So after the crazy and fun Indo experience, it was off to Thailand for the second time in my traveling life. I was here for 17 days a few years back, and experienced the most amazing New Years party ever, the Full Moon party in Koh Phangen. For most travelers, the Full Moon party is extremely famous and well renown. After experiencing the mayhem and intensity of the party, I had decided to return to Thailand for a second go at it.
So I made the relatively quick flight to Phuket, and met a pretty cool French Canadian girl on the plane who was on a little 3 week holiday as she was working in Australia (like pretty much every traveler these days due to the massive wages for simple jobs). We chatted a fair bit and were met at the airport by her friend from Montreal who was traveling around SE Asia by himself and had been in Phuket for awhile. I was pissed off at my bank, as my card wasn't working AGAIN (this has happened in 5 different countries on this trip, and everytime I call them, they say it's fine and to try another bank machine). Well I tried a few in Indonesia before I left, and then again at the airport in Phuket, but it wasn't working, so I had to eat the awful cash withdrawal cost and use my credit card for a cash advance, damn you TD!! So after getting money, we sorted out a mini bus to Patong, as I had booked into a hostel where my mates from Brisbane were meant to be staying.
On the way to the Patong, as per usual in Thailand, we made some silly stop at a tourist shop, and they were asking us where we were all staying, as they wanted to sell us over priced guesthouses if we didn't have anything booked. The one thing that Thais are notorious for, is always forcing you to stop at businesses run by their family members..it's the same thing all over, as you pay for what you think will be a fair price for a ride somewhere, and next thing you know, you're stopping 3 or 4 times at various businesses and they try and make you buy stuff. So after getting to this stop, the French Canadian guy was trying to tell the staff where he was staying, but didn't have the exact address, although I could hear him saying the same street name as the hostel I was going to, so I showed the driver that address and it made sense to him. As it turns out, the two Frenchies were actually staying at the same hostel as me, and I found out that the owner is actually a Canadian fellow from Victoria. He runs a pretty good hostel, and has some really cheap rates. I'd definitely recommend you check the place out if you ever make it to Phuket. Here's a link for the place: http://seabluephuket.com/
So we get dropped off and I'm pretty exhausted and tempted to just have an afternoon nap, but the two convinced me to head off to the beach with them, so I figured I could maybe have a nap on the beach, so we make our way through the hustle and bustle of the streets of Phuket, and head down my old favourite place Bangla Rd. and get to Patong. We found a spot, and settled down for awhile. The Frenchies went for a swim, but I still wanted to wait a few days to make sure my tattoo was healed before exposing it to the water. After hanging out there for awhile, and enjoying a nice beer on the beach, we wandered towards a place that had the cheapest happy hour beer prices around (50 baht compared to an avg. price of 100 baht), and settled down onto Bangla Rd. I hadn't really planned on much going on during the evening, so I actually didn't have a lot of cash on me and had left my cards and most of my money back at the hostel, thinking I'd be returning for a quiet night, but alas, that didn't happen. After spending most of my cash on the cheap beers, we wandered over to a pub called the Kangaroo Bar, and were sitting there for awhile and then I noticed some cute girls looking over in my direction. The Frenchies were pretty involved in a discussion, so I wandered over to the table where the girls and two guys were, and started chatting them up. It turns out they were all Austrian, but the guys weren't actually with the girls, they had all just met. I ended up hanging out with them for awhile, but then the guys were leaving, but the girls wanted me to come with them on the town.
They had never been to a ping pong show, so I said I would go with them...the one girl kept flirting with me a bit, but I wasn't too sure what was going on. So we find some guy on the street who takes us into one of the ping pong bars, and we find the beers to be ridiculously expensive (300 baht), and I have only 100 baht on me, but the girls decide to pay for my drink. Then I sit there in between the two of them and we wait for the show to start, and wait and wait and wait. Finally a girl comes around and says we have to pay more money to see something, and at this point, it just seems like a rip off, so we decide to leave. We get outside and the girls figured they wanted to go to a club, and I remembered a good club from a few years back called Seduction, so I took them there, and they continued to buy me drinks...great girls! So eventually the one is really flirting with me more and more and then we start making out in front of the other girl, who gets quite upset over this and leaves the club in anger. I ask my girl what the problem is and she tells me that they're actually a couple....sooo I'm in quite a bit of shock over this! So we continue to make out and have another drink, and she says we should leave, so we head out and she recommends we go down to the beach.
So we get down there and start fooling around, and them some random Thai dude (well I think he was Thai) just came over and sat right by us and was just watching...it was so odd, and I mentioned to her that he was watching us, and she just didn't care. Crazy Austrians! So we continue to just have some fun, and then go for a little swim, and then I walked her back to her hotel. Unfortunately, when we found her hotel, I actually had no idea whatsoever where I was so I grabbed her number, and then started trying to find my way back to where I was staying...well this lead to me wandering around for about 15 minutes before some lady boy on a motorbike offered to give me a ride. I told her/him that I had absolutely no money on me, but he/she said no worries, it's all good. So this lead to another 40 minutes of absolute randomness, as I couldn't remember the name of the street I was staying at, and she didn't know the name of the place or where it was....so we're just driving all over the place, and then I suddenly found my bearings and would tell her/he to make a turn, but he/she would just start laughing and ignore me and continue going down another street...it was kind of funny in hindsight, although I did think I was going to get taken somewhere dodgy and raped! ha ha, but eventually he/she dropped me off, and I was able to crawl into bed around 5:30 am...
So I made the relatively quick flight to Phuket, and met a pretty cool French Canadian girl on the plane who was on a little 3 week holiday as she was working in Australia (like pretty much every traveler these days due to the massive wages for simple jobs). We chatted a fair bit and were met at the airport by her friend from Montreal who was traveling around SE Asia by himself and had been in Phuket for awhile. I was pissed off at my bank, as my card wasn't working AGAIN (this has happened in 5 different countries on this trip, and everytime I call them, they say it's fine and to try another bank machine). Well I tried a few in Indonesia before I left, and then again at the airport in Phuket, but it wasn't working, so I had to eat the awful cash withdrawal cost and use my credit card for a cash advance, damn you TD!! So after getting money, we sorted out a mini bus to Patong, as I had booked into a hostel where my mates from Brisbane were meant to be staying.
On the way to the Patong, as per usual in Thailand, we made some silly stop at a tourist shop, and they were asking us where we were all staying, as they wanted to sell us over priced guesthouses if we didn't have anything booked. The one thing that Thais are notorious for, is always forcing you to stop at businesses run by their family members..it's the same thing all over, as you pay for what you think will be a fair price for a ride somewhere, and next thing you know, you're stopping 3 or 4 times at various businesses and they try and make you buy stuff. So after getting to this stop, the French Canadian guy was trying to tell the staff where he was staying, but didn't have the exact address, although I could hear him saying the same street name as the hostel I was going to, so I showed the driver that address and it made sense to him. As it turns out, the two Frenchies were actually staying at the same hostel as me, and I found out that the owner is actually a Canadian fellow from Victoria. He runs a pretty good hostel, and has some really cheap rates. I'd definitely recommend you check the place out if you ever make it to Phuket. Here's a link for the place: http://seabluephuket.com/
So we get dropped off and I'm pretty exhausted and tempted to just have an afternoon nap, but the two convinced me to head off to the beach with them, so I figured I could maybe have a nap on the beach, so we make our way through the hustle and bustle of the streets of Phuket, and head down my old favourite place Bangla Rd. and get to Patong. We found a spot, and settled down for awhile. The Frenchies went for a swim, but I still wanted to wait a few days to make sure my tattoo was healed before exposing it to the water. After hanging out there for awhile, and enjoying a nice beer on the beach, we wandered towards a place that had the cheapest happy hour beer prices around (50 baht compared to an avg. price of 100 baht), and settled down onto Bangla Rd. I hadn't really planned on much going on during the evening, so I actually didn't have a lot of cash on me and had left my cards and most of my money back at the hostel, thinking I'd be returning for a quiet night, but alas, that didn't happen. After spending most of my cash on the cheap beers, we wandered over to a pub called the Kangaroo Bar, and were sitting there for awhile and then I noticed some cute girls looking over in my direction. The Frenchies were pretty involved in a discussion, so I wandered over to the table where the girls and two guys were, and started chatting them up. It turns out they were all Austrian, but the guys weren't actually with the girls, they had all just met. I ended up hanging out with them for awhile, but then the guys were leaving, but the girls wanted me to come with them on the town.
They had never been to a ping pong show, so I said I would go with them...the one girl kept flirting with me a bit, but I wasn't too sure what was going on. So we find some guy on the street who takes us into one of the ping pong bars, and we find the beers to be ridiculously expensive (300 baht), and I have only 100 baht on me, but the girls decide to pay for my drink. Then I sit there in between the two of them and we wait for the show to start, and wait and wait and wait. Finally a girl comes around and says we have to pay more money to see something, and at this point, it just seems like a rip off, so we decide to leave. We get outside and the girls figured they wanted to go to a club, and I remembered a good club from a few years back called Seduction, so I took them there, and they continued to buy me drinks...great girls! So eventually the one is really flirting with me more and more and then we start making out in front of the other girl, who gets quite upset over this and leaves the club in anger. I ask my girl what the problem is and she tells me that they're actually a couple....sooo I'm in quite a bit of shock over this! So we continue to make out and have another drink, and she says we should leave, so we head out and she recommends we go down to the beach.
So we get down there and start fooling around, and them some random Thai dude (well I think he was Thai) just came over and sat right by us and was just watching...it was so odd, and I mentioned to her that he was watching us, and she just didn't care. Crazy Austrians! So we continue to just have some fun, and then go for a little swim, and then I walked her back to her hotel. Unfortunately, when we found her hotel, I actually had no idea whatsoever where I was so I grabbed her number, and then started trying to find my way back to where I was staying...well this lead to me wandering around for about 15 minutes before some lady boy on a motorbike offered to give me a ride. I told her/him that I had absolutely no money on me, but he/she said no worries, it's all good. So this lead to another 40 minutes of absolute randomness, as I couldn't remember the name of the street I was staying at, and she didn't know the name of the place or where it was....so we're just driving all over the place, and then I suddenly found my bearings and would tell her/he to make a turn, but he/she would just start laughing and ignore me and continue going down another street...it was kind of funny in hindsight, although I did think I was going to get taken somewhere dodgy and raped! ha ha, but eventually he/she dropped me off, and I was able to crawl into bed around 5:30 am...
