Ko Pha Ngan, My Yoghurt Home away from home

So yesterday there was a little discussion about time. You wouldn't think you'd be so pressed for it with six (now seven) weeks to dick around this lovely part of the world but when we actually wrote it down it seems we're allowed only a couple of days in each place, Chiang Mai, Luang Prabang, Siem Riep to name but a quartet minus one. One of the factors involved in our reappraisal of available time was that we decided we couldn't leave Ko Tao without diving again.

I mentioned previously but we did an open water diving course on the island, which was amazing. I won't go into the detail of how cool this was because I want the pictures we took to encourage you, dear reader, to disregard these hard drawn words in favor of the thousand each one is worth. Our dive camera is currently in the shop where we arrived in Ko Pha Ngan and I will post what I can when I can, which brings me neatly if contrivedly to the next affair of our wanderings: 'avin' it large.

This island is famous for the debauchery of it's full moon parties, where sunset beach (remember that show?) is crowded with revellers going mental til the wee smalls. We've elected to only hit the allegedly more boutique feeling of the half moon party, what I imagine is the electric picnic to the full moon's oxegen. So party on the 10th, hangover on the 11th and back to Ko Tao for the advanced (oooh) open water diving course, where they take us to 30m, and then off the islands.

A lovely lady in our dive resort who found out where we were going recommended our current guest house, where she said she used to work. It's called, wonderfully, Yoghurt Home 3, a delightful unnecessity made more brilliant by the apparent, as yet, lack of any Yoghurt Homes 1 or 2. She got us a good deal though, by writing a little note to the girl she knew who works here.

(Side note: When she wrote her name on the note, I coughed and didn't, uncharacteristically for me, say So wa dee, Krap, [insert name] and then introduce myself because I knew both Adam and I would have broken apart by my saying her name which was: Pu)



The pier from Ko Tao, though which we left.


Our lovely yoghurt home, which Adam described as 'cheap and cheerful' (it has air-con) and which I countered with 'cheap and depressing.'


The sign outside so you know I'm not bullshitting you, as if I had that Magritte an imagination.



The above is an example of what it's like to arrive on one of these islands. Every person on the pier wants your money and would like to take you where they're going. There's a small moral quandry, for me at least, involved in ignoring them, but it's worse again to even make eye contact. Keep an eye on the dude shouting red shirt, red shirt. Because I was wearing one and he was too, he thought we ought to engage in an act of capitalism.

Actually I was cracking up at the ignorance it took to just take out my camera and film them, the poor bastards but I couldn't resist. It's weird too, a red shirt was enough, we had enough kismit, connection to go to the town together... I wonder what he says to people in a different colour top from him? 'Homo sapien, homo sapien, I walk upright also, we go together!'