Koh Tao, Full Moon & first day in Malaysia (19th-22nd October)

We arrived in Koh Tao, which is infamous for its diving, by ferry and checked into our hostel. Ironically our hostel was the most expensive so far and by far the worst. We were sharing an 8 person dorm for the first time and were anxious to find future who our roommates would be.Fortunately for Heidi and I, all of our roommates for the first 2 nights were girls and roughly our age. 3 of them were English and were teaching for a year near Bangkok. They all loved Koh Tao and had been back many times during the school holidays. My opinion of the small island, however, was very different. It had its perks, we went snorkelling on the last day and saw some amazing fish. I have always loved swimming and snorkelling and so spending 5 or so hours in the water was very enjoyable. We saw some parrot fish which were massive and really looked like they had beaks. There were some smaller blue fish that kept swimming towards my body and biting the scab off my burn on my leg which was both disgusting and painful. Nathan bought a snorkel and mask so that he can use it through travelling and Matt and I hired one each so all 3 of us swam underwater together, pointing out hermit crabs and colourful looking fish to each other. The beach was called Tanotu and really was beautiful but it was the only beach that I liked on the island. The main beach was very small and very dirty and although the others liked spending time there, I didn't. We went to a pub called Lotus Bar which had live music from and Australian dude who sang unique covers of songs that we knew. The bar quickly turned from a relaxed bar where we sat on cushions drinking beer and listening to music to a chaotic club filled with fire dancers and loud music. It was a brilliant night and for over an hour we watched 4 Thai guys aged between 18 and 24 playing with fire using sticks, yo yo type things and a spiral instrument that they took into the sea and span round to make a massive Catherine Wheel effect. I really fancied one of them but he looked young, he had plenty of tattoos and wore a bowler hat and converse and I harassed him a couple of times during the night. He said his name was Bill! It was a really good night and we met a couple of people as well the 3 girls from the hostel who were very drunk and were throwing each other in the sea.
I think that by the time we got to this island I was missing city life and just wanted to be around proper buildings and concrete!!! I was happy to leave the island after 3 days and we travelled on the ferry to Phangan where the Full Moon party was! Ironically (again) the hostel we stayed in on this island practically promised to be a dive but in fact it was one of the best hostels that we stayed in. It was very cheap and we stayed in a 22 person dorm! We made friends immediately with a group of 5 guys from England who were travelling for 3 weeks in Thailand and then 3 weeks in Vietnam. They were proper lads, discussing girls every minute and preparing to get wasted at the party but they were very nice. We also met 2 Australian girls who live in Brisbane who gave us some tips for when we get there. We arrived in the morning of the Full Moon party and casually got to know where everything was in the day to reserve our energy for the evening. The party would start at dusk and finish at dawn. We all bought some tshirts from a market by our hostel to wear for the night out and spent the start of the evening playing games with our new friends and painting ourselves with fluorescent paint. Use alcohol in Thailand tastes so disgusting and I was sick drinking beer so hadn't really drank anything by the time it got to 2am, which was a good thing considering what happened next. We took in the sights of many tourists dancing crazily and swimming in the sea, enjoyed the music and new people that we were meeting and watched (from afar) the fire dancers who were not as good as the ones from Koh Tao as this one lady kept setting innocent bystanders on fire!
Anyway, we spotted what looked like an exciting slide that started on top of a building and ended on the beach with a very small beanbag breaking the fall. We climbed up to the top of the slide and Matt went down first, bouncing off the beanbag onto the rock-hard sand and was in agony. He proceeded to catch Heidi and me as we reached the end of the slide as he later told us that he didn't want us to ever feel the same pain as he did. Hero ;) The next couple of hours consisted of a trip to 2 doctors practices, a lot of crying a pain from Matt's end, Matt passing out from the medication and then coming round acting very drunk due to the drip the doctor had given him. I then had to look after him for a few hours as we walked back to the hostel and went to bed because he was so hyper and upset about missing the rest of the party! He work up at 8am and started singing to me, despite the fact that we were in a 22 bed dorm. It was like looking after a child but it was just so funny. Of course it was also a massive relief to be told by the doctor that he had not broken anything and would be fine soon, as the first few hours after it had happened were filled with worry.
When we got back to the hostel we saw the English guys from our dorm and they had been minesweeping (drinking abandoned drinks) that had been left on the beach and 2 of them had been spiked pretty badly. Matt's hyperactivity did not help their attempt to calm down and come down but that just made me laugh even more - oops!
