Day 22 - Coast to Coast

Our day began very early today as we were leaving the east coast for the west. We were quite chuffed because we thought we had prepared well by buying some breakfast items. At 6:30 when we tucked into our pineapple slices they tasted like alcohol and the buns we bought from a nice looking bakery were so stale and hard that they could have been used as a deadly weapon in a riot.

We were picked up in a mini bus that also collected another couple characters from around Krabi. At the one guest house we picked up 4 really rough sounding, boisterous lads from Manchester in the UK. They had tattoo's all over there arms and looked like they had been beaten with a wet newspaper. Ten minutes into the trip, one of the lads who went by the name of 'Skully' shouted out from the back seat "Oi tell the driver to stop, I've forgot my man bag!". After much shouting and exclamations, Baz - his mate, pipes up "Don't worry bruv, I've got your man bag mate". Let's just say that all your street cred goes out the window when you decide to buy a man bag. Unfortunately this was the only bit of excitement on the 6 hour trip to Koh Phangan. I had made the fatal mistake of not organising a book to read on the journey so I was about to start banging my head against the wall through sheer boredom when we eventually arrived.

After having some heated negotiations with a taxi driver in which he told us to beep off we eventually managed to halve his original asking price (a bit of blackmail was thrown in as well). That is the art of negosh. In our taxi (which is basically a bakkie with a modified canopy) we had a friendly french Canadian couple who were staying on the same stretch of beach as us. We had a good chat with them while our driver decided to try halve our life spans with his driving! Once we finally arrived at our accommodation we very pleasantly surprised. The name of the place was Haad Salad Villas and our lodging for the next couple nights was a clean bungalow with a small view of the sea and a hammock.

The best part was that we were about 30 metres from the beach. The beach was really beautiful and had a relaxed atmosphere. We spent the rest of our day enjoying our new slice of paradise.

Phil