Ko Phi Phi - Krabi - Ko Samui - Ko Phangnan

Oh man... I just realized how behind I am on the blog front!!! Yeesh.. I guess when I was travelling alone I had more time on my hands to keep up with these things. Since I last updated we have travelled from Ko Phi Phi- Krabi - Ko Samui- Ko Phangnan- Bangkok- Singapore- Bangkok- Chang Mai!!!!! I'll start with the first part and cover off all the Ko's (which means island in Thai).

So... We left Ko Phi Phi on a boat trip and headed to the city of Krabi where we caught a plane to Ko Samui, an island on the East side of Thailand. We spent 3 days in Samui, which in hindsight was a bit too long since the weather wasn't great, but we enjoyed lazing by the pool when the sun was out and checking out the shops or grabbing a bite to eat when the monsoon made an appearance. Evenings on Ko Samui were a trip... The streets were crowded with people, vendors, and crazy hawkers with gibbons monkeys, boa constrictors, and iguannas that would try and haggle you for money for a photo with their exotic pet. The monkeys were especially creepy with their long slender humanesque hands and creepy baby faces. While I was walking past one of them the handler pushed the monkey towards me and it jumped off and flung it's arms around my neck. Instinctively I put my hands out to catch it and felt it's butthole resting on my arm- this is when I began to freak out and asked the guy to get it off if me... While I'm running around trying to get it off while the handler and kris stand there laughing at me, another handler came up behind kris and plopped a boa around his neck!!! For anyone who knows kris, he's petrofied of snakes and spiders, so he started freaking out and yelling at the handler GET IT OFF ME OR ILL CHUCK IT ON THE GROUND!! I was laughing at kris, he was still laughing at me, and both handlers were killing themselves laughing until kris made a move to grab the boa off him and the guy finally realized he was serious and took both animals off us. Needless to say, I'd have paid ten bucks for some candid camera footage of that. Later on we were walking around to find some street meat and another monkey grabbed my arm from behind me and scared me to death- there was screaming and jumping involved on my part, and a lot if laughter from kris. The whole time I kept wishing my mom was there cause she would have sharted herself if a monkey touched her.

After our time in Samui we took another boat to Ko Phangnan- home of the full moon party. We were referred to a FANTASTIC hostel by a girl kris met in Victoria. The hostel was on the northern part of the island, called Haad Yao, at a hostel called Shiraleah. It had sweet bungalows, a pool, and a dive shop for only 500 Baht (about $15). Our second day there we went scuba diving at Sail rock. We did two dives and saw several hundred thousand fishies. I'm not even kidding... Even though the visability was kinda crappy that day, there were more fish out than I've ever seen before. An entire school of baracudas swam by us, and we saw a HUGE grabber fish- probably 80lbs or more and a giant eel. The next day we ventured to Haad Rin for the full moon party. It was a circus. Everyone there was drunk, on mushrooms, ecstasy, or in some cases on all 3. We got there pretty late so it was a pretty rough scene. People were passed out everywhere, dancing and sweating up a storm, urinating in the ocean, and starring into space..... needless to say, we didn't quite fit in with our mild chang beer and cosmo buzz and left shortly after we got there. The next day was spent poolside while we laughed at everyone else having epic hangovers. Some of them were still up partying when we woke up at 11am so you can imagine the shape they were in by 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Hahaha better them than me. Plus, it would have been a waaaaay more painful experience for kris to get a thai bamboo tattoo if he were fighting the 26oz flu...

We felt as though we could have lived at Shiralea for a month, but sadly we had to get moving to Bangkok cause our 15 day visas were expiring. The next day we shed a tear as we left our favorite hostel to date and said goodbye to "sticky island" (named so because it's hard to leave) and boarded a bus to make the EPIC journey to Bangkok. This experience I will cover in my next post, cause it's a story in itself.