Mom's Worst Nightmare

After 2 overnight buses and a treacherous 4 hour boat ride with too many people, we finally made it to Ko Phangan! We had booked a place for 3 nights at a place that must have been new because the taxi didn't know where it was...we drove around for half an hour before he dropped us on the side of the road to walk in to our resort. It was about 15-20 minutes in the heat with all our bags..not impressed! Our resort turned out to be super cute, and right on the beach. Unfortuantely, we were told that the Full Moon Party was on the 29th so we only booked for 3 nights...when it was actually on the 31st. We walked down the beach from resort to resort trying to find a place to stay. The ONLY place that had room was BAY HUT Bungalows, with a shady kind of creepy owner. There was obviously no one else staying there and there was garbage in the driveway. BUT we decided it was only a place to sleep, so we did it. We moved our stuff into a hut on the beach and when we walked in, we found holes in the floor, broken windows, a roof that was merely sitting on the walls and mosquito netting that probably hadn't been used in years....about the same amount of time since anyone had stayed there. The bathroom...although we wouldn't call it that...had no flooring, rust, mold and water stains, the sink ran through on to the floor and the shower head attached to a tube trickled dirty water. Still...we sucked it up, laughed at the sitch and stayed. The next morning, LH woke up and went in to the bathroom, shut the door and found 2 HUGE lizards on the back of it. Not geckos...LIZARDS the size of our feet. That was it. We RAN down the beach, yes I said we ran, to scope out a new place to stay. We found a cute one about 3km down the beach, booked it, went back and made record time packing up and getting out of there. We CARRIED our bags (repeat west coast trail in 35 degree heat) to the next resort. In short, it turned out to be fantastic...the bathroom had tiles, we had a hammock on our balcony, there was a great place to eat, and the lady that owned it spoke fluent english, which made things that much easier. She saved our lives!!! We got to enjoy the full moon party safely and sleep in a safe lizard-free cabin.

Getting off the island was ALMOST as fun...we booked a night boat and bus to Krabi. We were 2 of the first people there...and climbed on the boat, got ourselves a spot amongst the 2 rows of mattresses, and were actually pretty excited about getting to sleep! Masses of people started climbing on, and we realized that they were given a PLACE number. We were kicked out of our beds and told that we'd be taken care of after the boat took off. This meant being given a life jacket for 3 peole, and sleeping with all our stuff on the floor in the entrance way on to the boat. No stretching your legs out...for fear of smoking someone in the face (LH) or hitting a MOTORCYCLE (LT). It was a little like illegal immigration....for EIGHT HOURS on wavy waters. FUN TIMES!! It's all about character building right!? NO MORE NIGHT BOATS!!!

Stay tuned for more travel fun :)

Love L and L