Day 6 of The Big Adventure according to Sarah. I woke up to the faint sound of Lauren’s voice out in the corridor-cum-bathroom. ‘Who on earth could she be striking up a conversation with at this hour?!’

This was the second secret meeting Lauren had had with Ben, our very friendly dorm mate, in the past 24 hours. And they always seemed to take place in the bathroom.

She returned to the dorm and it turned out we’d both slept straight through and hadn’t heard a peep from our fellow dorm mates – RESULT. I invited her down to my bed (she was top bunk, I was bottom) for a breakfast of thai Pringles (Ligo) and juice cartons. Living the dream.  

We did some travel planning and booked the next nights hostel and had a little read up on the next island: Koh Panghan. I was a little apprehensive about this island because of its raucous reputation; I was more of a full sun kinda gal than a full moon.

The taxi wasn’t due to pick us up from the hotel until 12noon so we had a nice lie in and a chance to reorganise Lauren’s bag. Mine took all of 30 seconds to pack up and needed zero organisation. It was starting to dawn on me that Air Asia might not ever find my bag and I should probably start buying everyday things that I need.

The taxi (minibus would probably be more accurate) finally arrived filled to the brim with rosy cheeked Brits heading to Koh Panghan aswell. The drive to the port was a little hair-raising but we made it there unscathed and waited to board our vessel.

Our vessel turned out to be rather minimal in term of structure. But it was afloat so we all piled on.

Lauren and I got a window seat…

The journey across to Koh Phanghan took about half an hour across the crystal clear waters, and at one point we even said we wouldn’t mind if it took twice the time. The waters were calm and the sea breeze was very refreshing in the midday heat.

We disembarked the boat to be greeted by a plethora of taxi drivers all vying for our business. However, when we told them the name of our hostel they looked at each other confused and began hassling other passengers. This was not a good start.

A few phone calls later, the taxi drivers finally figured out where our hostel was and bundled us into a minibus.

They dropped us off outside Indy Home Cafe; a cute little cafe that was clearly trying to appeal to Westerners. With pictures of red London buses on the walls and Union Jack cushions on the couches, it was trying a little too hard. Anyway the barista slash hostel owner was super friendly and greeted us with a big smile and showed us up to our room.

Again, basic.

But it had everything we needed.

We even got a ‘Garden View’…

I went to sit on the bed only to have my bottom greeted by what felt like stone. This has been a common theme we’ve noticed – the Asians are fans of ‘strong support’ (also known as rock hard) when it comes to mattresses.

We settled ourselves into the room and decided to plan something exciting for the next day. We had a leaf through our lonely planet guide and settled on an ‘Eco Nature Tour’ which would show us around a Buddhist temple, take us snorkelling and show us one of the best waterfalls on the island. It would basically give us a whistle-stop tour of everything to see in Koh Phanghan. Perfect.

We decided to go to the cafe downstairs to ask how we should go about booking ourselves onto one of these tours. It was coming up to 6pm by this point and the cafe was closed, with no hostel owner in sight. Dammit.

We had seen that there was a cliff-side bar called Amsterdam Bar which was apparently THE place to watch the sun set so we set off in that direction, hoping to make it there in time. We passed this beaut mural on the way:

On our way we passed ‘Big Boss Travel Company’ and decided to ask them about booking onto an eco nature tour. The man was super helpful and made some calls and managed to squeeze us onto a tour the very next day! Buzzing.

We asked him for directions to Amsterdam bar and he told us it would take at least half an hour to walk there and by then the sun would have already set. Disappointing.

Happy to have sorted the next day’s activities, we headed to a night food market in search of dinner.

We got slightly waylaid by a clothes market and purchased some clothes that would be suitable for our Eco Nature Tour. Lauren got a dashing new pair of shorts and a tshirt with a feather motif on it and I got a vest with an elephant on it. Backpacker chic at its best.

When we finally made it to the night market, it was mostly street food stalls with some questionable smells wafting around. We settled for an indoor place that at least had, what looked like, a semi-permanent kitchen and ordered a vegetable pad Thai for Lauren and some steamed rice for me.

Virtually everyone else in the food market was white and we got the feeling that although they were serving Thai food, this wasn’t what Thai people actually ate. This was more like the western version of what Thai people eat. On our way out we decided to try a fruit shake, with no ice of course. Although since being here we have seen a shocking number of westerners with iced drinks and wonder if maybe the ice is safer in the south. Not wanting to take the risk, we have our mix of pineapple mango and passion fruit juice as what can only we described as tepid.

It was delicious all the same and that’s one thing we are definitely loving here – how ripe and tasty all the exotic fruits are.

Excited for our action packed day tomorrow we headed home to our rock hard bed and fell asleep to the dulcet tones of rabid dogs barking outside our window.