We spent the next day relaxing on the island, I bought some more shorts and got 2 pairs for just less than £7, not bad! We walked along a very rickety bridge on the beach and sat down on a large rock overlooking the sea and all 4 of us just chatted for hours. The next morning we woke up at 5.15am and got a taxi, ferry, and a few buses to Malaysia and arrived at about 9pm. We met a very Essex guy called Russel who had been travelling through India and then Thailand for the past 3 months and is now travelling through Malaysia. We've kind of adopted him now as he's staying in our 10 bed dorm here in Penang as luckily there was a bed spare. He had injured himself at the Full Moon party too, by stupidly jumping over the limbo stick that was on fire and burning the whole of the inside of his thigh. We're walking round like a bunch of old men now with Matt hobbling and Russel limping! When we arrived in Malaysia we had no Malaysian money so all 5 of us had to exchange our baht into ringgit. Russel and I were saying how we'd only just got the hang of baht so we're likely to pay extortionate amounts for things and think it's really cheap! The money here is more like at home, with 5 ringgit being near a pound rather than 50 baht being near a pound!
Malaysia is so different to Thailand and I'm absolutely loving it. The main roads look like English motorways and there is quite a lot greenery and a few parks. It seems that Penang has elements of Thailand, still some street food, although mainly at night, and some of the housing is the same. However, it's a lot cleaner, there are more police, there are also more concrete/built up areas and it resembles more of a city. We saw a difference in the hostel here in Malaysia to the Thai hostels straight away as it is cleaner and has plants and water features in it. It looks like the pictures of Chinese gardens that I have seen and definitely has that feel about it. Here the food is a mixture of Indian, Chinese and Thai and we bought some samosas and onion bargies from a street stall today and they were delicious. Because there is a lot of Indian food though, some of the street stalls look disgusting. We passed one today which was serving goats stomach curry and the meat looked like tyre. We found a delicious Mandarin Chinese cafe that serves a fresh version of a McDonald's breakfast with sausage, egg and cheese in a bagel so I was very happy! We spent the day walking around, looking at some street art that Penang is known for, playing with the American football in the park and visiting a mosque.
Later this week we are planning on taking the bus to Kuala Lumpur and seeing my friend Hannah from university and our friend Josh who we met in Samui. Can't wait :)

Koh Samui (8th-18th October)

It's been a long time since I last posted, partly because we've been so busy doing things but mostly because I've had my head in a book that Mickey gave me. I've just finished it and was a bit disappointed by the ending, but was transfixed by the rest of it! All the Falangs (English people) here seem to be reading murder thrillers!
Anyway, we moved on from Sumat and got the tiny ferry back to Pattaya. The men running the boat were very lovely as they carried Heidi and my bags down the rickety, portable ramp that they positioned from the ferry onto the dock. I would have fallen in if they hadn't because of how steep it was! We were all in fits of giggles as I tried to get up onto the taxi (an open roofed van) from the dock to the mainland with my bag on, falling over and landing on my knees. The 3 Malaysians that we shared the taxi ride with were not impressed with me! We then got a minibus back to Pattaya to stay at Mickey's for one more night. Daa cooked us our last meal of Thai pork chops and rice which was delicious and probably the only Thai meal I could have stomached at that point. The Thai food is lovely but the herbs are so distinctive and I can't get used to them! We watched some more Thai tv and went to bed in the comfort of a house that we had grown to know. I slept on the floor as we had all been taking turns but I was so glad not to be sleeping on the beds in the bungalows on the beach because they felt like massive sand bags. In the morning Daa cooked us Thai breakfast which is food that the English would eat at lunch or dinner, it was a massive plate of rice with onions and carrots in it. I couldn't get enough of it! I had to pass on the pork and vegetables that she cooked because I had just woken up and it felt weird, but the others told me those dishes were equally delicious. Mickey then dropped us off at the bus station so we could start our 13 hour bus journey, starting at 4pm and after getting the ferry to our destination, Koh Samui, we arrived at where we wanted to be at 8am. The guys left me in the hostel to sleep a bit while they checked out the beach.
