aid kit with basics, including Benadryl cream, and a Cortisone cream. It basically saved my life, I would highly recommend this.
7. Pack light. Depending on the time of year you visit, it will be better or worse, but it is a tropical country, and generally, it is very hot here. Be sure to pack light, and bring light, airy fabrics. I didn’t bring that many clothes with me, but there are a couple of items I brought that I haven’t worn, (a few tshirts, a synthetic fabric sun dress, anything tight or constrictive) and it’s because it’s just too hot.
Also, there are places that do your laundry for you on every corner, so don’t worry about running out of clothes. It usually cost us about 120B ($4) to get both mine and Derek’s clothes cleaned.
On our last day in Phi Phi, I finally mustered the energy to climb up and see the viewpoint. There are signs for it all over the island, but it was so. damn. hot. every day we were there that just getting up out of your lawn chair was a real physical effort.
We found our way there, and started climbing, for some reason I didn’t think it would be that far to get to the top, probably because I was in denial.
It was all cement stairs, and there were a lot of them. I could see the top from the bottom, so I concentrated all of my leg muscle and determination into reaching that point, only to realize that that wasn’t the top at all, just a layover along the way. That happened to me about 4 times.
When you finally drag yourself to the top, you have to pay 20TBH for each person (not a lot but still, it would be devastating to get up there and not have any money and have to turn around and go back down). There are two view points, the bottom one is pretty nice, but the top one, another 5 minute hike through the trees, is truly spectacular.
You can see the entire island, both bays, and it is breathtaking, absolutely worth the climb.
The climb really isn’t even that bad in hindsight, or should I say, once I’d clawed my way to the top of the Railay Viewpoint in Krabi (more on that later) where you are literally taking your life into your hands climbing up there, the stairs up to this viewpoint seemed quite lovely and relaxing by comparison. It’s all relative.
Definitely make the effort to climb up and see this view if you’re ever in Phi Phi, you will absolutely not regret it.
This post is going to be part love letter, part rave, so be prepared.
As soon as we decided we were going to be going to Thailand on our way to Australia, I started getting excited for Phi Phi. I’ve seen so many pictures of it, I had a friend visit the island a few months ago and she totally loved it, and let’s be honest, if it’s good enough for Leo, it’s good enough for me (in case you don’t know, the movie The Beach was shot here).
So there we were a few months later, on the crowded ferry to Phi Phi. We rounded the corner of another little island and saw it for the first time. And it is beautiful. Like awe-inspiring, stop what you are doing, kind of forget to even take pictures beautiful.
The cliffs are massive and green, the beaches are snow white sand, and the water fades from turquoise to deep blue as you head out to sea.
So here we are, all of these people on this ferry completely blown away by the beauty of this place, and as I’m sitting there gaping and trying to figure out how many of my worldly possessions I would need to sell to come live here permanently, out of the corner of my eye on the deck below where I am standing, I see a man pull out a packet of cigarettes, open it, take out a cigarette, and pull out a random piece of paper from the pack and THROW IT INTO THE OCEAN.
I almost couldn’t believe it, because it was unbelievable. I took a deep breath, and tried to calm down and give him the benefit of the doubt because, accidents happen right? Then, just as my blood pressure started to sink back down to a regular level, his buddy came up to him, presumably asked for a cigarette, and the guy gave him one, pulled out the extra piece of paper (no idea what kind of cigarettes these were) and THREW IT IN THE OCEAN AGAIN.
The left side of the ferry was completely packed with people, so I couldn’t get to him, but if I have learned one thing from my sister over the years, it is the effectiveness of a vicious death stare. It took a few minutes for him to notice me staring at him, but as soon as he did I gave him a look that would have most certainly killed him if I possessed any magical powers whatsoever.
He at least had the grace to look a bit embarrassed, and quickly made his way to a different part of the boat.
We made it to Phi Phi, it’s such a fun island, there are no cars so everyone walks and bikes everywhere, and you are never more than 100 yards from the beach. It has lots of great restaurants, and probably more bars than anything else on the island. At night every single beach bar becomes a dance club, and there are fire shows and lots of booze, and then even more booze, which leads to more fire.
The first thing we did once we dropped off our stuff was hit the beach, we ordered some drinks, got a table, and then waded out into the water.
I didn’t make it three feet in before my foot hit a beer bottle. I picked it up, carried it back up the beach, and left it there, planning to grab it after my swim. I started back into the water, took two more steps and found a beer can, and then a large piece of broken beer bottle.
Everybody knows that there is garbage in the ocean, that we need to do more to keep it clean, but seeing that just made me so, so angry. Phi Phi is probably one of the most gorgeous places on the planet, and people are just ruining it.
It might seem like I’m overreacting, but I had just come from Phuket (which I didn’t really care for) and had the same thing happen at two different beaches, I’d wade into the water, only to find a plastic bag wrapped around my leg.
