travelling with laughter

Charlies Angels were reunited, minus Charlie himself on Lang Kwai a duty free island on the west coast of Malaysia. Apart from the obvious cheap fags and booze unfortunately all it offered us was rain, a huge hangover, a lost debit card, cash and an excuse to leave and hit the beaches of Thailand. So we did, almost losing one on route thanks to a forgotten passport!

So we were on our way to Thailand, leaving early we arrived at the Ferry well before the scheduled nine o'clock departure. At the ticket counter we waited patiently for our turn, standing there we heard the familiar term 'passport' not so unusual as a) we carry it on us at all times and b) it is always needed when you cross a border, in fact whilst travelling! But standing there Stevie froze and like a stuck record started repeating the word Passport again and again whilst frantically unzipping her bag, literally airing her dirty laundry in public! It soon became evident that the REALLY important and vital stamp collecting book was still dozing nicely wrapped in her bed sheet in the dorm room we had just left! Whoops! In a mad dash Stevie taxied it back, retrieved her passport and we were set,except we missed the ferry....! Thankfully there was one four hours later so we sat in a french cafe making full use of the coffee re-fills! By the time we boarded we were buzzing like bees round a flower! I dutifully (pardon the pun) stocked up on ciggies, for four hundred it cost me five quid...it just had to be done and to top it off they were called 'Bingo"...classy hey! Who was i to resist?!?

A couple of hours on the sea and we arrived at the border of Thailand, thank goodness we did all have passports as a bold sign informed us that if we didn't we would receive a hefty fine and get thrown in prison too! We were rushed into a taxi, thrown on a bus, another six hours later we arrived a nice four km from Krabbi our destination. We were bombarded with taxi drivers, looking for an easy buck or two from three possible naive tourists....we had other ideas though, taking matters into our own hands we decided to hitchhike. After five minutes of waving at the side of the road a pickup truck loaded with a thai family pulled over, throwing our bags in the back, we climbed up and used them as seats. As the truck pulled away the heavens opened...great! Soon we were like drowned rats, ducking our heads down to try and save our eyes form the pelting rain. It was quite hilarious, we laughed all the way and the situation we had created for ourselves! Yes we had saved money....and got a shower in the process! Finally finding a hotel we certainly left an impression as we checked in, in the form of a trail of water and three growing puddles!

In the morning we decided to head for the islands on the west coast as the ones on the east were suffering storms, the previous day the ferry had tried to get there and had to turn around, that didn't sound like much fun to us! So after a days travel we landed on Koh Phangan, well known for its 'full moon parties', they happen every month attracting thousands of tourists from all over the world for nights of craziness. To keep the price down we decided the three of us would share a double bed dorm....three in a bed, it was cosy, all our feet hanging off the end!

Now the main drinking culture here and all over Thailand are the dreaded buckets, a sand castle bucket loaded with whisky, redbull and coke, filled with straws its the perfect sharing drink and leaves you dancing like a looney and normally swimming in the sea fully clothed! At about three pounds each it explains why everyone drinks them.... We did have some great nights out, though none of us managed to come out unscathed....clothes were lost, a few stubbed toes and one minor burn injury. In the evenings fire shows are a regular occurrence, flaming sticks and balls are flung round heads by the professionals but as always they think it is a great idea to have a bit of audience participation...seriously does this sound safe to you? Just picture it, a load of half/completely/almost comatosed/staggering drunks and then they through fire in for some added hilarity......a huge rope to skip with on fire and then there is the limbo.....all well and good til the wind blows and adds about ten inches to the flames!

The music is crazy, it blasts from speakers, though they have seen better days.....if you select the right spot you can try to identify one of the three or more songs competing for top spot in your ear drums! Most of it was awful, trance and all that weird stuff, maybe its my age but i just longed for abit of the beatles....! It was just about bearable! In the evenings when we hadn't gone out going to sleep was a mission, lying side by side we would vibrate to the bass pumping from down the beach....every morning i was surprised not to find myself on the floor, i was expecting to be literally shaken out of bed! The also great thing about our not so soundproof hut was the actual lock, the key would open the door once out of every twenty attempts...great, really great when you have had one or two too many buckets and need to get to bed desperately..!!

