WEEK HAH

I've been trying my best at learning the numbers and as 'hah' is 5 I thought it would be appropriate! 

Fun fact: On Facebook I saw a lot of Thai people writing 555 at the end of something, I soon worked out that they were saying hahaha. How funny! 

Week 5 was a normal week in Ban Song, I taught weather to Prathom 2 and 3 and colours with a rainbow theme to Prathom 1. 

Myself and Joy spent one of the evenings making ourselves beautiful... 

I made a lovely pork Phangan (Not sure of the spelling!) curry. 

Me and Joy followed the colour scheme on Tuesday, any Mean Girls fans will get my reference! 

 

I learnt how to write my name in Thai!

I got Lin and Jeff to record a Birthday song for my friend, Tori. 

I sat in and helped out in one of Joy's classes. I was also roped in at the last minute to teach 5/1, one of Lan's classes to teach them about appearances.

We walked to the shop one night, Joy wore some leather sandles for the first time (ERROR!!) and felt the consequences on the way back. She was shuffling so slowly that some Thai people were having a little chuckle (along with me) at her. It was so funny that I couldn't resist documenting the moment. 

After finding this card in a pack of ocupations, Lin taught me some more time and showed me how to write it all. 

These are all my most commonly used phrases according to Lin! 

In one of my last classes on Friday, a little boy chose to draw me teaching the weather. I've been given a few drawings and cards since I've been here but this has to be my favourite so far! 

How cute! I look a bit like Noddy with four arms but I enjoyed the gesture, even though he should have been paying more attention to what I was trying to teach! But it was sweet. 

THE WEEKEND THAT KOH PHI PHI HAPPENED

On Thursday 24th of July myself and Joy headed to Koh Phi Phi without really knowing what we were letting ourselves in for. School was closed on Friday and we had rescheduled our Thursday afternoon lessons for earlier in the week and already taught them so we could leave before lunch time on Thursday. 

We arranged to finish our lessons at 10:10am and meet with Lan in the English room who would drive us to the bus station so we could catch the coach to Krabi. Lan was late. We managed to track her down and were on the road by 10:20. When we got to the bus station Lan asked where the coach was and they said it had literally just gone two minutes before, how annoying! They also said if she drove fast we could catch up with it. 

Off we sped down the highway after the bus. After driving for a tense 10 minutes I'd lost all hope and started to think we should tell Lan to give up chase or she'd end up just driving us the 2 hours to Krabi herself! However our luck was in and we could see the bus in the distance. Now was the dilemma of how to stop it and get on. We managed to overtake it and get a good distance infront. The plan was to jump out and wave like mad to make it stop and then hop on. I was sceptical, what if it didn't stop despite our waves! 

Luck was in our favour, Joy was out the car on the road side and waved like crazy, getting it to stop further up the road. We legged it and hopped on, greeted by funny looks from Thais and the first farang's we'd seen for a while. Too pleased we'd caught it to care, I sat down looking smug that our weekend was beginning. 

Rebecca, who was travelling alone to Koh Phi Phi, as her ETA Victoria had decided to go to Chiang Mai in the North that weekend, contacted us saying she'd arrived at Krabi bus station. We planned that we would ring her when we got there to try and meet her and get the ferry alltogether. We didn't know if we'd make it for the 1:30 ferry or if we'd have to catch the 3pm so told Becky it was probably best to not buy a ticket yet. 

We arrived at a bus station in the middle of nowhere, with no one around. I'd expected a bit of a transport hub with people everywhere and sight of Rebecca! No such luck. Just as we bought a ticket for transport to the ferry and our ticket to Koh Phi Phi from a woman on the only desk there, I saw I had a missed call from Rebecca and rang her back to tell her to get a ticket for the 1:30 ferry. Unfortunately it was too late, from the bus station she was at, the transport from the ferry had just left and she had no choice but to wait for the 3pm. Even more annoying is that no taxi would take her individually to the ferry, despite us later realising that where she was, was about 10 minutes away! Ridiculous. 

