Koh Samui

We’ve decided that when we get back to England we’re going to buy one of those natural light alarm clocks. Waking up with the rising sun, although a bit distressing at 5:30, is a glorious way to start the day. We’re staying right by the beach on Koh Samui and everything is so peaceful and still as the sun rises and the wildlife starts to come alive. Alright, so it’s a bit annoying waking up before 6 every morning, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being woken up by a naked man at the end of your bed, which is what happened this morning.

It’s surprising how little prepared one is to be woken up by a nude stranger. When I imagine intruders in my house they are usually dressed in black, face covered with a balaclava and carrying a crowbar. Since it’s my imagination, I mostly end up disarming the robber with some lethal force and teaching them a lesson before they’re sent off to jail to break lumps of coal in those black and white suits with the arrows on. But I digress; the man that was standing at the end of our bed this morning was not wearing any sort of outfit other than his birthday suit. The less said about his crowbar the better.

The sequence of events isn’t entirely clear, but it seems the first alarm was raised when Polly heard the door open. She’s used to me creeping about in the morning so wasn’t unduly concerned, until she opened her eyes to shout at me for being too noisy and saw me next to her. At this point she woke me up with some sort of noise and I was aware there was a problem; however, it wasn’t immediately obvious what. First, I saw Polly – so far so good. Second, I saw me naked at the end of the bed – fine. Oh hold on, that’s not me naked at the end of the bed, I’m naked in the bed! Crap!

Disorientated by a vivid dream where I was on the wrong end of a manhunt in some charming Austrian village, my reaction was to leap out of bed and make a noise that was a mixture of angry shouting mixed with a goose honking. Since I couldn’t speak it was no wonder that I didn’t stop to consider that I too was naked so there we stood, face to face, naked, with me honking and him looking very confused as to why I was making such a fuss. Either way, either my shouting or my nudity convinced him to leave without a fight and he sloped back off to his room opposite ours. We can’t wait to see him at breakfast.

The last week here on Samui had been very peaceful by comparison. We’ve had enough of carrying our crap around the islands so have decided we’re staying put for the rest of our time away, which only gives us about another week. Tragic. Anyway, we still need rest and relaxation after Thai New Year, Song Kran, also known as the water festival.

It’s quite difficult to describe just how chaotic this celebration is. We’d heard a lot about it, none of which prepared us for the pure childish fun that is a whole country having a massive water fight. One restaurant owner told us he was closing down for two days and wouldn’t let anyone check in or check out because of the damage caused last year by water and advised us to stay inside in case we got cholera or some sort of exotic water-borne disease. Obviously we didn’t pay a bit of mind to this and couldn’t wait for the action to start.

We’d met up with an old friend of mine from college, who I’m glad to say is still as badly behaved as ever, so we were ready for two days of carnage. My goodness did we get them. Walking down the street it takes about two minutes before you are drenched from head to foot. The streets are lined with people with dustbins, buckets, water bombs, water pistols and numerous other reciprocals constructed with the sole purpose of drowning other people. The really serious Thais pack about 15 people in the back of a pickup with enough water to ensure the UK never has another hosepipe ban. Without any weapons ourselves, I resorted to picking up small Thai women and dumping them in rubbish bins full of water. They found this hilarious.

The celebrations started off innocently enough as we had a few drinks at our hotel, ate some dinner to line the stomach and went down to the beach to enjoy a few white Russians and watch the festivities. It’s unclear precisely what went wrong after that, but considering we’d only gone a few hundred metres down the road from our hotel it was somewhat disappointing that Polly was lost for about two hours and had to borrow money from a couple in the street to get home, whilst I had to enlist the help of two ladyboys who helped me by feeding me incredibl;y spicy chilli chicken.

Feeling suitably energised after 38 minutes of sleep, the party downstairs woke us up and we did it all over again the next day. Needless to say, we've never felt so awful.

Beach bums

Sweet mother of Moses, the scenery on Koh Lipe is something else. You can say what you like about the white sand and turquoise sea set against the lush green mountains, but when it comes to entertainment the humans win hands down.

We spent a whole afternoon watching these two and their mates (the other girl’s thong was even skimpier, unlikely as that seems) employed in all sorts of stretching and bending. We thought it couldn’t get more graphic than during the sandcastle squat, but we hadn’t counted on the photo shoot. We felt like we were on the set of a porno as we watched the bloke in Stetson and Speedos photograph the other guy and two girls who were gyrating, lunging, posing and groping all over the place. Top-notch entertainment.

Lipe's great, we even made some friends who could put up with us for more than one night! We met Dave and Clare on the beach, one thing led to another and we were soon clearing the fridge of Chang. It could be because we’re out of practice with the drinking, or the fact that it turned midnight and we’d forgotten to eat, but by jingo I could barely stand up. Still, it hadn’t stopped me trying to fight Dave – a professional kick boxer – all through the night. When I woke up the next morning I had sand in every orifice, scratches everywhere and my hands looked like raspberries I’d been bitten so many times by sand flies. Still they met us for a curry the next evening, but we suspect it was just show us the photos and videos of us making tits of each other.

This all made up for the biggest disappointment of the trip so far; not being able to see the Dugongs. We’d gone to Koh Libong for three nights just to see them but the weather was terrible; it had already rained and blown a gale for the last two nights.

We agreed we probably shouldn’t have bothered when the journey over there on the longtail boat was very, very scary. We didn’t see another boat out on the water, the major ferries weren’t running and yet we found one nutty longtail driver who would take us. It’s no exaggeration to say that every ten seconds we got soaked from head to toe by waves crashing over the side. As we motored past Koh Mook’s rocky coast we just closed our eyes and prayed the engine didn’t cut out. When we got to Libong the storm felled a palm tree that crushed a building there; luckily no-one was hurt so we decided we’d just whimper in our hut for the next few days and ride it all out.

It’s all blistering heat again and we’re in Hat Yai in the southern mainland after a complete 180˚ change of plan. The idea was we’d go from Koh Lipe back up north by ferry to Phi Phi and Phuket, but we had to plan this the day after our kick boxing evening and couldn’t cope with the idea of a nine hour ferry journey. We had the inspired plan to just go to the nearest city and eat McDonalds, which brings us here.

We’re staying in the New Season, which has a brilliant policy on damages to the hotel. You’d expect to get a bill if you smashed the TV, but in the room there’s a list of EVERY item in the building and what it will cost you if you a) break it or b) want to take it as a souvenir. Quite why you’d want to take the minibar as a reminder of your stay isn’t clear, and we daren’t put the ‘Do not disturb’ sign out in case someone nicks it.

Tomorrow we head to Songkhla on the east coast, the last safe town in the south before the Muslim separatists get really serious with their bombing. We hope. If it all goes wrong, please remember us by these sexy beach poses: