Koh Samui
When we arrived at the hotel we were greeted with a refreshing cocktail as we checked in (love these local customs). The place we stayed in was called Centara Villas and whilst I had looked at their website (I know...the accommodation is never as good as the photos, but I did look at Trip Adviser for their comments) but I was still unprepared for what greeted me. The apartments were all on stilts in various parts of the grounds and linked by a series of winding steps. I had the cheapest of the rooms (Garden View) which incidentally, should be considered illegal under trade description laws as all I saw were my neighbours and steps, unless the over grown plants were considered the garden! Don't get me wrong, the villas were nicely decorated and well laid out inside, but it was basically a conservatory on stilts, with glass on 3 out of the 4 walls. I would have loved to have left the blinds up permanently so I could look out at the sea beyond but every time I rolled them up all I could see is my neighbour walking around in his hammock underpants...God knows what he saw when he looked my way but he was 60 if he was a day! Really not a pretty sight before breakfast.
The rest of my party were higher up the hill, in two spa villas, basically a small whirl pool on their varanda consisting of local flowers and various drowned insects. They were on the outer edges of the complex so where as I had steps to climb everyday, they just had a steep hill but they did have privacy. As for me, it was like climbing Mount Everest! Breakfast was served on the beach front, at the bottom of the hill, naturally! So each morning, I would go down armed with everything I needed for the day, I was not gonna climb that beast of a hill more than twice, after all I came for a rest, not a heart attack!
After the first day, I envied their seclusion and I also thought the steep hill was easier to navigate than the steps, also I had "lost" my villa and was wondering around this maze like complex 4 times, this was despite having a map!! After finally finding it and suffering from lack of oxygen as well as heat stroke I was all set to exchange rooms. I had had enough by day two. This was before they told me they had been frightened out of their wits during the night as "something" had jumped on their roof and tried to open the door during the night...Tarzan I aint, so thought I was better off staying where I was. We still don't know what it was, but it did become a regular visitor so they had a lot of interrupted nights. I of course would pass out from pure exhaustion and would sleep like a baby!
Where we stayed was quite quiet and we had most of the beach to ourselves, despite it being rainy season, we had continuing sunshine and sitting under a shade by the beach was bliss it was on average 29 degrees and the sea was like a warm bath. Centara Villas was a couples paradise (they have two guitar playing singers who serenade each table with soppy love ballads at dinner. We only ate at dinner there the first night, thank God!) During the evening we would venture out to Chaweng or Lamai a 30 min or 10 min drive depending on which one you went to. These resorts were bustling with tourists and had things like McDonalds, Starbucks, pole dancers and fish and chips all along the main strip, you would be easily fooled into thinking you were in Magaluf! Although shopping was much better value in Bangkok, it was still far cheaper than the UK. So after tasting the delights of these resort areas, we thanked God we had not booked into anywhere there and went back to our beach that we didn't have to share with 50 - 60 thousand other people!
There were two local restaurants outside the hotel who served great Thai food and most evenings a 3 course meal with wine came up to a wapping £7.
We did the Na Muang waterfall and elephant ride excursions, the tour operator had informed us that it was fine to wear flip flops...big mistake! The 1st waterfall was small and barely manageable but the 2nd was over 80mts high and at first I had refused to go up the side of the mountain in flit flops and a shoulder bag but when I saw the whole group making an effort, I thought why not. So up and up we went via sharp rocks and slippery mud, others passed me by in their rock climbing boots and hard hats. They offered to stay and help me but I thought I could do it alone, albeit slowly. I had to pull myself up GI Jane style up this steep hill and the sweat was dripping off me after each turn. Then I came to this huge rock and the only means to get up it was via a bit of vine, I tried it to see if it would hold my weight and then I made the biggest mistake of all....I looked down! I was very high up and there was no one in sight, I could no longer see the others in front and when I called out their names, there was no reply.....I've seen enough movies to know that all it takes is one slip for them never to hear from me again and it's always the one at the back that gets done in (I had already passed the spirit house- a Thai style bird house on stilts that houses the spirit of someone that died!!) so I tried to calm my heart that was now threatening to beat its way, literally out of my chest and walked tentatively back down, I lost count of the amount of times my flit flops flew off or threatened to decapitate my big toe! When I finally got to the bottom I went to the makeshift shop at the bottom to replenish the 2 gallons of fluids I had lost on route, only to run into the biggest spider I have ever seen! I'm surprised I'm still alive to be honest!
