Thailand #5

My fifth trip to Thailand was in many ways the best. I had planned to meet up with some of the guys I met there the year before: Levi, Marcus and Gabe who had also planned to meet a bunch of their friends. So before I knew it we were a group of over 12 people from Canada, Australia, NZ and the UK which by itself made for an excellent set of adventures.

Levi admiring his handy work

One night we were all out for dinner all sitting around, a little tired from all the partying. Shortly after we placed our orders Levi decided he needed a pick-me-up and quite suddenly stood up to run across the street to a 7eleven to grab a red bull. He pushed back his chair and jogged across the street straight into the store. Literally. What Levi didn't realise was that it wasn't the entrance he was headed towards but a plate glass window. We heard a big crash and leaped up to see what had happened. After just a few hours, some stitches and bandaging he was already a few buckets in and ready to party again- with a hilarious story that half the island knew about (from having walked past the scene of the accident)

Mandatory "The Beach" photo at Maya Bay

On the bow of Dennis' boat. That's me in the middle with my O-face

One of the highlights of the trip was our boat trip with Captain Dennis. It was such a highlight in fact that we did it twice (I even went into discussions about working for the captain - he saw potential in my recruiting skills). We did a day trip out to Maya Bay (where The Beach was largely filmed) off the coast of Phi Phi island. The boat had this boom we would swing off the side of the boat with some netting hanging off it. Dennis called it the "Ocean Jacuzzi" we jumped off the side of the boat and landed on top of this net that would trail just under the surface of the water. Once you got a hold with your feet you could just relax there as the luke-warm water washed past you. The crew would throw down beers or pass along cocktails. We made a stop at monkey beach- where there were close to 100 monkeys on this beach, we tried to give them bananas and get close to take pcitures but they were very agressive. A few of us had some close calls, I even got cornered by a group of them and had to leap over a rock and a big angry male to get back to the water. A hard day to top.

The Ocean Jacuzzi

Getting a natural pump at the jungle gym, Koh Laanta

Koh Laanta was a very quiet and chilled out place. In fact a little too chilled out. We had some good times driving around the island on the little scooters we'd hired. We went to a driving range for an hour or so and had some very relaxed evenings in after a nice meal watching X-Men: First Class. On one of our rides we went part a fancier part of the island where the nice hotels were. We found this outdoor gym thing that looked amazing. It was a little bit like those cartoons where they blow up balloons to look like weights though- they didn't actually weight much at all.

The biker gang of Koh Laanta