Taxi Ride

 The day after our 4 islands trip was a sun bathing day, in the morning after breakfast miss Alex said she needed to go to the chemist to get some new drops for her eyes, which were sore. A mixture of road dust when she did her crazy frog impression on the mopeds, sea water and sand. So we headed out of the complex onto the main road to flag a tuc tuc down. I reckon some of the tuc tuc drivers in Bangkok should head down to Koh Lanta because we couldn’t see one for love nor money. Finally we managed to flag a lady tuc tuc driver down, we told her we wanted a chemist. Jumped on and straight away she asked if she could nip back to her house because she had cooking on and needed to turn it down. We laughed and said we didn’t mind at all. After a couple of minutes of miss Alex and me sitting and waiting for this lady to make sure tonights tea wasn’t burnt she appeared, this time with a parcel. Once back on her bike she asked if we would mind dropping this parcel off to her daughter on the way to the chemist, once again miss Alex and me laughed and said we didn’t mind. We pulled into the school and drove through the kids play ground, I was thinking to myself that this would never happen back home. You’d need a good CRB check before you could drive through a school playground in a tuc tuc. This was so surreal, the lady stopped her tuc tuc outside a class room and invited miss Alex and me to go with her to meet her daughter in her school. We both looked at each other and couldn’t believe it. We’d originally gone out to go the chemist to pick up eye drops. We followed the lady through the school to the canteen where her daughter was eating with her friends. The tuc tuc lady even urged miss Alex and me to grab some food and eat, but we felt cheeky enough, imagine us pigging out and getting a free lunch. The daughter was 6 years old and her mum introduced us to her, the girls name was Sarwadia. She was besotted with miss Alex and couldn’t take her eyes off her, she even curtsied and gave her a massive smile.  It was a brilliant experience to see the local children at school and to be fair the conditions didn’t look to dissimilar to back home, apart from the heat. We could hear children in distant classrooms repeating after the teacher, just like I did in primary school. All this for a trip to the chemist, which we still needed to go to.

We finally got to the chemist after the school and got the drops miss Alex wanted, the tuc tuc lady sat outside and waited patiently for us to take us back to the guest house. By time we arrived back at the guesthouse I felt as if I knew the tuc tuc lady, half expected her invite miss Alex and me to tea in the evening but no offer came. This is where miss Alex came up with the idea of buying a tuc tuc in Vietnam and driving the length of the country in a tuc tuc. Partly because she doesn’t want to ride a bike and the other part because she can lull about like a house cat with the backpacks in the passenger cab whilst I stress and try to navigate a tuc tuc out of Ho Chi Min city, (we’ll see about the tuc tuc but I still prefer a moped).

Everywhere we’ve turned up (Phi Phi the only exception) I’ve thought, where the hell have we landed here!! But once were ready to leave somewhere I always find myself thinking that I’d love to come back and spend more time there. Koh Lanta is no different. The beach we stayed on called Long Beach (it was a long beach) was so laid back and chilled. Every next bar looks more chilled out than the last bar. Our guesthouse was called Green Garden Resort. It was a family run business and they were all very friendly. Including the ginger cat that followed us to our room every night hoping for a bed or food, it got neither!! (flees.com) The beach bar was fantastic and had little beach huts overlooking the sea to relax during the day in the shade, or drink and eat in. If we do head back to Koh Lanta I’d like us to try a place called Bee Bees guesthouse. They had tree houses right on the beach to sleep in. Miss Alex has since said no chance! She reckons we’ll be riddled with spiders.

We’ve both enjoyed our runs on the beach at Koh Lanta, no shoes required, although at times we must have looked like we were break dancing along the beach front. The tiniest of pebbles can feel like a massive rock! My top tip of the day is to watch out for Thai fisherman and the fishing lines. I found out the hard way by upending myself on his line, which was conveniently neck high. The bar overlooking this all happened to be watching for that split second and I had to carry on running embarrassingly along the beach like it didn’t hurt. On the way back conscious of the fisherman with his fishing line I managed to do the same thing. I didn’t duck low enough. (muppet)

Yesterday we headed for Koh Samui, this is where we’ ll be spending Christmas. Basically we are going from the west to the east of Thailand. We left at 7:20am  and arrived at 4pm. It was a boat, bus, boat journey. On our journey we got talking to a couple who had stayed on Koh Lanta, we swapped funny stories of what we’d done since travelling and they told us of an English guy with another guy on 2 bikes. One of the lads was holding a camera in left hand and riding the bike with his right. Simple enough if the roads are nice and flat. Koh Lanta the roads are not nice and flat. So the lad had come to a part of the road with lots of bumps and started to lose control of his bike still filming in his left hand, of course the right break is the front brake so little it needs just little touches. He had no back break because he was holding his camera. He fell off. Instantly miss Alex and me thought this must have been Tom. (remember our 2 friends who we kept bumping into). He had told us of this incident on his bike and thought even after supposedly leaving the 2 lads to go off and do their travels away from us, we still found laughter in that other people, strangers had seen his silly incident.

Today was a typical Christmas Eve for me, like always iv managed to leave my shopping til the last minute, the only difference is I don’t have my good mate Army Dave (I know a few Daves) to call up at 9am and drag around town with me helping me pick presents. Weve both agreed on a limit to get a couple of bits that might help us when travelling, like thin vest tops to replace the thick hooded jumper Mrs Boyd made me pack. I’ve since had to lose the jumper to make room in my bag.  

Merry Christmas people, love you lots and speak soon xxx