Thailand - Day 18 - Bangkok

Day 18

Sorry fans, only a brief update today as we've spent all day on in a boat/car/plane. Pretty sick of travelling between destinations, but only 1 more flight in a few days and we'll be back in AUS. Anyways... we're now in Bangkok.

Not a lot of pictures as we've been travelling all day, but here are the ones we did take.

So as we were waiting for our boat from Zeavola we noticed some commotion further down the beach, as we walked down the beach we spotted one of the resort workers had climbed up a dead palm tree with a chainsaw to cut it down.

Anyways... along time after we left Zeavola we arrived at our new hotel the Pathumwan Princess in Bangkok. This is Kristen sculling her welcome test tube drink.

Required photo of the decorated bed, this room comes with the matching rose petals in the bath tub.

Complimentary chocolate cake for me. I let Kristen have some too.

Tomorrow we have a tour of Ayutthaya World Heritage Site booked, and an evening of shopping or Muay Thai.

I promise there will be a lot more photos tomorrow.

-Matt

Thailand - Day 17 - Koh Phi Phi Don

Day 17

Today we'd booked another tour from our resort, the name of this tour was "One Day in Paradise"

We started out with breakfast at the resort, then we hopped into a long tail boat and were off, our first stop Mosquito Island. Luckily for Kristen we didn't see any mosquitoes. Once here we jumped into the water for some snorkelling.

Mosquito Island from Zeavola

After we were done snorkelling we were off to Bamboo Island. Now on the brochure for "one day in paradise" it said we would have lunch on a secluded beach, what we found was a beach full of day tourists from Phuket :(. We put our towels down on a not so busy part of the beach and had lunch and a drink then we jumped back into the water for another swim. After we dragged ourselves out of the water we relaxed on our towels until our long tail captain came to get us to return to the resort.

Bamboo Island from Zeavola

Once we were back we went back to our cabin for a little while then we were off to the spa for a couples massage. Kristen had an gentle aromatherapy massage, I had a "medium" sports therapy massage. At one point the masseuse was kneeling on the back of my thighs driving her elbows into my back... I should have asked for soft. Once our massage was done we settled down on the beach with our books for an hour or 2.

After we were chased off the beach by the mosquitoes we retreated to our cabin for some mozzie spray and headed back out for our candlelit dinner on the beach

While we were having dinner the resort next door was putting on yet another fire show. After some very hot Thai dishes the rain forced us back in doors once again. Phi Phi turned on a beautiful day for us today which was the perfect way to end our time here. Off to Bangkok tomorrow for the last stop on our journey through Thailand. Were both looking forward to being home again, but at the same time we don't want this to end.

Bring on Bangkok!

-Matt

Thailand - Day 16 - Koh Phi Phi Don

Day 16

On the way to breakfast this morning something flew across the path and landed on a tree next to us. I think. I'm pretty sure it was this little guy. Do lizards fly? Or maybe it was a good jump? Hmm.

After breakfast we booked a long boat around to Ton Sai Bay, which is the touristy/central part of Phi Phi.

Little map to give you some reference.

We booked the long boat for 12 and took the couple of few hours as an opportunity to get some laundry out of the way. When it was time for our boat we headed down to the beach.

The tractor tuk tuk

Leaving Zeavola beach

Our driver took us up towards the top of the island and around to the back side of Ton Sai, and parked us on the beach. The trip took about half to get around there. He told us we had a few hours.

Me enjoying a banana nutella pancake that i bought as soon as i saw them. They are pretty yummy, but watch out for hot banana.

You may notice that I am wearing a dress (the second one bought here) and that the bottom of that dress is wet in the above picture. It made it a little bit hard getting in and especially out of the long boat. I was trying my hardest to hold my dress up so it wouldn't get wet while I was also trying to jump out of the front of the boat. Matt was no help. He grabbed on to me before I fell backward into the water but I still got wet and hurt my ankle a little bit. The banana nutella pancake made it better until I burnt my tongue a little further down the street.

We wandered around Ton Sai a bit, and found Matt some lunch.

Hmmm, that sounds familiar...

Cool restaurant we found after lunch

We sort of got lost (Matt assured me he knew exactly where we were), so I wanted to start heading back to our boat. We ended up on the main side of Ton Sai where the dock is.

We found our way back to our boat on the other side of Ton Sai and headed back to our hotel.

When we got back Matt decided that he would be a gentleman and lift me out of the boat on to the beach, which was fun and all of the boat drivers thought it was funny. We headed to the pool for a few hours, then came back to get ready for dinner. It started to rain (we have noticed that it is nice and sunny in the morning, overcast in the afternoon, then stormy at some point in the night). We didn't realise how heavy it was until we got outside and it was pouring down. It was so bad that the sand path was sucking our thongs down as we walked making it really hard. Thankfully we took our umbrellas. We came back to a turn down service having been and left us this cute little guy.

Tomorrow we have a special day planned.

Bye for now.

- Kristen

Thailand - Day 15 - Koh Phi Phi Don

Day 15

Today's post is going to be pretty picture heavy. Enjoy.

Up early again today for our half day Phi Phi tour. We started the tour by jumping in the weirdest tuk tuks we have seen yet. Unfortunately no pictures. It is a carriage pulled by a tractor. They don't really have roads or cars on the island so they drive tractors on the beach. The tractor took us out to the speed boat and our first stop was to pick up our guide, who was waiting down the next bay.

We went down and around to Maya Bay, a gorgeous bay famous for being the location The Beach was filmed at. It is amazing. We explored around a bit, then went for a swim in the nice water.

Path to a lookout

The lookout

This is the reverse side of the lookout from the boat

Next we went snorkelling in another bay/lagoon area.

Then back on the boat.

 

There were a few of these shacks around the cliffs

We were then taken to a good swimming spot, and were told to jump off the boat. Matt did, I used the ladder.

The bit in the middle where the boat parked was pretty deep, but around the edge was shallow enough for us to stand up in. However there was something in the water with us that kept nipping at us.

Our speed boat

Back on the boat again.

The "Viking Caves"

We stopped at Monkey beach, but it was crowded so we didn't get out of the boat.

Then off to another snorkelling spot.

The brown fish kept being a jerk and chasing around the black and white fish

There were literally hundreds of these stripey fish around, and they were not afraid of us

Oh no, attach of the giant fish!

After we headed back to the island we grabbed some lunch and relaxed by the pool. We had a nice quite afternoon planning our next few days.

I made another new friend

We had dinner at the restaurant, then took a stroll down the beach. On the way back up we stopped for ice creams and started heading back to the hotel. When we were almost back we noticed something on the beach in front of the hotel next to ours. A fire show.

The show was amazing. When we got back to the room, we noticed our turn down service had been, and they had left us some gifts. Last night they left us a photo of us from when we arrived and some chocolates, tonight they left us a worry doll. I used to have some worry dolls when I was little (much smaller than this one), so it was a nice touch that made me very happy. We absolutely love it here.

Bye for now.

- Kristen