Koh Tao

After a gruesome 2 day journey I arrived in Koh Tao. One overnight bus from Chiang Mai arriving in Bangkok at 5 am and after 15 hours another over night bus arriving at the ferry at 5 am. A mere 2 hours later and we were floating away towards islands! I met Sinead, who me I'd met in Pai,d at the Koh Tao ferry and we took a very expensive taxi to The Lotus Resort. Sinead had arrived a day earlier and scoped out some places. We were both ready for some sun and sand and this place happened to have a pool. We spent the next few days leisurely enjoying the rays and working on our tan. A local guy from our resort bar set up a snorkling tour for a bunch of us and we drove around the island, stopping at a few bays and enjoying the fish. We were excited to have our very own bungalow a short walk to the ocean and just meters from the pool. What we didn't realize was every night at 2 am there was a pool party that lasted until about 6 am. Rough. Especially considering it was started at about the time we wanted to go to bed. I ended up listening to my iPod every night until 6:30. I finally checked it out myself on our last night....it wasn't pretty. One night we went to a Lady boy show, which was very entertaining. Tina Turner was the best, a fantastic imitation. Every night at the beach the bars and restaurants had live music, fire dancers, and twinkling lights. It was a great atmosphere to relax and listen to great music. It was a great idea to order your favourite cocktail in a bucket, yep a bucket. In all fairness it was a small bucket, but a bucket just the same. Of course there's no way I could partake as that would put me under the table. Sinead and I decided to share one but I didn't realize it was buy one get one free....which they made automatically. So........we each had a bucket! I'm pretty sure we had a good night! I met Beyonce (from the lady boy show) at the last place we went, she shared her drink with me! I also had the best hotdog of my life outside the 7-11 at 2 am. I got the last one, the guy behind  me seemed pretty bummed. One thing about Koh Tao was that everything was really expensive. I was shocked at the prices. The people there were friendly but you could see they didn't love their island being full of people. I had a great time but was ready to leave for Bangkok after our 4 days. We went to book our boat and bus back only to find everything fully booked. We went to several travel agencies and no one could help us. We finally asked at our hotel and the lady was amazing. She called several times to find out if anyone had cancelled before booking us on the slow boat. We left at 3:00 pm and arrived at the pier for 5:30 pm. We were supposed to wait 4 hours but only had to wait an hour and a half. We hunkered down and watched a movie (until they started playing one on the bus at full volume).  We arrived in Bangkok at 3 am. Good thing Khoasan Road is open 24 hours. We arrived at a Guesthouse and were booking a room at 3:30 am. I was leaving that night but Sinead wanted another night and the woman was happy to only charge us the one night....if we waited until 5 am. I begged to take the room right away so we were in our beds by 4:30. And how kind, at 9am construction started in the room next door. Needless to say we got half our money back. We spent the day wandering around and before I knew it it was time to leave for the airport. Sinead leaves the next day and will meet me in Bali!