After our boat and hour long bus transfer to our hostel we were absolutely pooped. I think two weeks of constant drinking and then three nights of late night partying in a row in Koh Phi Phi took it out of us a bit so Ammun and I had a good rest while Tom packed his suitcase for the last time. However there was one exciting thing that did happen. We did some washing. We washed almost everything we own and it made the room smell so good once we had our knickers etc hanging from everything we could find!
For dinner we went to a restaurant called Kata On Fire Grill Restaurant which had come very highly recommended on tripadvisor. One of the reviews mentioned how great the pineapple rice was so I went for that and it was amazing!
We didn’t stay out too late because we were all getting up early. However, it seems there was an outside club or something outside the dorm and my bed was next to two windows so it was so so noisy with music and bad singing and a DJ hyping people up. This went on til 2am so I was awake until after 2am and was not impressed.
Tom’s last day arrived and it was quite an emotional morning. Obviously Ammun and Tom were really sad to be saying bye to each other but I also felt sad to say bye to him. Because of the distance between them at home, I haven’t had many opportunities to get to know Tom before so the last two weeks have actually been really good. Obviously I did end up third wheeling occasionally but there was so much going on around me that it didn’t bother me too much. Plus there were quite often dogs around so I amused myself with them. Please enjoy the closest thing I’ve got to a coupley picture:
Ammun and I were still so sleepy after putting Tom on his bus to the airport so we went back to bed, watched some Gossip Girl and had a nap. For lunch we went to a cute little restaurant covered in flowers that we had seen on our way to dinner the night before and had an “English Breakfast”. (Probably the most questionable attempt at a fry up I’ve ever seen)
In the afternoon we grabbed our towels and headed 150m down the road to Kata Beach for an afternoon of shade-bathing away from the really strong sun. The whole afternoon we barely talked but we didn’t need to. We both felt so serene and calm and I enjoyed watching the 4x4s come to collect boats and jet skis from the sea at the end of the day as the sun went down. It was a lovely ending to our two weeks of island hopping.
For dinner we went to a restaurant called Daisy that was next to our hostel and had a nice dinner with an even nicer starter. We had chicken nuggets. We were very happy! We played a game of pop up pirate (which was way less tense than I remember as a kid) and then an Argentinian guy joined us for a game of jenga and laughed as our not so traditional Thai starter arrived.
The next morning we went for a good filling breakfast and then waited for our taxi to the airport that we had booked the day before. We were ready for 11:30am like we’d asked but we were unsure why it was 10 minutes late. Instead of waiting longer, I went up and asked the staff when it would arrive and they pointed to my receipt where the guy from the night before had written 11:30pm not am! The staff flapped around finding us a taxi as soon as possible and luckily we could jump in with another two people who had come from a nearby hotel. We arrived at the airport, waited in a queue to get our bags checked to even enter the airport only to realise that this was the international airport and we had to get a shuttle bus to the domestic airport. Again, we had to have our bags scanned before entering and I had to empty the bottom section of mine because my luggage scales were coming up funny on the scanner (I’ve been carrying them for 3 months now and never had a problem!). We were rushed to the front of the queue before our bags were taken out a different exit as we missed the bag drop and then we went through to departures. I didn’t even have time to both wee and get chips from Burger King because the queue was so slow and we had such little time but we made it. The flight was fine (probably because we watched more gossip girl) and we have arrived safely in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.
I will miss the islands because I love how chilled everyone is in a beach environment but I feel ready to move on and not have sand in everything anymore! There was a lot more we could have seen such as the big Buddha and waterfalls but the main reason we chose Phuket is because it has an airport for all of us to fly back up north! Maybe another time I would adventure more…
Annalise x