Quiet frankly I could quite happily set up a Yoga retreat and live there for the rest of my life, for despite Thailand being considered a third world country. I only saw two beggars one in Chaweng and the other in Lamai (they basically just walk a long with a cup in their hand and as they don't hassle you, I'm assuming they were beggars and not just thirsty!) Everyone else is out to make money to feed their family, if not by selling fake designer goods, it's providing beauty treatments, running a bar, restaurant, shop, tour group, selling goods on the beach or even selling their services to western men eager for a taste of Thai! They approach you with the same questions; "where are you from and how long are you staying?" and then you know the hustle is coming; a friend with a tailor or jewelry shop you can go to who does "special discount" but it's all done with a smile so you never feel intimidated and I was extremely sad to leave, vowing to one day return.
London and the Riots
There was a 5 minute segment about the riots on Thai TV so I really only caught up with all of it once I returned. The first paper I picked up on my return was The Standard and from their pictures it would seem that every black person in the UK was responsible for the uprising. I then started watching all the BBC and You Tube footage. It was youths in general, black, white and asians and it just wasn't the main cities that was affected but tiny little hamlets around Essex and Kent, some of these areas have little or no black people. I mention this because I also saw the interview with David Starkey which stated that whites were acting like blacks and I was incensed to say the least!
Starkey, who is a Historian and therefore considered highly educated, seems to believe that all nationalities have a special gene that means they ALL act the same regardless of their circumstances. Well lets just test that theory shall we? ALL my white friends want to be Jordan, I have Chinese friends obviously, they can ALL fight like Bruce Lee, my asian friends ALL wear saris and break out into song everytime they see the rain, my muslim friends ALL have a bomb making kit in the kitchen, I've lost count of the amount of times I've caught ALL my Swedish friends stark naked shopping in Tescos, everytime ALL my Brazillian friends hear a samba beat they break out the sequined thong and feathers and start marching down Oxford street and don't get me started on my African friends, ALL sitting on the tube with a dead zebra on their shoulders not to mention ALL my Irish friends lying in a drunken heap 15ft high outside every pub in London. All of this is completely absurd, but Starkey seems to think as Black people, we go around breaking into shops and stealing trainers and naturally the whites want to copy this "black" pass time so now they are "acting" black because naturally we all act the same as its our colour that determines our actions. Neither I or any member of my family has cracked the windows of Curry's when we found we needed an extra 40 inch screen TV but I suppose under Mr Starkey calculations, that would mean I was acting white. But what does it mean to be white using Mr Starkeys rule of thumb? Through out history, Europeans have raped and pillaged every continent, that which wasn't theirs has been taken by force from the indigenous people that owned it.....hold on a minute! That's exactly what these yobs have been doing, far from acting black, these youths have been acting as white as their ancestors once did! Maybe Mr Starkey should brush up on his history!
After the shooting in Tottenham, a peaceful protest escalated into anarchy. I once read Michael Cains autobiography where he stated he was a little bit of a villain when he was a kid but these days there's no parks for the kids to play in (they've been turned into high rises) they have computer games that desensitizes them to violence and they see you can get rich and famous just from showing your tits on TV. Michael predicted that one day the youth of Britain would rise up and start a war and this is exactly what has happened here. It was a war between the young and the old, the have and the have nots, colour had nothing to do with it and just plain villains taking advantage of an opportunity. In Thailand, everyone is an entrepreneur, they have a work ethic that the youths here would do well to imitate, but with babies giving birth to babies and the grand mothers not that much older. I'm unsure how we can ever turn things around.
