There’s a bizarre atmosphere around Coral Bungalows, as no one quite knows what to do before the big Full Moon Party tonight!
One things for sure, everyone here right now can be split into two obvious sections: 1) those who went out last night and 2) those who didn’t.

1) those who didn’t were either like us, and had a quiet and earlyish night in order to be able enjoy tonight to the maximum. These people are spending today, after having had a nice long sleep, sunbathing as much as possible in order to have the best tan underneath the full moon neon clothing. There’s also the other people in this category who fall under the status ‘paranoid’, (I was close to ending up like this and got a swift talking to from Juliet). They can be found in the shade, not eating and not drinking anything, just incase they happen to get ill or even (this is 100% true) incase the sun makes them sleepy and it ruins their party tonight.

Then group 2) The people who did go out. On the most part they’re by the pool eating a full English breakfast and trying to nurse their hang over as quickly as possible for tonight. Or they’re still drinking, why stop right? Or I guess there might be some still in bed, who knows, I can’t see them.

Whether you’re group 1 or group 2, every single person here is in Koh Phangan for exactly the same reason: The Full Moon Party. And every single person here is counting the minutes until it is time to cover our bodies in neon paint, get a bucket and head to the party beach!

After a chilled morning by the pool, 7 of us headed to the Total Wipeout zone of Thialand! For anyone who hasn’t seen the tv program Total
Wipeout, first of all you need to watch it, you’re seriously missing out! But it’s basically a big assault course in the water with obstacles, things you have to climb and different sections you have to conquer.
Ours wasn’t quite as hard or technical as the one from the tv program but it had the key sections and it was a lot of fun!

You start off by swinging into the water off the top section of the building on a rope swing! Then you swim to the first obstacle which is the doughnuts, round blow up balls which you have to run across! Next is the monkey bars (very slippery) and then the giant rolling a pins which you have to run across but if you don’t stand exactly in the middle they spin! Next is the giant ice burg which you have to climb up and slide down and then finally it’s the… BIG RED BALLS! Three giant balls which you have to bounce across and only 40 people ever have actually made it to the other side.
After you’ve completely the course there’s also a ‘blob’ to go on. This is a giant inflatable blob and while someone lies on one end, people jump of a ledge onto the other end which launches the person 6 or 7 metres into the air, landing (normally a belly flop) into the water.
It was a fun but exhausting afternoon!

We arrived home to a beautiful sunset and then after dinner we headed into town to buy our Full Moon Party outfits!

Later we all went to a Muay Thai Boxing match! It was quite intense with a lot of shouting from the audience, even the first match of little kids was tense!
The start of the matches were my favourite as the competitors complete a sort of ritual to the ring out of respect. They go round a pray in each corner and then perform the prayer dance of agility to the gods… And then the match begins. It’s quite a brutal sport, with the aim of the game being to knock your opponent out so badly that they can’t get up! You also score points for punching or kicking different parts of the body.. Safe to say it was scary to watch but a good experience.
We’re going to see a ladies competition in Koh Tao so hopefully we’ll be Muay Thai experts by then!

The problem with being in a country where everything is cheap is that there’s a risk of not being careful when spending money. So the exchange rate is about 53baht to the pound and right now we’re eating lunch for about 80baht, a beer is 50, water is 10 and taxis are 100-150. That gives you an idea of the prices and so we’re staying in hotels and hostels for at most £10 a night. It means that when things cost a bit more and the baht goes into the thousands we panic and immediately think we’re spending loads, when actually never more than £15. It also means that you tend to buy things, because they’re cheap, not because we need them and so the little things all add up.
Like the super organised travellers we are, we’re keeping tabs on our money spendage, as we know that come Australia, prices will change rapidly! But when silk shorts are 100baht, a pad Thai is 40 and alcohol buckets are 200, it’s hard to say no.

Tip to other travellers:
Book packages of lots of things together in advance from tourist offices. In Bangkok we booked all of our transport to Chiangmai, a hotel in Chaingmai, the jungle trek, trains down to the islands and our ferry, all at once and it only cost a little more that £100!
Also keep track of everything you spend, we’ve both got a money log in our journals, as it means you can then work out how much you’re going to need for a day or week, and you can also see a clear image of what you’ve spent.