Anyway, myself and Joy boarded the ferry just as it began to rain. 

The ferry to Phi Phi took about 2 hours and it was not pleasant. The weather was horrible, it was raining and a bit stormy with big waves, I was concentrating so hard on watching the waves so I wouldn't be sick. Much to the confusion of the man sitting next to me who thought I was staring at him! 

The sick bags got handed out and you can guess what happened next. Luckily I wasn't sick but I can't say the same for many others on the boat! 

Getting off the ferry I wanted to kiss the ground I was so happy to be on dry land. Before I could enjoy it too much I realised that us foreigners were being pushed one way and Thais another as we walked off the pier. All of the farang's had to pay 20 baht to get onto the island and there was a big sign saying about it being money to clean the beaches etc. I'm not even sure if it was compulsory but everyone seemed to be paying it and I didn't want to take the risk of getting my hands chopped off for not paying so I handed over my money (which was only actually the same as 40p). 

We had booked into Stones Bar hostel and I'd got a screen shot of the directions on my phone so we had a quick look to get our bearings. There were no taxis about on the island down to the fact that there are no roads! It is all pedestrianised which was great as it was only a small island anyway, you didn't really need roads. There were however plenty of Thais riding around on bicycles and carting around big cages on wheels which filled up the path so you had to jump out of the way quick to avoid being squished. 

Our instructions were to follow the pier straight ahead until you hit the beach, turn right and walk along the beach for 5 minutes and we would then find Stones Bar, which we did! 

This was on our walk to the hostel. When we got there I was very happy, it was so cute with loads of reclining cushions in the beach and under the cover of the bar. We checked in and were shown to our 16 bed dorm. Seeing as this was my first time in a proper hostel dorm it was certainly a risk going for a 16 bed. It was a tiny room filled with bunk beds but it was absolutely fine. It had 3 wet rooms off it so that was no problem for all of us. 

That's my top bunk with the red towel hanging off the end and Joy is the top bunk in the very left of the photo. 

After setting all our stuff down we decided to grab something to eat, have a look around and see what was about and then we thought it would be nice to meet Becky at the pier so we could take her to the hostel ourselves as we felt bad that she'd had to wait in Krabi and didn't want her getting lost on her own! 

On our way to meet Becky a man from a diving shop asked us what we were looking for as we walked past, I said 'our friend' and he replied with 'well where is she?' 'On a boat!', 'well she should be easy to spot then!'. Har har har. 

He was talking to us about the diving on the island which sounded amazing and very tempting but he also told us all about Koh Phi Phi including where to go for shopping, food and drinks as well as what to do, even drew us a map, how kind. Our new friend also told us that at Stones Bar we shouldn't expect to get any sleep as we were right on the party beach with the bar of our hostel right under our room...

We met Becky and took her to the hostel. When she checked in we asked if Laura and Amanda, who would be arriving the next day, would be in our room. They weren't supposed to be but the nice lady changed it around for us. We thought it would be nicer if we already knew 5 out of 16 people in the dorm. 

We then got ready, had a quick photo shoot and then went for dinner and cocktails. 

Becky and Joy then decided they wanted henna tattoos so their needs were also remidied.

We had a good laugh in the tattoo shop because they were all laughing at our attempts at Thai. With some words if you don't say a word in a certain tone, it means something completely different. 

The word for beautiful is 'Suwaii', and you have to go up at the end. If you say it more as a flat tone, it means chronically unlucky. How unfortunate! 

All inked up we moved onto the party beach at Slinkys Bar. Joy and Becky for the famous cocktail buckets but I decided against it and just went for glasses, sensible for once. 

The fire show they put on each night had ended and moved to audience participation. This was limboing under a fire limbo, jumping with a fire skipping rope and jumping through a hoop made of fire! All the danger. 

The British workers at Slinkys were holding up a sign that said 'Girl with no bra = free bucket, Naked boy = free bucket', there were plenty of people that were confident enough to get them selves some free buckets! Brits abroad eh, embarrassingly can't be tamed. 