When we arrived at the hotel we were greeted with a refreshing cocktail as we checked in (love these local customs). The place we stayed in was called Centara Villas and whilst I had looked at their website (I know...the accommodation is never as good as the photos, but I did look at Trip Adviser for their comments) but I was still unprepared for what greeted me. The apartments were all on stilts in various parts of the grounds and linked by a series of winding steps. I had the cheapest of the rooms (Garden View) which incidentally, should be considered illegal under trade description laws as all I saw were my neighbours and steps, unless the over grown plants were considered the garden! Don't get me wrong, the villas were nicely decorated and well laid out inside, but it was basically a conservatory on stilts, with glass on 3 out of the 4 walls. I would have loved to have left the blinds up permanently so I could look out at the sea beyond but every time I rolled them up all I could see is my neighbour walking around in his hammock underpants...God knows what he saw when he looked my way but he was 60 if he was a day! Really not a pretty sight before breakfast.
 |
| Close to the neigbours |
The rest of my party were higher up the hill, in two spa villas, basically a small whirl pool on their varanda consisting of local flowers and various drowned insects. They were on the outer edges of the complex so where as I had steps to climb everyday, they just had a steep hill but they did have privacy. As for me, it was like climbing Mount Everest! Breakfast was served on the beach front, at the bottom of the hill, naturally! So each morning, I would go down armed with everything I needed for the day, I was not gonna climb that beast of a hill more than twice, after all I came for a rest, not a heart attack!
After the first day, I envied their seclusion and I also thought the steep hill was easier to navigate than the steps, also I had "lost" my villa and was wondering around this maze like complex 4 times, this was despite having a map!! After finally finding it and suffering from lack of oxygen as well as heat stroke I was all set to exchange rooms. I had had enough by day two. This was before they told me they had been frightened out of their wits during the night as "something" had jumped on their roof and tried to open the door during the night...Tarzan I aint, so thought I was better off staying where I was. We still don't know what it was, but it did become a regular visitor so they had a lot of interrupted nights. I of course would pass out from pure exhaustion and would sleep like a baby!
 |
| Centara Beach |
Where we stayed was quite quiet and we had most of the beach to ourselves, despite it being rainy season, we had continuing sunshine and sitting under a shade by the beach was bliss it was on average 29 degrees and the sea was like a warm bath. Centara Villas was a couples paradise (they have two guitar playing singers who serenade each table with soppy love ballads at dinner. We only ate at dinner there the first night, thank God!) During the evening we would venture out to Chaweng or Lamai a 30 min or 10 min drive depending on which one you went to. These resorts were bustling with tourists and had things like McDonalds, Starbucks, pole dancers and fish and chips all along the main strip, you would be easily fooled into thinking you were in Magaluf! Although shopping was much better value in Bangkok, it was still far cheaper than the UK. So after tasting the delights of these resort areas, we thanked God we had not booked into anywhere there and went back to our beach that we didn't have to share with 50 - 60 thousand other people!
There were two local restaurants outside the hotel who served great Thai food and most evenings a 3 course meal with wine came up to a wapping £7.
 |
| 2nd Waterfall |
We did the Na Muang waterfall and elephant ride excursions, the tour operator had informed us that it was fine to wear flip flops...big mistake! The 1st waterfall was small and barely manageable but the 2nd was over 80mts high and at first I had refused to go up the side of the mountain in flit flops and a shoulder bag but when I saw the whole group making an effort, I thought why not. So up and up we went via sharp rocks and slippery mud, others passed me by in their rock climbing boots and hard hats. They offered to stay and help me but I thought I could do it alone, albeit slowly. I had to pull myself up GI Jane style up this steep hill and the sweat was dripping off me after each turn. Then I came to this huge rock and the only means to get up it was via a bit of vine, I tried it to see if it would hold my weight and then I made the biggest mistake of all....I looked down! I was very high up and there was no one in sight, I could no longer see the others in front and when I called out their names, there was no reply.....I've seen enough movies to know that all it takes is one slip for them never to hear from me again and it's always the one at the back that gets done in (I had already passed the spirit house- a Thai style bird house on stilts that houses the spirit of someone that died!!) so I tried to calm my heart that was now threatening to beat its way, literally out of my chest and walked tentatively back down, I lost count of the amount of times my flit flops flew off or threatened to decapitate my big toe! When I finally got to the bottom I went to the makeshift shop at the bottom to replenish the 2 gallons of fluids I had lost on route, only to run into the biggest spider I have ever seen! I'm surprised I'm still alive to be honest!
