The Life of Phi Phi...

Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) is the little island in southern Thailand famed by The Beach starring Leo DiCaprio and Johnson out of Peep show. It was our next destination and had a reputation for lovely beaches and a party scene, the reputation was correct.

Now when you arrive on the island you will come in on one of three boats, an early morning one, and midday one and an evening one; that dictates where you will stay for your time on the island. This is because the island is so small that spaces in accommodation are limited therefore those who arrive first get the good hotels and those that arrive later (us) end up in the shit heap. You can’t even go to a place and say “can we stay tomorrow?” because they don’t even know. That’s how busy it is, they don’t even have a bookings book!

This sign has nothing do with anything but it is funny.

So we were staying in this complete shit hole, separate 20 man dorms with the beds pushed as close to each other as possible, so that the person next to you could easily roll over and wind up on your bed. This happened, frequently. I wouldn’t have mind so much if it had been a fit bird next to me, but instead I had some ultra-annoying Norwegian bell end.

The Norwegian moron was the least of my concerns as I would later discover that I had been put in a room with a select collection of the world’s biggest idiots, potentially to get me on a wobbler as some sort of experiment.

We had thought that the hostel would be a good shout because we could meet some new people; I remembered very quickly that I don’t like people all that much. I didn’t want to learn their names so I categorised them as follows

First there was Posho Twat, an 18 year old gimp with an opinion about everything without any knowledge of the subject and stupid posh voice which I’m sure he was putting on. I rinsed him in all discussions

Harry Potter Girl, loved Harry Potter, talked about it all the time, fancied Ron Weasel, played the Deathly hallows Part II on her laptop on loudspeaker after a night out, had a Harry Potter themed tattoo. She has ruined harry Potter for me.

Emo Girl, seems like she worked for the Northern Thailand tourist board, would not stop harping on about Chiang Mai. Go live there and get away from me!

The Hair Straightened Brothers, they don’t require much explanation, Jesus!

Canadian Girl, swanning around telling anyone with ears about how she lost her phone and bank card and then asking inane questions like “would you rather dry hump your grandmother to death or cut your nob off”

Unfunny Australian Dick’ed kept using the phrase, “I’m gunna make like a dick, and beat it”. He must have said it about 500 times, even when he wasn’t leaving. No one ever laughed, and it doesn’t make sense.

Bum Trouble, my advice to this idiot is DO NOT announce to everyone that you’ve had the shits for 3 days when everyone you are announcing it too has to share a toilet with you! “I’ve got Irritable Bowel Disease; I’ve got Irritable Bowel Disease!” No you haven’t, you’ve eat some shit food so get on with it. And isn’t it called Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

The Lads from Stoke, They were from Stoke, but they were not lads. About 40, acting like their 12. Desperate to cop off with the Americans.

American Girl, basically thick. One person asks “how much did you spend last night?” she replies “well, 130 on food and 150 on drinks, so like, 270?”

American Girl with Burns. She had burns on her inner leg from spilling a soup on herself, just to paint a picture. I had to wake up to sound of her having sex in the room, this caused some quite vocal irritation due to the burns. Some hours later I was woken up again as she had moved beds and had got hold of one of the Stoke Lads. She obviously didn’t learn from earlier in the night because those burns got in the way again.

The only way to avoid these people was to go out on the smash, so we did; and at £4 for a bucket with half a bottle of vodka present, it wasn’t expensive.

The bar next to our hostel had a Thai boxing ring, for Thai boxers? Nope! For normal punters to go and beat each other up; of course. This provided much hilarity, especially when two birds got up and literally scrapped for 5 minutes, bizarre yet brilliant.

The night life spills on the beach where there are people painting UV stuff on you if you like. I came across this and a girl started drawing on my arm. I think you’re supposed to pay because the little Thai bloke doing it got annoyed and threw his palette at me. It hit me on the arm which flew a combo of orange, yellow and black paint all up my arm; I looked well cool, cheers mush.

Here’s a video from one of the nights, I have no idea who the woman is :s

We took a trip off the main Phi Phi (Phi Phi Don) to see Phi Phi Ley, which is the beach from The Beach.  I can’t remember if it’s the island from it as well but here it is anyway.

This included the best snorkelling we had done all trip and a chance to stand on the beach and write things in the sand.

The boat returned in time for us to catch the sunset.

Anyway, that was Phi Phi.

Verdict? Good! Nice view also.

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Christmas, New Year & the Full Moon...

We had planned to stay in a lush apartment for Christmas to feel a bit homely and cook our own attempt at a Christmas dinner. It’s hard to describe how eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in restaurants for 5 months does get tiresome.

When we got to Koh Tao we weren’t disappointed, it was lush and was nestled high in the mountains looking over the sea and we cotched there for a few days before Christmas which was fairly standard aside from crashing a moped at an embarrassingly low speed.