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| It's Kari Alexander! |
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| Catching a ride with a lady boy |
After waking around 2:30 pm, with a bit of a hangover and having some chuckles over the previous night's shenanigans, I awoke to find the French Canadians getting ready to head to the beach, and met a lovely English girl on the bunk below me named Siobhan. She had a very unique name, as it's an Irish name and was super cute. So after chatting for a bit, and finding she was by herself, we made friends and decided to head down to the beach together, as the French Canadians weren't ready yet. So we wandered down there and just enjoyed a nice bit of sun and got to now each other. After hanging around there, the Frenchies showed up as well. While down at the beach, I saw one of the crazier things I've seen, as there's parasailing available down there, and one of the staff members of the parasail company actually runs behind the person with the parachute, and then latches onto their back and climbs up onto their shoulders, and just hangs out without restraints or anything, a 100 and some feet up in the air....crazy Thais! I am wondering about the hiring process for that job, as the guy who interviews for the job, and then learns what it entails, probably leads to some questions such as “what happened to the last guy?” ha ha.....so yeah quite the sight, although there's really no worker safety standards anywhere in Thailand, so things like this are the norm. So we all just hung out and rehydrated a bit and then Siobhan let me know that she was meant to meet her friend Scott, so we just hung around until 6 pm until he finally showed up.
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| Patong Beach |
After meeting up with him, we wandered down and found a pub for a few beers (we sat at one that was by a sign saying it was happy hour and beers were only 60 baht, but found that the bar we were at was 100 baht, so we did the literal 5 second walk over to the next table in the next bar and had the 60 baht beers instead). After chatting and getting to know Scott a bit, and meeting some super drunk Croatian girl who had been working there for a few years and seemed to be pretty keen on Scott, we then just made our way back to the hostel to relax for a bit, as I was still pretty tired and in need of a nap. Although I ended up finding Pat Wood (whom I had met 2 years earlier in Thailand) and a few of his mates who had just arrived back in Phuket from Koh Phi Phi. We ended up going for a bit of a feed, and hearing some of their funny stories from their nights in Koh Phi Phi. Alex, Pat's younger brother who I hadn't met, woke up one morning on some random couch without his pants on, and the occupants telling him he had to leave since they were checking out, and he had no idea what or where he was....the boys were pretty loose! But they were all feeling the effects on their stomachs, so they were having a pretty quiet night.
After dinner, I just found Siobhan, and we wandered back down to Bangla road to meet a few of her other friends for some drinks. We ended up at the Honky Tonk bar where they had 2 for 1 cocktails, so we ended up hanging out there for quite sometime, meeting Scott, 2 girls from Singapore, and a couple who were friends with the Singapore girl. We had some good times there, and then wandered down to another area of Bangla that is basically a big open cavern with about 60 small bars, basically all offering the same drink prices and hilarious entertainment from lady boys dancing seductively on stripper poles and trying to pull any tourist into their grasp. It's a highly entertaining area, and the culture shock of Bangla to a first time Asia visitor is well worth it. After lingering around there, we eventually wandered down to Seduction, as we thought that a British DJ named Judge Jules was playing that night, but alas we had the days mixed up. The one Singapore girl was taking it easy that night since she had passed out the previous night in one of the toilets at the bars on Bangla and had to be carried home ha ha. They also had to go SCUBA diving the next morning at 8 am, but her friend was going nuts with the shots and drinks and ended up sleeping through one of her 2 dives the next day ha ha. So we just hung out dancing and Siobhan and I just ended up flirting a fair bit, and eventually hooking up a bit. It was getting a bit late, and we decided to wander back to the hostel for the night, with Scott as well.
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| Shots with Scott |
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| Scott monkeying around |
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| Crazy drunk dancing dude |
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| B52s what! |
We made a quick stop at McCas from a quick meal, and found one messed up Aussie dude passed out in the corner with his mate, so I snapped a photo, which apparently pissed them off quite a bit and almost lead to a confrontation...ah some people...but all was good, so we grabbed our food and headed back to the hostel for the night. Siobhan and I ended up sharing a bunk that night and had a bit of fun, which ended up waking up one or two of the people in the room...ah the joys of having romance in 8 person dorm rooms! So I was up fairly early the next morning, since I don't really sleep well when sharing a bed with someone, and ended up just lingering around to grab some breakfast. I was meant to join Pat and his mates but they were up earlier than I was, and were off to the airport to fly off, so I never caught up with them again until Koh Phangan.
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| Drunk Aussie |
So after just lingering around contemplating whether to go golfing for the day or not (and finding the prices around Phuket to be a bit steep), Siobhan and I just wandered back down to pretty great Italian restaurant for some lunch and coffee and then down to the beach and hung out there, but that didn't last for very long, as the rain ended up coming in around 3:30 pm, so we were back at the hostel, staying dry. I was contemplating booking a tour to the James Bond island the next day (the one from Man with the Golden Gun) but figured I would hold off and see what my other mates were doing, as they were arriving that evening from Brisbane. Due to the rain, I didn't get up to much until the evening, when we were meant to head back out and meet the Singapore girls at the same bar as the previous night. We eventually made our way down there, and just chilled out enjoying the girly cocktails. I had no way of getting a hold of Lawrence and his mates for when they got in that night, but as luck would have it, I happened to see them walking down Bangla road, pretty drunk, so I ran out and met up with them, and found that I had known one of other guys, as I had stayed at Lawrence's place in Brisbane one night in June, and had ended up watching the Stanley Cup Finals with Jeff, who was here in Thailand with Lawrence. I also met their other mate Dale, who had kind of a hippy look to him, but seemed like a pretty cool guy. They kind of were just wandering around taking in the sights, and weren't interested in sitting down for drinks with us, so I just agreed to meet them the next day.
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| Who says we don't get along with Natives |
The rest of us just hung out at the Honky Tonk bar for awhile, and then wandered around to try and find this paddle slapping bar, where there's naked women everywhere, and you get to spank them with giant paddles (the paddles don't hurt as the staff was smacking us with them outside before we entered), but the entry price and drink price was a bit too much so we just wandered over to Seduction again, as we thought that was the night that Judge Jules was playing, but again found out it was actually the next night ha ha...the Thai cocktails mess with our sense of dates I guess! So we just got inside, and the girls were basically surrounded immediately on the dance floor by a huge group of creepy French dudes....and I was the only guy with them, and had to keep repeatedly saving them...it got to be a bit tiresome, since I was fairly tired already and didn't really feel like keep having to fight off the French dudes. They kept grabbing Siobhan in particular, and the Singapore girls kept telling me to get in there and save her, but after I would she would always kind of wander away from me and get grabbed back....ahhh frustrating women sometimes! So after hanging out there for a few hours, we eventually just wandered back to the hostel, and stopped at a sweet Kebab shop run by some crazy English dude. The reason we stopped there on the walk back was because there were two English lads who told us they were the best kebabs in Phuket, and sure enough, they were quite delicious. The guy running the stand was actually a pretty nice fellow and we chatted for a bit, but then it was off to bed. Siobhan had a bus and ferry the next morning at like 7 or 8 am, and we got back around 5 am, so I didn't bother trying to spend a night in bed with her, but we just grabbed each other's contact info, and agreed to try and meet up in Koh Phi Phi or Koh Phangan.
The next day, I wandered down for some breakfast, and then tried to find Lawrence and the guys to see what they were up to. I ended up finding out the boys in their room, minus Dale, who had apparently not made it back the previous night, and they were a bit worried about him, as he had never been outside Australia, and they had no way of getting a hold of him since he had no phone or anything. They had last seen him at one of the bars they were at, where one of the Thai girls had a stranglehold on him, and kept kissing him, so they pried him off her and left the place, then realized he wasn't with them when they started walking. They wandered around looking for him a bit, but couldn't find him, and were just sitting waiting. Suddenly he walked through the door, and the guys were just so elated to see he was alive, and we listened to the hilariousness of his experience. He had woken up in a random field somewhere, covered in scratches and having no idea where he was. He then took over an hour and a half to figure out how to get back to the hostel, and hope the guys were there, since he had no key, no money, and no id.....it was pretty hilarious first night for them.
So after they got all sorted out and caught up on some sleep to get over their hangovers, while I just wandered around for awhile, we ended up heading down to the beach to chill out and get approached by random Swedish girls trying to convince us to visit their Scandinavian bar that night...after flirting with them and generally wasting their time, they eventually got fed up of us, since we weren't agreeing to their sales pitch and wandered off. Unfortunately, the beach trip didn't end up being for very long, as another big rainstorm rolled in, but this time we got caught in the full on downpour. We ran through the streets desperately trying to not get soaked too badly, but it wasn't possible, and ended up back at the hostel drenched head to toe. Fortunately, my electronics that I brought with me didn't get too soaked, and were still functional. We just ended up back at the hostel for awhile, waiting for the rain to pass; and then wandered down to the local food market where we found some incredibly cheap and amazing dishes, such as Pad Thai and Chili Beef (nice and spicy) for $1 dollar a dish...soooo good. So after enjoying some good eats there, we wandered down to Bangla Road again, and stopped by the Pit Stop pub where the Changs were only 50 baht apiece...great deal. After a few beers there, I talked the lads into heading to Seduction, as I was certain that this was finally the night that Judge Jules was playing, and it was.