All in all we had a great night, Becky met an English guy, Steven who turned into her weekend boyfriend which was cute. 

The next morning I felt really sorry for myself. The alcohol from the night before made a reappearance which wasn't the best thing to happen whilst staying in a dorm. The good thing though is that I didn't hear anyone else come in, but we may have drunkenly woke a couple people up with our laughing when we got to the room, oops!! 

On Friday our paradise island was very rainy. We chilled out at our hostels bar to take cover and this was when we found out, from the smell, why it was called stones bar. I'll post a photo that we saw on the island to let you guess what was readily available, despite having heavy penalties in Thailand for a very small amount. Maybe those rules don't reach Phi Phi?! 

After a very chilled and rainy day where we attempted to do some shopping, we admitted defeat and bought some dashing rain macs for 30 baht from 7 Eleven. 

We decided the day wouldn't be a total wash out (all puns intended) so we went for a manicure and pedicure while the rain continued to flood sections of the island. That was a bit annoying because my beautiful new toe nails had to be walked through muddy rain water on the way back. 

We then got ready to go out for some dinner and decided that a night out was probably off the cards if the rain carried on! 

Laura and Amanda, who were meant to have arrived on Friday evening ended up sadly missing the last ferry to Phi Phi because of their mentor being late so spent a night in Krabi town instead and they would get there as soon as they could on Saturday.

As we were getting ready, Becky's weekend boyfriend, Steven turned up at our hostel door with his friend from New Zeland, Cal. I let them in thinking they were staying in our dorm until they stood awkwardly without properly walking in and the penny dropped who they were and I recognised Steven from the night before. The five of us went out for dinner at Banana bar which is where you can normally see a great sunset (not that night!) and get some good Mexican food. They also play a film every night so we sat and watched 'The Life of Pi' until the rain cleared in very good timing. 

That night was a great blur of more cocktails, fire shows and fun. 

With me and Joy stupidly not asking for a key each to the hostel I ended up losing Joy, getting locked out and after sitting on the doorstep for a while trying to get in, I admitted defeat and slept on one of the comfy chairs on the beach. I was only there a few hours before it got light and I tried to get someone to let me into the dorm again. Success! After about 15 minutes someone went to the toilet and spotted me through the glass door. Horray! I then got into bed and slept until about 11 when Laura and Amanda finally arrived. 

Finally the sun had come out so we could do some sunbathing and swimming. This was the day that we were going to book a tour to see Maya bay where 'The Beach' was filmed with Leonardo Di Caprio. But because it was uncertain wether it was going to rain and we'd left it late in the day we decided it sadly wasn't worth it as rain would totally ruin the trip. 

That night we once again donned our rain macs and returned back to Banana Bar for food and to watch Get Him To The Greek. Myself, Joy and Becky were again joined by Steven, Cal and new additions of Laura, Amanda and some of Laura's friends from home that were on the island. 

After Banana bar we headed to the indoor Irish pub as it was too rainy for the beach. We went upstairs and played a multitude of drinking games. 

Soon after we headed to the usual beach bar/club, Slinkys and then things got a little scary. Laura started to have a panic attack and her breathing wasn't good. I was having a slight panic thinking what if something is seriously wrong, is there even a hospital here?! We all tried our best to calm her down and get her breathing back to normal but it was difficult with the loud music going on right next to us. We took her back to the hostel where one of the girls had some medical training and just tried to have a conversation with her which none of us had thought of. It eventually got her breathing back to normal and all was fine. It was very scary at the time but at least we all know what to do if anything like that happens in the future. The good news is that we all stuck together to try and help in anyway we could. 

The next day was Sunday which sadly meant it was time to leave all the amazing fun we had behind and travel back to Bansong. We got an early ferry to be on the safe side. It seems to be the same story whenever we leave somewhere, it was glorious sunshine! Luckily there was a sun deck so we sat out to try and catch a tan.

