Ko Tao – Christmas – CampervanLife Official

Ko Tao:

Getting to Ko Tao took a lot longer than I thought. I bought my travel ticket from my Hostel in Krabi as I needed to get to Koh Tao to meet my friends from the UK for Christmas. This ticket cost me 1100 baht and involved me getting a lift via taxi/truck to a coach station on the outskirts of Krabi and then a coach to the port of Don Sak Sakon Port. After arriving in the port you’re given coloured stickers so when you board the Songsern boat to head for the islands the staff know where to place your bag depending what island you’re getting off at.

As I mentioned before in total this took a long time and after speaking with a few people I realised I booked the slower boat to the islands and not the high-speed catamaran.

The boat goes to Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Tao, and you get off at your island, then others board to move to the next island or head for the mainland.

I approach Ko Tao and was greeted by some stunning views of the coastline and when we got closer to the port I had a strong smell of fuel and could see this on the top layer of the water, first thought was a boat is leaking pretty bad but while we were docking I noticed a few local guys trying to stop a long boat from sinking and more guys on the coastline pulling a rope and trying to pull the longboat from the water.

As always when a tourist or backpacker arrives somewhere, local taxi and TukTuk guys are trying to get your business, I paid 200 baht to get to my hostel as it was a 40-minute walk north of the port.

I checked into the hostel and met a cool group of young travellers from Sweden (Jenny and Joel) and the Netherlands and had a beer with them while I waited for the call from my friends Tyler and Cam.

They were staying in a plush hotel on the beach called Simple Life Cliff Resort, this had a great room, luxury multi-level swimming pool and again great views. Later that evening we headed for a club in the hills called The Factory, 2/55 Moo3, Ko Tao.

Ko Tao is a really nice island and I did like it better than Phi Phi, few reasons for this but the main reasons was the coastline views were amazing, the beach was clean and the main tourist strip was clean, relaxed, tidy and inviting, it also didn’t smell like the streets in Phi Phi.

Christmas day, after having a great day and night with the lads we had Christmas dinner booked at 12pm at a restaurant that Tyler’s friend had organised for us and his diving instructor staff and friends. 18 turned up for the dinner and we enjoyed a great Chicken Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and drinks. One thing I forgot to mention in Phi Phi was that when we were at the pool party at the Ibiza hotel, a girl talking to Cam thought I was his dad, funny enough this came up at the Christmas dinner when everyone was around, funny but bloody true. Couple hours later we headed to one of the guy’s houses in the hills via motorbikes for a house party.

This place was lush, swimming pool, great views and great music from Tyler who DJ’d B2B for us for about 9 hours until late, we then headed into the town for some more drinks and met some more people. At this time of night things started to get messy as they would but we me and Tyler met a group from the UK, had a dance and drinks and the rest of the night I can leave you’re to your imagination as I don’t want to be rude.

With only a few days left in Thailand, I needed to start looking at getting back to the mainland and back to Bangkok. I booked the high-speed Catamaran from Koh Tao to the mainland and the bus from there back to Bangkok on boxing day for just 650 baht as I was flying back to the UK the day after that.

The weather turned bad for that last day and was lucky as some boat trips were cancelled because the sea was that rough. Once I said my goodbye’s to Tyler, Cam and Neneh at breakfast while enjoying a chicken burger, a bloody cocktail and dressed in my poncho I headed to the port to catch my ferry.

While waiting the boat arrived and everyone that came off looked so pale and sick, I thought bloody hell it can’t be that bad…….how wrong I was! The sea was that rough, everyone was given a sick bag, and after just 5 minutes of setting off, I would say 80% was already sick, including myself.