We flew into Bangkok on Thursday 16th July and stayed at the Hotel Oriental near Coussan Road, the party street, where you’ll find bars, clubs, street food, people doing henna and hair braids and we even found a man selling fried grasshoppers and maggots … yummy! We spent all our four nights here and met other travelers all there for a good time too!
During the day the Oz Bus group visited the floating markets, for €10 each we got a boat to take us around for an hour and a half and bought souvenirs, coconut milk and local specialty dishes like Pad Thai (fried noodles with vegetables and shrimp in a local sauce, must try this if you come to Bangkok!). After our money was well spent we visited the Jeath Bridge Museum and then took the two-hour train journey along the bridge on the River Kwai, this was interesting for our history buffs and for anyone who has seen the movie 'The Bridge on the River Kwai'.
The following day was spent wandering the 500 shops and 90 restaurants in the enormous MBK shopping mall. This is the place to go for whatever you need in Bangkok and also has a Boots pharmacy store! Exciting when you haven’t been able to buy your normal moisturiser in two months! For the Harry Potter fans in the group we couldn’t miss the new movie and enjoyed it in our comfortable air-conditioned digital cinema. Bangkok though to be fair wasn’t half as unbearably hot as the previous countries we had been in.
That night the whole Oz Bus group went to Coussan road and enjoyed a few Vodka Buckets, for €7 they put a naggin, two Red Bull and Coca Cola in a bucket for you. But be warned, the Red Bull here is not for the faint-hearted, it’s very strong and made a few of the group quite ill! We all ended our night in 'The Club' throwing glow paint on each other and went to bed about 5am.
The next day was spent shopping again and we left on Monday morning to get the ferry to Koh Samui. But not without its drama as the three Galway Girls after a heavy night out slept in and had to be woken at 6.10am, 10 minutes after we were supposed to leave, and required help to pack our luggage! Ooops!
The ferry took an hour and a half to get to the island of Koh Samui and as soon as we arrived we knew we were in Paradise, we had four days to spend here at the Home Bay Resort, where we all had lovely beach huts.
On Tuesday most of us hired out jeeps and mopeds and drove around the island. It’s only about 60 km long so a full day is long enough to see most of it. We visited a safari park and held a baby tiger, we swam by waterfalls, and we went to a snake house. After some saucy noodles for dinner we headed to the party street on Changweng to be greeted by lady boys and hostesses dressed as nurses trying to lure the men in our group into their bars. It was all quite seedy so we headed for the Reggae Bar.
There is also a very cool bar nearby called the Ice Bar, the only ice bar on a tropical island. It will set you back about €8 entry and the drinks are much more expensive but it’s well worth a visit. The next day was spent relaxing and buying outfits because tonight was none other than the famous Moon Beach Party on the island of Koh Phangan. Anybody who has been to Thailand will tell you about these beach parties! We got a speed boat over at 10pm and arrived absolutely saturated! We proceeded to get our glow in the dark paint tattoos all over our arms and legs and after much haggling the Irish girls managed to get a pot of glow paint for ourselves and destroyed any poor soul that happened to pass! The night was spent dancing in the sand to techno and running in and out of the water until 6am when our speedboats brought us all home again.
Thursday was spent lying on the beach and in the sea until sadly we had to leave on Friday. It was a sad goodbye to the Home Bay Resort as all the staff were so wonderful and friendly and helpful.
The next day we kept travelling on the bus in order to get to Malaysia. We stayed in Penang on Saturday where there is so much to see and do we were disappointed we didn’t have more time. We did manage, though, to visit the Pinang Peranakan Mansion, depicting the typical home of a rich Chinese Baba more than a century ago. This comes highly recommended and is only €2 entry. Although it is not customary in Malaysia to tip as it has been in every other Asian country we’ve visited, our guide was so helpful we gave him something.
Our next stop was Little India, a market street selling Indian silks and food and souvenirs. Nice if you haven’t already spent nine days in India, like us! After this we headed for some traditional local Malaysian food, try the Curry Mee or the Hokkien Mee with a The Tarik to wash it all down.
With our bellies filled we went to visit the Toy Museum, Asia’s first and the world’s largest toy museum with a life-sized Leonardo the Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtle greeting us at the door.
Down the road we enjoyed a pint in Shenanigans, the local Irish bar with the prices to match Ireland, alright!! And after empty promises to the barman that we’d return the next day for some Irish Stew we headed home ready to head to Kuala Lumpur the next day.
There we visited the Petronium Twin Towers, the highest buildings in the world until recently, and enjoyed three hours shopping in Marks and Spencer, Topshop and all the faves from back in the west. We even managed to get a lovely Irish sandwich and scone from O’Briens Irish Sandwich Bar. At this stage we were starting to feel a little homesick for the 1st time ... and then a Westlife song started playing in the supermarket! Sniff!
Sunday night we stayed in Melacha and wandered down the busy Johpur Street which is a type of Chinatown, offering everything from fake designer bags to fried squid. We stopped off at the Geographers place for a nightcap and headed off home to be up early for the ferry to Indonesia.
We loved Thailand so much because of the Thai people, they are so bubbly and friendly and love to laugh! We found Thailand and Malaysia very clean and much more organized in comparison to the rest of Asia we have visited. It’s very modern, yet they don’t seem to stress out like a lot of the western countries. Most of the people in Thailand are Buddhist but in Malaysia there is a mix of Muslim, Buddha, Hindi and Christian but you will see a lot more women wearing headscarves and traditional dress here. These are two countries not to be missed and for us three Galway Girls personally it has been our favorite part of the trip so far, along with the amazing Nepal of course.
For the next two weeks we will be facing tough times in the countryside in Indonesia, look out for the next blog!
Slan!! Sara, Emily and Jacinta
Advt