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| Geoff creeping |
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| at the Pit Stop |
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| Crazy Dale |
I hadn't really heard of him before, but googled him, and he's been around for quite sometime, and has been involved with a lot of the Ministry of Sound productions, which I thoroughly enjoy. Check out his website if you're interested in him www.judgejules.com. So anyways we got in there, and it took awhile for the place to fill up and for him to get on stage, but once he did...wow he rocked the place. Such an awesome DJ experience, especially since the venue wasn't the largest place, so the vibe was great. We ended up meeting a few cool girls, and Jeff and Dale hit it off with two of them quite well...I wasn't so lucky until some Asian girl started grabbing me and dancing with me....I couldn't actually tell if she was Thai or not, so I just continued dancing with her, and figured since it was a fair bit expensive to get into the club that night, due to th DJ, that she couldn't be a prostitute...so we danced and flirted for quite awhile, but everytime I would try and kiss her, she would kind of shy away, then I would just leave her, and she would end up tracking me down again. So eventually it was about 2 am and the DJ was done, and she just grabbed my hand and said let's get out of here. So I figured ah what the hell, why not.
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| Dale found a friend..bad time though |
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| Lawrie and Geofferson enjoying the Judge Jules |
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| Rocking good party |
So we get outside and we're walking and then she drops the bombshell on me “how much you pay?”...arghh....so I told her no no, I'm not paying for anything, but she insisted on still walking with me hand in hand, but then I just let her get a bit ahead of me, and when she turned one corner, I just bolted! I started running down the street towards my hostel, and took off my orange shirt, since I didn't want her tracking me down...to some people I'm sure it looked hilarious as this drunk white guy was running down stripping off his shirt....so I get down to the kebab shop, stop in there for a bite to eat, chat with the owner some more, and then just call it a night. I knew the boys were heading to Koh Phi Phi the next day, and had a spare bed in their place, so I decided to book a boat ticket the next day before I went to bed, and head out to Phi Phi since I had so much fun there the last time I was there.
The next day I woke up, grabbed breakfast at the same place I had been eating breaky at the last 3 days in a row, and wandered back to the hostel to catch up with the lads a bit. Eventually our ride came to the hostel, took us to the pier, and we hung out there waiting for our ferry. We ended up meeting two hilarious English dudes named Jack and Matt. Jack's thoughts on his trip was that he would just rack up enough debt to declare bankruptcy back home, since he already had a fair bit of debt, but was also interested in get rich quick schemes. We talked a bit about stocks, and he was pretty enamored with the idea ha ha, thinking it's an easy way to make money. We also heard the story about them in Bangkok, where Jack had hired a Thai girl for the night, and ended up paying her 13,000 baht, which is close to $430 Canadian dollars!! We were having a good laugh at his expense, especially with him telling us the story about the experience. They also told us that Jack had bought their plane tickets over the phone from some guy he met in the streets, and they ended up being fake tickets, so when they got to the check in counter, the airline told them that they weren't on the flight and the tickets didn't exist ha ha ha. So they had to fork over another $3000 for flights to Bangkok to go the next day...crazy lads.
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| Lazy days on the boat |
We also told him about the Reggae bar, where you can volunteer to Muay Thai fight against other customers for a free bucket, and he got super excited about that (I later spoke to his friend that night and found out his fight didn't go so well as he got beat down pretty badly ha ha ha). So we hopped aboard the ship, and figured we'd catch some sleep, but the day was just too nice, so we ended up sitting on the deck and just having a few beers and enjoying the nice views. We eventually arrived in Koh Phi Phi, and found the hotel that the boys had booked, which was pretty swank. It was also $150 a night, which is quite pricy for me, but I figured I would splurge once at least. So we checked in, and wandered around to find some food at the local market, which again had some wicked dishes for under $5. After having a great feast there, we wandered down to the beach to check out some of the fire twirlers, and just enjoy the festivities. We ended up hanging out there for several hours, and saw what I would say is the best fire twirler I've ever seen. The guy could be swinging his stick around lightning fast, and throw it 30 to 40 feet in the air, and catch it behind his back and continue on. It was sick. After that show ended, we wandered over to the one dance floor area, and met a few Aussie girls that I had talked to in Phuket a few days earlier, and hung out with them for awhile, but the one had a boyfriend much to Jeff's disappointment as he was out in the water flirting with her. Her friend wasn't really showing any interest in me, so I just bailed on them, then met some nice American girls and chatted with them for quite awhile, while the guys just wandered off and did their own thing.
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| First night out in Koh Phi Phi |
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| enjoying the fire show |
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| First bucket of Thailand trip v 2.0 |
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| A little mailman action for the ladies |
I eventually made it back to the place, and when I got into the room, Lawrence made a startled motion that made me actually think he had a girl over or something, so I asked aloud if he did, but he was alone, and had been sleeping but was startled. We chatted for a bit, but then just went to sleep. We woke up the next morning and wandered down to find some breaky at a place that I had eaten at last time we were in Koh Phi Phi. It was a pretty tasty meal, and we ended up seeing one of the American dudes we had also met in the port and were talking to him....all was fine and dandy, and Lawrence kind of snuck off at one point during the conversation, but I hadn't noticed. He returned and the American dude was just leaving, and it kind of smelled, so Lawrence announced that he had actually shit himself a bit by sharting ha ha ha....so we wandered back to the hotel, but first stopped at a store that had some wicked fluorescent shorts, and I tried to get a decent price for four of them, since I figured they would make great party pants, but he wanted a bit too much, considering the quality of them, so I figured I would shop around the island a bit. We got back to the hotel so Lawrence could get cleaned up, then hung out in the pool a bit. There were a few cute girls hanging around the pool, but we didn't really chat any of them up yet.
Eventually Lawrence and Dale decided to wander down to the beach for awhile, but Jeff and I decided to just hang out in the pool since we were paying so much for the hotel anyways. After lingering around for awhile, enjoying the sun, I decided to go grab a few beers for us. I found a cheap supermarket nearby, and picked up 8 of them since they were so cheap. Once I got back to the hotel, we had a pool bar there, but the hotel wasn't operating it, so I figured I would just use it and set up my own bar. And thus, Reilly's Pool Bar was created :) Geoff was my only employee, and was hired on as our DJ. The bar offered free beers to anyone who wanted one, so it was not a very economically sound bar, but it was still good fun. Since we had a few beers, I had always wanted to play wizards, which is an Australian game where you finish your can of beer, and then tape a new one on top of it, and begin to create a wizard staff. Whoever has the largest staff is the Grand Wizard, and gets to boss around the lowest staff. My mates in Sydney had played it several times, and I was always wanting to give it a go, so thus our afternoon wizards session began. By the time Lawrence and Dale had returned, we were already building our wizard staffs to 4 or 5 each, and Reilly's Pool Bar had it's first 2 proper customers.
So we basically spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at the pool bar, playing wizards and getting some huge staffs. Eventually it was getting late in the evening, and we figured we should head out to some of the pubs and show off our staffs, but we were all pretty gooned....Dale decided to have a quiet night and stay in, and we gave him a pretty hard time but continued on without him, and found two British girls at our hotel to come out with us. Unfortunately, we were easily distracted once we got out into the streets, as so many people had never seen the wizard staffs before, and were in shock and awe. We basically felt like rockstars out there! Groups of people would keep approaching us and talking to us about them, and I guess we ignored the Brits too much, as they bailed on us, but we still met heaps of other cool people. We got into the one pub, and Lawrence and Geoff didn't last too long. Lawrie bailed about 30 to 40 minutes in and tried to convince Geoff to go with him, as he was in pretty rough shape, but he said he would stay. The last few things I remember about seeing Geoff that night was him stumbling around without his staff, as some dude had taken it and was wearing it like a necklace, pretending like he had drank all the beers himself (total douche), and then I remember seeing Geoff stumble into a large table and spill all the drinks off it onto a few people, who weren't too impressed. At that point I grabbed him and said time to split, but he just shrugged me off and went wandering off on his own...I guess he made it back to the hotel, but couldn't figure out how to get into his room, and ended up sleeping in the stairwell, and pissing himself ha ha! He also lost his camera that night, so there was no documentation of the night or day, boo.
As for me, well I wasn't ready to throw in the towel on the night yet, so I wandered down to the beach party and came across a few girls, that I recognized to be Dutch. I started chatting them up, and sure enough they were Dutch, although they had a Welsh girl with them too, and within about 10 minute of being on the dancefloor, she pounced on me, and before I knew it, she was leading me off to a remote area of the beach. It was rather strange, as we were making out and fooling around on the beach, when some random Thai dude, similar to Phuket, just suddenly showed up and sat by us watching!! So strange. So we decided to go for a swim instead, and stripped down and ran out there, and had some more fun. After that, we were back on the shore, and I was having a tough time finding my stuff, but fortunately we found it, and wandered back down to the party. I ended up hanging out for another hour or so there, and then decided to call it a night. At this point, things are again quite foggy, as I woke up the next day minus my watch, and I'm really not too sure if I left it on the beach when skinny dipping, or if I took it off to show someone on the walk home, and just forgot to get it back. The watch was pretty unique, and most people ask how it works, so I usually take it off and give it to them to show them, and then get it back, so it's possible that I just forgot to get it back while doing this....damn.
So I make it back to the hotel, and think I've also lost my keycard to the room (which would have cost $20, but I found it in the room), so I bang and bang on the door until Lawrie wakes up, and get to sleep. The next day was Xmas day, so I made the call home to the family for a bit, then did some xmas shopping for the boys, to get us some party shorts! I was able to find 4 pairs of the shorts for 600 baht, in several neon colours. Win! Although the pink shorts I got myself would later come to bite me in the ass a bit, but oh well! So while Lawrie and Dale were out getting massages, I wandered along the beach trying to find my watch, to no avail. I did meet some crazy old Russian lady who was trying to sell me on some boat trip, but since I was leaving the next day I wasn't interested, but had a good chat with her for awhile. After the chat, I just wandered back to the hotel and bugged Geoff enough until he got up, and then picked up some beers and spirits, and the bar was back open! And thus began another intense game of Xmas wizards! We all stocked up on Xmas hats, and Dale even participated this day/night to the fullest! So after several hours there, we wandered down through the streets, and were again treated like rock stars. We even found some local children who absolutely loved the staffs, and would keep grabbing them and banging them up and down...quite cute!
