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Had Thien, Island of Ko Phan-Ngan [ Thurs. 17th - Tues. 22nd February 2005 ]
We'd originally planned to stay at Bottle Beach on the island of Ko Phan-Ngan as we'd read it had the nicest beach.
We jumped in a longtail boat with a load of others and dropped each of them at different bays. Bottle Beach is a fair way from the port at Hat Rin and they wanted 1500 baht (21 quid!!) to take us there. We hastilty decided to jump at Had Thien and paid just 100 baht.
Had Thien is home to the Sanctuary resort and just a small number of other little bungalows. We were unable to get in at the Sanctuary, so off we went through the coconut groves to another set of bungalows.
We managed to get in at Beam Bungalows and paid just 350 baht (5 quid) a night for the bunglow. Not the Hilton but it had everything you needed and we were just happy to have to somewhere to stay!
The Sanctuary is a new age veggie health freak resort were yoga, colonic irrigation and vegetables are the order of the day. Katy, are friend from Singapore, had booked in here and was doing a 3 day fast. She was paying someone not to eat?! The fasting was followed by some colonic irrigation and a load of weird shakes. Julie did show some interest and wanted to do it, until Katy explained the 'ins and outs' of colonic irrigation.
Julie decided to be ultra healthy and was up each morning at 6 for a swim in the ocean. Totally veggie all week, no wine/beer and generally just eating good things. I couldn't give up the beer or smokes, but I did eat some veggie stuff now and again.
We stayed in Had Thien for 5 nights and it was really good just to do nothing all day. It was really peaceful and we were now ready for the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, our next destination.
It was really choppy the day before we were due to leave and we'd spoken to people who had been out on the boats.
Stories of iPod's and digital camera's getting soaked through didn't really inspire us with confidence for our boat trip at 06:00 the next morning.
That night, I was frantically backing up everything to my portable hard drive and Julie was busy wrapping everything up in bin bags! Our boat didn't turn up at 06:00 and we missed the 08:30 connecting boat over to the mainland.
The first boats to leave were at 09:00 and after haggling with them, they finally agreed to take us to Hat Rin for our taxi to Thong Sala.
Luckily the travel agent was able to change our tickets to Bangkok, it just meant we would now arrive in Bangkok around midnight.
The sea was extremely rough and on the catamaran over to Ko Tao, Julie was starting to look a little green. She was relieved to be on dry land, I can tell ya!
Enjoy the pix...
Lee asleep in the hammock.
The bathroom and shower.
Coconut trees.
Longtail driver.
Joo on the boat.
Lee on the boat.
Our resident lizard. Look at the size of the thing!
Had Thien beach.
Lee having a 'fruit facial' at the Sanctuary beauty parlour.
Boat at Thong Sala pier.
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