Most of our time in Phi Phi was so much fun, and it really is gorgeous there, despite a few pieces of trash in the water, but it just seems like if we can’t even see the benefit in not completely destroying someplace that looks like this, there isn’t a lot of hope for anywhere else.
Tomorrow we leave for Cambodia, after more than a month of traveling through Thailand.
Here are just a few of the many ways that we got around this gorgeous country.
beautiful ’70s bus interior
My favourite way to travel is to have a few things in mind that you want to do, but also to keep things pretty open, so when you get to your destination, you can talk to locals and other travelers and figure out which places they think are must-see. Some of the coolest places I’ve visited have just been word of mouth referrals, of places I’d never even heard of before.
So when we got to Thailand, I heard over and over that we should check out Ayutthaya or Sukhothai, they are both national parks with lots of cool temples, and that is where all of the Buddhas around Thailand are made. Ayutthaya also used to be the capital of Thailand, before Bangkok.
Sukhothai is the older one, some of the temples are more like ruins, and Ayutthaya is the newer one. I decided I’d rather see the more historical one, so we set out from Chiang Mai for a 5 hour bus ride to go check it out. I’d heard from several other travelers how hellish the bus ride was, but I really didn’t think it was that bad, although I did have a good book and a sleeve of Oreos to keep me company.
Sukhothai itself is pretty quiet (although we were there during the low season) it’s not super touristy, and there isn’t a ton of other things to do except for check out the park, so two days there was a good amount of time.
We were told to come first thing in the morning, since the Buddhas all face East, and they photograph better with the sun shining on them. We rented bikes (around 100TBH for the day) and pedaled around the park for a few hours. The park itself was so beautiful and peaceful, and after so many days of walking (jungle trekking) it was actually really fun to just be on a bike.
The park itself is divided into 3 different sections, and you have to pay 100TBH (around $3) to get into each one. Once we’d gone around the park multiple times, we decided to go ride our bikes around town for a bit. We saw a sign for a waterfall and cave, so we set off pedaling down a deserted dirt road, with no idea where we were going.
About 20 minutes later, we saw another sign for the waterfall, but this one mentioned that it was actually 30 miles down the road. The sun was fully overheard, and it was starting to get really hot, plus there was an unfortunate incident with a spider (I almost veered into the ditch because it was the biggest spider that exists in the world. Derek insists it was a crab from the lake right beside the road, but he was not blessed with my eagle vision) so we decided to head back.
We went back to the park for sunset, even though it was a bit cloudy it was still pretty. I would definitely recommend going to Sukhothai if you have time on your trip, I would absolutely go back, especially in November when they have the Loi Krathong Lantern Festival.
We are having the time of our lives exploring Thailand, and as much as I want to share all of our fun adventures, I also wanted to take a minute to talk about some of the things that are happening politically in the country.
As most of you probably know, there are some changes happening in Thailand right now. The government has been relieved of some of its duties by the military, and there is a some uncertainty as to what this means for the elected officials, and whether this is truly a coup, which has happened 12 times before in the country’s history.
This creates some difficulties, since it was a government elected by the people of Thailand, but because a struggling economy and a feeling that the country was not on the right path had led to mass unhappiness and protests, the military stepped in, and declared martial law.
We were a little nervous about coming here during all of this, the U.S. State department put out a statement dissuading all non-essential travel to Thailand a couple of weeks before we were supposed to leave, but we already had our trip planned, and we knew this was probably our only shot at getting to visit Thailand, at least for a long time, so we decided to come anyway, and hoped for the best.
To be honest, it hasn’t really affected us, there is a curfew designating that everyone has to be home by midnight every night, it was originally 10 o’clock, but they saw a drop in tourism immediately after the curfew was enabled, and since a lot of the Thai economy is based on tourism, they have to do what they can to keep people coming here, even during this chaotic time.
We’ve noticed a military presence for sure, especially further north, in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Many of our tuk tuk drivers liked to point out the groups of soldiers stationed along busy intersections, and an increase in check points along main roads.
From talking to locals, and watching the news here, it seems that the media has been instructed not to speculate on the current political situation and many of the national Thai broadcasting channels were shut off by the military when they seized power. There are reporters covering these events, but they have to be careful what they write, and must stick to only the bare facts, or they can be accused of inciting riots.
Also, I heard that some news outlets are being censored via the internet, and a few times when I was trying to read an article, once from the Daily Mail, I was redirected to a rather official looking Thai page, and wasn’t allowed to access it, although I wasn’t able to read what it said.
From what we’ve seen, reporters are using social media to get the news out, and protestors are also using social media to let people know where to gather. Some Thai locals are in favour of the military intervention, and some are not, it’s a complicated situation.
We didn’t see any rioting or anything like that in Bangkok, but we met some guys from the UK a few weeks ago that were here when the military first took over, and they had to avoid the palace and all of the major temples in Bangkok because of rioting, and there had been incidents where pipe bombs were used, so they weren’t able to visit many of the landmarks of the city.