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| Hanging on the beach with Lawrie |
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| The Chicken's new travel friend Roo |
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| Merry xmas from the staff and owner of Reilly's Pool Bar |
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| Our first customer |
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| Roo got into the buckets a little too heavily |
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| Mailmaning a Wizard Staff, oh Yiew Bet! |
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| The children loved the staffs |
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| And the ladies loved Geofferson! |
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| Weak link in my staff |
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| Hello Ladies! |
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| Sometimes, you need a helping hand from a friend! |
We made our way down to the beach party, and rocked out there for quite awhile. We were dancing on some stages, and I remember using the staff cleverly as a poking device for attractive girls that would walk by, much to their disgust or pleasure depending on the girl :) At one point I was joined up on the dancing stage by one of the American girls I had apparently met the night before, and soon we were making out but then she left to find her friend, and I never saw her again! Ah well, so Lawrence and I just wandered around meeting heaps of cool and fun people, while Geoff and Dale disappeared. Eventually we were pretty tired, and happened to come across them, and found they were chatting up some girls, so we just left them be, grabbed some food, and walked by numerous tattoo shops, laughing at all the drunk people getting tattoos that they would likely regret the next day! Thailand seems to have tons of tattoo shops near all the bars, and they are always full in the evening, clever buggers. So we just got back to the hotel, and crashed for the night.
The next day Dale wandered into our place at 10 am, and told us that once again, for the 2nd time in a week, he woke up in some field ha ha ha! I guess he was following some British girls off to their place, when they lead him into a jungle area, and then they just kind of ran off, and he was lost, so he just found a nearby field and slept there....crazy guy. So we had to check out, and I took a bit longer as per usual, and when I dropped off my key, I found that they were charging us 80 baht for lost shoes in the room. The room had provided 2 pairs of flip flops, and Lawrence had lost his own pair the first night, and subsequently lost the 2 pairs from the room the 2nd and 3rd nights out ha ha...what a guy. So after paying for his tab since he was off getting breakfast, we wandered over to a nearby shop to get our boat tickets out of Phi Phi and off to Phuket.
After arranging for the tickets, we hung out at the docks forever, as boats in Thailand are often late arriving, and finally boarded. It was a pretty quiet ride back, as we were all quite tired, and not in the mood for boat beers like the trip to Phi Phi. We arrived in Phuket, and went back to the same hostel, checked in, and planned for a quiet night. I wandered around a bit, organizing a Thai massage (damn they hurt, as they force you into some really gnarly and uncomfortable positions), then wandered down to Bangla road to look for a new party shirt. I had spotted these cool shirts that illuminate to sounds, and figured I should get one for Koh Phangan. I stopped at one kiosk near his closing time, and low and behold, of all the places in the world, I found this bad boy!!!
So after haggling him down to $20 (a win, considering that's probably less than what most people would pay, but since it was late in the evening, he just wanted a sale), I happened upon Lawrie and Dale, who had just bought a bootleg DVD and were heading back to the hostel to watch it. Since we were all having a quiet night, I decided to tag along with them, but then found that the DVD was a super crappy copy, and didn't even work properly. So after attempting to watch it for a bit, we just gave up, and I just went and watched some tv on my laptop, and called it a night.
The boys were flying out the next day to Koh Samui and onto Koh Phangan, and I arranged for the bus/ferry combo to meet them there that night. I was supposed to be picked up between 8:45-9:00 am, so I was up early, had my breakfast, and waited, and waited, and waited. I eventually was picked up by a nice Honda Accord at 9:45 am, and thought that I was going to be riding in style to Surathani to catch the boat, but alas, we picked up 4 more people with huge bags (it was a real challenge to fit everyone and their bags into the car), and then were just dropped off at a bus. So much for riding in style. So we hopped aboard the bus before a few other late comers arrived, and fortunately found seats, as several people had to sit in the aisles! The bus ended up making pretty good time, and didn't have any stops unlike the last time I visited Thailand where we had to make 3 bus changes, and the bus broke down several times. We were in Surathani super early, and I figured we might actually make it to Koh Phangan within a 6.5 hour time frame from Phuket...but of course, I was wrong.
We lingered around at a ticket office, waiting for other buses to show up, and then were taken to the port where we waited another lengthy wait. After all the waiting, and delays, the boat finally arrived in Koh Phangan around 8:30 pm, so it was a pretty long day. I sorted out a taxi to our resort to meet the guys, and found it was actually only a 10 minute walk from the pier, so I could have saved myself the effort if I had only known. I got into the place, checked in, and found the boys had met up with Lawrence's younger brothers Pat and Alex, and their whole crew. So I joined them for the happy hour cocktails and some dinner. We hung out at the resort for awhile, and then wandered down to some jungle party. When were about to enter the party, I met a nice German girl named Birte, and chatted with her for a bit, and then we wandered inside. I didn't bring much cash with me, and wasn't planning on having much of a crazy night, and the party was actually quite dead.
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| Lawrie and Geoff heading out for a chunder |
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| What are the 3 Stooges thinking about? |
After hanging around and socializing a bit, I eventually spotted Birte again, and we started chatting, and continued chatting for probably about 2 or 3 hours. Some of the boys left the party to go back to Haad Rin, as it was kind of dead, and Geoff, Lawrie, and Dale just had some “special shakes” and were doing their own thing. Eventually Birte and I went off to dance a bit, but then some Dutch guy kind of came in and was trying to make his move, so she just wandered off from both of us. I just kind of lingered around by myself, went and found the guys who were all in the field spewing due to too much of the shakes ha ha, and then wandered back towards the party. Eventually I found that they had all left the party, and I was down to my last 180 baht, so I just decided to head back to the resort. I happened to see Birte chatting with some other dude, so I just wandered over and said goodbye quickly and turned to leave, and then she chased me down and said she wanted to hang out the next day, so I grabbed her number, and found a motorbike taxi to take me back. I arrived to find the guys pretty messed up, and we wandered down to the ocean for a bit to take in the moonlight, and then called it a night.
The next day everyone was feeling pretty rough, so we all were in for a quiet day. We just spent most of the day lingering around the resort, lounging by the pool or playing table tennis. Eventually I got ahold of Birte and agreed to meet up later in the evening, so I wandered down to the food market to meet her there. The food market was so awesome, as there was so much cheap and delicious food. For about $2 you could have a delicious feast, it was great. We ended up hanging out there for awhile, and then just wandering around doing some shopping and what not. While walking about, I spotted a German flag hat, so I made her wear it for a photo op, and then we looked around a bit more, and I spotted a hat just for me. I told her it was a Canadian hat, since we're all a bunch of jokers and such.
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| The Canadian Hat! |
So after wandering around and chilling out, we found an internet cafe, and then we were too tired to really do much else. I could tell it wasn't really going to go anywhere with her, as there just wasn't a whole lot of chemistry, but we still would remain friends. So after arranging for a taxi to take her back to the place she was sharing with another German friend, I just wandered back to the resort and found everyone to be asleep by 10:30 pm....easy night I tell you!
The next day we decided to rent some scooters to tour around the island a bit. Since the island was filling up with full moon partiers, it was a bit difficult to find a place with 3 scooters for rent. We ended up just getting them from different shops. I've never really ridden a bike/scooter before, so it was definitely a bit of a learning experience for me, but great fun. Birte had asked to tag along that day as well, so I agreed to go pick her up, even though I didn't really know how to get to her place. I was also probably the most inexperienced rider of the group, so it was a bit ironic that I would be the one driving with a passenger. We drove around for awhile, until I finally found a road that lead to the hospital which was near where she was living, so we drove down there and found her waiting for us on the highway. We picked her up, and were on our way to try and find some cool waterfall, but our navigation skills weren't so good, and we actually ended up taking the wrong road! Because I had Birte with me, and she didn't have a helmet, I wasn't inclined to drive as fast as the other guys, although I was quite surprised to see that the dinky little scooters actually can get up to about 90 km/h. It's quite a rush riding a bike though, and I can only imagine what driving a real bike would feel like. Because I was so slow, I ended up losing the rest of the guys, but managed to catch up with them in a village about 20 minutes later. We ended up at one of the beaches that had really good snorkeling, so we just parked there and rented some snorkel equipment.
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| My new pimp ride |
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| My Motorbike Crew |
The weather was kind of blah that day, and the visibility wasn't so great, so I didn't actually bother renting any equipment or entering the water, although all the others did, but they didn't really see much, so it was kind of pointless. We hung out at the beach for a few hours, and then made our way back to town, and decided that after a quiet night, that a wizards session was in order! So we found some flats of beer, and then Dale and I went wandering around to find a cooling mechanism, since we couldn't get any cold flats of beer. We walked by a homeware store, and found some huge plastic garbage bins, perfect! So we picked that up, and a few bags of ice, took it back to the resort, and began another session of wizards. Geoff and Lawrie decided to kick the game off by shotgunning a beer, and Lawrie ended up spewing all over after one beer, the guy is a spew king! Birte was also in attendance and quite perplexed by this game of ours, and we tried to get her to play with us as well, but she was taking it easy until New Years, so we let her just hang out and watch! After finishing up our 48 beers, we wandered down to Haad Rin, staffs in tow, and met the exact same response as Koh Phi Phi. People were stopping us and chatting to us, telling us how awesome we were. We met heaps of people, and kept running back to the local 7 Eleven to pick up more cheap beers, rather than pay for drinks at the beach. I ended up meeting a pretty cool Swedish chick, who tagged along with us, and was chatting her up for quite awhile, when some dude just wandered in and isolated me from the conversation. Dudes on Koh Phangan are ruthless!!
