Ice cream and island time in Thailand!
Crossing the borders between countries by land in south east Asia is probably one of the most confusing things in the world. Crossing borders always involves lack of communication in English, a couple stamps in your passport, and a lot of wandering around. We’re never told who to look for on the other side or which general direction to head to. As we get off the first bus we’re given blue stickers in exchange for our tickets, then told to go to a building that turns out to be the Cambodian immigration office, after we passed though we wait for our new French friends make it through so we can stick together to make it to the next phase because no one has told us what’s next and it’s better to be lost as a group. Right? Next a man asks us if we’re going to Thailand and he tells us to keep walking along the train tracks… eventually we see Cambodian flags turn into Thai flags and so we must be going in the right direction. Although this walk couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes it seems very confusing when it seems as though you’re walking through a random Cambodian/Thai town with homeless people begging in every direction and no idea when you will actually arrive to the next immigration official. We find the Thai immigration office, and get some more stamps then try to find our bus driver who we don’t know what he will look like or where he will be waiting for us. He finds us with our blue stickers and we wait by the bus for ~20 minutes until someone decides it’s time to go. I think the best thing to do in these situations is to keep calm and sit down/stand still somewhere and have faith that some random person will be kind enough to realize you have no idea what’s next and tell you where to go. Somehow through all the confusion we always make it to the other side due to having faith in the people knowing someone will end up helping/finding us through the chaos. This isn’t the most exciting story however, it does give you a taste of how confusing Asia can be when no one ever tells you what’s going on…which is basically all the time!
We spent 1 night in Bangkok where we decided to be “normal” for once. So we went to go see a scary shark movie and then to a hello kitty cafe. Ever since that first plane ride hello kitty has had a way of sneaking up on me when I need some cheering up.
So, we finally made it to the Thai islands! Ko Samui is first on our list. There’s quite a bit of tourists here but the beaches are very long and white, the sky is clear, and the day is hot. We spent our time on Samui trying to relax on the beach and eating lots of icecream. I love the water here because it is so warm, it’s probably impossible to get cold swimming in this ocean. There’s quite a bit of night life in Samui so one night we decided to check out Ark Bar because they have some pretty cool fire shows on the beach! What the fire show entails is a bunch of twirling, throwing, and tricks with flaming fire sticks. Really glad we got to see that!
We booked a day trip to Ang Thong National Marine Park, adding another island to our list. We spent the morning hiking to a blue lagoon (gotta say those stairs killed my knees) then went sea kayaking. In the afternoon it was quite rainy so we hid out in a little hut, eating ice cream to escape from the cold rain.
- If you know me at all you know you should know at least these two things: 1. I love the ocean 2. I love ice cream. I’m definitely getting a fill of both of these on our much needed a vacation from our vacation! [envira-gallery id=”5650″]
