Ko Phangan

After leaving the jungle, Mel and I dicussed what to do with our remaining time. Our original plan was to head to Ko Pi Pi, the island where "The Beach" was filmed. However, this was pretty far out of the way and after already spending a couple of our days in transit we decided to skip the highly touristy island and head straight to larger island - Ko Phangan. After just one night there, we prioritized our remaining time in Thailand and decided to stay and enjoy the island for an entire week rather than hop around to various places. There was plenty to do on this big island: beautiful beaches, great food, loads of entertainment and best of all it was fun and easy to get around on our moped that we rented for $5/day. We stayed at a nice family run resort called the Feild Paradise Resort. We loved it and were much happier to be there than one of the more commercialized resorts on the island.

The pictures sum up the basics of how we spent our time - besides Mel getting massagges and me taking a Thai boxing lesson - which I quite enjoyed but also found very exhausting! On our last night we went to the full moon party which is a huge beach party that happens every full moon. I don't have any pictures from that night but I heard there were 30,000 people and probably 95% of them were completely wasted. We took it more easy on the indulging than most people - a couple drinks and one bucket - and we had an interesting experience watching the craziness that unfolded.

Overall Ko Phangan was an absolutely fantastic week with Mel; breakfast on the beach every morning, exploring different beaches and attractions on the moped, trying new food places, chatting with other travelers, chilling out on hammocks, and most of all enjoying life together!

Catching the ferry to Ko Phangan

Breakfast on the beach at our resort


Looking at our resort from the ocean

Mel's first time driving the moped. She did great and rented her own for 1 of the days Chilling out on the deck of our hut

One of our favourite places to eat

View from the Amsterdam bar

Chilling out at Amsterdam bar

Making use of the underwater feature of my new camera

The boat we went snorkeling from

We had lunch that day at the island on the right

At the top of the viewpoint

Mel really liked the blue fish

The free scuba diving lesson that came with our snorkeling trip

The afternoon it rained we played some chess

The bussiest beach on the island - Haad Rin beach

Sunset dinner near the end of our stay

Jungle Adventure

The final leg of our 4 day tour included trekking through the jungle to get back to town, with an overnight stop on the way sleeping in hammocks in the jungle. We didn't know exactly what we were getting ourselves into, but let me tell you, this got pretty intense. The first day we got dropped off by boat at about 2:30pm. We then trekked for about 3 1/2 hours. We called it a day when we found the first river because it wasn't long until dark and our guide strongly prefers to stay on a river.

It was really cool to observe how resourceful our guide was, for example he cut a bamboo stick in half and served dinner to us on the inside of it, which looked cool and got the job done well. Despite the fact that our guide hadn't seen rain in a month, it rained that night. I actually thought it was pretty cool that we were in the rain forest and it was raining and I enjoyed watching the resourcefulness of our guide in keeping us dry - for example using a thorn vine to hold up a corner of the tarp. Lucky for us the rain stopped after about an hour and allowed us to get settled in our hammocks in the trees.

The next day (today) I woke up to our guide boiling coffee in a bamboo stick over the fire to make us coffee in bamboo cups he had just made. That was one delicious cup of coffee! After eating some food we got packed up and headed on out. We expected it to take about 3 or 4 hours but it ended up taking about 6 hours because we ran into various obstacles along the way - mainly running into large waterfalls while following the river that left us with little choice but to scale up the mountain to get around it. We all ended up with various scrapes and bruises along the way and were very happy to get out in the end. It was quite the incredible adventure but I don't think any of us (besides our guide) will be going back to the jungle anytime soon. The coolest part about this, and probably the most surprising to us, was that we were covering new ground, "off the beaten track," that even our guide hadn't done before. So we essentially got lost in the jungle and eventually found our way out, and that was no accident.