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| Showing off to Birte |
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| Love those Heinekens |
So after realizing she was a goner and it was a lost cause, I just popped in to say goodbye, and gave the guy a hard pat on the back to make him know I wasn't too impressed (yeah real tough guy here ha ha). We then wandered down to Pat and Alex's place, and found those boys and got them to come on out with us. The rest of the night was just a big wizard session and filled with meeting heaps of people. We ended up hanging out with 2 girls for a really long time, but found out they had boyfriends, so it was a lost cause. Although the one girl told me she had one and that her friend was single, and the supposedly single friend kept coming to talk to me and was really touchy feely. It was a bit of an odd situation, as there were a few other guys hanging around with them, and they kept giving me dirty looks when she would come hang on me, and I asked her about it, and she said they were just friends, but it felt otherwise. I was pretty tired and just wanted to go home, but she convinced me to stay longer, and since Lawrie and Dale were still there, I just hung out. This was also the night I unveiled my party shirt, and was confronted by several Canadians, including a rowdy bunch of Stamps fans who surrounded me and yelled “Go Stamps Go” repeatedly...it was all for a good laugh though, good times. Eventually we were ready to head home, and the flirty girl wanted my number to hang out the next day, so I gave it to her, but didn't think much of it. We found ourselves a taxi and were the only ones in the it, and I was so tired that I just fell asleep in the back of it, on the bench seat, which is pretty dodgy, since they are just pickup trucks with benches in the back and a canopy, but no way of keeping people from falling out the back, but we made it back fine and safe. I later realized I forgot to turn off the batteries to my shirt, and the light thing is dead, something I have to remember to do in the future he he. We also managed to find Geoff, who had completely disappeared on us. We got back to the bungalows and he wasn't in his bungalow since Dale had the only key, so we were all thinking that Geoff had met a girl and went off with her, but once Lawrie and I got into ours, we found Geoff to be sleeping in Lawrie's bed! Lawrie and I had decided from day 1 to just leave the key hidden by our bungalow, rather than having to rely on finding each other for it, in the case of separation, and Geoff obviously knew our hiding location, and used the key to help himself to a bed. Oh and all of this happened on Lawrence's birthday, what a nice gift!
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| Party shirt is in the hoooooouuuuse tonight |
I awoke early the next morning to Geoff's alarm as he had to go extend the rental of his bike by a certain time (although once he got there, he found out that he could have just kept it without showing up and asking to extend the rental). I felt like crap so I just went back to sleep until about 1:30 pm. I couldn't figure out where I had put my phone, and was afraid I had lost it but found it strewn on the floor in a random spot, and found that the girl from the previous night had tried calling me at 7 am and texted me at 8 am asking to come hang out on the beach with her...crazy woman, so we started chatting a bit throughout the day, trying to make plans to meet up, but being on opposite sides of the island, and not feeling too comfortable with driving the motor bike to Haad Rin, nothing came of it. We were all meant to go to the waterfall that day, but upon speaking to the boys, everyone was way too hungover.
I ended up just hanging around the pool for quite some time with Birte, as she had returned to our place with my bike, since I had been letting her use it, as I wasn't using it as much as I would have liked. We just chilled out for awhile by the pool and had a laugh at an Irish lad who was getting a pretty good afternoon drunk on, as he decided to go streaking around the resort a bit and jump in the pool...quite a sight considering it was about 2:30 pm and he was that banged up. At one point he finally put his shorts back on and was stumbling around by his mates, when he knocked over a few glasses and shattered them, and then unknowingly he stepped in all the glass and cut his foot quite badly. So when one very drunk dude cuts his foot by a swimming pool, how does he deal with it? Well of course he jumps in the pool! Needless to say, that was the last time I had an urge to use our pool for the rest of our time at the resort. Eventually the boys woke up and came and joined us for a bit and then we wandered down to the food market for some eats. Geoff was feeling the worst of the bunch, and had to return shortly after eating, while the rest of us put together some plans for the rest of the afternoon. We had heard about this Amsterdam bar that had a wicked view of the ocean, so we set upon finding that place with the bikes.
When we finally found the place, we found it was up a wicked huge hill, which was pretty scary for novice bike riders. We ended up navigating up it, although Lawrie wasn't able to make it all the way up, as Birte was riding on the back of his bike, and their combined weight was a bit too much for the bike to handle the hill ha ha. So she had to hop off and walk the rest of the way up. When we arrived, we found the place to be absolutely packed, and numerous people smoking joints, as it was one of the only places on the island that could sell them (they must have been able to bribe the police well enough ;)). So we just ended up chilling out there, having a beer, and enjoying the spectacular view of the sea, as well as taking in an awesome sunset. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera that day, so I missed out on the photos :( So after hanging out there for about an hour and a half, we noticed that a rain storm appeared to be coming in, and we really didn't want to drive down that damn hill with the bikes in the rain, so we were off and back to town. We ended up just grabbing some snacks and chilling out at the resort for awhile, and then I managed to finally get a hold of Siobhan, the girl from Phuket. We agreed to meet up that night, and I ended up joining the boys for a few drinks at the resort bar while trying to sort out plans with Siobhan.
Now the bar at our resort, was quite a crazy sight that night, as the resort manager/owner, a crazy South African lady, decided to spice things up a bit, and offered 300 BAHT to any girl who would get on the bar and show her breasts, and to show that she meant business, she showed all of us customers and her staff members her own breasts to get the party started. She also offered free drinks to any guy to who would get completely naked on the bar and dance....there was this one Danish dude who was by me who took things one step further, and did one of the craziest things I've ever seen.....he put sambuca on his penis, and used a lighter to light it on fire!! It was absolutely nuts!!! Unfortunately, the sambuca wasn't of high quality, and it didn't really light on fire so well. He later told me he tried that trick at a music festival in the summer, and it worked awesome and didn't hurt at all...he said it was dark and he was actually gyrating his hips so that it created a flaming and swinging genital ha ha ha...crazy. The bar manager was also a bit keen on old Dale, as she had been at the beach the previous night and was flirting with him a bit, and then was trying to get him naked and dancing on the bar...so she offered him something more than just free drinks, she offered one night with her if he did it, so they shook hands and he stripped down for a bit...hilarious! She later came back and said she was drunk and was only kidding, but he told her that a handshake sealed the deal, and that he would collect over the next few days. Sadly, after getting drunk and not sleeping or eating well, he ended up just being too tired and never did collect!
So after all these shenanigans, I realized that I was actually a bit late going to meet Siobhan at the food market, so I had to jump on the bike and go grab her and bring her back. We ended up hanging out for awhile at the resort, having some drinks and just chilling out. By about 11 pm, Dale was pretty gunned, and I was also starting to feel pretty good....Lawrie and Birte were in a bit more chilled mood, and weren't really up for heading out, but Dale, Siobhan, and I were all for it, so we grabbed a taxi and went down to Haad Rin. Pretty much as soon as we arrived, we were walking down to the beach, and as luck would have it, we just happened to walk by Scott (British dude we had met in Phuket) as he was making out with some girl in the streets. We stopped to talk to him, but Dale didn't see us stop and continued walking down to the beach, and I never could find him again that night! So we grabbed Scott and wandered down to party a bit on the beach.
I was obviously with Siobhan and we were making out and dancing, and then I spotted a girl that I had met on Koh Phi Phi, so I went over to talk with her, with Siobhan in my hands, and some Aussie dude comes into our conversation, and starts yapping about how the girls should be talking to someone awesome like him and not speaking to “boring orange shirt guy”, as I was wearing my Dutch football jersey. It was a bit shocking to me, and I just started to talk to him, and he told me to be quiet cause I was boring and to leave! So then he grabs Siobhan and starts trying to grind on her, and kiss her, and she's backing away from him and then he's asking her if she would rather dance with him or “boring orange shirt guy” and she says she would rather be with me, so I grab her, and then he gets in my face! I'm telling you, guys in Koh Phangan are ruthless!! I have a pretty even temper about me, and don't really care that much, but this guy was pissing me off, so I put my hand on his face and shoved him away, and then he was back in my face trying to start shit! So Siobhan just lead me away, and conflict was avoided, but still, I couldn't believe that dude....some people.
So we wander around a bit more, dancing and having some drinks, when Siobhan decides she wants to go find her other friends who are at a half moon party. I wasn't terribly keen on leaving Haad Rin for the other party, as it was a ways away, but she convinced me to go with her, and since I had lost Dale already and couldn't find Scott, I just went with her. We arrived there and found it was 500 baht to get in, which was pretty expensive, but we went inside. She didn't have their phone number and could only talk to them if she had wifi and they were on the internet at the same time, which wasn't possible at the jungle party. The place was absolutely packed too, so trying to find her friends was an impossible task. We ended up finding a place a bit higher up so we could try and see them from above, but no luck. While we were sitting up there, talking, and dancing, and kissing, there were 3 other guys who came up beside her and started chatting her and trying to get her to leave me to go dancing....like wtf!! Is it cause I'm a small guy, and others just think they can roll over me or what? Arghh frustrating times indeed! So after this goes on for awhile, and we can't find or see her friends, we wander around a bit more, and then we're pretty tired, so it seems like a good time to head home. Now this is where things got really frustrating, as she was living way in the north of the island and didn't want to go all the way up there....and seeing as how we had spent a fair bit of time together in Phuket and this night, I said she could just come stay at my place and I would drive her back in the morning, so she initially agreed to this, but then started saying how she really wanted to find her friends, and that she would maybe just go to their resort and try and find them, even though she had no clue what room they were in....so yeah, this makes absolutely no sense to me, but what can you do.
So we sort out a taxi, and meet a bunch of other dudes in there, who all start chatting her up and hitting on her a bit right in front of me, and I'm just remaining quiet cause I'm getting pretty sick of this. So we pull up to my place, and I get out and say are you coming with me, and then in front of all the other guys she says no, I'm going to go to my friends' resort and try and find them...ouch, what a shot to my ego! So I get out, and wander back into the resort, and I can hear the other guys in the taxi saying “ooooh he's gotta be pissed off about this” and I hear her say “no, I'm sure it will all be fine”, so I get back into the room, and go to sleep, but yeah obviously after all that I was pretty pissed off.
So I awake the next day and grumble a bit to the boys about my night, but try not to fret about it too much, as it was now New Years Eve! So after lounging around the pool a bit, we wandered down to the food market to grab some eats, and I gave Birte a ride home, as she had ended up crashing at our place the previous night. After dropping her off, I decided to grab another bite and stopped by a place that my mate Dan and I had eaten at almost every day a few years back. I recalled them having some awesome Chili Basil Chicken, so I ordered one of those and waited, and waited, and waited. It took about 45 minutes to get my food, and then when I tried to get my bill at the bar, it took another 15 minutes...I was seriously considering just leaving the place without paying, but I'm too honest for that. So after finishing up there, I stopped by the supermarket to grab a wizard hat from Birte, as she agreed to participate that night in our wizards session, but I told her she would only get the hat if she proved to be worthy. I then got back to the place to find the boys (and found out that Geoff was now completely broke and would have to borrow money from Dale or Lawrence, and then when Dale checked his balance online, he found that he had been scammed in Phuket and had $1200 taken from his account!) So that was a crappy way of starting off our New Years Eve party, but Lawrie agreed to give both the lads money as needed until they got back home. So we wandered out to grab our beers and prepare for the night.