 We had time to spare in Krabi before we needed to get our bus back. So we grabbed some lunch with Rebecca and tried to make a plan for the next weekend. Very exciting! 

ANIMALS AND AEROBICS

Seeing as I had just been to the jungle I decided that my most appropriate next topic was to be animals. I had great fun teaching it and made myself some flash cards as we don't have a colour printer in school and the card available was too small to print on. 

In most of my lessons I went through the flash cards first with them to check their pronunciation as most classes had already learnt the animal names. I added in animal sounds and actions to make it more fun for them and they lapped it up. 

The pronunciation on some were quite unexpected.  I would have thought that snake would be easy but they were saying it more like 'suh-nake' and the same with spider it was 'suh-pie-dur'. When one of the teachers joined me in the class I realised it was her pronunciation that they had learnt it from. 

When I demonstrated the pronunciation infront of the class emphasising the 's' sound and exaggerating snake as only one syllable and spider as two, the teacher picked up on it as well and I saw her practising saying it the same way as me. Learning obviously isn't just for the children! 

I developed a game using my flash cards which went down quite well. I had 6 flash cards with numbers 1-6. I invited a child to the front who would pick a face down fanned out number card from me. I would ask them what number it was and they would tell me and the class. They would then have to find the picture of the animal at the number relating to their card. I would then ask what animal it is. After they had told me their job was to write out the name of the animal next to the picture. Depending on ability for some classes I wrote out lines representing the number of letters in the word to help them. If they struggled I gave them a clue or a bit of help and when they had finished the whole class would give them a clap. 

A game I played with my smartest Prathom 3 class was alphabet animals. I wrote the alphabet across the board and split the class into two teams which was more to control the class and turn taking than for a competition. One person at a time could come out from 1 team and write an animal name starting with one of the letters and then it would be the next teams turn. It gets competitive towards the end when there's only tricky letters left. The winning team is the one that writes the last animal. 

Hangman also worked well with some classes but not so much with others. One class was full of children very reluctant to join in and say a letter. Another was so eager that we struggled to play because it got too rowdy with everyone shouting letters. 

Prathom 1 loved the game where 'Teeecha Chrowee' made herself look silly. I would make the animal noise and act like the animal and they would shout out what animal I was. Everyone was entertained. I'm just glad none of them were recording that! 

With some of my Prathom 3 classes I also got them to fill in the missing letter of animal names or write the whole word out if I thought they could. 

On the Tuesday of week 4 at school Lan invited us to go to an aerobics class with her. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to be sweating while people looked at me and called me farang but we agreed. We were instructed to walk down to the traffic lights, turn right and then walk until we heard the music and be there at 6pm. We decided to not be right on time as we knew Lan wouldn't be and we didn't want to arrive before her. 

On the walk there we spoke about 2 things. One was surely it'll be in an air conditioned room like it would be at home. No one, not even Thais want to do aerobics without aircon. The second was my question of how are we going to understand the instructor, as surely it'll all be in Thai! 

We arrived at the music. It was outdoors. OUTDOORS. There was a woman standing on a raised platform and about 50 women in rows copying her routine to Thai music. This was all in the car park of the post office and fire station. Infront of the fire trucks and behind the aerobics were some men playing football. 

After a quick scan of realisation of where we were about to do aerobics I started to walk in. Joy however did not. 'No, I can't, it's not happening.' I demanded that we had to go in because it was too late Lan had seen us and we were here now! It was like a dog pulling back on it's lead when it doesn't want to go into the vets. 

The location of the aerobics class. My view was from the bar/restaurant across the road afterwards.

Anyway we went in eventually and joined in. We managed to stay incognito unt one of the moves required us to spin around so everyone saw the farangs and had a little giggle and a mutter about it! 

Afterwards Lan asked me why I was red and seemed a bit puzzled. It may have had something to do with aerobics in 30 degree humid heat?! I realised though that most of the Thai women had retained their normal colour and had just sweat a tiny bit. How??!! 

Lan then took us across the road for a much needed ice cold drink. 

It was as refreshing as it looks. Delicious.