1st day of jungle trekking

Me waking up this morning

Morning coffee in our new cups

My view for most of the day

Us after the much anticipated exit from the jungle

The treehouse where Mel & I are sleeping tonight, back in town

Khao Sok National Park

We met up with Mel's friend, Julie, and we decided to go to this park that Julie had heard good things about. We spent one night in a cabin overlooking the river and found a cool guide to take us out on a 4 day tour. The first day we took a long-tail boat pretty far to go to the sanctuary in search of wild animals. We saw a bunch of monkeys and some cool birds and spiders. We also went for a good hike. That night we stayed in floating huts which was a lot of fun and a totally unique experience. The next day we did some more touring in the boat & our guide spotted an elephant. We all caught a quick glimpse of it while it ran up the hill, and our guide and boat captain went creeping after it to get some pictures on Mel's camera.

That night we stayed in a larger gathering of floating cabins where the food was really good and the local people working there were really fun. After dinner, we checked out the prices at the bar and saw that whisky cost 180 baht (approx $6 Canadian). You may expect to pay this much for a whisky in Europe, or even a fancier place back home, but it seemed surprisingly pricey for Thailand. We still ordered one and were pleasantly surprised when we got a mickey of whisky for the 180 baht. Needless to say, Mel, Julie & I had a good time chilling out with our guide that night and were joined by other locals at various points throughout the night. There were groups of travelers at other tables but the locals were only coming to hang out with us, which was a cool feeling. Julie had a funny quote that night, "I don't want to hang out with any white people," which we all had a good laugh about. The locals made us feel right at home at the floating huts. So much so that we asked our guide if we could stay there for an additional night before continuing on with our journey, which he said was fine.

The next day our guide took us on a tour of the caves. This was absolutely incredible and too hard to describe with words. The pictures definitely don't do it justice but still give you an idea of what it was like. It was about a 20 minute excursion from one end of the cave to the other, walking across rocks and through water sometimes as much as 2 or 3 metres deep. We went back to the floating community of huts for some delicious lunch and then headed out on kayaks with our guide to look at monkeys playing in the jungle. We did some more swimming, playing & chilling and came to the conclusion that that day was the best day of our lives so far.

Our guide, his younger brother, and our captain.

The floating cabins (ours was to the left)
The view from a lookout that we hiked to

The Caves

The captain made my day by letting me drive the long-tail boat.

Floating Market

Probably the most interesting market I've ever seen - and the original floating market in this part of Thailand (near Bangkok). I believe our tour guide said it's been around since the 70's and it was started by Chinese people. We hired a boat to take Mel & I and two others around the market - about a 15 minute venture. Our boat was propelled by two captains with paddles - one of them is in the black shirt at the front of our boat in the picture above. This was one of the most jammed up points of the journeys - boats were everywhere and vendors in boats were all trying to sell us something - from hats to spices to postcards. The market was mostly tourists when we were there, but every morning from about 5:30-7:30 you can catch the locals trading here.



While at the floating market we saw signs for "The Most Exciting Show in the World" which was a snake show. How can you resist that? So we checked it out and it was pretty incredible. The pictures didn't capture the craziest moments but still give you an idea of how close the show guys got to the deadly cobras. One guy had 3 snakes, caught 1 in each hand, and the final in his mouth. After successfully doing that without getting bit, they squeezed the venom out of them in front of the crowd to show they weren't joking around. I thought they were nuts, but they were also very skilled and put on a great show.

Bangkok

What a city! We had a great time but were ready to move on and away from the buckets of booze.

Hong Kong

A bonus destination - during our 6 hour layover en route to Bangkok, Mel and I took the train into the city for a look around Hong Kong.

Final Day

Yesterday, my last full day in Europe, I rented a plane and went on 2 flights over Copenhagen. I recruited some people on the Oslo Cruise and they were happy to go and pay for the flight. On the first flight, I was given permission to fly directly over the Copenhagen International Airport at 1000 feet which was really cool and something I've never previously been able to do. It felt fantastic to hit the skies again!

Currently I am in the Copenhagen Airport waiting to board my flight home. I have a 5 hour layover in Frankfurt and will be breifly meeting up with Andreas, another friend from Copenhagen, for lunch and a quick tour of the city.

I arrive home later tonight and will be heading to the cottage on Friday to take my first snowmobile ride of the 2009 season!

Looking very forward to seeing my family & friends!!

Jake :-)