After the east coast of Malaysia which was a bit of a let down the idea was to go back through Thailand visiting places I had not seen before.
I landed at Phuket fairly late and stopped for one night at Patong beach resisting the urge to stay longer as I had previously spent far too much time and money there!!!!!
I went to the quiet one street town of Phang Nga but only managed about 2 hours exploring time because of rain. The only thing that seemed advertised there was the James Bond island trip that I had already been on in 2006.
After an uneventful couple of days I got the bus and ferry to the island of Ko Lanta. I quickly found a place to stay and went out to explore. I got one of the biggest shocks of the whole trip when I found the place was empty. The area was full of dive shops, travel agents, bars, eating places etc but looked like it had been evacuated. At 8pm I stopped for a drink at a bar and was told that I was the first customer of the day !!!!!
Later Idid find a place with a handful of people to talk to including a Brit who lived there. The following day I explored as far as I could on foot. I soon figured out it was time to move on, I know there was political trouble and it was the low season but I expected more than this.
I got out of there and headed to Trang because it was on the train line to the north. It looked far more like a town in Malaysia than one in Thailand because of the large numbers of Chinese people there. The first thing I seen when exploring town was a motorbike accident which was not good. Found a few westerners in a bar during the evening, one of which gave me some tips for Vietnam which at the time looked to be the most likely country after Thailand.
After what had happened I felt I needed to go to Hua Hin because I knew that was lively. I did the 7 hour bus ride to the junction town of Chumphon. I stayed overnight to break up the journey but didn't leave in the best of moods because of a dispute with the hotel staff. Firstly they were pestering me from 10:30am onwards to checkout even thought there were several signs saying checkout was 12:00. Then they refused to give me back my key deposit....it was not a lot but I hate being ripped off (or even attempted).
I got on the train to Hua Hin and the problems started big time. I started getting aches,pains and blurred vision which quickly turned into a full blown migraine. I somehow made it to a room and passed out. I had suffered from these all my life but this was the worst and the longest one ever. 3 days later I had left my darkened room only to buy the strongest pain killers I could get my hands on that did nothing. I went 5 days without solid food which had to be the longest in my lifetime. I must have slept an average of 16 hours a day for that first 4 days.
It was the weekend before I was back on food and felt well enough to do anything. I went out on the last night and met the Irish bar owner who I got to know on my previous visit then it was onwards to Bangkok.
Looking back however I did well when it came to illness. Apart from that 5 days the only time I felt bad was a couple of times when my stomach was getting used to new foods. I was ill in a place where I knew and nothing was happening. It would have been far worse if that had happened while in Sumatra, on the Komodo boat trip or in some noisey crowded backpackers.
5 days illness out of 16 months backpacking was not bad at all..........
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