Koh Samui, Same, Same, But Same

We go to Koh Samui from Krabi and the weather had turned a bit crap with lots of rain and cloud. It made us feel a bit homesick actually, seeing the familiar grey skies.

Brian found a great little cheap room for 2 nights. It was €25 per night and was brand new, right beside the beach on Bo Phut, about ten minutes from Chaweng beach, the main tourist spot.

The Thai people always say "Same, same" when they are asking you if you want the same round again or if they're showing you the Thai equivalent of what you asked for, i.e. they'll try to give you some mad Thai concoction of madness when you ask for a vodka red bull and will say "same, same" with a big huge smile on their face. Anyone who has been to Thailand will have seen the t-shirts that they sell everywhere with the words "Same, Same" on the front and "But Different" on the back. They sell them in all the tourist spots.

Koh Samui island is same, same but same. It's similar to Phi Phi in that the beach is stunning looking but again, they're not looking after it and it has become really built up, especially around Chaweng. The towns are badly planned, or not planned a all, with smelly streets from overworked sewage systems and a million electricity cables running overhead.

It was good fun though with some cool beach bars but 2 days there was plenty. Maybe if the weather had been better we might have had a different opinion, everything looks nicer in the sunshine.

We decided to give Koh Phangan a miss as it's also meant to be "same, same" and we were looking for paradise and had heard Koh Tao was amazing and less travelled as its a bit further away.

Before we left for our boat to Koh Tao, we had a surprisingly good full Irish breakfast! With proper tea and all. Savage!

Krabi

We took a minibus and ferry from Koh Lanta to Krabi and they had the usual health and safety precautions that you become accustomed to in Thailand. They pack around 50 cars, buses and bikes onto a pimped up crate with an engine, then squeeze all the pedestrians into the gaps in between and the job's oxo. Off you go across the deep crocodile rivers with you!

We checked into a gorgeous hotel called the Dee Andaman Hotel. It was so cute and the staff were so friendly and really appreciated Brian's Thai. We had a lovely 4 poster bed so Brian felt like a real princess. I put a pea under his mattress but he didn't feel it so he's not a genuine princess, he only has princess feet.

Lovely sunset from the rooftop bar:

Krabi is a lovely town with far fewer tourists. We took a little wander around the streets and arranged our transfers to Koh Samui.

Then we had a little trip along the river and visited the national park and Brian's second favourite caves and my second favourite monkeys (they couldn't swim so weren't as cool as the Langkawi monkeys).

Brian finally snapped and we fell out over my poor photography skills. He felt that he always took nice symmetrical photos of me and I just didn't take the time to get his head in line with long tail boats and mountains,etc. We nearly called off the engagement over it but since we only know each other in Thailand, we agreed to call a truce.

That night, we saw one of the seediest sights of all in our hotel. There was a German man who was pushing 80 with a 20 year old, gorgeous looking Thai girl. They were smooching all over each other. He was talking to her as if she was a baby, saying things like "what sound does a cow make" and she'd say "moo", the lessons seemed very therapeutic and Brian learned a lot from it too but it was so cringeful! We had to share a tuk tuk bus into the town with them. It was like a seedy episode of Barney.

Speaking of Barney, saw this really cool museum all about Krabi, they've evidence of history right back to the dinosaurs.

We left the next day for the islands on the east coast, Koh Samui and Koh Tao.

Koh Lanta, the Romanta.

Catherine's version of events:

So we were having a lovely day by the sea again and were wondering about whether to do a boat trip or tour of some sort as we had gotten a bit lazy that week.

Brian told me that he had a surprise trip booked for that evening. I hate surprises so I had him pestered all day and was convinced we would be doing something very Brian-ish like night fishing or camping in a bat cave or something mad. Then he said to wear something nice so I thought maybe he had booked a dinner cruise for us or something.

A taxi picked us up at 4.30pm and it had an advert for Koh Lanta Speedboats on the side of it so I was then wondering why he made me dress up to get soaked on a speedboat with no change of clothes or anything.