The beach - beautiful. The best beach we have been to so far. The sand was white and the sea was a transparent blue/green. It was what I imagined Thailand to look like. On top of this, the weather was like it was in Bangkok with no rain at all and a heat that made only sunbathing bearable. Of course I stayed in the shade because of my ginger genes (thanks gpa!!) but still it felt like paradise. The hostel was also lovely, a 4 person dorm for £3.75 a night which was very clean and with our own en suite. 2 of the beds felt like concrete but we swapped around to make it fair and we couldn't really complain.
We took motorbikes out one day to see the whole of the island which was a lot bigger than Sumat and so had proper roads and lots of Falang. We went to numerous beaches and travelled to see a giant Buddha. We hadn't visited any religious places since Bangkok so we all really enjoyed that as it took us back to the first place we visited. The view from where the Buddha was took my breath away as you could see all along the shore and it was getting dark.
Here it gets dark at about half 6, which we were surprised about, so we went for dinner at an American restaurant and met the owners. We were brave to go back on the motorbikes considering the massive gash I got in my leg the first time round but the roads were like in England, plus the crazy driving of cours. If you drive "too slow" some crazy motorbike driver will keep beeping at you to drive faster but you constantly hear beeps along the road anyway. Taxi drivers will beep at any pedestrian to get them in their cabs so you just have to ignore them and keep walking. We also visited a butterfly farm which I surprisingly enjoyed and got some good photos which I know my Grandpa and Dad will enjoy ;)
We met quite a few friends whilst in Samui as we went to a bar called lipsmackers that was run by a few crazy people, one called King who looked like he was always on drugs and probably was. You would spot him one minute and the next he would have disappeared. It was here where we met a lovely Malaysian called Josh who was very intelligent and great to have a conversation with. Matt and I ended up having an hour-long friendly debate about religion which was more interesting than anything else. He had 2 tattoos on his fingers; Roman numerals. One was V. for the film V for Vendetta, which was the film that inspired him to become a film maker, the other was I. to remind him of when he was Catholic.
Heidi and I also met 2 Israeli guys who were equally as nice but not quite as good at English. It was extremely interesting listening to what their life was like in comparison to ours. They had both served 3 years in the army in order to get their further education at university at a discounted price. The guy I spoke to is now in construction and although it is considered a good job, he is paid a considerably lower wage than he would be in England. Whilst in Sumat, Heidi and I spoke to a Thai who owned a pub on the island. He informed us that he had visited England and said he hated it because it smelt like cheese! There isn't much cheese around in Thailand due to the bad grass and so he was not used to it when he visited the UK. He also had a 2 year old baby with his American girlfriend who he met when she was holidaying on the island. His child and girlfriend both lived in America because the schools are better there, and it was sad to hear he could only see them every 3 months. He was happy to show us photos of them and they really were both gorgeous. He offered me and Heidi some food that we had never seen before and I was happy to try it. I am still not entirely sure what it was but I think it was semolina and coconut in sugar, as you can see in the photo. I enjoyed it because it was so sweet, but after one mouthful Heidi refused the rest.
In Samui we went out a couple of times, starting the night at lipsmackers and ending it at Ark Bar. The latter consisted of fire throwing and dancing on the beach which allowed the club to be seen from miles away. On the "dancefloor", a collection of young girls between the ages of 3 and 12 would walk around trying to sell flowers to the men to give to the ladies. The sad part about this was how young the girls were, and how they were working in a space full of drunk young adults. I had not experienced a place like this until I was 18, and they were working every night there from such an early age. One young girl selling flowers, however, showed her mental maturity by completely out-smarting Matt. As he had refused to buy me any more flowers, because he bought me a rose in Pattaya for a laugh, the young girl became very annoyed with him. Why she didn't pick on Nathan I don't know. She then challenged him to a thumb war, at which he refused, but was coerced into through physical force. Of course the young girl won because she had been doing this all night every night for a very long time. When Matt outright refused to buy these flowers she took Heidi's beer to smash on top of Matt's bottle causing it to foam out of the bottle neck. For the rest of the night this girl followed Matt around making sure he wasn't causing trouble. This included taking some glow-in-the-dark glasses off him and tearing them to pieces once checking with her friend that Matt had found them rather than purchased them. The next night I rewarded her for her good judgement by giving her a bracelet that a random man had bought me. I also made deals with the girls that allowed me to get a hug off them if I managed to get people to buy flowers! I told many of them how pretty they were, and the young ones loved it, although to my dismay some refused to accept the compliment as truth. I don't know what their lives are like, and their job was not particularly unsafe, but I believe all little girls should be told how pretty they are so I said it and genuinely meant it.