When Christmas came I woke up J Bird to give him his presents, he didn’t get me anything but I didn’t expect anything so…

Here’s the moment when all of Jack’s Christmas wishes came true:

For Christmas dinner we invited these two sisters who we had met back in Vietnam and were on the island at the same time. We ate a variation of a crimbo dinner all cooked on the hob, it was a medium success followed by Only Fools and Cluedo, classic.

However, Christmas took a sour turn for me. Now, I’m going to tell you a story but it’s not a nice one. I have deleted the sisters from Facebook so they don’t have to endure the story.

I was busto for the toilet after numerous cokes and I noticed that one of the sisters was in the toilet for an exceptionally long time. When she did eventually emerge I rushed in and was immediately hit with a powerful pong. I’m not a dickhead so I’ll let a bit of smell slide, plus I’d made them the food so was partially responsible. I closed the door which was on the same wall as the toilet itself. I rounded the loo and faced it, looked down and noticed something on the bath mat position directly in front. It was a little shit nugget. I still don’t know how it would have managed to get there due to the positioning of everything. I was horrified and panicked but not wanting to be a scrooge and ruin Christmas for everyone; I folded up the mat and threw it in the shower. I didn’t mention a thing until they left 5 hours later and I informed Jack. Try and enjoy crimbo with that on your mind; knowing there's a little poo wrapped up in your shower!

Koh Phangan is the home of the Full Moon Party, it’s basically a massive beach party where people dress like mongs and drink buckets until the early hours. We were there for two of them, first on the 28^th and the second for New Year ’s Eve where 60,000 people gather. To get there you would be crammed (and I mean really crammed) into the back of a pickup and some mental Thai LAD would drive like Nigel Mansell on an E as you struggle to keep the contents of your bucket inside the bucket as you endure astronomical G Forces.

Here are my video highlights of the from NYE and pics from both events:

 I returned to our bungalow after the first party but we had locked the key inside so I slept in a hammock on the porch whilst insects ate the fuck out of me; until Jack returned an hour later:

J: “Oi mate… what you doing in that hammock”

T: “Remember, we forgot the key”

J: “It’s alright I’ll go sort this out”

T: “Don’t you think I’ve already tried reception”

J: “Yeah yeah, whatever”

Jack left and returned moments later

J: “Yeah there’s no one there”

T: “I know”

J: “Let’s have a look”

We walked around the bungalow and noticed that the mosquito mesh windows looked quite flimsy, so Jack broke one and I boosted him through. LADs

Now, two full moons had come at a cost. The cost of flip flops. When we got to the beach on the first night I had brown flip flops but returned with one black and one white flip flop, this was as a result of petty theft, I think; so I stole someone else’s shoes, don't judge me.

On the second party the waves swept away the odd shoes off my feet so I borrowed some others

Later on I found one of my original flip flops.

Then after the current stolen ones got uncomfortable I stole some others, these are much better.

Anyway Koh Phangan is nice.

Before heading off to Koh Phi Phi we had a brief stay on Koh Samui, which isn’t all that. In summary I did the following there:

Stayed in a hotel run by extremely unconvincing lady boys

Dominated the pool table; destroying all comers until a polish bloke beat me and left to go smoke weed in his room while his daughter slept

Ate chicken curry on pancakes wish was surprisingly, insanely delicious

Lost my phone between eating a Subway and then eating a McDonalds across the street

Rinsed some prostitutes at Connect 4 (they probably let me win)

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Flipping Tigers, Cuddling Quad Bikes & White Water Rinsing...

Chiang Mai for us was going to be a whirlwind 2 days of extreme adventure to cram in before heading to the islands for the infamous Full Moon party.

The town itself was pretty busy and surprisingly large and the minibus in was not free of incident. Our minibus tapped some pickup and the driver got out and got all agro. He was some American twat sticking his head through the window shouting at our driver things like, “I hope you got a lot of money!” “oh you got a load of Farang in here, this is gunna take a long time”. Imagine this said in the most whiny gaylord American accent, such a pleb. I don’t know the fella but I can honestly say that I hate him.

After his bitchfit he looked at the damage of his car, discovered there was none and drove off, seriously what a pube.

The town center has a vibrant night market where you can buy anything fake; from hang bags, Zippos and model cars to paintings, pornography and batman ninja stars.

 The morning of the first full day arrived and we headed out with our taxi driver, Phillip (not his real name). Phillip would take us around all the sights for the day for just 6 squids and he was a proper LAD. Although he never spoke to us I can just tell he was a proper LAD.

First stop was the local Tiger Kingdom. You know the typical sort of place where you walk into an enclosure full of tigers, hug them, get a picture and leave. No biggie, just your usual tiger kingdom – get over it.