Brian had a backpack with him and after about 30 minutes, we passed Kantiang Bay and drove into the National Park where he opened the backpack a bit and showed me our two sleeping bags and said we would be camping there. I was very worried at this stage as I was already being eaten alive by moskeeters in the comfort of our nice, clean hotel so I was imagining the infestations that lay ahead of me in the forest!

But then we pulled into this lovely cliff top restaurant in the middle of nowhere where Brian had booked a table and we watched the sun set and had the most amazing meal. It was the most romantic place I've ever seen.

We had lovely evening and we were just talking all normally and enjoying ourselves. He kept looking at his watch as if he had to be somewhere and I was slagging him. The Liverpool match was on and I thought he was probably getting antsy about missing it. Then a while later he got all romantic on me and got out of his seat and bent down on one knee...

I didn't see any of this as I was hiding my face in my hands so, in effect, I missed the whole proposal but it was very lovely. I was delighted. The ring was too big for my finger though, he must have thought he was proposing to Princess Fiona. I do have big hands for a girl and he must have been banking on my holiday fat-hand syndrome where they swell to caveman size and I've to drag them along the ground behind me. I didn't mind though. To be fair, it was a whirlwind romance and he'd never have had the opportunity to get my ring size, what with me living with him for 6 years with jewellery and rings lying around everywhere, etc. :)

I know you're probably thinking, "13 years, were you not suspicious?", but honestly, I'd no idea he was planning to do it at this time. Especially since we're both unemployed and heading to Canada on a shoestring. And in fairness, he had plenty of opportunities over the years...for example that Christmas a few years back when mam gave Brian my Granny's ring in front of the family while I was upstairs. Talk about putting him under pressure. It was a bit of a boring Christmas though, she was just trying to liven it up with an ad hoc engagement! :)

Brian's version of events:

Leading up to it:
I was wondering about how I would propose and thought of some of the precedents set by the lads:

- Wheels proposing in Paris at the Eiffel Tower
- Tooley two days after he met Julie
- Heendog proposing at the Westbury
- Johnny on Christmas morning
- Pea Murphy proposing in a nightclub (still not sure if Claire even heard the proposal ;))
- Gav putting the ring into a pizza box (probably the most romantic, especially since it was a margarita).

I had always wanted to put the ring into a bottle, then put the bottle into the sea just off the coast and wait at the beach until the tide brings the bottle in. That's the most romantic way of proposing in my opinion. I'd gone so far as to develop the plan further with Gav on Christmas eve last year (after a feed of Guinness).

The plan was for Gav to scuba dive off the coast of thailand with the ring in the bottle and wait till I was on the beach with Caff and then float the ring in towards us. Almost perfect. I went home to mammy whelan that night and told her of the arrangements and she said, "I wouldn't expect anything less from you two bloody eejits, two morans" lol, I thought the funny bit would have been when Gav had to come out of the water to give his congratulations.

The ring:
This was a tough one. I didn't have Caff's ring finger size (I probably should have kept the ring Joan gave me to give to Caff one christmas morning). I had to measure her finger, but how?

When she was asleep one night in Dubai, I wrapped my ear phone cable around her finger and pinched it, then marked it with a pen which then gave me the size! Easy, hey? Not really.

I went shopping in the Dubai mall and looked for the ring. I was considering either getting a token one or the real thing. I saw a really nice ring in a shop window so went in to find a little small Jeweller lad with long finger nails, like something you would put into a USB drive. There were also two nice girls working there. They asked me for the ring size so I pulled out my ear phones and wrapped them around their ring-sizer stick thing. They looked at me as if I had just eaten a sarnie in daylight during Ramadan. I told the guy that that was my girlfriend's ring size. He looked at me gravely and said, "is she very fat sir". I was a bit shocked and said, "not at all"! He then proceeded to use his kind female colleagues as human mannequins. One girl was bigger than the other so he said to me, pointing at one of them, " sir, is your girlfriend as fat as her?" I was mortified and said, "she's not fat", then he called the bigger girl over and said, "sir, maybe she is as fat as this girl?". Haha, talk about awkward. I got out of there as quick as I could. Token ring it was, so!

