Livelifeinabox

Travelling to a Thai island from Bangkok for the first time can be confusing. You have an array of transport options to choose from including buses, minibuses, taxis, songthaews and maybe even tuk tuks. What should you do? When travelling to Koh Samet, I did a lot of research on the best way to get there (cheapest way) and here's how we did it.

Go to Ekkamai (Eastern) bus terminal

We went via BTS to Ekkamai station (pretty easy as we were staying in Bang Na in eastern Bangkok). The journey cost 38 Baht each. At Ekkamai BTS, there are signs pointing you to the correct exit to take for the Eastern bus terminal at Ekkamai station. However once we got out onto the street we were instantly lost! We turned left instead of right and were going away from the bus terminal. Luckily we asked a traffic warden ('Eastern bus terminal yuu-tee-nai?') and he pointed us in  the right direction.



Look for the correct ticket booth

This is really confusing! We were searching for a booth that sold…

Before we left the UK we went to an NHS travel clinic to get vaccinations. We were very fortunate that we were able to get most of our jabs on the NHS, but there were a couple that we'd have to get privately. I looked into the prices at private travel clinics (£90 for Japanese Encephalitis vaccine!) and had a rethink.. Maybe we should just risk it? We certainly hadn't budgeted for these expensive vaccinations...

But I thought it over carefully and had a sudden brainwave! The reason these vaccinations are so expensive here in the UK is because these diseases aren't endemic here. The demand for these vaccines isn't very high, and that would surely drive up the cost. I did some research and there's a national vaccination program for Japanese Encephalitis in Thailand, meaning the vaccine is widely available and at a cheaper price too. I did some more research and found a couple of blogs about other travellers who'd had the same idea and had shared their tips about …

Well here we are in Bangkok, Thailand! After wanting to come to South East Asia for over a decade, we've finally made it here. We've been here for a week so far and are easing into a new way of life, in a country with a different culture, diet, and customs to our own. We expected to feel a little culture shock, being far from our home comforts, but we want to share with you a few things we've experienced since arriving in the land of smiles.

1. Jet lag.



We had a 17 hour flight from London Heathrow (including a 3 hour layover in Guangzhou, China) and arrived into Bangkok at 10pm local time. We thought that after a good night's sleep we'd be cured of any jetlag incurred, but boy, were we wrong! We've experienced days of waking up at 5am, random sleeping in the middle of the day, and at the moment we can only seem to fall asleep by 5am and subsequently wake up at noon. Hopefully this will get easier soon, but it's sure taking its time!
2. Dietary change.



We kn…