We still had an amazing time and we found both countries to be an amazing experience. We started on Boxing day I met up with a couple of mates at Heathrow. We flew to Thailand to Bangkok via Beijing. We had a quick look around Beijing as we had about 5 hours to kill but we found the place to be cold and a bit depressing really. Wouldn't recommend it but if we had more time, I may have changed my opinion. I can imagine Beijing being a lot nicer in the summer.
We got a taxi to hotel our hotel from the air pot which took about half an hour. It was in the middle of the night which enabled the driver to drive about 100mph so we told him to slow down. We arrived at our hotel in Khaosan Road which is a very touristy street in central Bangkok. We arrived about 2am and the place was really buzzing. We stayed at the D&D Inn hotel which was adequate and had plenty of facitlities including a roof top bar and swimming pool with good views of the city. On Khaosan Road, there is a really diverse range of travellers from old men from Western Europe looking for there next wife to young Americans/ Australians, Chinese, many Europeans along with plenty of Brits. The street is a good first port of call for any traveller due the wide range of hotels, bars, restaurants and souvenirs. The bad points are that you will be hassled many times to buy a suits, lady boys, tuk tuks, ping pong shows and everything under the sun!
We had 1 night in Bangkok before leaving to go South. We had bought our train tickets back in the UK as train tickets can sell out in Thailand (buy here), especially around the time of the New years eve Full moon Party. We got the train around 4pm and we had something to eat before the guards came round about 8pm to put the sleeper beds up. The beds are comfortable and clean but the sleep wasn't great, the journey lasted around 12 hours but I woke about 6 times in the night. Even though the trains travel fairly slow in Thailand, the state of tracks are poor and some parts of the journey are very bumpy.
We got to Surat Thani around 5am as the journey was delayed at some point. We were exhausted and had to get a short bus journey to the ferry port where we were getting the train to Koh Pangan. We boarded the ferry which took about an hour to get to the Island. We had a few days before new years eve to relax and chil although we decided to head to Haad Rin on our first night which is one of the main towns on the island and where the famous full moon parties are. We stayed at a lovely resort on the north of the island called Serenity Residence, the food was amazing wherever we went in Thailand but especially at the hotel we were staying in. It was a small family run hotel but they catered for our every needs. Our room was meters from the beach with sea views from the balcony.
We had a great time on New years eve, we headed down in a taxi from the resort and we met some other revellers who we actually ended up staying with. We met a great funny guy from Brazil who spent the rest of the evening with us. We decided to dress up in traditional face paints and colourful head bands. In the picture below, my arm reads 'Mr Happy Ending' . We got down to Haad Rin very early as we had heard the roads can get jammed up by taxis and many people ending up missing out on the full moon party. We arrived around 6pm for dinner and it was a totally amazing night. My memories are fairly vague but the Thai red bull sends you crazy (which is actually banned in the UK). In fact its so strong that I ended up drinking not as much I usually would on New Years as it gives you a great buzz. The buckets (drinks) are really cheap where you basically can purchase from about 100 booths and shops. You can negotiate with some if your in a group so always start the bidding low!. The good thing about the buckets is that you get to poor your own drink as you get a bottle of vodka or whisky with a choice of lemonade/coke and customary red bull. I think it works out about £3 per bucket and trust me, you don't need more than 2 unless you are a very hard core drinker, in which case you may manage 3. The beach's are packed with 1000's of people, I didn't see any fights/troubles/drugs or anything that made me feel unsafe. Just go easy with the drink and you wont have any problems.
NYE - Koh Pangan 6pm
2 days before NYE
After New Years eve we spent the next couple of days chilling out. We went to book our train journey back as we didn't pre-book tickets. What a mistake that was! So our only option was a gruelling 13 hour bus journey back to Bangkok. The coach was a good laugh for the first couple of hours as we had decided to sit down stairs with a group of people we met on the ferry coming back from Koh Pangan. Downstairs had a large communal table in the middle with long bench style chairs. We thought, great we had the VIP party section which we made a concerted effect to get. Most of bus was on the top deck with reclining chairs. So after the novelty had worn off we tried to sleep which was nye on impossible. We realised by this time we had definitely made a massive mistake and we ended up sleeping on top of each other, and at times taking turns to lie down. We arrived in Bangkok with severe sleep deprivation and we then found a hotel and went straight to bed!
Our next destination was Laos. We had to spend an extra night in Bangkok as the trains were full again but we managed to get trains tickets the following day to North Thailand and Laos. See next blog post for Laos backpacking trip
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