I went to Swarovski and picked out a lovely token ring. Of course I had to take out my earphones again but thankfully there was no weight bullying. Although I did have to do a pi calculation based on the length of the cable. Don't ask, I obviously got my sums wrong, I had forgot to bring my log tables with me. Anyhow, I got the ring and just had to wait for the right time.

The night before:
I had rang big Brian the night before to get his blessing. I told him that I loved his daughter more than I loved roast potatoes and ketchup. He understood the love for the roasties and so he gave his kind blessing and I told him I may have exaggerated and that Caff and roast spuds may be neck and neck :) I remember the first time ever meeting him in Caff's house when she had told me he was a bouncer. He's not a bit scary though, he is tae. Her whole family are.

The solution:
I organised a beautiful restaurant built into the cliffs in the west of the island called Noon Sunset http://www.noonlanta.com. My plan was to have dinner and watch the sunset and then scruff my knee up. I couldn't wait and was actually a bit nervous!

The morning:
Caff had been reading all the Harry Potter books for the first time while we were away and she was on book number 6. It was 9am and she was at the end of the book and apparently some fecker called Dumbledore keeled over at the end.

Caff bawling over Dumbledore:

She was sobbing away on the bed that morning so I'm thinking, why doesn't she read the happier books with bigger fonts? I'm more of an Anne and Barry fan myself. Barry's like myself, he loves lorries (Eddie Stobarts), jam and happy endings. He must have grown up in Phuket. :)

I told Caff that I had something planned for that evening and that we needed to be back from the beach by 4 as we were being picked up at our hotel. I packed sleeping bags (and the ring) to put her off the scent. The taxi came and I told Caff we were going camping in the national park, which is beside Noon!

She looked a bit nervous! But we got there in the end and it was unbelievable! Worth the 13 year wait! The sun set and we had lovely dinner, a nice aul soppy chat (ah here, leave it out) and I proposed to the absolute shock of poor Catherine! It was perfect.

She cried twice that day. The first, when Dumbledore died and the second, when I proposed. Not sure how to read that one. But it was great :)

AND, I even got the second half of the Liverpool game in afterwards! Smooth eh?! I could just about see the screen over Caff's giant paw.

Brian's head looking like a Golden Delicious :)

In Ko Lanta, Drinking Fanta, With a Panda

Only joking, there are no pandas here. Nor Fanta actually. What there is though, is amazingly clean, white beaches that stretch for miles against a backdrop of lush greenery. It's horrible, as you an imagine :)

Our hotel is the Lanta Mermaid Hotel ( http://www.lantamermaid.com/index.php ), a lovely small hotel about a two minute walk from the beach. It is family run and the staff are so nice. There is a nice lady who works there called Ms. Pao. She runs a tight ship and keeps an eye on you (telling you off for missing breakfast, and giving out to you for wearing your shoes in the gaff, etc.) but she is very loveable and keeps the place so nice. There's a lovely atmosphere there. There are loads of little Thai restaurants and bars dotted along the coast, nothing like Phi Phi. The beaches are quiet and peaceful as they should be.

One day on the beach, we bumped into a guy I went to college with, Odhran (the Viking leader) and his lovely girlfriend Julie. That night we met up with them for a few drinks along with our friends from Phi Phi, Cath and Barry, who had just gotten engaged in Koh Lanta.

For the rest of the time, we relaxed and did nothing for 6 days except wander to the beach, rent bicycles, chill out at lovely beach bars watching fire dancers and eating the best Thai food in Thailand!

Nothing much else happened there really...

...except that we also got engaged - after 13 years, eek! We will give you the gory details in two versions of events in the next post!

Koh Phi Phi, Koh Phi Phi, Koh!