Off now to Koh Phangan’s total wipeout course in the sea…
Happy spending!

happy birthday to meeeee

The celebrations started last night as our hotel, Coral Bungalows, is the pool party venue of the island, the first of the pool parties leading up to the full moon was happening. Thankfully we made friends with some Canadian girls during the day and so there was a group of us going into the party. It took a while to get going but thanks to the Coral Bungalows happy hour and the humidity that forced everyone to go swimming very quickly, the party was soon very lively. At midnight as I turned 19 we jumped in and even ran and also swam in the sea! After convincing nearly everyone to go in the pool, Juliet and I decided to call it a night and headed to bed… As a 19 year old!
(the photos by the pool party sign actually caused a lot of havoc as I fell trying to pose by it and hurt my chin and my toe! So so clumsy…) but we finally got the photo, while in the water!

birthday part 2!
This morning we stuck to birthday traditions from home and opened my cards on the bed as soon as we woke up! It was so lovely to read all the cards from people and while I’m not at home, the cards are so lovely to have. I also had a few presents to open: an amazing fluro yellow shirt, a gorgeous bracelet and a linked ring with the quote “the world is a book, those who don’t travel read only a page” engraved on it which I adore.

We then had a very needed English breakfast brunch and while I skyped and facetimed and did a lot of birthday messaging, Juliet caught up on her sunbathing… Safe to say her face didn’t get burnt!

After a relaxing day soaking up the sun, we headed into the town to explore and I FINALLY got a braid! (It’s now a birthday present braid from Julie hehe) we’d been looking everywhere to find someone who did braids and so our mission was accomplished in Haad Rin! We also got matching bracelets so we’re all set.. Who needs to get tattoos and piercings while travelling when you’ve got a braid and a friendship bracelet?!

This evening Juliet found a super cute Fisherman’s restaurant for us to go to, to carry on the celebrations! It was right on the beach over looking the sea, lanterns and fire dancers! aaaand even though it was a white table cloth restaurant, at the front there was a little Fisherman’s boat with cushions and a small table, and we were lucky enough to get it! So we climbed on board our dingy on the beach and ate our way through a menu of fresh Thai fish. Thanks to Juliet I even got a candle in the brownie at the end!

My first birthday away from home was made special by my travelling companion and it was also so lovely to have cards and video calls from everyone I love at home, that I can now keep with me for the rest of my travels. Besides, what better place to spend your last teen birthday than on the party island of Thailand… KOH PHANGAN!

Three tuck tucks, two taxis, two sleeper trains and a day in Bangkok later we are finally at the Islands!!
First stop: Koh Phangan

Home to the famous Full Moon Party and plenty of gorgeous sites, beaches and viewpoints that we will be checking out in the next week! (Even including a beach cinema)

Tonight our hotel is host to a massive pool party, it’s yet to get busy but hopefully it’ll liven up.

Then Julie and I can have a very much needed sleep before waking up to… MY BIRTHDAY!

With lots of time to kill while travelling, for example like me now, with a day to kill between two over night sleeper trains, there’s actually lots of things for a backpacker to do.

Before I came travelling I downloaded loads of movies and they are a great way to kill time, also reading books, playing cards, writing postcards and for me it’s a perfect time to blog.
Many travellers also like to keep journals of what they’ve been up to while travelling, so that they don’t forget anything. When you’re busy, you’re really busy so the hours of waiting for flights, busses and trains is a perfect time to catch up with your journal and write about past events.

For Juliet and I, we obviously kill time in style and found a little Thai salon in order to treat ourselves to a manicure and pedicure (for 350baht, about £5). After having a very intense Thai spa treatment, with dead skin literally scraped off the soles of our feet and our fingers and toes scrubbed clean (quite brutally), we now have perfectly painted nails. While having our pedicure both of our salonists commented on our unwaxed legs (something with haven’t got round to doing, especially with our hostel showers) and so soon we found ourselves lying on beds having hot wax poured on our legs! As expected, the Thais wax differently and instead of using paper to rip the wax off they literally just pull it off with their hands!
(There were a lot of screams coming from Juliet’s bed!)
Anyway, an hour later we left the salon a lot more groomed and clean than when we had entered. We have now found ourselves a small restaurant with wifi and can happily spend the rest of the afternoon eating lunch and catching up with friends and family.

^^^ our set up for the afternoon.