We’ve had such a wonderful time traveling around Thailand, and meeting its people. It’s hard to say what is going to happen with all this, the last time martial law was declared it went on for a year and a half, but I hope it’s resolved in the best interests of the Thai people.
You can read more about the situation here.
As I mentioned here, while we were up in the north of Thailand, we signed up to do a 3 day jungle trek. We didn’t do much research about what it was going to be like (as per usual) and even though it was called a 3 day jungle TREK, we somehow didn’t really get the concept that we would be, in fact, walking the whole time.
In spite of the laboriousness of trudging (quite a lot of it uphill) for 3 days straight in the jungle, alternating between blistering heat, and torrential downpours, it was actually super fun. We had a really good group, it was us, a couple from Germany, a couple from the Netherlands, and 4 really fun guys from the UK, along with our sweet guides, Sam and Ron (not their real names).
The first day we walked about 3 hours, most of it uphill, stopping for a water break at a waterfall, and for a break when our guides found some wild mangos (they were seriously delicious, and I don’t even like mango) and some magic mushrooms. Our guide advised against the magic mushrooms, as apparently lost in the Thai jungle is maybe not the best setting for that adventure.
We eventually got to a village, where we would be staying for the night. We slept in a wooden shanty type structure, it had outside walls and a roof, but was still totally open. We each got a mosquito net to keep out the worst of the bugs. Our guides cooked for us (curry) and then we built a fire, and had a few beers before bed.
As luck would have it, Derek ended up getting sick in the middle of the first night, and stayed that way for the next 3 days. I had brought some medicine along, and treated him myself as best as I could, but being sick in the middle of the jungle is pretty miserable, he would trek with us whenever we had to, but immediately had to lay down for a nap whenever we stopped.
I had basically convinced myself it was malaria, but then I remembered we’d only been in the country for 5 days at that point, so I realized that was pretty unlikely.
Some people were only doing a one day trek, so by the time we finished eating breakfast on the second day, I was the only girl left in the group. We set off trekking through the forest, stopping for lunch at a local farm house in the rice fields.
We learned a ton about rice farming, the couple only lived there during planting/harvesting season, otherwise they went back to their house in the village we had stayed at the night before. The farmer also made rice moonshine, so Sam and Ron grabbed a couple of bottles of that before we left.
After two more hours of walking across rice fields (which was actually really neat, ripe rice is sooooo green) we got to our camp beside a waterfall. We were hot and sweaty, and wasted absolutely no time jumping in for a swim.
Sam and Ron made us supper (curry and rice) and then we lit a fire beside the river. Sam was pretty handy, and made a bong out of a water bottle and some bamboo, so we got to try out some Thai bush weed, which is apparently a non-negotiable itinerary item for anyone visiting Thailand, although getting caught with it means 5 years in a Thai prison, so you definitely want to be careful.
The best part about the whole trip was sitting around the fire watching the waterfall as the sun was setting. As it got darker, we started to see little dots of light in the bushes, they were fireflies. They showed up one at a time, until finally there were hundreds of them, it was pretty amazing.
The next morning, we woke up, ate breakfast (made with river water, so that was just the opposite of everything we were told about drinking water in Thailand) and set off. We only had about two hours of walking until we were back at a road. We had lunch, and then bamboo rafted down the river to get the rest of the way back to where we were getting picked up.
It was really fun, I’m trying to figure out how to upload a bamboo rafting video on here, but so far every time I export the file it comes out with no sound, so I’ll keep working on that.
If you have the opportunity to do trekking while you are in Thailand, and you are at all outdoorsy, definitely do it. It’s so rare these days that you really get to be fully immersed in nature, we had no electricity, no phones or contact with the outside world the whole time, and it was so nice.
It was such a neat experience, and the second day was way better than the first day, so try to do the full 3 days if you have time.
The most beautiful temple we saw in Thailand (and we saw A LOT) was the White Temple. It was part of our day long trip to Chiang Rai, where we also saw the Golden Triangle, crossed the border to Laos, and visited some of the hill tribes.
I had seen pictures of the White Temple, but they were always small and it didn’t look very impressive, so I wasn’t that excited about it. But as soon as we jumped out of the van, and saw it in person, I was absolutely stunned.
It’s completely white, and every single inch of it is inlaid with metal and glass mosaic tiles. It had been cloudy all morning, but as we were walking up to the temple, the sun came out, and it was absolutely blinding. You couldn’t look directly at it without sunglasses on.
The temple was designed by one of Thailand’s most famous artists to honour the current King of Thailand, and it’s taken 7 years so far to complete. It’s not finished yet, and parts of it were damaged in a recent earthquake.
The premise is showing the difference between heaven and hell, heaven being the immaculate perfection of the temple, and hell being the thousands of hands reaching up, and the demons decorating the different corners of the temple grounds.
It’s totally gorgeous, and really interesting as well, definitely check it out if you are interested in art or religious culture.
loveliness. 