Next the Snake Zoo come Snake show place. Here mental little Thai geezers would put snakes in their mouths, try and get snakes to bites their faces and lose control of snakes so that they scurried into the crowd. Here you can see the funny buggers have decided to point the snakes head at my nob, those guys, funny!

The best part by miles was the bloke on the microphone during the show. He controlled the music (The Final Countdown instrumental version) and would repeat the phrase “most danger snake in Asia” approximately 90 times in an MC Neat style voice.

After the show we had the opportunity to walk around their zoo, which included more snakes, a monkey who charged at us until he hit his noggin on the cage and rabbits and guinea pigs.

Next on the tour, quad bikes through the jungle on an off road track. Ok no problem. So the lady said to us,

“30 minutes or one hour?” - one hour obvs!

“Easy, medium or hard” - erm.. hard, cheers

“what size engine” – yeah will take the biggest, 450cc please.

We headed off and after 5 minutes I had flip it and smashed my arm up using the “if in trouble, floor it” tactic whilst ascending a steep rocking hill.

Driving for another hour and 15 minutes due to the generous quad bike guys proved tricky as what can only be described as a well dangerous path and blood falling from my arm was a less than pedestrian excursion. Awesome, nether the less.

The next day promised to be even more action packed. We bandaged up my arm and were picked up before zooming off to range of activities set up by the tour company. First on list wasn’t even on the list. For some reason the driver stopped at an orchid farm and said “20 minute”.

That is literally all he said. Have you ever spent 20 minutes in a section of a garden center where they only have one type of plant? Enormous yawnfest… but hang on, what’s this? A butterfly farm in the corner – this I had to see.

Jack said you can judge a farm on the quality and quantity of its produce. We saw 3 poo coloured moths!

We were taken to a village where people with long necks live, basically a zoo for humans. I was repulsed.

Following that tragic waste of time, we drove through some sort of jungle roads until we reached base camp, served some Pad Thai and we jumped on an elephant, as you do. We had to stand on a platform and mount it, except n no one said how, so I just stepped on his head and sat on the seat. We named him Jonno and off we went.

Now I don’t want to knock Jonno seeing as I was sitting on his back and lolling but come on bruv, try and walk a bit a flatter. I really thought we were going to fall out of the seat and get trampled all over. There was also the awkward moment where Jonno walked unaided to a shack where a man appeared and pointed a cup on the end of a stick at us. We both looked at each other and didn’t know what was going on. The man pointed at a sign that said “SUGAR CA-NES 50B”, finally it all became clear and I said to the man, “no thanks we don’t want any sugar cane, I’m not hungry” The bloke looked at me like I was an idiot and I turned around. Then Jack had a revelation, “hang on, is the sugar cane supposed to be for the elephant” “oh yeah, that makes more sense”. We put money in the cup and gave Jonno the canes, he ruddy loved them.

We ditched Jonno and went in the jungle on a trek with our group, two English lads, a German couple and bunch of Chineso’s. The walk wasn’t long, well it shouldn’t have been long but my Christ those Chineso’s are slow, urgh.

On the way there were groups walking past on the way down. After one group passed Jack had something to say:

J “That lad had a funny bandage on”

T “Huh? What bloke?”

J “that bloke, just walked past… with the bandage… had a bottle of water”

T “Jack!” I looked at him with a concerned face

J “What?”

T “Jack… that wasn’t a bandage. That was a fake arm… with a hook on the end… holding a bottle of water”

J “Are you sure?”

T “Yes, I am definitely sure”

When we got to the waterfall it was a bit ordinary. This is where we decided that we can add waterfalls to the list of things we’ve seen enough of. Also on the list are temples, shrines and morons.

Now for a quick game of Where’s Tristan!

The day’s main event was up next, white water rafting. We got in the raft and teamed with the other English guys, both us and them wanted to avoid being grouped with the slow Chineso’s. Actually I’ve just realized we spent all day with these English blokes but they never asked our names, we didn’t ask theirs; perfect.

Heading down river, our guide was a little bit eccentric. Singing an incredibly annoying tune and striking up odd conversation for any situation, let alone whilst gliding down rocks and what not. The odd topics included the film Rambo 4, the Mayan end of the world, The Decepticons and the threat of nuclear war from Iran, all in broken English.

Jack asked the guy how many people have fallen in the water, he replied with “everyone”. Moments later we went over a mini water cliff sideways and flipped straight over. I’m still not sure if it was deliberate or accidental but it hurt so much as my body got dragged across some fairly pointy rocks and my bandage got ripped clean off. I was able to climb on top of the up turned raft whilst the guide laughed so hard I thought he might die. Then the chineso’s strolled past.

We hopped onto a bamboo raft and finished off down the strip of the river and that was Chiang Mai, loved it.

Typical video summary:

 

So we went south for a mini stay in Bangkok again where we had enough time to hang out with some Girls Next Door and have a drink with Sean Connery.

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