Lawrie and I started out our New Year's Eve drinks with two deliciously gay Bacardi Breezers, and then got back to the place and started our wizards session. Birte eventually showed up with her friend Henning, and they informed us that they had no water at their place and would like to have showers at our place, so we let them do that, and then Birte told us that she needed to go back to her place to actually get ready for the night (strange girl, not too sure why she just wouldn't have brought all her stuff to our place in the first place but oh well). This kind of threw off our plans to be down in Haad Rin at Pat and Alex's place for a pre-party by 5 pm, but oh well. So after she finally returned, we grabbed our big bucket of beers, grabbed a taxi and headed down to Haad Rin by 7 pm. We tried to find Pat and Alex's place, but took a wrong turn and ended up at some very small and remote beach, so we had to haul our beers back the way we came and eventually found their place. They had 4 new girls over at their place, a few friends from back home, so we had a pretty full house. We ended up playing some drinking games with cards for awhile, and just having a sweet pre-party, then it was time to paint up! The last time I had been at the Full Moon party, I had painted “Free 1 Night Stand” on my back, and my phone number, so in keeping with the trend, I had Lawrie paint that on my back again ha ha. I also let Lawrie paint my eyebrows, but unbeknownst to me, he actually made a huge orange unibrow that looked so ridiculous, good times though! We had several funny paint jobs on the lads. So after finishing up the painting, we were off to the beach to kick off the party, by lighting off some big ass fireworks that Alex had picked up.
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| Probably one of my favourite photos from NYE |
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| ooooh Bacardi Breezers...just the right amount of gay |
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| Calling the Wizard session to order, here here! |
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| Preparty at Haad Rin bungalows |
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| Didn't even realize Lawrence had painted a uni brow on me until I looked at this photo |
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| Hauling around our big ass bucket of beers to the preparty |
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| Don't get too close to my nipples Birte! |
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| Pat and Birte |
After lighting those off, we stopped by the crazy slide and watched many many drunk people slide down it, falling on their faces. And shortly after this point, I pretty much lost everyone, as people just kind of wandered off in their own directions, although Lawrie and I kind of stuck together meeting people who were in awe of our wizard staffs as per usual. So after wandering around for about 20 minutes, some Dutch girl locked onto me and that was pretty much it for the rest of the night! We ended up dancing and she told me she was going to be my New Years kiss (the previous year I had about 11 ha ha, so I wasn't too sure how tame this year would be). So at like 11:50 she jumped the gun, and kissed me, thinking it was New Years, and then of course 10 minutes later, everyone acknowledged the actual New Years! The beach was going crazy with people partying, and the New Years fireworks were set off in droves.....now Thai fireworks are a bit dodgy, as they were launching some of them at an angle instead of straight up, so several times they were going off way too low to the ground, and the beach was getting showered with firework debris..it was a bit freaky and pretty hilarious watching people get hit by these stray fireworks, as no one appeared to get hurt, everyone was just shocked when they got hit.
So we continued dancing and making out, and that was pretty much it for about 3 hour or so I think! At one point I did go and meet up with Pat and the other guys for a little bit, but then decided I had a good thing going on, so just went back to the Dutch girl and continued to hang out with her. We were actually fooling around a bit while dancing, and I recall at one point, some girl grabbing my hand and slapping it away from where it was ha ha, some people don't appreciate over the top PDA I guess! Another interesting thing to occur was that some very drunk girl stumbled by us, and decided to try and pry me away from the Dutch girl and started grabbing and grinding on me while I was dancing with the Dutch girl....even the women in Koh Phangan are ruthless apparently!! So at about 4 am, we decided to go for a wander with her other Dutch friend and some Canadian dude, to try and find the secluded beach that I had stumbled upon earlier, but unfortunately I was a bit too drunk and not very good with directions, and ended up getting us quite lost and unable to find the beach...so much for more New Years action! So we ended up just finding some small Italian restaurant to get some food and a few more drinks, and as luck would have it, a Danish girl that I had met earlier in the week at our resort happened to come in with some Danish dude and sit at the table by us. It was a bit odd cause when he wasn't looking or was in the bathroom, she actually kept grabbing the back of my neck and hair and playing around a bit...I think she was actually kind of interested in me as well...tough times!
So after chilling out at the restaurant for awhile, we then walked around for a bit more and then just came to the hostel where the girls were storing their bags. They had to catch a bus at 7 am and head to Thongsala and then catch a boat to Koh Tao, so I just chilled out with them until their bus came. As another sign the world is small, while sitting there with them, a Swedish dude that I had met in Indonesia happened to walk by...crazy small world, so we chatted for a bit, and then he had to go off to some after party. I decided to leave the girls and head down to the beach for a bit longer, but grabbed the Dutch girl's number, as I was planning on going to Koh Tao next anyways. I actually didn't realize when I left her that I was wearing her hat, so when I was down on the beach I received a text from her, telling me to take good care of her hat and to hopefully return it. I agreed to come meet up with her in a day or two, and she sent me a very direct and forward text , being Dutch and all....it basically said she really wanted to see me again so she could sleep with me (but in a much more crude language). Oh those Dutch, so forward! So after wandering around the beach for awhile, I decided to go to Pat and Alex's place to see if there was any after party going on, as it was now 9 am.....well I arrived up there, and found Alex to be sleeping on the hammock at their place, and I decided I was also quite tired, so I just sat on the deck of their place, and actually fell asleep there.
I was woken up about 1.5 hours later by Alex, who was giving me a bit of a nudge, asking who the hell I was. Once he realized it was me, he told me I should go sleep in the hammock since he was going inside. So I wandered down to the hammock and ended up sleeping there until about 1:30 pm. It was an interesting sleep as it ended up raining a bit, but there was some towel there that I managed to use for cover and as a blanket. I could hear all the boys rustling about at their cottage, so I got up and wandered up to chat with them a bit and hear the stories of their night. After having some laughs and chatting a bit, we all wandered down for some lunch on the beach. It was funny to hear from them how both Geoff and Lawrence both showed up at their place to try and sleep that night, as Geoff had snuck in through their window and was sleeping in Brown Bear (the nickname for the one dark guy in their group)'s bed, and Lawrence was sleeping outside on the patio where I slept. I guess Brown Bear returned with a girl and found Geoff in his bed, and woke up Lawrie too, and kicked them out since he needed his alone time with her. Later on when the rest of the boys returned to the cottage, they found Brown Bear to be passed out on top of the girl, and they were both open mouthed and in a kiss state...interesting way to pass out!
So after having lunch with the lads, I said my goodbyes and sorted out a taxi back to the resort. I arrived back around 3 pm, and was still covered in paint, and some English fellow and some Scottish gals were sitting near our hut, and were asking if I was just getting back from the party, but unfortunately I didn't go as hard as a few years earlier, when I was actually at the party until 1 pm the next day before going to sleep. So I chatted with the English lad a bit, and then found Lawrie and the other boys. We ended up hanging out for awhile, and Lawrie and I just played some pool and some table tennis, killing the day. We eventually decided to head over to grab a massage from a place just across from our resort, and wow....that was the best massage I've ever had! (Lawrence also agreed with me, as they just used the right pressure, a good oil, and there was some amazing ointment on the pillow which opened up all the sinuses too....super awesome hangover cure. So after finishing up with that, Lawrie stuck around to get his foot wound cleaned and later told us that they started feeding him some rice liquor and food while he was hanging out there getting his foot tended too...the Thai people are really quite incredibly friendly and kind when you get a chance to get to know them a bit.
So after the massage and feeling like a million bucks, we grabbed the bbq at our resort, and it was so awesome. The prawns and the beef skewers were quite great. Birte ended up showing up and joining us too, and told us about the horrible ending to her New Years night. I guess she ended up talking to some British guy who was trying to get her to go swimming with him in the ocean, and she refused and then he grabbed her and started dragging her in, and then she dropped her phone in the water and it was ruined. Then when she left the party, she only had 50 baht for a taxi ride, which wasn't enough, and the taxi driver just ended up dropping her off in the middle of nowhere, and she had no idea where she was and had a broken phone. She ended up crying and walking around until some random Thai man picked her up on his motorbike and drove her home. So she joined us for dinner, and Lawrie and I were contemplating going down to Haad Rin to the Same Same but Different bar, as the Danish girl from our resort had said that a few of them might go down there that night. But once we found her, she said that her friends were too tired, and she didn't feel like going down there. By that time it was already 10:30 pm, and we were also kind of feeling tired, so we just had a quiet night with 2 beers, and then went to bed fairly early.
The next day we tried to figure out a boat ride out of Koh Phangan, and had to check out. Upon checking out, the staff informed me that I would have to pay for a new sheet and towel because of the pink stains on it from my party shorts.....and they wanted to charge me the equivalent of $60 Canadian. There was no way in hell that a bed sheet and towel was worth that much, and they were trying to tell me that it was the paint from the Full Moon party, but I knew better as I hadn't slept in my bed with the paint on. After arguing a bit over this ridiculous price, I told them that I would take the damn sheets to a local laundry place and that I would try and get them to get out the stains. So we left our bags at reception, and went for a wander to try and find a laundromat and to get some tickets to leave that day. I was hoping to go rendez-vous with the Dutch woman. So after finding a laundry place, and getting them to finish washing the items within 2 hours, and trying to use some chemicals, I went to find the boys and have some lunch. We had initially sat down at one restaurant, and I was carrying Lawrence's bag for him, and set it down at the table and went off to drop off my laundry, but then the guys decided they didn't want to stay at the place, and left, but Lawrie forgot his bag there. Fortunately, it was still there when he realized that we had left it there and returned it.
