The man with the disappointing day trip

By -
The next couple of days after New Year were a little bit surreal. It rained torrentially and solidly for a day and a night and drummed on the tin roof of our hostel as if someone was continually emptying gravel onto it. It became an appropriately semi-hypnotic soundtrack to our collective hangover. As the rain eased, so did our headaches and we were able to venture out in search of food, coffee and other such necessities. The footpaths that linked the various parts of Railay peninsula had become rivers and we now had to wade along these, knee-deep in places, to get to where we were going. Because of all the standing water there were now also whole new squadrons of mosquitoes eating me alive (my legs look like gourds) just to add to the misery. We headed to West Beach only to find half of it missing - the rains had washed away huge swathes of sand and, in places, huge ravines had been created where storm drains had failed and collapsed. I ordered a cup of coffee to try to deal with the confusion but that merely made things worse - especially when I asked for some milk to go with it and was presented with a baby bottle, complete with teat. Were they deliberately messing with my head?

We needed something to cheer us up and that arrived in the form of two old friends of mine from the world of weekly magazines. Adrian and Saffron, who had recently married and were staying in Ao Nang (the next beach up the coast), decided to take time out from their honeymoon to come and see us! We had a great afternoon on our weather-beaten corner of Thailand and they cheered us up no end. The sun even came out too! It was really good to see them and sad to wave goodbye as they rode off into the sunset on their tailboat, like seabound cowboys.

The next day, we decided we should take advantage of our geographical position and visit Ko Khao Phing Kan, a rocky outcrop in Phang Nga Bay, more commonly known as "James Bond Island". This is because it was the star of 1974 movie The Man With The Golden Gun starring Christopher Lee as a hitman with three nipples and a midget sidekick (they don't make them like that any more!). As movie locations go, it is probably one of the most iconic in cinematic history. As tourist destinations go, it is probably one of the most distressing places I have ever visited. The beach is now home to lots of market stalls selling the worst kind of tacky dross - weirdly, not one of them sells any James Bond memorabilia - and the whole place is swarming with boatloads of loathsome tourists (a bit like us, I guess) getting in the way of any photos you might want to take and generally being annoying (some obviously confused Italian lads insisted on screaming the theme from Mission Impossible for their entire visit). It was not a pleasant experience. As a Bond fan it was heartbreaking.

We left Railay at dawn the next day. As the tide was out we had to be taken to our boat by tractor and trailer. This is definitely a new one to add to the very long list of different modes of transport we've been on for this trip. We got a boat to Krabi, a plane from Krabi to Bangkok and then another plane to Singapore where we had a lovely drunken night courtesy of one of Claire's old rugby friends. We're on the home straight for this leg now and there are only a few more days before we have to fly back to the UK briefly before leg three of this marathon year-out. So what should we do for those last few days? I know, let's get a bus to Malaysia...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The coast with the most

By -
Image
I’d always assumed that the famous leaning tower of Pisa was once straight and that it had gained its unusual tilt over centuries of subsidence. Turns out that it was just a dodgy building job and has been an almighty cock up all its life. One thing is for sure though: it’s one of those landmarks where it is better to be outside looking up at it, than up it looking out. That little gem of wisdom cost Claire and I 18 euros each in entrance fees. You see, aside from the arduous climb up the stairs seeming a bit steeper in places and ever-so-slightly easier in others, all you get at the top is a view of the rest of Pisa which, apart from the neighbouring cathedral, is pretty dull. There are a few bells up there (it is, after all, a bell tower) and some annoying tourists, whose sole job is to get in the way of every single photograph you want to take, but otherwise there’s not much going on. The best views are to be had down on the ground and they are actually best viewed with the tower b
Read more

Captain cook

By -
Image
At this time of year a lot of the campsites have started closing for winter so, as we made our way back towards the Alps, our choices of where to stay became a bit limited and we ended up choosing campsites that we might not normally stay at. Which is how we ended up staying at a fairly surreal place in a little town called Torre Daniele. It’s not a massive town but we still had difficulty locating the campsite itself and, even after spotting it, couldn’t find a way in and somehow ended up driving over a sort of rickety old foot bridge. The place was full of old knackered caravans and looked abandoned, apart from a single dog who was barking loudly. Claire hopped out to see if she could find someone in charge and approximately 20 seconds later was back in the van with the barking dog hot on her heels. We drove a bit further into the camp and an elderly couple emerged from one of the caravans. They were Dutch, very friendly and told us that they came here for two months every year to he
Read more

Back on the road again

By -
Image
So, where were we?! After leaving Malaysia we returned to Singapore briefly to await our flight home to the UK. On our last evening in Asia we visited the nearly brilliant Night Safari at Singapore Zoo. I say nearly because it's a bizarre concept where you get driven around the park in a "tram" (basically a glorified tractor and trailer painted with zebra stripes) to look at the animals in semi-natural surroundings – in the dark. It's hard enough trying to spot zoo animals in their enclosures in broad daylight so adding the element of darkness seems a bit thoughtless. In a bid to give you at least a fighting chan ce of seeing something, t he zoo keeps the animals awake by not feeding them until night-time and shining giant spotlights at them. This means you end up being driven past tired and grumpy creatures who are up way past their bedtimes. Odd. Our flight back to the UK was one of those disappointing experiences that people always bore you with after they'v
Read more