We took a lovely boat trip to Phi Phi island where we sat out on the deck and got some more sunburn. We docked around 3pm and wandered through cute little streets to our beach bungalow. This part of the island is pedestrian only so no cars or motorbikes are allowed. The only taxis are the longboats that will take you from beach to beach.

We stayed at Dee Dee's in Phi Phi by the sea sea (they say everything twice here). Dee Dee's Beach House was on the Lo Dalum Bay side of the crest. The place looks like paradise with turquoise water and gorgeous cliffs around a perfect half-moon beach but we were sad to see that it is really filthy on the Lo Dalum and Ton Sai Bay beaches. The water is full of plastic and crap and the sand is slimy with oil and dirt. I'd say the place was amazing years ago before the tourists wrecked it.

Our little beach bungalow was really cute, very basic but had air conditioning and was literally 5 steps from the beach. The garden had little hammocks and sun loungers all around and the place was really clean.

On the first night, we went for something to eat and strolled around the little streets. We thought the place seemed quiet and thought maybe it was off-season or something. As we walked back towards our beach house, we couldn't believe the madness! All the little cafes and bars that had unassumingly lined the beach earlier that day were now wild parties and night clubs that stretched for around a kilometre along the beach. Each one had brilliant shows with fire dancers, disco lights, mad music and party people everywhere drinking buckets of mad stuff that looked like magic potion but was actually a Thai whiskey called Song San. The place was crazy...and we thought this was going to be a relaxing few days in paradise...whoops!

The next day we went exploring and trekked over to Long Beach. That was more like it! Lovely clean water, gorgeous white sand, and not many boats. It was beautiful and what I'd imagined from everyone's descriptions of Phi Phi.

We took a taxi boat back that evening and thought, if you can't beat 'em, let's get buckets with them. We had met a lovely couple called Barry and Cath, who were on their way home to Ireland from Sydney, taking some time in Thailand beforehand - sort of the opposite of what we are doing. We met up with them and enjoyed a bit of a party night on the mad beach. Cath had been to Koh Phangan and said that Phi Phi was exactly like the full moon parties there!

Evil memory-erasing buckets of looney-juice!

We had to get up for a boat trip to Monkey Island and Maya Bay and I was a tad worse for wear after my bucket experience but the swimming and snorkelling helped. I'd a bit of trouble putting my snorkel on, "like Ballotelli putting a bib on", according to Brian. The snorkeling was stunning, I'd love to be able to show you the amazing tropical fish, they were beautiful! We even saw a sea snake (and no, it wasn't Brian flashing us in the water!).

The tour guide was gas. He knew exactly 10 English words: boat, swim, snorkel, monkey, rice, 100 baht and Leonardo Di Caprio. The boat would just stop and he'd shout an order to "swim", or "snorkel", etc. It was very funny being ordered around by him, he was a scorpy little fella.

Maya Bay was beautiful and we got a few snaps at the famous seascape from The Beach.

(Our reenactment of The Big Bad Wolf http://youtu.be/VGRQGm4-A4k )

Brian found "his favourite cave" on the other side of Maya Island. It was part of an amazing looking lagoon that fills up through the cave when the tide comes. There is a cool little campsite right in front of the lagoon where Brian thinks Leo must have "tied up his loose ends and got soapied every night".

On or last night we went to a great little Indian restaurant. The food was tae and they were showing Rambo on a big TV. So random but good ol' craic. Nothing like some good food watching sly bate the bejaysus out of a few Burmese terrorists.

The next day, before we left to catch our boat from Phi Phi for Koh Lanta, we went to look for the tsunami memorial garden. We had watched a documentary on YouTube about the tsunami a few days before just to freak ourselves out about staying there. The memorial was right behind our beach house and was very sad to see. It was a tiny garden and all overgrown but there were some lovely memorial plaques laid out for people who had died there. It must have been the scariest thing ever, the island is only 200m wide at it's narrowest point so it was annihilated by the wave. It was sad but glad we paid our respects before moving on to see more of the beautiful Thai islands.