Koh Phangan, Thailand

Hello!

Geoff and I have spent our first full day on the island of Koh Phangan, on the east coast of Thailand. We had an exhausting, dirty few days to get here but it's been worth it so far. We left Siem Reap earlier this week - took a shared taxi to the Thai border with a nice Irish couple that we met. After an hour and a half getting processed we finally got into Thailand and took a 7 hour train ride (SLOW train ride - 255 km) to Bangkok. We finally got to our hostel after an exhausting 14 hour travel day. We spent that night and the next day on Bangkok. Talk about a crazy city. We stayed outside of the central part of town - it looked like the future. Massive mall complexes that adjoined to their impeccably clean and cheap sky train line. Getting into the main part of town, however, was like entering a totally different place: dirty, dusty, noisy and bustling. We ate cheap road side eats and walked around the Riverside/Chinatown area. We then tried to see some of the tourist sites but decided it was a bit too expensive. We had to rent outfits though just to get into the complex. They were matching, which was pretty awesome. After that we caught an overnight bus to Surat Thani, the jumping off point to three of the main islands on the east coast. This time of the year it is crazy busy, we would have preferred to take a sleeper train but could only get a bus. Geoff and I met a Danish guy travelling and Geoff and him ended up gabbing way into the night. I got some sleep, as good as a sleep as you can get on a bus, arriving at 5:30 am. We had to wait 2.5 hours for another bus to take us to the ferry pier (1 hr) where we waited another hour to catch a 2 and a half hour ferry. Phew. We've been feeling the travel burnout - I think I might've been a bit ambitious to try and see this all  in a month but if it gets to be too much we might just skip seeing a few things or take flights instead for any of the long haul trips. Koh Phagang is very beautiful. We rented bikes today, which was fun, but its smoking hot and humid. We quickly turned back around to get back into the ocean and pool that we have at the place we are staying. Food so far has been good and cheap. I think Cambodia had the best food yet, so much fresh fruit and stir fries with veggies and noodles, fresh juice, yum. Overall we are eating well. 

We are looking to enjoy two more nights here before we jump to another island where we hope to get some snorkeling in. Will post some photos soon.  WiFi has been sketchy at best so trying to cram as much in in this post before it disappears again. 

Jess