Tim and Gem's Honeymoon Adventure

After three months on the road and an 11 hour flight from London, we reached our final destination, Thailand, with a couple of days in Bangkok to begin before heading to Koh Tao for a couple of weeks of sun, sea and a whole lot of nothing.

Bangkok is a city you either love or hate, and after 4 times here, I still love the place. It’s hot, it’s busy, it’s full of weird and wonderful smells and its just such an interesting place. Food stalls line the streets at all hours of the day, shopkeepers sell everything from designer handbags to full moon party singlets, buckets of booze to electrical goods. It really has something for everyone.

After our long flight, we didn’t feel like doing much once we arrived at our hotel around 6pm, so we dropped our bags off and went for a wander to the backpackers paradise of Kho Sahn Road to see what bargains we could score and of course to get some tasty street pad Thai for dinner. It ended up becoming a very successful night. We got some good deals on a few bits and pieces of clothing (although bargaining here isn’t as easy or rewarding as China) and we got our street pad Thai which hasn’t changed in price since I was first here 7 years ago, 30baht for egg pad Thai and another 20 for a few spring rolls, a delicious dinner for less then $2.

An early night was a success for Gem as she fell into a coma as soon as her head hit the pillow, but me on the other hand battled for the first time in my life with what I guess is jet lag. I thought getting a big sleep on the plane was good news, but it wasn’t and resulted in just a couple of hours of restless sleep.

It’s not like I needed any sleep anyways, as day two was far from strenuous. After breakfast, we decided to get a massage, something we were both in need of after months of travelling and carrying bags around. I opted for a hard Thai massage to really sort me out and Gem went for the more relaxing coconut oil option.

Massages in Thailand are a complete different experience to your normal, relaxing massage. Instead of the soothing soundtrack of a rainforest or whales, your ears are treated to the sound of the bustling streets below and the unmistakable sound of tuk tuks screaming around the streets. Then instead of being lathered in a ylang ylang lavender oil concoction, there’s nothing but the dry, super human strength hands ripping into your muscles without the aid of oil. And its not just hands that do the massaging, elbows and feet and knees also contribute to the experience. You get bent, twisted, hit, slapped and poked for an hour by a little lady that looks like she should be making you a pad Thai. Once the hour is done, you feel amazing. Your muscles knots and kinks have been beaten out of your body and your flexibility feels like its improved 200%. It’s not a relaxing massage, but it definitely helps with the pains and tightness in your muscles.

It was good we had a relaxing day, as that night we were going to endure a fun overnight bus and then early morning ferry to Koh Tao. The tickets to the islands in the gulf had sold out, so we knew it was going to be chaotic, and it was. 630pm came around and we joined the heard of tourists making their way south. There were more then 200 people waiting for a bus, and in true Thai manner, it was chaos and felt extremely unorganized. Half an hour after the quoted departure time (early for Thai standards) and we were on our way.

Besides having to wait for a few hours at the wharf, and finding out we had gone to the port a lot further south and the ferry was going to be two and a half hours longer, it was a fairly painless journey.

Back to Koh Tao, one of my favourite places on earth, one that I spent 7 weeks on on a previous trip. The island is one of, if not the most relaxed, less touristy and quiet of the islands located in the Gulf of Thailand. In saying that there are still tourists and bars and clubs, but it still has the charm of old school Thailand, no chains or skyscrapers and practically next to no rules.

We had two weeks booked here, the first week at Simple Life Resort right in the middle of the action and just across from the beach, and the second week up at the end of the beach in a cute little bungalow with its own private beach for resort guests.

The day after we arrived, Conan and Emma-Lee turned up and it was really good seeing some familiar faces. We spent nearly a week with them before they continued their adventure to Laos.

The first week on Koh Tao we spent on the beach, swimming and lazing in the sun, and hired motorbikes for a couple of days so we could all explore the other beaches around the island.

We decided one day to do a boat trip around the island, which involved sailing around a little paradise like island, visiting all its little hidden coves and beaches and then finishing up on one of Thailand’s most beautiful islands, Koh Ngyuan. Each little bay or beach we stopped off was different to the previous, and each one seemed to be home to different kind of sea life. The first stop we went snorkeling and spotted a few black tipped reef sharks, the next were home to lots of anenomoes, the one after had hundreds of parrot fish and it went on like this for all 6 stops, each one offering some sort of unique sea life.

A week of good food, drinking at some bars with amazing scenery (beachfront and up in the mountains) and of course a little bit of partying, especially new years.

