Nicole's tales of Thailand...
My boyfriend and I decided it was time to explore part of Asia, and the perfect beginning would be Thailand.
We booked and planned the holiday ourselves and thought it would be fun to island hop around the country so we could see as much as we could in just under 3 weeks. We started off in Bangkok for 1 night and explored the main party strip full of bars, clubs and street food. We then hopped on a plane at 6am the following morning (suffering severely from jet lag!) to Chiang Mai with Vietjet Air.
When we arrived in Chiang Mai which was only a short flight from Bangkok (less than 1 hour), we were blown away by the immediate beautifulness the country had to offer. The heat was intense and luckily for us, the taxi we had to transfer us to our hostel was air conditioned!
We decided to book a cheap and cheerful hostel in the heart of Chiang Mai for 3 nights because we had booked to stay in an Elephant Sanctuary just outside of Chiang Mai for 1 night. The hostel was called Jaidii Guesthouse (Hostel). We took the opportunity to explore the streets of the city who were hosting a large street market full of food, clothing and other random items.
At the Elephant Sanctuary (which I strongly recommend doing, called Elephant Nature Park) was so peaceful, calming and refreshing. You were strictly not allowed to ride the Elephants, and were only able to feed, bath and enjoy their company. We were given a full tour of the sanctuary which included other rescue animals such as dogs and boars, and were given a beautiful wooden hut to stay in, were the Elephants were literally in our garden which our terrace was looking over. It was incredible.
After our night at the sanctuary, we headed back to Chiang Mai for our last night. We experience a server rain storm which cut out the power to the city, and was very unnerving as the whole restaurant and street outside was pitch black – the street market was also happening during this time!
We jetted to Surat Thani with Air Asia were we booked a ferry transfer with Lomprayah to Koh Phangan. We got to Koh Phangan eventually and was transferred to our hotel which was breath taking. We booked a luxury private hut and our resort had its own private beach. The hotel was called The Bay Resort & Restaurant . I never wanted to leave! The food was amazing, the staff were as friendly as ever and waking up to the white sandy beach and bath temperature water was the best ever. We stayed here for 4 nights and have agreed that we will return in 2019 to this particular resort.
On our second night on the island, we went to the Full Moon Party on Haad Rin beach. I have to say, this was the best beach party I have ever been too. The beach, at peak season, can hold 15,000 party-goers which is wild. The season when we went to the was quiet and there was around 4,000 people on the beach. Every 50 meters there was a new bar on the beach with its own DJ, so there is something there for everybody.
After our 4 nights on the island, we transferred with Ferry Samui to the next island over, Koh Tao which only took 1 hour. We stayed here for 3 nights and took the opportunity to go Scuba Diving for the day, which was incredible enough to inspire us to do our week long scuba course to get our open water certificate, which we plan on doing during our next visit to Thailand in 2019.
We then made our journey to Phuket and had to take a ferry transfer again from Koh Tao to Koh Samiu. At Koh Samiu, we flew with Bangkok Airways to Phuken International. This part of our journey was my favourite, as we were celebrating my birthday, and we had lots of fun activities planned. We stayed in another beautiful hotel called Sea, Sun Sand Resort & Spa for 5 nights. On my pre-birthday dinner, we thought we would take a break from the Thai Street food and visit Hard Rock Café which was really cool. There was a tribute rock band playing on the outdoor stage overlooking the outside restaurant.
On my actual birthday, we booked a PhiPhi Islands Early Bird day trip with Snorkelling and visited the Phi Phi islands, were we visited the beach from the movie ‘The Beach’ and went to ‘Monkey Island’. We met some great people on the trip and couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my birthday! On the evening of my birthday, my boyfriend surprised me with a beautiful private dinner on a jetty at the 5 star resort Amari. We had our own private chef with a special taster menu, waiter and the jetty was covered in candle lights! We then partied the night away in Phuket’s best bars and clubs which are conveniently all down one strip.
We booked a whole day excursion a few hour’s drive from Phuket which included Water Rafting and Quad Biking. There was the option to add Elephant Riding however neither of us wanted to do this because of what we learnt when we visited the Elephant Sanctuary in Chiang Mai.
For our last 2 nights we flew back to Bangkok and stayed at the Prince Palace Hotel which was very grand. We spend the last 2 days exploring the street markets and making the most the Thai food. We booked a private tour for us and the tour guide to show us around the Princes Palace in Bangkok.
written by Nicole Carron