We just hung out at the food market and enjoyed some delicious fruit shakes and some good eats. Birte had gone off to try and find us tickets to Koh Tao that afternoon, but came and joined us at the market and informed me that there were no tickets available whatsoever. We asked around at a few travel agencies and they also said there was nothing available, so I decided to just go ahead and book a ticket for the next day as it was selling out quickly. Birte was going to come, but then decided to head to Koh Phi Phi instead to meet up with her Kazahkstan friend. The boys decided they were going to go to Railay in the south, and since I had already been there, and wanted to go meet up with the Dutch woman, it was going to be our last night together. We still hadn't sorted out accommodations yet, but we were close to the hotel that I had stayed at last time I was in Thailand, and wandered over there and managed to get a pretty decent room for a cheap rate. So we booked in there, and then the rain started to come pouring down hard. I had to run back to get my laundry, and then take it back to our other resort. When I returned with the laundry, I found that they had been able to get all the pink out for the price of $3 Canadian.....so yeah that was a huge win. So after returning that, I grabbed my big bag and drove to the new hotel, which was a bit of an adventure, but worked out quite well. After getting all checked in, we just ended up hanging out, grabbing a bite to eat, and having a super quiet night.
I tried to get to sleep at 11 pm, but the frogs outside our window were absolutely crazy loud...and then the rain would get really heavy, and then mosquitoes would buzz in my ear...needless to say, it was one of the worst sleeps of the trip! Lawrie and the boys were all leaving at 6:30 am, so it was a pretty early rise, said our goodbyes and then I had a bit more of a sleep until it was time to go catch my boat. I returned my motorbike, and was happy to see that they didn't try and screw me over on any charges for damages, as the Thais can be quite bad for ripping people off on the bike rentals. After getting that sorted, it was down to the pier, and hanging out waiting for the boat. The boat was delayed a fair bit, as that's par for the course in Thailand, but eventually we were off and onto Koh Tao. I managed to catch up on a bit of sleep so it was good. I had spoken with the Dutch girl, and she had a place for me to stay once I arrived, but said she would be at a diving course in the afternoon. So upon arrival, I found the resort where she was staying, and just hung out waiting to hear back from her so I could check in. And I waited and waited and waited, until finally 4 hours later she finished with her course and showed up. So we got my bags all sorted in the room, which was pretty decent as it was a nice fan bungalow for $15 Cad a night, so splitting it made for some cheap accommodations. After getting all sorted out, we ran down to a nearby pub to meet her other Dutch friends, and then off to some Italian restaurant that was quite good. The one Dutch guy had been there doing quite a few dive courses, and talked quite highly of the dive resort called Bans where he and Hilde were both doing their courses.
It has been a few years since I was diving, as I actually thought my PADI card expired, and I had tossed it away awhile back while cleaning out my wallet. So because of this, I never really looked into diving again, but I figured it would be a good place to start back up again, and a good reason to clean up my living a bit. So I figured the next day I would check out dive schools and sort out some courses. We ended up finishing dinner late, and wandering over to the pub we had been at earlier in the evening, and hanging out there until about 1 am, and then got back to the room. Upon getting into bed, Hilde was pretty much all over me right away, and thus began a two week travel romance! So after getting to bed pretty late, she had to be up the next morning fairly early for her SCUBA course, while I was just a bit of a bum and slept in quite late. After waking up, I decided to go try and find a gym that I had seen advertisements for, since I've been fairly lazy and out of shape. I walked on towards where I thought it was, but didn't end up finding it, and took a wrong turn which lead me to the main highway on the island. I figured I would just go for a run instead, and ran along the highway to the pier, but it was a road filled with a lot of hills and it was very hot.
Needless to say, after about 20 minutes of running, I felt pretty crappy and almost got ill...I had to sit down for quite awhile and try and calm my nerves a bit, and was barely able to but managed to eventually. I did get back to the bungalow and had to lay down though to try and feel better, and ended up just sitting there for several hours doing nothing. Eventually I made my way out again and stopped by Bans to check out prices. I ended up deciding to book my Advanced diving course there, but had to do a refresher dive since it had been over 10 years since I last dived. I actually thought I had my Open Water certification, but found out from the staff that I only had 2 dives and had my SCUBA certification, so I had to do a refresher course, and 2 more dives to get my Open Water before I could begin the Advanced course. So I was sorted out for the next few days.
After finishing up the booking, I just hung out waiting for Hilda to finish up her evening course, grabbed some dinner and had a pretty quiet night since she had to be up early the next day. The next day I just wandered down for a walk around, grabbed some lunch, and met my instructor to perform my refresher dive. I thought it would be in the pool but found out from the girl that we would be doing it in the sea instead. When you haven't done something in a long time, you're pretty rusty, and the last time I did any SCUBA, there have always been professionals there to prepare all the equipment, and I just had to throw it on, but this time was a bit of a shocker, as the instructor told me to start getting my own equipment ready, and gave me a quick brief on what to do. I really didn't know what the hell I was doing, but she eventually walked me through more thoroughly, then we were off to the sea. We just worked on some basic dive manoeuvres, and all in all it took probably about 20 minutes to finish up. I did experience some ear discomfort, and have always had some issues with equalizing, so for the next few days of diving I decided I would just try and use some pills that they offer on boats.
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| Just another lazy day on Koh Tao |
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| Breakfast at my resort |
So after wrapping up there, I just hung out waiting for Hilde to finish up her course, and had another super quiet night. It was really nice to be able to get to a place where you could just chill out, enjoy a nice dinner and not worry about the huge parties that most of the other places in Thailand offered up until that point, and was a much needed break for the body. I decided to try and continue the relaxed times by organizing my dive schedule so that I had early mornings and wouldn't be tempted to go out and find some late night shenanigans like usual. Hilde was finishing up her Open Water course, and wasn't too sure if she was going to do her advanced or not, but was enjoying the place enough that she booked into it, so we continued to remain roomies over the next few days, which was also a lot easier on the budget, since the bungalow we had cost $14 a night, but with splitting it, $7 a night is pretty decent for accommodations, right on the beach.
So I was up fairly early the next day, and off to begin the theory part of my Open Water course. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was actually only one of 2 people in the course, which is a great thing about Bans Dive Shop, as they have so many instructors on staff that you get some fairly intimate courses being offered, as opposed to my previous course where there was 1 instructor and 20 students. I had a nice Thai woman named Fai as my instructor, and found that she wasn't too concerned with the theoretical part of the course, more of the practical side, so we barely even cracked the book, we just did the quizzes and discussed the answers. I found that after not having looked at the first few chapters in 11 years that I had pretty much forgotten everything but no worries. We finished off the quizzes, and since I already had 2 dives, and required 4, I had the rest of the day off while the other student went out and did his 2 first dives, so I just had to sit around and read a bit and finish off some homework. Again, another pretty quiet evening, just went for dinner, sat on the beach a bit, had a beer, and off to the room to sleep.
The next day was my earliest start yet, as I had to be at the dive shop by 7:30 am, so it was up early, and wandering around trying to find a place to get some food, but most of the places aren't open until 8 am, so I was stuck getting some chocolate and pieces of fruit from the Seven 11. Then it was on to the shop, pickup all our gear, and head out on the boat. Koh Tao is ridiculously packed with divers, and Bans was no different, as the big boat hauling us out had probably 60 some divers, and there was another 10 large boats with similar amounts of people all heading out at this time. We arrived at our first location, did some prep work, and then it was time to suit up and get out in the water. Something about putting all that gear on and jumping into the water, preparing to go underneath into an unfamiliar region is quite a rush! So we get all gathered up in our small group, and are ready to descend. We get down to our depth of 18 m, and get relaxed and ready to do some of the exercises we need to do, including buoyancy control, communications, and navigation. Since it was my first dive in quite sometime, I found that I was a bit nervous and breathing a bit more intensely than I should have. This eventually lead to us having to end the dive a bit earlier, as I was the lowest on oxygen...sorry to the other guys! But we ended up spending about 44 minutes under the water, and swam around some of the nice coral and saw some interesting fish and plant species.
I had popped some of the ear medication and didn't have any problems equalizing, so that was a relief. After we got out of the water and back on the boat, we discussed a few more things, and were off to the next site to do our next dive. 1 hour later we were back in the water for our last dive of the course, and this time I was able to control my breathing a lot better, and we all managed to stay in the water for 55 minutes, so it was definitely an improvement. After touring around and just having a fun dive, we were back in the boat to sign off on our log books and back to shore. We had a quick lunch and then had to finish up the final exam and 2 quizzes, and then the course was all wrapped up. I was beginning my Advanced the next day, and had to consider what 2 optional dives I wanted to do, so that we could get the equipment all booked up. The next day was meant to be a super full day, as we had class time in the morning, and then had 3 dives to do in the afternoon. The awesome thing about advanced is that you really get to branch out a lot more on your diving skills, as you get to perform a deep dive to 30 m, another navigation dive, and a night dive for your 3 basic dive skills, and then have a list of another 5 or 6 optional dives to select 2 from. So I had another pretty quiet night in preparation for the upcoming full day. Hilde was off doing her night dive that evening, so I waited for her to return until 9 pm to head out for dinner, and then back to sleep by 11 pm, and another day of sobriety and relaxation in the books!
The next day was a super long and exhausting day, but it went by pretty quickly. We were finished up with the books by lunch time, and out on the boat by 1 pm to head out to perform our deep dive. My advanced course ended up only being one other guy, as with the previous course, so it was definitely another intimate course, and Fai ended up being my instructor for that course as well. I had decided that for the next day I would do the underwater photography dive, and the underwater vehicle dive for my optional dives (you know, those propelled vehicles that they use in James Bond movies to get around...sweet stuff!), but first we had to knock off the other 3 dives. One of the dangers of diving deep is the potential for nitrogen narcosis (where too much Nitrogen gets absorbed into your bloodstream due to the depth and pressure, and it actually causes you to become intoxicated. To test you for this, the instructor prepares a set of a few exercises to test your coherence level. I didn't have any problems, although it was interesting to note that the one exercise had me see a bag of snacks, and I had to remember what they were and the colour, but due to the depth, the colour of the bag was a brown, yet once Fai put her flashlight on it, you could see it was actually red. But yeah no problems with the deep dive, on the narcosis side of things, or the equalization of the ears, so all good!