We spoke to Lan that night about our weekend plans as we wanted to go to Koh Phi Phi, an island on the west coast of Thailand. We asked if it would be possible for us to teach our Friday lessons in the week around our current time table so we could leave on Thursday night and have a bit longer there. 

Lan got back to us the next day and said that there would be no school on Friday as the teachers were going to school in a town a few hours away to look at their new library and to get ideas on how to get the children interested in reading. Bonus! We booked our weekend and began to get very excited as we had heard good things about Phi Phi. 

On Wednesday I had a lovely day of funny students and gifts! 

The children all love these loom bands and make them every second they get the chance. My Prathom 2/5 class all got a bit excited and gave me loads of them at the start of the lesson. By the end of the lesson, the blood flow to my fingers was fairly uncertain. 

That day me and Joy had the idea to let Team, Toop, Mean and Lin, the children who are always in the English room, watch Peppa Pig as it was in English it could benefit their skills. I'm not sure though who enjoyed it more, me or them... (ME!)

That evening I also decided to call it time on the rice cooker being untouched. Since Lan took us shopping for the house and bought us a rice cooker we hadn't used it because the security tag was still attached to the lid. I had enough and took our massive knife to it. 

I didn't lose any fingers in the process so it was a success! Horray for DIY. 

WEEK 3 AS TEECHA CHROWEE AND KHAO SOK NATIONAL PARK

As it had been a long weekend and we were on Koh Tao we were dropped off at our house on Tuesday morning by Cham. It was at this point that the feeling of sickness came over me and the sickness bug from Koh Tao had travelled from Joy to me. We both spent Tuesday bedridden and feeling sorry for ourselves. 

On Wednesday I decided to carry on teaching the body as I had the week before because I only ended up teaching 2 lessons over the whole week so I realised there was no point changing the topic. I taught two lessons in the morning and still had my afternoon 12:30 to go. After my second lesson we were told that the principal wanted to take us to his orchard to pick mangosteen (remember the best fruit in the world?!). We jumped at the chance, first he drove us (with Buhlan to translate) to his home where we met some of his family. Then we moved on to the orchard. We were given buckets and he joked in Thai that if we didn't fill the bucket, we wouldn't be allowed back into our home. The only problem was that the ants love the mangosteens due to their sweetness. Everytime I picked a mangosteen off the tree, I'd have a family of ants running up my arm and having a little nibble. My remedy for this was to pick one, kill 5 ants, pick one... Buhlan thought it was hilarious.

After we went to the nicest restaurant in Bansong which Lan has taken us to before for soup, rice and noodles. We were showing the principal that we could count to 5 which he enjoyed and began teaching us more numbers. He also asked about Koh Tao and we showed him some pictures. 

Inside the lovely restaurant

That evening we went shopping and found some pretty interesting canned food. 

Pigeon and chicken feet. Nice. We decided against both and just bought the ingredients for a simple sausage and tomato pasta. 

On Thursday, as we left the house to go to school we got a little bit stuck because there was a sports day parade going past! This country is strange but oh so exciting. 

Then on Friday, after teaching until 2:30, Lan dropped us at the van station in Ban Song. She spoke to the driver for us to check that there definitley was a van we could get from Surat Thani city centre to Khao Sok National Park. They thought there was but weren't too sure if we would miss it. We got the van anyway into Surat Thani and got loads of stares by the 16 other passengers and the usual whispers of 'farang' went round. 

We got to the van station around an hour and a half/two hours later due to traffic and were pushed towards an English speaking Thai man who sold us a ticket to Khao Sok and told us it's the last bus At 5. So at around 6:10 we got on the bus. Classic Thai time! We were curious for a while wether the bus was ever going to come and passed the time speaking with the bus man, he was asking us about Ban Song and teaching there. 