Yesterday, we carried our chilled day on into the evening. We went over to see some of our friends, from the jungle, at their hostel (the Chang Gang reunited) and after a chilled couple of hours chatting, four of us headed off to the night market. This is a huge evening market stretching across atleast 5 different streets, on both sides of the road. Here Juliet and I put our bartering skills to good use, managing to haggle prices down by over half! The problem is we got so carried away, we’d barter on things we didn’t even want that much, and then would have to purchase them… But all in all it was a productive market shop and a cool experience wandering between stalls lit up by lanterns, at night.

After the market, we met up with the rest of the Chang Gang in the famous Chiangmai THC rooftop bar. On entering you’re surrounded by UV graffiti and rickety staircases, leaded their way up to the rooftop. Here before the last wooden ladder is a place to leave your shoes, as shoes aren’t allowed in the chilled bar filled with mats and pillows where people sit on the floor. The music was pumping and the bar was full and even though it closed at 2, we’d had a good relaxed night of talking and dancing.

Today after a lovely lie in, we got breakfast and having checked out, are spending the rest of the day by the pool. We have to leave about 3ish to get to our sleeper train and after such a nice stay at Top North Hotel, we will be spending the next two nights a bit more uncomfortably, sleeping in a bunk on a train. We stop off in Bangkok for a day, before reboarding the train to make our way to the Islands!!

Today after a not-so-early night of looking at jungle trek photos, washing obsessively to get rid of the jungle smell and just generally relaxing, we got up very early ready for our Thai cooking course.
We were picked up at 8.30 and taken to a local market in order to look at and learn about the Thai grown local meat, vegetables, herbs, sauces and powders that we would be using in our cooking.
After this we walked a short way to the local cooking school and we definitely knew the ingredients we’d be cooking with we’re fresh as the market was on our doorstep! Here we spent the morning learning about Thai cooking and learning ourselves how to make a chicken and coconut soup, Pad Thai, Thai Green Curry paste and the Thai Green Curry itself and finally, deep fried spring rolls!
While cooking each dish we learnt about the individual ingredients and tasted them throughout the process so that we could make the dish perfect for our own tastes. For example Juliet omitted any form of chillies where as the two German guys (who were trying to eat like the locals) added extra (and regretted it!)
All of the food we made was delicious (and this is not because I’m a good chef) it was purely down to the fresh produce, and easy but effective Thai recipes. We also got a recipe book at the end so we can recreate these dishes at home!

After we’d finished cooking school, feeling extremely full, we headed off down the street to find a massage parlour. On the way we came across a local festival, inside of a temple, with loud music and lots of food! We definitely couldn’t stomach any more food or even the thought of it so we listened to some music then headed to the massage shop and both had a very relaxing Thai Oil Massage.
As we are still exhausted from trekking we are definitely not brave enough for a traditional (and very rough) Thai Massage… Yet.. But we’re looking forward to getting one when we are more relaxed in the islands!
As for our oil massage, it definitely added to a relaxed day with the rest of the afternoon spent by the pool.

day 1
Our day began with an early start, alarm clocks set for 7am, breakfast half 7, packing 8am, bag check and check out 8.15 and then picked up at 8.30.
After getting in the bmp (our tour company) open back truck, we headed to the bmp lodge to pick up the rest of our jungle trekking crew, soon to be known as the chang gang, and headed up to the jungle.
On the way we stopped off at a local 7/11 and market to stock up on fruit and water for the journey and then reloaded the truck and set off towards the jungle.
Our trek started with.. A trek. I don’t think any of us realised how strenuous jungle trekking would be. 30 plus degree heat, backpacks, up hill through a jungle, our tour leader, machete in hand, clearing the path way for us to walk. After about an hour of beautiful scenery we came to a small Thai temple. All of the trees leading up to the point of prayer were tied with orange ribbons – the colour of the monks.
Soon after the temple we arrived at a small water fall, our first cooling down point of the day. We swam in the water fall and cooled down under the fountain until we were called in for lunch – vegetable rice wrapped in a giant leaf and tied with a piece of straw – and it was delicious! After about another hours walking we arrived at an even bigger waterfall with a cave behind the actual fall of the water where you could stand.
Here we swam and cooled off again before completing our last trek to a village high up in the mountains where we would be staying the night.
Dinner was made for us by the locals, delicious green curry, steamed vegetables, noodles and rice and after an evening of talking round the campfire we all went to our little huts so spend our first night.

