Days 14, 15, 16 and 17

First mate Joey here. The journey from Koh Samui to Koh Phagnan couldn't have been easier. The sea was a bit rough but still nothing compares to our first high speed catamaran experience. 

The resort we were heading to had arranged a taxi to pick us up from the pier, so thankfully we didn't have to do any flagging down or haggling on prices. The taxis on Koh Samui and Phagnan are called songathews - basically a pick up truck with benches in the back and a metal roof. If your lucky you get ultra violet lights, and the more people that share one journey the cheaper it is. 

We arrived at P & K resort in Haad Salad (the opposite side of the island to Haad Rin where the full moon party is on). We were amazed by the place straight away, it looked like the guys who owned it had built everything themselves out of natural resources. The attention to detail was spectacular, however we couldn't help feeling a bit too far out. After having been quite secluded in Koh Samui we were ready to party in Phagnan, but it seemed we'd picked the wrong place to stay. Haad Salad is beautiful, but boring (to a young couple such as SK and I wanting to see as much of the islands as possible). We decided to have 2 nights there (although we'd paid for 4 - ouch) and then move nearer to the busier parts of the island for our last 2 nights on Koh Phagnan. We found a place for £10 a night on booking.com, bit the bullet and booked to move there in a couple of days. 

The two days and nights we spent at Haad Salad were undoubtedly lovely. The beach there is beautiful, so we did lots of marvelling and wandering. We built a sandcastle, we drank lots of beer and ate some decent Thai food. When the tide goes out the beach bar/restaurants put tables and chairs on the beach, so on our second night we had a candle lit meal down there which was pretty special.

We got chatting to one of the waiters in the beach bar we ate at, after he made us smile by saying 'lovely jubely'. Turned out he was a Burmese migrant who came to Thailand in search of work, which he was desperate for so that he could support his wife and 2 children back home. He told us how he'd learnt English just from reading the dictionary and listening to people speak. His story about how he travelled to Thailand in the back of a truck with about 20 other people opened our eyes to a side of culture that we'd never witnessed before. We see migrants being frowned upon left right and centre but the truth is that some of them actually need to leave their homes and families to find work in order to survive. This waiter had only seen his kids a handful of times since they were born and didn't know when he was going to see them next, but he worked 13 hour days everyday so that he could afford to support his family. He also seemed like the happiest guy in the world, who just wanted to learn and do well for himself and his family. It made us appreciate where we come from and just how lucky we are. It highlighted, again, that most of the local people, in a place where we think everything's dirt cheap, are absolutely murray mint, and we're loving life, galavanting around chinning beers day in day out.

We're definitely adjusting well to island life and the way everything is so relaxed and chilled. There's no pressure to do anything much, which is something I am enjoying a lot, especially as I probably won't get an opportunity to do nothing for 6 months again in a hurry. If ever. And you know what they say... YOLO.

So we enjoyed our time in Haad Salad, but we hardly saw any other people and being at least a 30 minute drive from a Seven Eleven (which are everywhere over here, a bit like Tesco Express in England) was a bit odd, so we we're ready to move on - Ban Tai here we come.

This is the Captain speaking. Our decision was justified. We fretted over whether it would be worth the effort moving from Haad Salad down to Ban Tai quite a bit. We're only in each place for a few days at a time though, and there's a lot to see and do here, so we didn't want to walk away with any regrets, and this is a decision we definitely didn't!

The move was fairly straight forward, 20 minutes in a songathew to the new place, Cocoa Gardens in Ban Tai. The price of the new bungalow was £20 for 2 nights for the both of us. Pretty damn cheap, and the bungalow itself was nothing to write home about. No luxuries at all, and a rock hard bed that had a huge hole on one side of it. The location was perfect though, it was so close to Haad Rin where all the nightlife is, right by the pier for when we were leaving and to top it off, the resort overlooked the beach.

On the first night here we went in to Haad Rin for a pizza and some drinks. We'd heard of a great Italian/Pizza restaurant down there called Monnalisa and fancied a pizza after a few days of Thai food. The pizza was perfect, but unfortunately Haad Rin was a bit quiet, with not much going on. Plenty of bars to choose from, but none of them were really busy. No problem though, we wanted some choice – and we got it. We had a few drinks around there then as we were walking to get a songathew back, found a woman selling the infamous 'buckets' for 200 baht. That's £4 give or take a few pence. We chose one (apple vodka, red bull and lime soda) and it was delightful. The red bull over here is as potent as they say – it's like a syrup! So we had almost finished it by the time we got to a taxi stand but we weren't ready for it to be over. We decided to get some booze from the shop and go back to the balcony of our bungalow. Hong Thong (snide whiskey), diet coke, red bull and strawberry flavoured fanta. Sounds disgusting doesn't it? Well it wasn't – it was actually really really nice. Plus it cost 250 baht for two bucket loads of it. The drinks flowed and we stumbled to bed barely able to walk straight.

The next morning came quite unsurprisingly with a pair of huge hangovers. So we pottered around the resort for a few hours, enjoyed the beach and the bar (soft drinks only – we decided to have an alcohol free day for the first time in Thailand) before heading out in the evening to Thongsala night food market. It's literally three rows of street food vendors selling a wide variety of different cuisines. Seeing as I didn't have one last night, a kebab was on my mind – what better way to cure a hangover? Josephine went for some fresh spring rolls and a Thai green curry and we shared a stick of home made crisps. The guy literally spirals a potato around a stick, chucks a bit of batter on it then deep fries it in front of you. Excellent. The food was great, and we decided we'd walk it off for 20 minutes back to our resort. On the way we stopped at a bar for a San Miguel Light – the no alcohol rule didn't last very long. Then off to bed for an early night. Gotta be up at 5:30am to get ready for our next trip. Phuket for Christmas.