Day 94

Thursday 3^rd February 2011

The very last day. We leave today although it will be tomorrow by the time we hit Manchester soil.

Franky had discovered there was an animal park on Koh Samui where you could have your photo taken with a tiger. He was itching to do this and as our flight wasn’t until 6.30pm we had the morning free.

Unfortunately this meant a very early start for the Franks. The alarm went off at 8.15am and we headed down for one last hotel breakfast before being picked up for the animal park.

We were scheduled to watch an animal show but it wasn’t starting until 11.00am so we had time free to check out the residents. First stop was the tiger enclosure. Here was found Tony the Leopard and Pacqiuao the tiger cub. Tony was a bit intimidating, pacing on his perch and staring down the lens of the camera. Pacqiuao on the other hand was a playful little thing aged just 4 months and sooooo cute.

We both had chance to stroke him and pose for photos. His fur was coarser than I expected. And I learnt something useful… I can add tigers to the list of animals that I am allergic to. I admit this probably isn’t something that is going to cause me great inconvenience in life but it’s good to know!

From the cats we headed up to the enclosures where the toucans were being given their breakfast of bananas. I thought this one was trying to fight his way out of his enclosure until we discovered that he just liked having his beak stroked. He’d close his eyes with an air of contentment.

There were a couple of monkeys who were keen to come over to the bars of their cages and check us out and some little red deer that really liked eating the leaves that we found scattered across the path.

Then we spotted a leopard cub. He was just 2 months old in a cage next to Pacqiuao’s sister. He was cute and playful and much friendlier than Tony. We got to pet him and give him a bottle of milk. Although he could hold it perfectly well himself.

The place the Leopard on the head game is very common is parts of Thailand

Just after this shot was taken he amused himself by biting my head!

There was a huge variety of animals you could be pictured with including monkeys, a n otter, a snake and various tropical birds but we’d spotted a baby elephant who was out ready for the show with his mahout (trainer). We grabbed some bananas to feed him and headed over. When we arrived he was dancing to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ New York – how surreal! We fed him the bananas which he wolfed down in no time. We hosed him down. I was giving him a drink with the hose but not to his liking so he just took it off me and held the hose in this own mouth until he’d had his fill. Then Franky gave him a scrub down.

It was soon time for the show. The three Indian elephants were 2, 4 and 6 years old and performed all kinds of tricks.

Hula hooping on their trunks whilst dancing, standing on front legs, back legs or sitting down.

They could play football and had a penalty shoot out against an American from the audience. Thailand won.

One elephant won a tug of war against 16 tourists!

After this it was onto the monkey show where again 3 monkeys were performing all kinds of tricks with their trainers, eating with spoons, twirling fire batons, climbing for coconuts, playing basketball and much more.

Finally we watched a crocodile show. Four crazy Thai trainers jumped into the enclosure with 6 crocs. It was very different from the ones at Australia Zoo. One minute they were snapping and growling at the humans. The next it was as though they were hypnotised by the trainers using small wooden sticks and the trainers could then put their hands and even their heads in the crocs mouths. One trainer even put his hand through the flap at the back of the croc’s throat into his stomach. First he put a 100 Bhat note in their and then 5 minutes later he took it back out. Very bizarre!

say aaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!

We were supposed to watch a bird show and a snake show but time was marching on and we hadn’t packed or checked out of the hotel yet which we had to do before 2.00pm so we got a transfer back.

We packed up the bags one last time and said a fond farewell to the grand suite. I’m not sure we’ll ever stay anywhere quite like that again. We had time for lunch on the veranda at the hotel. typically as we were leaving the sun had finally appeared to prove that Thailand really can be a sunny tropical paradise. We had a last few beers and a dip in the pool before taking a shower and leaving the KC resort in our complementary transfer to Koh Samui airport.

Yet again it was nap time for Franky but fortunately the airport has some comfy sofas.

 In fact it’s a great airport with beautiful gardens and a complementary area with coffee, cold drinks and nibbles for all passengers.



The nap was kind of justified today though – we had an early start and have a busy night of travelling ahead of us. Typically as Franky sleeps I take the opportunity to write the blog. It will be weird not doing it anymore. I’m considering continuing when I get home although I’m not sure we’ll have anything interesting to write about… ‘got up, went to work, had tea, went to bed’!

We departed Koh Samui on schedule at 6.30pm and arrived in Bangkok for 8.00pm where we had to get our bags and recheck them in for the flight to Heathrow. We tired the ‘honeymoon card’ one last time but to no avail. The Thai lady at check in was lovely and told us that although the flight wasn’t full there were no leg room seats or upgrades available at the moment but that she would put a request on our booking and we could ask again at the gate. We’ve heard that before so it means 13 hours of cattle class for us!

We cleared immigration without any trouble and as we had a few hours to kill thought we’d see if we could buy our way into an airport lounge with our remaining Thai Bhat. It took some effort to find the lounges as the airport is massive but we eventually found them not to far from our departure gate.

The British Airways staff were not for letting anyone in who wasn’t a Business Class or first Class customer. Apparently they are trying to maintain the exclusivity of the lounges. However, we were informed that the CIP lounge would allow passengers to pay to get in. We trundled down there and parted with the last of our money – we were in! The CIP lounge also turned out to be the Air Korea lounge so the variety of food on offer was interesting – pork balls?! There were some little sandwiches and good selection of drinks. To be honest we didn’t really need feeding as we’d been given a snack on the flight from Koh Samui and were expecting to be fed as soon as we got on the BA flight. More than anything we wanted a comfy seat, a drink and the use of the internet.

We had sufficient internet to get yesterday’s blog posted….. and then it crashed. Typical bloody Thai internet dealing the final blow. It amazes me that South East Asia is where all our technology comes from and when you get here it doesn’t bloody well work!

We boarded the plane and was dismayed at being right, we weren’t in premium economy, we did manage to get bulk head seats but there didn’t seem to any extra leg room and the seats were tiny, so thin its criminal!!

The flight was long and fairly uneventful; I stuck to the plan of having tea and then getting some shut eye whilst Franky decided that the plan didn’t seem like much fun so instead chose to drink whiskey with the older guy sat next to him. 6 doubles later I could hear him telling a lady that the 10 month old baby opposite was actually to blame for the red wine spillage as the baby had toddled over and requested to read the article in the magazine regarding Harvey Kietel, apparently toddlers love him. I thought oh great that’s him drunk and turned round and fell back to sleep, I left Franky and his new friend to it.

We landed at Heathrow and after a fairly short layover and a Starbucks we boarded the jet back to Manchester.



The rain was lightly spitting as we landed just how we imagined it, the clouds were grey and full, the temperature was cold and windy and for the first time in 94 days the taxi driver didn’t help us with our baggage. It’s good to be back.

We slid the key in the lock of our lovely little home and eagerly pushed down the handle. The door swung open and we ran inside jumping around like little school kids, it’s funny how much you appreciate your house when you haven’t seen it for three months.

Ten minutes after this we’d phoned Sky, had all the HD channels switched back on and were sat on the couch with a coffee watching Sky Sports News.

I guess some things never change!