Just Another Day For You And Me In Paradise

Posted by Emily

Hello from the lovely islands of Thailand! We have been greatly enjoying ourselves here and now to back track to the beginning....

On the 31st, we boarded a plane headed to Bangkok and then one headed to Surat Thani, the city where all the ferries to the islands leave. The flights took us about 2 hours total and we were very happy that we had purchased the tickets, even though they weren't as cheap as we would have liked, because it greatly reduced what would have been a traveling time of over 24 hours (we were pretty far north).

We arrived at the Surat Thani airport around noon and while waiting in line to get bus tickets into the city, we ran into 2 other guys going to the same island as us. We ended up splitting a taxi and catching a ferry together, getting there much earlier than we had expected. We thought we'd have to wait until the next morning for a ferry. I guess I'm not surprised that they had an earlier ferry that coincided with the arrival of the flight from Bangkok. Things here are set up very nicely for tourists.

The ferry ride was uneventful. Just a big long and way too hot. We arrived at the port, found a taxi going to the beach we wanted and hopped in. Well, I should say hopped ON. Taking a taxi on the islands involves sitting on a bench seat in the back of a pickup truck. You really have to hold over the bumps! They're not so bad once you get used to them and they're really not that scary because there's not that much traffic.

There's not that much to report for the next few days because pretty much what we did was lay on the beach, swim and kayak a little. There was also a lot of reading and lying in hammocks. It's pretty much too hot to wear any clothes during the day so we would get up at about 8:30 am and just put our suits on. Lovely. The sun is super brutal if there are no clouds out and the first 2 days Nicki and I both got burned, I while wearing SPF 25 and reapplying. I have been in some pretty hot places, but nothing like this. The second it was even too hot to lay on the each so we borrowed some rafts and floated around (there is very little surf here it seems and I am enjoying the swimming without the waves!).

The beach we stayed in Ko Phangan was beautiful. Quite short, maybe about half a mile long, with perfect white sand, bath water warm turquoise water. We were surrounded by palm trees and green hills. Very very beautiful. I've been to a lot of beautiful beaches but I was still impressed with this one.