One of our friends from lipsmackers told us that the island of Samui was quickly becoming less backpacker friendly and was expanding its market to more wealthy customers. We saw many extravagant and expensive looking hotels as we went around the island, and it seemed that these places were quickly replacing hostels and pubs. The 2 lipsmackers bars will soon become only 1 as the owners have been forced to shut down the one in the street (the other being on the beach) to make a grand entrance into the town.
After one night out, Matt and I got a motorbike taxi ride back to the hostel, with both of us on the back. It was such a funny experience as we were driving so slow, this made it safer which made me happy, and I had my arms wrapped around the driver's stomach and Matt laughing in my left ear.
We have now left beautiful Samui and caught a ferry to Koh Tao where we will stay until Saturday morning when we will take yet another ferry ride to the full moon party!! Wooo!! Oh, also, the burn on my leg is healing nicely and I don't even think it will scar :)

1st October-7th

We stayed in Pattaya for a week and took a ferry from the mainland to an island called Koh Sumat. Heidi and I were shocked to see how small the ferry was because we naively assumed that it would look like the ferry you take from Dover over to France. In fact it was just like a bus but for the sea as you can see in the picture.
We're planning on staying here only for a couple of days as it is a very small island and it's not been that sunny here over the past few days.
This brings me onto the storms in Pattaya. Almost every night that we've stayed at Mickey's there has been a massive thunderstorm in the evening and all through the night. The second night in Pattaya was the worst as the storm cut out the electricity and we were stuck in the dark for hours. At first it was so scary as we were in a massive house that we didn't know well with no light to guide us around. Every time there was lightning you caught a glimpse for less than a second of what everyone else was doing and looking at. Matt took an amazing video of the lightning

 and you can see and hear just how bad the storms are and yet how beautiful they look in the Thai surroundings. We lit candles so we could see what we were doing and all 4 of us got into our swimmers and swam in the pool in the heavy rain. I wasn't expecting it to be so cold but it was freezing! Such a good experience and Mickey and Daa thought we were crazy.
We had a night out in Pattaya which was so much crazier than Fever in Nuneaton ;) Heidi and I had to use our first toilet that was a hole in the ground and Heidi found it very difficult. I was laughing so much that I nearly wet myself before I even got into the cubicle! The music was English music and we stuck to beer because we've heard bad things about Thai spirits. Heidi and I danced on the stage in the club while Matt and Nathan looked like our biggest fans. A taxi back to Mickey's was only £2 each which was pretty good considering how far away it was. We spent the next day watching American Pie on Mickey's tv and went to the Outback pub where Daa works for some English food. We tried some street food whilst at Mickey's although we're being very careful about what we consume. We have discovered banana pancakes which are cooked on the side of the road or the beach using a cooker. For 20p they fry a pancake, put bananas and scrambled eggs in the middle of it and pour condensed milk on top. Really really delicious. I'm still eating Thai food but am glad to have English food every now and then although the beefburgers here are so tiny and Nathan had one that was green!
Koh samut is such a beautiful island. We found some accommodation for £6 a night, they're little bungalows on the beach which are so handy. Once Mickey and Daa dropped us off here we went exploring and found a litter of puppies on the beach. It goes without saying that we've visited them every day. This island is what I imagined 'travelling' to look like. We've been swimming and cloud bathing here and we're now on our third day. We went out on the first night and went to a crazy outdoor pub and made a few friends. Me and Matt crashed a party in another pub and made even more friends. They love Maroon 5 out here which we're all enjoying as it takes us back to our teenage years. Me and Matt stayed at the party until the lights came on, in true Nuneaton style, and went late night (or should I say early morning) swimming. It was so much fun and the sea was so warm.
Today we've hired motorbikes and are driving around the island. The main road is a dirty beaten track and the island is much more hilly than we thought!! The ride is a bit bumpy but it's all part of the fun and we got soaked in a downpour of rain. We've all got cuts and bruises from the ride on the bikes, the road is just so unstable that it's impossible not to crash. We managed to bike all the way to the end of the island, which is the photo with Heidi in it, so we have been from the top to the bottom.
We're now looking up where to go next and whether we can make a full moon party on another island but we need to be out of Thailand in 2 weeks. It's lovely being able to choose where to go whenever we want to.