The bus to Khao Sok took about 2 hours and when we got there there didn't seem to be a lot around, just lots of dark jungle! When we got off the bus there were a few cars about, a man approached us farang's getting off and asked us all where we were going and lead us to further transport. Before we knew it we were getting into a 4X4 with this man. As soon as we were in I had a little panic of thinking is this even a taxi?! Who is this guy! We could definitley be dragged into the middle of the jungle right now and no one would know. Luckily after a quick scan I saw he had a license hanging up on his windscreen, well it could have been fake but still, my worry was pointless because within 5 minutes we were dropped off at our hotel. 

We were welcomed by the loveliest couple and the man told us that his home town is Ban Song so he was very excited that we were teaching there! We were shown to our room along a wooden walk way and were warned to watch our step as it wasn't well lit and some of the planks of wood were broken. Bit scary! The walkway was also quite high with no rail, classic Thailand. It would be a health and safety nightmare at home but I kind of enjoy that it's allowed here. 

We had a lovely little room with pink princess mosquito nets, winning! We knew that Laura, Amanda, Rebecca and Victoria had already checked in but we couldn't contact them because we all had no signal and no wifi. We also forgot to ask which huts they were in so we could go and knock. We decided they must be in a restaurant so we'd go see if we could find them. 

We started to walk along the path to the restaurants but it got scarily dark very fast so we decided to go to the closest one as it was late anyway. We enjoyed dinner in our restaurant with bats circling in and out and a plethora of lizards on the walls and lights along with a loud buzz from the jungle. It might sound horrific to some but I was actually really enjoying it! 

On Saturday morning we got up early so we could book some sort of tour of the national park. We asked at reception and we were booked on a tour before we really knew what it was due to the receptionist's hastiness but who doesn't love a mystery tour! 

Whilst we were eating some breakfast at the hotel, Victoria and Rebecca appeared. They were booked to do a jungle trek which was leaving at a similar time to our tour. We made plans to meet up with them after our tours in the evening the old fashioned way as our phones still weren't working to get wifi or signal. 

Here's a quick snapshot of the hotel before our tour. Jungle paradise.

We were bundled into a van with a Thai man as our driver who introduced himself as 'Big Man' which he certainly was. We drove around to a few more hotels to pick other people up before doing the hour and a bit journey towards the National Park and Chewlan Lake. 

First with our tour group was a long tail boat ride around Chewlan Lake which was incredible.

After enjoying some incredible views on our boat which was also driven by Big Man, we stopped at some raft houses for lunch and a swim. 

Me having a swim and being easy breezy buoyant, scuba girl as per. 

After a good lunch of rice, chicken, fish and fruit we were told that we would shortly be getting in the boat for 5 minutes and then beginning our jungle trek to the cave that we would be swimming in! Big Man told us to bring a lamp (torch) for the cave and a camera and to wear trainers not flip flops. We didn't know to bring torches so didn't have any. Also, i've been using my phone as a camera and seeing as there'd been talk of swimming through the cave I didn't think my iPhone would really fancy a swim so I left it at the raft houses along with my bag. I was a bit worried that it could get stolen there but Big Man but a towel over all of our bags and everyone knows that towels work better than padlocks, lockers or safety deposit boxes as measures of security so my mind was at ease. 

Sadly this part of the journey is assisted with no photos. I was tempted to draw some sketches to assist my jungle tales, I told Joy of the crazy silly thought that I had and she decided it would be funny so here goes. 

We got off our long tail boat after a 5 minute ride from the raft houses. The edges of the river bank were really high and muddy after we'd got off the boat onto one side we had to slide down, walk through the river and slip up the other side. Notice big man leading our tour group. The picture is to scale, he was that big.

We then walked down an extremely slippy and muddy path on our way to the jungle. There was a stream we had to cross and there was a tiny thin log acting as a bridge. It was too far to jump so you had to have some good balance. It wasn't a tiny drop down to the stream either, it would have been tricky to get back up. Luckily we all put on a good tight rope act and made it across without too much trouble. 

