a wildflower in the land of smiles: Ko Tao and Ko Phi Phi: Rain, Rain, Go Away!!

After 7 weeks of traveling and living out of a backpack, I’m back in Khon Kaen! School starts next Wednesday so I’ve spent the last few days re-cooping, doing laundry, catching up on my shows, posting my adventure pictures on my facebook, going into school and preparing the classroom, and attempting to update my blog! I had an amazing time traveling and want to share my adventures but I’ve been putting off updating my blog because it seems like such a daunting task. I kept a journal on my travels so I wouldn’t forget the good stuff.. so here we go!

After Ko Phangan and the National Park, Olivia, Jess and I jet over to Ko Tao on March 22. While at Full Moon, the girls and I were still up in the air about which island to go to next (life is SO tough!). We had two options..

1. Ko Samui: a big and beautiful island that’s high on New York Times’ List of 41 places to go in 2011, but very touristy and resorty.. the kind of place you’d like to go when you have money to spend, which is definitely not us right now.

And 2. Ko Tao: turtle island, a smaller island with beautiful coral and fish, therefore attracting a lot of people interested in diving.

We decided on Ko Tao because we had heard great things about the island from friends who didn’t do diving, and I’m so glad we made this decision!

Ko Tao! We took the ferry from Ko Phangan to Ko Tao and easily found a cheap bungalow for the three of us to share on Sairee Beach, the backpacking hub of Ko Tao. We spent the first day exploring our surrounding area and made a mental list of all the places we wanted to eat at and the bars we wanted to check out that night. The next day was Jess’ 24^th Birthday and we had signed up to spend the day snorkeling. The water and fish were beautiful but it began to rain and storm mid day causing dark and rough water so we ended the tour an hour early. It rained on and off for the next three days so we tried to stay dry during the day and went out at night, including a huge mud party festival on our last night. There was a performance stage set up in a large open area that was covered in a foot deep of mud. It was messy but tons of fun!

The next morning on March 26, the girls and I woke up and made it to the ferry. Luckily it hadn’t started raining so we boarded the ferry without much thought.. the ferry needed to go from Ko Tao to Ko Samui to Ko Phangan then to the main land, so it goes around all the major islands in the Southern Gulf to pick up passengers before heading to Surat Thani, the main port on the main land. As soon as we pulled out of the harbor, we knew this was going to be a tough ride. We hit the open water and it as rougher than rough, our boat was not only bouncing front to back but also side to side. We thought it would steady out but it continued this motion for the next three hours. I grew incredibly anxious and began to panic grabbing the seat in front of me when the actual windows of the ferry were hitting the water due to the rocking. 30 minutes into the trip, I was convinced our boat was going to sink and I didn’t see a single life jacket. I don’t normally get nervous on boats or seasick but it didn’t take long before I was sharing a large trash barrel with other sick passengers. The looks on other passengers’ faces were anguish and pain, and I could tell they were thinking the same thing. I was feeling pretty crappy and accepted the fact that the boat was either going to sink or I wouldn’t survive the motion sickness so I curled up next to the luggage and piles of backpacks to try to fall asleep. The next thing I knew, we were in smooth waters and gliding to the dock at Ko Samui. I rushed back to our seats and to Olivia and Jess in tears and shaking. We were told we needed to switch ferries and take another boat to the other island that would take us to the main land. I was terrified and couldn’t imagine being on water like that ever again and was considering staying on Ko Samui until the following day just to wait out the rocky water. With Jess and Olivia’s help, they talked me into going on the next boat which ended up being no problem. The rest of our boat trips were smooth as could be! (I wish I had been competent enough to take a video of our boat but that was the last thing I was thinking of.. but I feel like I can't even explain how bad this boat was!)

We found out later that our ferry was one of the last ones to leave the islands for the next week. The storm and flooding continued and put Ko Tao and Samui into natural disaster modes. Ko Tao and Samui were hit hard with flooding and faced issues of no electricity and running water for days. Thousands of tourists were stuck on the islands and the Thai Navy and helicopters came in to evacuate. Although the ferry ride probably ranks high on my most miserable moments in life, I’m REALLY lucky to have gotten out of there when I did!

Ko Phi Phi: Olivia and I headed over to the other coast to visit some islands over there and our first stop was Ko Phi Phi! I had been before with Jenna and Christmas and loved the island so I was excited to go back. It rained most of our time there except for our last few days so we got a little beach and snorkeling time in, but I made friends with people who work on the island so we found something to do most days. I mostly wanted to stay on the island until the storm passed in fear of another rough boat ride. Ferries weren’t leaving the island everyday and many of the buses were canceled because they couldn’t drive up to Bangkok because of the flooded roads. When I left Phi Phi, my bus went through Surat Thani and actually began to fill with water because the flooding was still so high! Much of Surat Thani still had no electricity and many people had lost their homes. I have never first-hand seen such devastation, streets flooded, bridges collapsed, and homes washed away. I’m really lucky that I left Ko Tao when I did and that Phi Phi wasn’t affected nearly as much on the other islands. After Phi Phi, I came back to Khon Kaen for 24 hours before heading to Laos!