Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

Saturday, 24th of September, 7am:
Arrived in surrathani. took a bus to don sak ferry port and then a ferry to nathon, the main ferry port in samui. from nathon we took a pick up taxi to chaweng.

my god - samui, especially chaweng has changed a lot! maenam beach has become very populated and chaweng beach has dramatically changed its appearance. most of the street vendors have gone and cheap shops and bars have been replaced by upmarket stores and bars...

...there are proper adidas, levis, etc stores now and many western bars that look very exclusive! it is very tough to find cheap accommodation in chaweng, and we were even there in low season!!!

p&p resort where Nora stayed for 8 weeks 2 years ago when she worked in samui has more than doubled the price...a bungalow that cost 500 baht 2 years ago is 1100 baht now!

all the cheap beach front huts that offered basic accommodation for 100-200 baht have been repaced by exclusive spa resorts and so on...on almost every corner in samui you can find posters and signs for properties and spa resorts...it really seems that samui will become an exclusive and rather upmarket island in the near future...

...but the main reason to come here was that Nora wanted to see Toi again, a thai massage girl she made friends with 2 years ago...
meeting again after such a long time was great, meanwhile toi's daughter fang (5 years old) moved to samui as well. we went to see toi's new bungalow (which is much nicer than the bamboo hut she lived in a couple of years ago) and spent hours playing with fang...

the weather was nice - nora caught a really bad sunburn on the ferry (what a surprise)and had to be bathed in after sun for the next few days... and no thai massage..what a pity!

as we only came here to see toi we stayed for 3 nights before leaving for krabi.

but we wouldnt arrive in krabi before having a real adventure and in fact the most scary and horrible experience so far...

...Monday, 26th of September 8pm:

We needed to book a bus-boat-bus package to get us from Koh Samui to Krabi so we tried a few travel agencies and finally decided to buy our tickets from the last place we asked as they were all pretty much the same price anyway and the guy seemed kind of ok. Friendly and laughing etc....We arranged that he would personally pick us up from our bungalow at 7am the next morning to take us to the ferry port in his air conditioned jeep...so far so good!

....Tuesday, 27th of September 7:20am
Guy turns up in his his Jeep as proimised if not 20mins late but what is 20mins between two travellers and clearly psychopathic, schizophrenic thai murderer!!!! So we jumped in his jeep after a rather cold and silent greeting from him before he wheel spins off on route to the ferry port which is on a normal day about 30-40mins drive away. We could immidiately sense that something was wrong! He stuffed the tickets for the bus and boat into my hands as he overtook and dodged cars, mopeds and pedestrians. He was pedal to the metal and flat out from the word go. Overtaking cars on narrow roads with oncoming traffic only metres away. Deliberately aiming for children on their way to school only to swerve at the last minute. Driving head on into traffic and giving the petrified drivers the finger as he stared at them with his blatently drug hazed eyes! Driving up to the cars and bikes in front only to slam on the brakes at the last second accompanied by a blast of the car horn! Ok things were getting a little tooooooo scary for us both now so Nora nudged me to say something. So at the risk of freaking him out I very politely mentioned that we still had time and that there was no need to hurry. Bad move!!!! We have both never experienced such an unexpected and shockingly scary reaction. He swerved the car off the road and screached to a halt whilst screaming at the top of his voice that we were to "SHUT UP!!!!...SHUT UP!!! GET OUT OF MY CAR NOW!!!!"......errrr ok we are going to die now! Next thing Nora asks him to calm down which resulted in his arm being raised and swinging violently in Nora's direction. More words from me and he gave me the same threat! Time to exit the car me thinks. We jump out and open the boot to grab our rucksacks and he jumps out too and comes round to meet us. Boot open, boot closed, boot open and the bags are out as he starts asking for the tickets back for which we have already paid....nice try. We were free and alive and slightly shaken (Noras knees shook for at least 30mins) as he spun the car around and raced off in the direction we had come from. So that was that....stunned and deserted at the road side with tickets for a ferry which was leaving in 15mins from a port which was still 15mins away....S**T! Luckily one of those Thai pick-up truck taxi things drives by and we manage to flag him down...the race is on! Anyway to cut it short(er) we made it in time and got safely onboard the 8am ferry bound for Surrathani.....what a start to the day...things could only get better!