In high season 30,000 strong flock to the party. After we docked we hung around for an hour or so chatting to many and they all said it was an amazing experience.  Unsurprisingly, few had taken the time to explore the island other than Haad Rin where the part takes place.

We’ve been here for 6 days and it is nothing short of paradise, especially if you hop on a moped and scoot around to many beaches.  The days are going slow, which is great, and we’ve been so relaxed it was unthinkable to get the laptop out and write a few posts. 

Because it’s still a king tide, which takes a week or so to settle following a full moon, the snorkeling has only been average.  The beaches are stunning and the weather has really picked up.  We’ve met a few great couples and have hung around and toured with them for the past few days.

There is not a lot else to write about, we have done absolutely nothing other than what couples do on paradise islands and you don’t want to read about that.

There are many more pics here, have a flick through – it’s no.37 on the list.

We’ll start with our home and its surroundings for the first three days and the remainder are of our second home a few miles up the coast. Anybody that feels like joining us for for Christmas for a few weeks, now is the time to start booking.  If these pictures don’t convince you nothing will.

The second picture shows why there has been nothing posted here for a while .

Sam woke on our our first morning covered with welts and shaking, literally, from the anaesthetic they inject.  We had a quick read on the net and followed the advice – plenty of antihistamines and soothing cream – and thankfully she is now well on the mend.  Not the kind of thing you want when wearing a bikini – it looks like a bad case of acne.

Before we get any smartarse comments, yes I was sleeping beside her (and not on couch as it were), but it seems my blood is not near as tasty.  I had a few bites, but they obviously got bored trying to pierce my thick skin and moved onto the easy prey next to me.  Poor thing was was covered from head to toe.

Travelling can be great fun .

After a quick read we agreed on a stretch of beach, haggled with the touts and took advantage of a ‘free taxi’ to the resort.  We hadn’t put our rucksacks down for more than 5 mins when we were being bombarded with all manner of excursions and extensions to our existing certificates.  ‘Hold on, fuck, gives us a minute to settle in and get to know the area before we sign up and part with our hard earned bucks’.  It was full moon (also known as king tide) which meant the waves were choppy and visibility was poor (about 10–15 meters), which we had later found out from some very disappointed returned divers.  Unlike us, they buckled under the sweet talking leggy blond who greeted them on arrival and they signed up!  We’ve come a long way since being scammed by the taxi driver in Cairo .

We held off and told them we weren’t interested for the minute, we were going to relax for a few days and see if the conditions improved – as you can imagine – it went down like a lead balloon, especially as they had agreed a heavily discounted room rate.  We were quids in.

We woke the following morning with Sam in tears having being eaten alive with bastard bed bugs (next post).  Enough was enough, we packed our bags and headed south to Ko Pha-Ngan.  Tao itself was beautiful and had the weather been better we would have stayed a little longer.  At different lodgings obviously.

Just some of the few snaps we took.

More from here soon hopefully.

We were a little shocked at the current exchange rate, previously 62 baht to the pound, now only 54 – what’s the story Gordon?

Just a few things to sort out before we head south:

1. Book the bus.

2. Hair cut.

3. Dental hygenist (cheap at £10).

4. Replenish first-aid kit.

5. Replenish sun and bite creams.

6. Replenish women’s bits.

7. Laundry.

8. Purchase an iPhone

We like lists, maybe we should consider writing all our posts in this manner. Most likely you won’t hear from us for a few days until we sus out internet availability etc.

Bye for now, off to top up our faded tans .

1. Sang along on the karoke bus.

2. Amused the locals with our woolly hats. 

3. Avoided food poisoning, amazingly!

4. Hiked the 4^th New Wonder of the World.

5. Played and won at Texas Hold’em [best poker face ever].

6. Drank far too much Tsingtao Beer – pure piss, but cheap.

7. Spent far too much money with nothing to show for it [apart from damaged livers].

8. Learned absolutely no Mandarin other than ‘Ni Hao’.

9. Smoked 20 cigs a day by choice, and 90 with without [pollution].

10. Watched a whole series of House [Hugh Laurie].

Started by China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, and later added to by the Qing and Ming Dynasties, the Great Wall is the world’s longest human-made structure, stretching over approximately 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia, but stretches to over 6,700 km (4,160 miles) in total.  It is also the largest human-made structure ever built in terms of surface area and mass. At its peak the wall was guarded by more than one million men. It has been estimated that somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall.

We trekked the less touristed and restored section from Jinshanling to Simatai (10k), a truly authentic wall experience.  We awoke at 5am and following a 3–hour drive were ready to start our hike at 9.  It was a tough 4–hours (30 towers) but it was spectacular with incredible surroundings.  When you look back at the long section completed, it’s just jaw-dropping.  We were very snap happy, with around 350 photographs.  Amazingly, we only met two other trekkers en route, so we had the wall pretty much to ourselves. 

The same hair raising feeling that you get at the Taj and the Pyramids, and one you don’t get at the other UNESCO sites, a unique cultural heritage site and a natural selection as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Interesting fact: the myth that the Great Wall is visible with the naked eye from the moon was finally buried in 2003, when China’s first astronaut failed to spot the barrier from space.  The wall can be seen from a low earth orbit, but so can many other objects of human construction, such as motorways and railways.  Looked at from above, the relative width and uniform colour of large roads renders them more distinct than the Great Wall, a structure even less visible from the moon.  The myth has been edited from Chinese textbooks, where is has cast its spell over generations of Chinese.

Video also included!  More photos here.

UNESCO World Heritage Site #13

For almost five centuries it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

We have yet to visit a UNESCO Site and not take hundreds of photos.  On this occasion we took only a few. The complex so vast, the buildings were so large and so busy with tourists, it was almost impossible to capture a decent shot.  There was literally thousands upon thousands of tourists, truly incredible and what a money spinner.

We, like most of our travel comrades in the hostel, became frustrated walking around and in the end just headed for home.  We have provided a few pictures, but they are all crap…even the ariel photos taken from Beihai Park looking down on the city are layered with smog…

The two boys in the picture below had the right idea .

UNESCO World Heritage Site #12

We left at 7pm and braved 12hrs sitting on our rucksacks in the smoking section in between two windy carriages. There is a silver lining however, at least the clouds of smoke drowned the stench of piss (or ammonia) from the French style squatting toilets either side.

Our colds were on the mend but we now feel ropey again. Still, this means we are now officially quadruple hard traveller types.  Backpacking is not all about chilling and drinking beer you know…

It’s just a few shots of us rambling through one of the tourist streets, but we think it still captures the laid back approach that seems to be unique to Pingyao.  Not sure what the quality will be like.  We shot it in HD but not sure how youtube handles this type of media.