day 2
After waking up to hot toast and scrambled eggs, again made by the locals whose village we’d slept in that night, and discussing who had had the fewest hours sleep due to the freezing conditions up the mountain and the cockerel that decided to cockadoodledoo at about 5am, we headed off for day two of trekking. The serious hiking day. This day was our biggest and most strenuous in terms of tackling the jungles terrain. After visiting a local school, we walked accross farm lands, marsh lands, up steep sand hills, across rivers, bridges, through waterfalls and even walked in an ants trail across the different levels of the rice paddy until about 3 hours later we arrived at our lunch destination: A small village located right at the top of a very steep hill – granted it took us a long time to get there and we all collapsed at the top but it was worth it for the view! After a very very very long lunch of super noodles, coca cola and lots of water, we headed off again to trek some more! The afternoon hike, although long was not as hard, as it was mostly downhill and soon we arrived at the village where we would be spending the night. A desolate village right next to a small waterfall and wide river.
Dinner on this night was chicken and potato curry with roasted pumpkin and green beans, again an amazing meal made by the locals.

day 3
Day three in the jungle only included one solitary hour of walking, something that everyone was very pleased with. We started off the day with our first and only trek down to a road where we all piled into the back of an open-back truck (all fifteen of us) and headed off to see the elephants. Here we enjoyed an elephant ride and got to feed them sugar cane, it was actually quite sad to see them chained up but we were reassured that they are well looked after and we decided that we’d rather them walk around a paddock holding people then get exploited for their tusks!
After our elephant ride we reloaded the truck and headed off to our lunch spot – more delicious local food! And then again back in the truck, this time bagless and clothless (with bikinis don’t worry) as we were heading off to go rafting!
The rafts were five bamboo sticks wide floating devices which were very long and sat four people in a line behind one Thai man and a bamboo stick who pushes us along. The rafting journey started off quite peacefully until we came across locals bathing in the river, thinking it would be hilarious to splash us and try and tip us in! Then the journey got even more adventurous when the calm river turned into white rapids and our raft got faster and faster making it’s way between the rocks and narrow streams!
After a relaxing, exciting and quite scary at times raft journey we arrived back safety!

After the rafting, those who wanted got the opportunity to travel up to see the long neck tribe, a Burmese tribe who live secluded in the mountains and have the local tradition of wearing gold rings around their necks. They add an extra ring for every year that they live and so soon their necks stretch to the extent that if they took the rings off, their necks would collapse. So two of the couples that I had met while trekking, another girl I had just met and I travelled up to visit them and to learn about their culture! It was a truly amazing experience seeing the tribe and although it was sad to see how isolated they are by the other Thais, they were very friendly women and little girls, who were happy to show us their beautiful necklaces and pictures of their relatives with even longer necks. Now I know why they are nicknamed the giraffe women!

This evening Juliet and I honestly didn’t think we could eat another bite of Thai food and so went for a quick Italian before having a very needed shower – it’s extremely hard to stay clean in the jungle… But we have had a great three days and experienced a jungle trek we will never forget!

On arriving in Chaingmai, delayed by two hours, we got an open back taxi to our hotel in Chiangmai. A quaint hotel with a big pool and kind staff welcomed us and after leaving our stuff in our room and changing we headed down to the pool.
Literally as I arrived by the pool I suddenly felt very hungry and quite sick so I ordered some lunch. Feeling very much worse I tried to go inside where it was cool but my eyes went black on the way and I collapsed. A very scary experience, triggered (I think) by exhaustion from the train, dehydration and hunger, but I came around in the cool hotel lobby with some mint inhaler type smell being wafted under my nose and surrounded by little Thai people fanning me. It’s actually quite funny when I think back on it, also because I think I fell on top of a poor little Thai lady! After eating some food and drinking some water I felt much better and ready to sunbathe!
This evening Juliet and I headed into the city and were pleasantly surprised by how different it is to Bangkok! It’s a lot more open, more chilled and has a completely different vibe to it. The chilled atmosphere surrounds a central square with street food venders and street musicians. We bought some Pad Thai off a street stall for 40baht (about 70pence) which was honestly the best pad Thai I’ve ever eaten! Then we shared a Nutella rotee (Thai equivalent of a pancake) as it’s pancake day on England!

So all in all, first impressions of Chaingmai are very good! And we’re looking forward to coming back to this city in a few days.
Having an early(ish) night tonight as we have to be up at 7am tomorrow to head off on a 3 day and 2 night jungle trek! Let’s see what that part of Chaingmai has to offer! ☺️