Koh Phangan, Take Two.

As you know, I’ve been feeling pretty down about this island. I had a rough few days but yesterday we decided to rent scooters to explore a bit more. We had been wavering on the idea of scooters because safety is a big concern for us. One in every ten people here seem to be covered in bandages from scooter accidents, the roads can be rough and filled with people, and no one wears helmets.

Naturally, since we are Safety Sallys, we insisted on finding a bike with good brakes and solid helmets. We found a nice one, after walking around for about an hour in the sweltering heat and without any training other than, “This is how you turn it on,” we were off onto the open road. There aren’t many road rules here but we just keep to the very side and pray for the best.

We put less than 2 dollars worth of gas in our hog and with a full tank of gas and a couple of full bellies we rode until the pavement turned to dirt. Then, concerned for our well being, we turned around and did it all again. In doing so, we found an amazing little night food market with the most delicious banana pancakes! A banana pancake is a very popular dessert here that isn’t anything like it sounds. It is a very thinly spread piece of dough that is put on a griddle and then filled with your desired fruit. The dough is then folded over the fruit, fried again, and then covered in your desired topping (nutella and chocolate seem to be common ones.) It is then cut into squares and eaten in seconds.

We also found the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen in my life. It is on the north part of this island in a place called Choluklum. We promised ourselves we’d come back in the morning before we checked out but it turns out that the hostel we booked on Koh Tao was full and they had to cancel our reservation. With a stroke of luck, we googled the bungalows on that perfect beach and not only are they in our price range, they had one free the very next night. HAAAALLELUJAH!

We woke up this morning with smiles on our faces. MOVING DAY! We finally got to say good riddance to the shit hole that was Red Cube and hello to where screen savers must be made. This place is GORGEOUS.

Not wanting to spend an arm and a leg on taxi services, we decided to transport our luggage to our new bungalow ourselves... on our scooter. No, we’re not total idiots, we didn’t try to take both backpacks at once. First B got on, she’s the driver. Then I strapped one backpack on and took the bitch position on the back of our 150CC beast. So maybe we have to lean forward to stream line our bodies against the wind resistance when going up hills but hey, we made it. Renting a scooter was the best decision we’ve made since coming to this island. I can say that with confidence because I’m writing this from the hammock on the deck of our bungalow overlooking heaven.

S.