We arrived on Koh Phangan last Saturday after leaving Ko Samui, We were kind of unsure what to expect from here, Its very well known as the party island of Asia, We had heard things like it was very cheesy and full of louts and the accommodation wasn't great. We decided to stay slightly outside of the main resort called Haad Rin, and we certainly landed on our feet!! The place we are staying at is called Phangan Rainbow and is just amazing, Its right on the waters edge. Here it is, its the one on the left hidden among the coconut trees:
There are hammocks hanging in a few of the trees, making it very hard to do anything during the day!
Getting up in the morning and sitting down to breakfast with this view is pretty cool:
It makes all those morning getting up and cycling to work in the pissing rain seem worth it!! Its still monsoon over here, but I think somebody forgot to tell the rain as its over 32 Degree's everyday and it has rained for a total of about 20 min in the last week....... *touches wood*
Koh Phangan itself is a smaller island than Samui, its pretty densely covered in forest, and there are only a few proper roads around the coastal areas of the island. After surviving the roads of Samui on the moped, I was well up for getting one here too, that was until I saw the hills........ Ive never seen anything like them, it looks like they made the actual road in a factory somewhere, rolled it up and used a helicopter to lay it down over the top of very steep mountains, some parts are 45' or over, when you come over the top of them, you cant see the road ahead of you, very much like a roller coaster, except there is no four-point harness holding you into your seat! Not to be put off by a little thing called death, I decided to get a moped anyway as the place we are staying is not near anywhere else and I like mopeds........ I did a test run on my own up (and down) the hills, I made it safe and sound, although I was quite glad it was over, Next up was to try it with the two of us, I'm very glad charlie is half my weight, because with anymore weight I don't think we would have made it, You have to get a good run up to the hills as when you hit them at full throttle, you go from doing 80-90 kph to doing 20kph (still under full throttle) by the time you get to the top. We are gonna try and get a video of us doing it as it would be very funny....
Here is a shot from one of the hills (one that we could stop on!!)
The picture does not show how steep they really are......
One thing that is great about the amount of hills around is that you can get great views from them, Here is a nice sunset from a few days ago:
The views are pretty special, you can see all the surrounding island and the off-shore reefs which look really cool.
This is two photos put together again, the main bulk of the trees are coconut trees as alot of the work on the island is provided from the coconut plantations.
We have been pretty lazy here, but its just that kinda place, we spend most of our days swimming (or sunbathing in charlies case) and reading books
Charlie reading.........
Charlie sunbathing.........
The owners have two really cool dogs, one is a very old German Sheppard crossed with a Rottweiler and the other is a 3 month old Rottweiler puppy, Needless to say the puppy drives the older dog nuts, although when he goes too far the older dog shows him who's still boss:
Notice the giant and still very sharp teeth on the German Shepard!
Here is the puppy:
He is a crazy thing and loves driving charlie nuts by jumping on her while she is sunbathing and running off with her flip flops, Needless to say I think the puppy is a little legend........ It makes me miss my dog loads though......
We did manage to pull ourselves away from our little beach hut for one day to go to the north of the island for a bit of sightseeing and we had also heard that the snorkelling up there was savage.
On the way up we took it kinda easy and stopped off at the islands only lake (nothing special) although the place we stopped for a drink was kinda cool:
When we looked up the road to take on the map, there was a tiny bit on the map that showed the road turned into a dirt track for abit, Expecting literally a road with dirt on it, we were a little surprised when It turned out to be pretty much a total off-road kinda situation:
Well, It was pretty hairy and charlie had to get off a few times, but we made it through and we were pretty glad to see tarmac on the other side, we got laughed at a few times by locals who thought we were pretty crazy to be going on that road on that type of bike, Here is our baby:
If you have ever seen the "Long Way Round" with Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor, It was very much like that except we were on a 125cc Moped instead of a 1100cc BMW Off Roader and we had to travel about 10 miles as apposed to around the world, but apart from that it was pretty much the same......... Obviously It was my amazing moped skills that got us through.......
Anyway when we got there it was gorgeous, it was a nice long beach with a small sand-bar which lead out to a small little island:
I spent most of the day snorkeling, It was seriously cool and the water was sooo clear, I saw loads of cool shit, even a couple more sharks, I kept my distance from them as I didn't know what they were and they were pretty fucking huge, but its mad looking down and seeing all these amazing looking fish just swimming around you... I cant wait to start scuba diving in Ko Tao!
When I got out I found charlie reading while sitting on a cool swing:
Its a pretty cool picture if I say so myself.....
Trying to get a similar shot of myself turned out to be a bit harder...
After being forced I made a nice face......
I hope everyone is keeping well, We are off to Ko Tao tomorrow (monday) and Ill be doing my open water diving coarse, I cant bloody wait!! Charlie will be updating the blog soon, because from a few emails I've gotten, It pretty clear that everyone wants to hear from her and for me to stop talking crap........
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