What i always fail to remember whilst drinking are the consequences of these buckets...the 'i think i am dying' feeling as i wake up, when my mouth is like Ghandis' flip flop, a head like you have just had a round with Mike Tyson and basically the inability to do anything except try and rehydrate and sleep. Though the island does try to pamper to all of us zombies by providing bars that play back to back friends and family guy, allowing our brains to function on there lowest ability!

Feeling the need to escape the 'duff duff' music and overly tanned sun worshippers on Stevies birthday we decided to rent mopeds and explore the island.I had Caroline on the back of mine, it was a shaky start as we headed off but after five minutes Caroline had stopped screeching in my ear! The roads are so steep, they are like a real life rollarcoaster, some so steep that Caroline and i  almost came to a stand still, we were leaning forward in the hope that it would help! We visited a trickle of water, named on the map as a waterfall.....then made our way to a glorious quiet clean beach where we chilled for an hour or so.

On our little escapade we had to take a few detours, as Caroline and i stopped for a kodak moment we heard Stevie calling, "guys do not come this way, this is really not a good idea......ahhh, no its not funny'. At that point we stopped posing and went to her rescue, she was stuck trying to keep the bike upright on the sandiest road that was also covered in ruts. It was clear that we could not go down and so after half pushing and revving the bike back up the hill we changed course. This was just the start of things to come, had i known they were going to get worse, i would have gone back right there and then. Heading for another waterfall we found ourselves slipping and sliding through mud, almost losing our flip flops in the process......safe, mmmm, don't think so.We had gone two minutes down the road when it dropped off into a steep muddy hill...i just knew that if we had have gotten down in one piece, getting up would be another story. Time to abandon that one......later reading about that waterfall it stated that you should only attempt it on bikes if you were an experienced rider and on a dirt road bike! We had neither of those going for us!

Ok so a beach seemed like a good idea......could we make it there? What i must say is that being on abike my two worst fears are sand and gravel, my fear is that i am going to slip and slide all over the place and then land on my butt.....so you can imagine my delight when we came across an extremely steep hill covered in gravel! Stevie went for it and a little hesitantly i followed, we did make it to the top after almost coming off (the bike took on a life of its own) but then came to our demise about ten minutes late going down another gravel hill. The ironuc thing i wasnt bombing it down, i was taking it easy, one minute we are upright , the next we are lying on the gravel to an audience of jeeps! Caroline and i were unscathed, a little stunned but okay.We wheeled the bike down hill as it was too steep to try and ride it back from where we were,  like getting back on a horse after being thrown off, i got back on terrified i would come off it again and we headed back, enough was enough. Though to get back we still had one more gravel downhill to contend with....reaching it, i sat with my feet on the floor and walked down it inch by inch like a total loser! I was scared shitless of the bike going over again on the gravel, it was the equivalent of if you went and tried ice skating in stilettos, it was that slippery. What didn't help matters was another tourist...on his bike he smiled sympathetically at me as he went past, over revved his engine and then came flying off landing in a heap. It seems i wasn't being over cautious after all! Luckily he was okay but by now i was a sweating shaking wreck! The words 'game over' sprung to my mind!

The next day we returned the bikes, to have then inspected, mine did have some scratches, but then they also found some on Stevies bike even though she hadn't even come off! We ended up in a shouting match, tried the waterworks approach, all to no avail....We were caught in a catch twenty two situation, we were going to have to pay as they had Stevies passport.... They blatantly told us that if we didn't pay they would sell her passport and that it would be no good telling the police as they didn't care. So we paid for the repairs in the end, we had been completely conned. TOTAL DISASTER and one not to be repeated. It is all a scam, one that i think many tourists fall into. Budget blown it was time to leave the island. Koh Tao was our next destination, a chill out zone and so we boarded another ferry and escaped!