Okay so I may have exaggerated on this drawing. We didn't see any snakes but we did have to do a good bit of climbing and holding on to trees as it had previously been raining loads so the jungle had turned into a bit of a slip and slide as Joy found out when she landed on her bum! Har har har! There were also quite a few places in the jungle where we had to wade through the water in fairly strong currents which was made difficult when we were walking on slippy rocks. I know how Bear Grylls feels now on his adventures ;). 

After about an hour of walking we came to a waterfall and Big Man climbed straight in there! It looked like too much fun to skip it and it was very hot so we all wanted to climb in. Whilst clambering gracefully over some slippy rocks I slipped and cut my knee on a rock. That red bit in the picture is me heavily exaggerating how bad my cut was. 

It's not bad at all but it didn't half sting! I've got a good scar from when I fell on a waterfall though. Total 'gap yah' story. 

We continued on through the jungle and came to the cave. 

Big Man went in first with his torch and we all followed tentatively. It was dark and slippy, you had to negotiate your way over slippy rocks whilst not hitting your head on the top of the cave. The water got to hip level and we saw a little baby crocodile in there! Shortly, it opened out and got deep to the point of swimming against a current. We had to grab the rocks to pull ourselves along so we didn't get pushed back. At this point Joy began to panic and it was a good decision for us all to leave. We had heard stories before we went that a few years ago some tourists went in the same cave and died as the water level was too high and they got in trouble. Because of this you can only go in at certain times of the day when it's at a safe level but it was still a bit frightening! 

We trecked all the way back to the long tail boat all looking a bit sweaty, wet and muddy but only minorly injured so all in all it was a great trip! Big Man had to turn our boat around on the river and was having a few problems. 

HE FELL IN! Hahahaha haaa. It was very funny. 

A soggy Big Man drove our boat back to the raft houses to collect our belongings from under his security towel and I had another swim and some fruit. 

Reunited with my phone I took a post jungle experience selfie, looking a bit disheveled!

Soon after, Big Man drove our boat back across Chewlan Lake and then returned us by van to our respective hotels. What a job that man has! 

That night we met up with all four of the girls for dinner and then drinks at a Reggae bar. 

My 'Thai Spirit' cocktail wasn't so great. The funny thing about most cocktail menus you find here is that none explain what is in the cocktail, and I quite enjoy the suprise. Jack, one of our friends that we met in Bangkok orderd a 'Gay Power' whilst playing the name judging game and it was delicious. After a few of us tried it we all had 'Gay Power'. 

We played a few card games in the Reggae Bar and had a really nice chilled night, due to being right next to the Khao Sok National Park, the little village doesn't have too much going on and was a bit more of a family place although there were plenty of backpackers there! 

We did the 10 minute dark walk back to our hotel huts powered with our phone's torches.

In the morning myself and Joy met Rebecca and Victoria for breakfast about a 10 minute walk away. They left to get their bus back to their school soon after. 

We then met Laura and Amanda to go tubing on the river. We were packed into a van with four black rubber rings with a Thai man that looked like the guy out of the jungle book so I named him Mowgli. 

We were put into our rings and got swept away by the current. It wasn't very relaxing as you had to paddle away from and around rocks, the bank, trees as handing branches. It was however, very fun. Mowgli got out of his ring to grab and direct ours at some points where it was looking a bit dangerous or when the river went in two directions!

When we got back to the hotel the four of us asked the guy on reception to book us a van back to Surat Thani for 1pm. We then went to get some lunch at a restaurant with the slowest service in the world. Normally service and cooking time it's that long so we thought we'd be fine with an hour but we were so wrong. Annoyingly we couldn't do anything about it. We knew we were going to miss our van but we'd orderd the food too long ago to leave! Joy did the 10 minute walk back to tell our hotel what had happened before our food came. The guy at the hotel wasn't happy at all but there wasn't much he or we could do about it so he booked us onto the 2pm van. 

The journey out of Khao Sok was so scenic and was great to see as we missed it on the way in as it was dark. 

We made it back to Surat Thani and didn't have to wait too long for our bus to Ban Song. 

Lan dropped us home from the bus station and we got some rest ready for school the next day after a busy week.