The whole beach was crammed on new years with thousands of people boozing, dancing and watching the fire twirlers work their magic. At midnight a very sketchy set up of fireworks were let off (and thankfully none misfired and hit the nearby crowd) and we welcomed in the new year. The girls retired a bit earlier then Conan and I wanted to, so we spent it down the beach hammering down a few more Changs and Singas before heading home at what I remember to be around the 5am mark. Probably would’ve made it home earlier if I didn’t spend half an hour in 7-11 making peoples toasted sandwiches.

The week with Conan and Em went too fast and they were off to Laos and we were off to our new home, and the one Gem had been looking forward to most of the trip.

Gem decided to do her advanced diving course, which also coincided with moving to our new place, so while she was having fun diving, I was moving our luggage to the new place, but it was easy enough and our new places was beautiful. A little whitewashed sandstone bungalow surround by frangipani trees and wild ferns, and the beach only a stones throw away…It was easy to feel at home here.

The next 9 days was a lot of the same, which was a lot of nothing, which is why you go to a tropical island isn’t it? Our days were spent sitting by the pool or down by the beach or a mix of both, eating lots of tasty food and drinking plenty of coconut shakes.

One morning we decided to do an early morning dive together which was amazing. Chumpon is a 30m deep pinnacle that is absolutely covered with sea life of all shapes and sizes. We had perfect conditions as well, a beautiful sunrise, pretty calm water and the visibility under the water was just insane, you could see so far into the distance. Our second dive to Red Rock Drop was just as good as well, not as deep as our first but equally as amazing.

We also spent a bit of time riding motorbikes and exploring the island and its beaches located on the opposite side of the island. These beaches were amazing and had half the crowds, and some of them only had a handful of simple bungalows on them and that’s it. Koh Tao is good like that, if you want to see and meet people, there are beaches for that, but if you want to chill out in some peace and quiet surround by nature, then it’s easy to do that also.

Our last full day on Koh Tao we decided to head back to Koh Ngyuan early to avoid the crowds and get a good spot to sit in the sun. We arrived around 930-10 and quickly discovered that it wasn’t early enough, the beach was crammed already. We later realized the day trip quick ferry from Koh Samui arrives at 9, and that explained the 1000’s of Chinese tourists that were floating in the water donning their bright orange life jackets. Luckily though we walked across the sandbar (which was only waist deep) and over to the other side of the island, and there was no one there, so we managed to get primes position on a nice flat rock on the waters edge and laid there all day. As soon as the water over the sand bar dropped to knee/ankle depth, the crowds headed over, but we had our spot and we weren’t moving for anyone.

So the time had come (two days later then originally planned) and it was time to leave Koh Tao and head back to Bangkok for a night before flying home the following day. The ferry and bus ride this time was painless and was fairly quick, and we arrived into Bangkok around 830pm and found some dinner and had a little wander through the night markets before hitting the hay.

Our flight wasn’t till 8pm, so we had the whole day to shop and hang around, and we still had a few things on the shopping list to get. First stop was a boxing shop to pick up some new boxing gear. The directions I had were pretty rough, but luckily we drove right past it and we were able to get out and cross the road into the little shop stacked floor to ceiling with boxing and kickboxing gear. 15 minutes later and with the help of the very friendly lady who ran the place, I had myself some new gloves, head gear and three sets of wraps for $90, not bad considering just the gloves cost more then that in Australia.

After that successful stop we took a short walk to MBK, the seven story shopping mall, that on the bottom looks just like your average mall, but as you get higher it becomes more like a huge indoor market selling anything and everything.

On our way to MBK, we had to walk through some of the streets that were closed due to protest, which we thought sounded a bit sketchy, but in the end it wasn’t bad at all! Thai peoples way of protesting seems more like a camping festival! There were people camped everywhere, stalls set up selling food and drinks and people playing music and just hanging around, it was kind of weird, but rather cool at the same time.

We made it into MBK with a few hours to complete our shopping mission, and long story short, we nailed it in less then an hour. We even reframed from buying a lot of things we didn’t need (which is harder then it sounds in Thailand as you convince yourself you need even the most useless things). We also ate one of the tastiest meals of the whole trip there, a bbq pork soup which doesn’t sound amazing, but it was extremely good!

Loaded up with bags, we got a cab and headed back to the hotel to pack our bags/try and fit the new purchases into a bag and relaxed with one last Singa, and before we knew it we were on our way to the airport, and the honeymoon of a lifetime was coming to the end.