 |
| Arachnophobia! |
Quiet frankly I could quite happily set up a Yoga retreat and live there for the rest of my life, for despite Thailand being considered a third world country. I only saw two beggars one in Chaweng and the other in Lamai (they basically just walk a long with a cup in their hand and as they don't hassle you, I'm assuming they were beggars and not just thirsty!) Everyone else is out to make money to feed their family, if not by selling fake designer goods, it's providing beauty treatments, running a bar, restaurant, shop, tour group, selling goods on the beach or even selling their services to western men eager for a taste of Thai! They approach you with the same questions; "where are you from and how long are you staying?" and then you know the hustle is coming; a friend with a tailor or jewelry shop you can go to who does "special discount" but it's all done with a smile so you never feel intimidated and I was extremely sad to leave, vowing to one day return.
London and the Riots
There was a 5 minute segment about the riots on Thai TV so I really only caught up with all of it once I returned. The first paper I picked up on my return was The Standard and from their pictures it would seem that every black person in the UK was responsible for the uprising. I then started watching all the BBC and You Tube footage. It was youths in general, black, white and asians and it just wasn't the main cities that was affected but tiny little hamlets around Essex and Kent, some of these areas have little or no black people. I mention this because I also saw the interview with David Starkey which stated that whites were acting like blacks and I was incensed to say the least!
Starkey, who is a Historian and therefore considered highly educated, seems to believe that all nationalities have a special gene that means they ALL act the same regardless of their circumstances. Well lets just test that theory shall we? ALL my white friends want to be Jordan, I have Chinese friends obviously, they can ALL fight like Bruce Lee, my asian friends ALL wear saris and break out into song everytime they see the rain, my muslim friends ALL have a bomb making kit in the kitchen, I've lost count of the amount of times I've caught ALL my Swedish friends stark naked shopping in Tescos, everytime ALL my Brazillian friends hear a samba beat they break out the sequined thong and feathers and start marching down Oxford street and don't get me started on my African friends, ALL sitting on the tube with a dead zebra on their shoulders not to mention ALL my Irish friends lying in a drunken heap 15ft high outside every pub in London. All of this is completely absurd, but Starkey seems to think as Black people, we go around breaking into shops and stealing trainers and naturally the whites want to copy this "black" pass time so now they are "acting" black because naturally we all act the same as its our colour that determines our actions. Neither I or any member of my family has cracked the windows of Curry's when we found we needed an extra 40 inch screen TV but I suppose under Mr Starkey calculations, that would mean I was acting white. But what does it mean to be white using Mr Starkeys rule of thumb? Through out history, Europeans have raped and pillaged every continent, that which wasn't theirs has been taken by force from the indigenous people that owned it.....hold on a minute! That's exactly what these yobs have been doing, far from acting black, these youths have been acting as white as their ancestors once did! Maybe Mr Starkey should brush up on his history!
After the shooting in Tottenham, a peaceful protest escalated into anarchy. I once read Michael Cains autobiography where he stated he was a little bit of a villain when he was a kid but these days there's no parks for the kids to play in (they've been turned into high rises) they have computer games that desensitizes them to violence and they see you can get rich and famous just from showing your tits on TV. Michael predicted that one day the youth of Britain would rise up and start a war and this is exactly what has happened here. It was a war between the young and the old, the have and the have nots, colour had nothing to do with it and just plain villains taking advantage of an opportunity. In Thailand, everyone is an entrepreneur, they have a work ethic that the youths here would do well to imitate, but with babies giving birth to babies and the grand mothers not that much older. I'm unsure how we can ever turn things around.
Great post, as always!!!
ReplyDeleteGlad you had a good time and you must be gutted the riots were over before you could make it to Costco ;-)
Marco.
I take it you kicked in every Deli and moped shop in the Nottinghill area???!!!
ReplyDelete