We caught a bus into the city and after breakfast, Johnny and the dudes ran some errands while Jay and I headed to the train station to book tickets to the island then skated around the city and found some spots of our own while we waited for the Preduce skateshop to open. We finally found the shop around noon and got some food before Tao took us to a couple local spots. We eventually met back up with Johnny and the rest of the guys for a quick session and dinner before heading off to the Bangkok railway station. Since we booked the tickets the morning of, no sleepers were left so we took 2nd class sitting w/ fans, which actually turned out to be pretty nice and cool and not sketchy at all. Tickets from Bangkok to Ko Tao run us about $26 USD including an 8 hour train ride and a 2 hour boat ride.
The seats went pretty far back, it was like flying first class... on a train. I lost my digital camera at this point; it fell out of my pocket while I was asleep and I didn't realize until I had already gotten off the train and it had left for the next stop. All these photos are actually stolen from Johnny Tang's camera. I captured a bit on my Nano so expect a vidclip of soon. I was a bit bummed since I had taken over 130 pictures in Bangkok already before I had even gotten on the train. But it would prob. have been worse had I lost the camera on the train ride back vs before even reaching the island.
To the Lomprayah Catamaran which took us from the pier in Chumphon to Ko Tao. About a 2 hour boat ride, where Johnny got boatsick and spent the last 1 hr throwing up. We hadn't really slept much in the past 24 hours though so I reckon that might have done him in.
When we arrived at the pier in Ko Tao, we grabbed some food while deciding what beach to head to first. The whole island is fairly small and you can actually rent mopeds and ride to any beach on the island within an hour or so. The roads are REALLY dangerous and all dirt and steep as fuck so it was pretty sketchy. I saw wayyyy too many people walking around Ko Tao in bandages. Most of the time you get taxi trucks which can take you to where you want, though it's pretty pricey.
I forget the name of this beach... I think it was Ao Thien, on the southeast side of Ko Tao. It was the first beach we went to, only to discover all the bungalows were full.
This is Tanote Beach located on the east side of Ko Tao and was the second beach we went to and ended up staying for 3 nights. Ridiculously beautiful, amazing snorkeling 10 feet from the sand and you can climb up and jump off the massive boulder in the middle.
Johnny's bungalow at Poseidon Bungalows in Tanote Beach. About $4 USD/person/night. 2 people per bungalow. So rad, and the front yard is the beach.
We tried to climb one of the mountainhills surrounding the bay but couldn't find the path, so we ended up just pouchin at a restaurant/bar with an amazing view. The owner was this extremely eccentric Thai lady who called herself Mama. She made us wear cowboy hats and take photos with her and to come back later to have a disco party... which we didn't go to but I bet it would have been fun.
We rented one of these boats for a day and the driver took us on a snorkeling trip around the whole island.
The driver knew all the best snorkle spots w/ the clearest water I ever seen.
Can't recall what bay this was at but you could snorkle between and under the boulders.
We even got lucky and spotted a black tipped reef shark swimming with us. I'd say it was at least 8 feet long.
After 3 nights in Tanote, we headed to Sairee beach, which is the most popular and most crowded beach on Ko Tao. But after the quiet nights on Tanote, we were pretty psyched to get into the night life on Sairee beach. To tell you the truth, there were so many foreigners on this side of the island and everyone speaking English that I didn't feel one bit in Thailand at all.
Dusk on Sairee Beach.
This is a fireshow at The Locust, which is the main bar on Sairee beach and gets pretty wild at night with everyone drinking rum and liquor out of buckets. Def the best option for nightlife in Ko Tao. We even went to a club called H20 one night, but it was pretty lame in comparison to the usual club spots in Shanghai.
We had initially planned to go to Ko Pha Ngan, another island south of Ko Tao. It's apparently got more beaches than days in a month and the biggest party scene: the notorious Full Moon Party. But Ko Tao was too comfortable and no one wanted to leave so ..... maybe Ko Pha Ngan next time. We did check out Ko Tao's moon island Ko Nang Yuan which was really small and amazing as well. A taxi boat took 15 minutes from Sairee beach to Ko Nang Yuan and cost 200 Bhat r/trip. I'd have more pictures but I haven't had a chance to steal any photos from the other guys' cameras so I'll have to upload them later.
We came back 1 day early to spend it trying to skate in Bangkok but it rained almost all day and we made it to one spot around 4pm, then it took us 2 hours to catch a cab and get stuck in traffic to move less than 5 miles. Bangkok's traffic is worse than anything I ever been in. Earlier in the day, we actually got scammed into a tuk tuk scheme. Super wild. Some stranger told us it was Buddha day and all the temples in Bangkok were free and the tuk tuks were only 20 Bhat for 3 hours. Since we were only skating around looking for spots (and this is at 10am) we figured why not check out a temple. So the tuk tuk takes us to a temple with no one and we weren't even allowed in. Just some dude outside trying to tell us about this crazy jewelry he bought at the Bangkok Expo center, selling it for cheap on that day only. We didn't give a fuck about jewelry but the tuk tuk ride was fun so we went to the Expo only to find out it was a small dingy jewelry store on a small street, haha. We instantly hopped back on the tuk tuk, sensing something was super weird, and the driver being put off by us now. He didn't even ask where we wanted to go next and took us to some crazy deserted temple fairly far from the skateshop. The funny thing was that when we came out of the temple the tuk tuk was gone but really, it was him who got screwed considering we didn't even pay him anything. Though we did have to take a taxi to a skateshop which cost us about 30 bhat ($0.88) each so I guess in the end, we did get screwed. But the tuk tuk ride and the story was def. worse it, ha.
I'll have more pictures up later in the week and a video clip once I put something together. Sorry for the lack of skate photos since we only skated for one day, and the skate spots I had photographed got lost with my digicam. Extra thanks to Tao for helping us out though, without that dude, Bangkok is a maze. I'm also pretty sure I ate so much pad thai the length in noodles could span from Shanghai to Delaware, haa.
1 comment:
hah I like your purple socks.
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