Thailand Adventurous Women Trip

DAY 4 - 19/6/09

We awoke to mist settling on the mountains and the quiet of the river, just gorgeous! After breakfast was done, we watching the elephants being bathed in the river before two of the girls set off for an Elephant ride, some of us visited the nearby Mon Village and went onto the Buddah Cave which was very interesting and one of the girls decided another massage was in order.




On checking out of the Jungle Rafts, we longtailed it back to the Pier and then mini bus onto the Tiger Temple which was to be another highlight of the trip. Rules have changed a little since I had been there last as far as clothing, but we were prepared as we were traveling with our suitcases. Our Tiger experience started with sitting with some of the tigers, before being able to walk down to the Canyon with them, along with a volunteer carer and one of the monks. We then were able to go into the Canyon and have photos taken with them - that is a good experience, but the best was yet to come. Once we had finished at the Canyon we walked back to some of the open area where the monks, a couple of volunteers and some cub tigers were playing. They encouraged us to all come and sit with them, pat them and even kiss them on the nose - OMG that would have to be the highlight for many of our girls...they thought it was out of this world and so did I!! How lucky were we to have had this experience and I do believe it was purely by chance, as our timing for walking back before the crowd had given us this opportunity. Apart from tigers, there were plenty of buffalo, cows, deer, goats, boars and other wildlife just wandering around.

After the Tigers it was onto the Railway Station in Bangkok to catch our overnight train to Chumpon. Again - another great experience. We were all pretty exhausted from our big day and looked forward to being rocked to sleep by the train......eeek except when they braked suddenly (A LOT), it sounded like they were hitting cows!!!!

DAY 5 - 20/6/09

Early Morning - half asleep we arrived into Chumpon Railway Station at 5.00am after an early morning wake up call of 3.30am, so all feeling a little sleepy as we arrived into Chumpon at a guest house where we were able to have breakfast and freshen up before our 1.5 hour ferry ride across to Koh Tao which departed at 7.00am.

We arrived in Koh Tao at 9.00am after a pretty good ferry ride (few girls popped the old sea sick tabs for good measure). Koh Tao is a sleepy little island, with a beautiful tropical feel and the sand is almost as good as home!! From the Pier, it was a short truck ride to our hotel - Koh Tao Resort, which was just beautiful - all of us were totally wrapped. After settling in, it was off to explore the main town, back for a massage and swim and then a wonderful beach side dinner.

DAY 6 - 21/6/09

This morning the tide was really low as we waded out to the longboat for our snorkeling trip around the island. We went to four bays which were all AMAZING. I would have to say that it was on a par with our snorkeling experience in the Red Sea. We saw so much marine life and the visibility was awesome. We came across heaps of different fish, big and small, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, bright purple clams, all types of different coral and more! The colors were so vivid. On our return we didn't so much cause we were all really tired and pretty scorched - eeew.


DAY 7 - 22/6/09

Koh Phanang - Cookies Salad Resort.

We arrived in Koh Phanang (home of the full moon party), and it seems extremely quite. Took a truck to the Cookies Salad Resort where we are staying, then freshened up before heading back into town for a little lunch and shopping. After that it was back out to the resort for a swim and a bit of relaxation time.

DAY 8 - 23/6/09

This morning after breakfast a couple of the girls took off for a walk, whilst the rest of us went down to the beach cabana for some body treatments....aaah heaven! I had the works, massage, foot scrub, pedi and mani - so good and so cheap. Then the rain set in for the first time on our trip, so it's back to the open air bar/restaurant at the resort for a bit of blogging time. Tomorrow we set off for Koh Samui which is our last leg.