Message from a bottle

This has the potential to be the shortest entry of our trip as despite staying on Hat Khua (a.k.a Bottle Beach on the north coast of Ko Pha-ngan), for longer than we have stayed at any other location on this trip we stuck to the plan and did very little for 7 straight days.

Even if we had been tempted to get out of our hammocks the beach could have been designed to dissuade us. A few hundred meters long, the beautiful sandy shore was surrounded by thick jungle (of which more later) which put paid to any ideas we may have had about running. Even the turqouise sea, while perfect for paddling or the occasional game of frisbee, was full of "sea lice" whose role seemed to be to attack anyone who strayed too close to actual swimming. Happily admitting defeat we slipped into a very comfortable routine of a reading, napping, eating and hanging out at the restaurant while enjoying plenty of the local rum.

While the weather spoilt us for much of the week our first couple of days were a different story as the long-tail boat which brought us to the beach just beat a huge storm which we watched blow in from the sea. It was strong enough to make our tiny bungalow feel very vulnerable and ripped parts of the roof clean off the main building!

The rain returned on our final day but the intervening days were stunning and exactly the kind of quiet, relaxing break we'd hoped for.

We planned to leave the beach 'tomorrow' for at least the last three days and unfortunately this meant that our ever growing rum and green curry tab kept outpacing our supply of cash and we needed to make two trips back to town to use an ATM. Rather than take the convenient, fast and reasonably priced long-tail boats, the first time this occurred we decided that we would hire a sea kayak and paddle the 5km into a headwind instead. While we eventually made it safe and sound, trying to paddle in tandem while keeping a plastic kayak straight on open water for an hour and a half was a 'bonding'experience.

That little adventure was just a warm-up for our second trip when we opted for a hike through the jungle instead. There was supposed to be a trail we could follow marked by plastic bottles but this was more of a suggestion as to where the undergrowth might be less dense and the occasional rock faces less deadly, than a trail in any recognizable sense. Sure enough after about 2 hours, just after the point when we decided we absolutely couldn't turn back, we got lost. With our shoes full of decaying leaf mulch and heavy rain soaking us to the bone we tried to laugh it off which worked well until we stumbled into one creek bed only to find that every surface was covered in biting red ants! 3 and a half traumatic hours later we stumbled into town and immediately ordered the biggest serving of chocolate pancakes we could find.

Aside from our ill-fated trips back to civilization the main sources of amusement were the beach's collection of animals. One evening we took a stroll to find the local stray dog digging frantically in the sand.

After about ten minutes he finally flushed out a decent sized crab which led to a hilarious stand-off - how many pinches on the nose is dinner worth?

In case any cat fans planned to take this as proof of canine stupidity we woke up (mid-afternoon) the next day to find our friend Kate screaming and clinging to the post of her bungalow:

The cause? One of the camp's cats was trying to swat a four foot long King Cobra which had crept in from the jungle. One of those times you don't want to consider exactly how long it would take to get to the nearest hospital.

When we finally dragged ourselves from the beach we were thrust quickly back into the realities of Asian travel and got to spend the evening in a mosquito ridden depot while our bus to Bangkok was coaxed back to life. We made it eventually around 5 the next morning and having learnt that Bangkok is a great city as long as you do not try to do anything or go anywhere we spent a very relaxing 24 hours before our flight to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.