Koh Tao

To reply to this Swedish comment: the things I wouldn't eat are for exemple: huge amouts of pig nose, bugs (maybe this I'll try..), chily that you don't want to try ever again, all sort of small animals.. I forgot what others things I saw.


Well, here is a summary of my last 3 days:
I went from Hua Hin to Chumphon by bus early in the morning. I meet russian people again, but this time one of them spoke english a little bit. We shared the taxi and took the boat to Koh Tao. First my impression when we left the 'harbour', with no one on the beaches arround, was that I reached heaven. Then the boat was sort of empty. Then we arrived in Koh Tao, and there it was totally different. THe west cost, biggest one on the island from far, is almost only about buildings made out of conrete. People in the street are white people. The beach looks amazing but the water is actually very polluted. So I went further, again loosing at least 2L of water sweating. I finally found an old thai woman renting bungalows for a reasonable price. Well, it was OK.

Yesterday I decided to move out to the other side of island, but with my heavy bag I wanted to take a 'taxi'. After quite a search, I found two switz girls that accepted to share the taxi with me. Then 30min of incredible ride in the jingle, with quite a lot of moments where I thought the 4x4 would flip over on the roof. We finally ended up in a very nice place! We were alone with the owner of the place and her family, all thai. The water there was amazing so I snorkled (masque et tuba) for quite long, enjoying the colorful fishes and the corals. I even got attacked by a seagull that probably protected its nest, quite aggressive the beast! Moreover I felt very relaxed for my grant, it was good time.

I was planning to stay there for a couple of days. Unfortunatly the landlord tried to screw us quite a lot. She didn't say there wasn't water or electricity except between 23 and 5, when accpeted to run the engine cause the wires were broken up. Then she served a fish at night that was probably waiting in some petrol for a couple of weeks (humm hummm quite disgusting thing that was this fish ^^). So the two girls wanted to get back today and thus I did the same.

After some deep water jumping and snorcking, I headed back the main beach and I found back my nice bungalow with the old lady who quite smiled at me when she saw me back with my big backpack.

I think I'll spend tomorrow on the island, maybe walking to another isolated beach, but without my bag.

Sometimes it seems to be such a waste here that I feel guilty to be part of this tourism. This afternoon when I was looking for the internet coffee, I crossed a place where there was an open-air septic tank, awfully stinky. I could have puked there...
The worst is that some people don't even care or realise. And Thai people here, some are just bored and a bit hopeless (like my grandma bungalow owner a little bit), but some other seem to want to keep on going. I don't know if they are just blinded by money or what.

Well, that's not my state of mind 100% of the time, not at all, but it's scary sometimes.

I'll try to post some pics soon if I can.
Jérémie.