When you're that deep down, any sort of paranoia is also a very bad thing, and since I do have some bad anxiety, I was a bit worried that I might have some issues, but no such luck, so all went well. After doing a few of the exercises, we just swam around and spotted some wildlife. We saw a few barracudas, a Scorpionfish (one of the most deadliest and ugliest creatures I've ever been up close to), a Jellyfish, and various other uninteresting fish. Due to the depth, you use your oxygen a lot faster, so this dive only lasted 32 minutes, but was one of the best ones yet, since I've never been that far down.
After we wrapped up that dive, it was off to do a navigation dive, which I sucked at pretty badly. I had a roughly drawn map, and had a compass, and was meant to lead the instructor from one point, around a reef and return to the starting point, but I struggled a fair bit with it...it's definitely a lot harder than one would think! I had to get a bit of help to find a landmark I was looking for, but eventually we found it and were able to just wander around and have some more fun diving. We spotted a pretty cool Blue Spotted Ray on this dive, and a White-eyed Moray Eel, and then just the other same fish as previous dives. After this dive it was back to shore to hang out, grab some dinner and work a bit on some of the quizzes and wrap up the final exam for the open water, then relax until the night dive.
Around 6 pm we were on the boat, and on our way out to do our night dive. SCUBA is pretty exciting and fun during the day, but then going out in pitch black darkness is another new dimension of diving. We grabbed our flashlights and did some prep work on the boat before getting geared up and ready to go. We had a group of 4 of us including the instructor, and it's important to have the buddy system when diving at night, so I was paired up with her and had the other two guys following me. We ended up diving for about 42 minutes, but it was probably one of my least favourite dives, as my torch was pretty poor so I didn't really have great visibility, and the one guy behind me kept following too closely and knocking my fins, and I kept thinking I was hitting coral so I would be looking back all the time. It was pretty frustrating but oh well. One really neat thing about the night dive is that if you clap your hands in the black water, and the plankton emits a neon green light, as they become agitated. It's a pretty neat sight. We also ended up seeing another Blue Ray, and some beautiful looking fluorescent coral.
After the dive it was back to town for a late dinner and another quiet night, as I choose to do my 2 remaining dives in the morning, to make sure I didn't become tempted to head out on the town. So up again the next morning at 6:45 am, and off to the dive shop to grab my gear and head out. The first dive of the day was the underwater photography dive, and Fai decided for us to get off at the ship wreck site and tour around there, and then swim off to the next dive location. On our boat there was a mix of advanced and open water divers, so the advanced who chose to perform the ship wreck dive as their optional dive were being dropped off, and Fai decided to combine two in one for us, so it was pretty cool. The visibility was really poor however, and there wasn't much to see, although the ship was a fairly impressive sight. Unfortunately we couldn't actually go inside the ship, as it had too many enclosed chambers and you need special qualifications to go inside it. After wandering around the ship for a bit, we were off to another dive site called Himpeewee.
At Himpeewee, we saw some really cool things, and were able to get some awesome pictures. At this location we were able to see some Damselfish, Banded Coral Shrimp, a Sawblade Shrimp (which was extremely hard to spot and get a good photo of, since they are quite rare around Koh Tao now), some Parrotfish, and Rabbitfish. Eventually we had to get back to the boat, but we still had enough air to continue under the water, while another group of divers who were low on air had to swim on surface which is much more difficult. So we had a little race with them, as their instructor had spotted Fai and I underneath them swimming for the same boat, and tried to beat us.
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| They drew a character beside each instructors name..I figured it was meant to resemble the pupil, so here I am! |
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| Bombs away |
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| Fai hugging the cannon of the warship |
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| Yay for oil rigs underwater |
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| Butterflyfish |
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| Hanging out on the Anti Aircraft Gun |
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| Many fish under the sea |
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| Sawblade Shrimp |
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| Racing the other divers to the boat |
After getting back to the boat, we were off to the next and final dive location with our Bombardier DPVs. I found the thing surprisingly hard to drive in a straight line, as I later found out that my weight belt had shifted on me and it was causing me to be pulled off to one the one side, so I was always having to over correct. They were a fun little toy though, and we drove around a bit of an obstacle course, and then cruised around the reef and other divers. Since we still had the camera from the earlier dive, we were also able to take some photos and videos of the experience, which was good fun. After the final dive, it was back to the shop to finish up some paperwork and get my logbook all finished up, and now I'm an Advanced Open Water diver, which should open a fair bit of new dive possibilities while I'm in S.E Asia :)
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| Nemo |
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| Motoring around |
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| Hey Shrimp! |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeWNtAI-RnU&feature=related
So after the course was all wrapped up, it was time to just lounge around the beach for a few hours, and relax for the day. That night we went out for some dinner and some celebration drinks, but didn't have too crazy of a night. We figured the next day would be our last night in Koh Tao, and were kind of saving up for that, plus I was pretty tired from the early morning diving that day.
The next day we caught up on some sleep and wandered out for a late breakfast, then I wanted to go find some WiFi and a coffee, plus check out the gym to see if it was any good. I ended up finding the gym and popping in just to quickly see what the facilities and rates were like, and thought that Hilde was going to stay outside and wait for me for 2 minutes, but then I came out and found she had left, so I lingered around for a bit and finally got a hold of her, and found out she thought I was going to actually stay at the gym so she left. I then found this tiny little French restaurant and saw they had WiFi so I decided to wander inside and get a coffee. I found that the place hadn't actually opened yet, but the Frenchman who owned it was kind enough to get me a coffee nevertheless. We ended up having a conversation in French for about an hour or so, and I found out that he was waiting for his menus to finish being printed and would be actually open in a few days, and that no one had stopped by his place yet. I asked him if he would still be able to make dinner that night if we stopped by and he said he would be able to, so I figured it would be good to support this new business.
After a few coffees, I had gotten a hold of a guy who owned a dive shop on the island, that my cousin Sheena had met several years earlier, and she had told me to stop by his shop. I had gotten his phone number and touched base with him, and he told me to stop by his shop for a beer or two that evening. So I checked out on the internet where they were roughly located and used my crude Koh Tao map to sort out a walking route to the place. I grabbed Hilde and asked if she wanted to come for a walk, and she agreed to tag along, so we were off. Rather than going up the main highway, I figured a walk along the scenic coast would be a bit nicer, but I also thought it wouldn't take a terribly long time or be too arduous...well wow was I wrong. We ended up walking up some pretty steep slopes and meandering along the coast for over 2 hours before we ended up back on the main highway, being lost and unsure of where to actually find the resort where I thought that the guy's shop was. So I give him a call and tell him I'm by a place called Ruby Red on the main highway, and he keeps telling me to meet him at some other place that I don't recognize the name of. After some describing back and forth where we are exactly, the guy figured out that I was on Koh Tao and that he was actually at his other shop on Koh Samui! So after some chuckling about this, we ended up not being able to meet up.
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| Talk about a quiet beach |
So Hilde was giving me a pretty hard time since I had made her take such a long and tough walk to get to a place and find out that we weren't even on the right island, but she took it pretty well. We ended up just finding a restaurant for a beer, and then grabbing a taxi back to our resort to grab a shower and head over to Oh Frenchy for dinner. We arrived fairly late, and I was worried that he might not be preparing food, since he still wasn't even open, and I had told him we would be back by about 7 pm, but got there around 9 pm. Fortunately, he was still sitting in his cafe and was glad to have us in for the first meal his restaurant would serve. They had a pretty small menu, but the food was fantastic. I ended up having some delicious duck, while Hilde had a Tuna Tartare steak. The guy was a really great cook, which was a bit surprising, as he didn't have any background in cuisine before quitting his job in France and moving to Thailand. He also had his cute 17 year old daughter there helping him for a few months, and I later found out that she did a fair bit of the cooking as well.
So after having a few drinks and dinner there, we said our goodbyes and we wandering by looking for one last spot for a nightcap, when a girl on the street pulled us into the bar she was working for, offering cheap buckets, and we decided to pop in there for a drink. We ended up meeting a few pretty cool Finns (who I had to show my Helsinki Newspaper article to), some Swedes, and a few other Dutchies. The Dutch guys were having a great time sucking back the laughing gas, as this bar offered shots of laughing gas...yes Thailand offers pretty much anything! We ended up hanging out there for a bit longer than one drink, and actually got a little drunk for the first time since New Years....yes a good long sober stretch! On the walk to the next bar we actually passed by a street vendor who was wearing a pretty sweet hat, check it out!
We ended up getting to the main bar too late, as they were already shut down, so we just went back to the room and crashed for the night. The next day we were both feeling a bit hungover, and didn't really feel like heading to the mainland that day, so we decided to book our tickets to Bangkok for the next day and then just lounge around for the day. I was feeling pretty lazy and out of shape, so I figured I would just go for a day at the gym, so I wandered down there and had a pretty awesome workout. It was pretty great to get back into the gym for a change. After the workout, I just wandered back to my favourite French cafe, to have another long chat with the owner, as it was another great spot to practice my French. After a few cups of coffee, it was off to have a shower and relax for a bit on the beach. Then back to O'Frenchy for our last meal of Koh Tao. The food was so so good there again, that I actually ended up ordering two main courses because I just couldn't get enough. We ended up meeting a few more French people that stopped by for a French drink called Ricard, so we tried some of it as well...it was a fairly interesting liquor, but kind of tasty. After spending a few hours there, it was back to the room for one last night, and time to pack up for Bangkok.
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| The things street vendors wear |
We ended up getting to the main bar too late, as they were already shut down, so we just went back to the room and crashed for the night. The next day we were both feeling a bit hungover, and didn't really feel like heading to the mainland that day, so we decided to book our tickets to Bangkok for the next day and then just lounge around for the day. I was feeling pretty lazy and out of shape, so I figured I would just go for a day at the gym, so I wandered down there and had a pretty awesome workout. It was pretty great to get back into the gym for a change. After the workout, I just wandered back to my favourite French cafe, to have another long chat with the owner, as it was another great spot to practice my French. After a few cups of coffee, it was off to have a shower and relax for a bit on the beach. Then back to O'Frenchy for our last meal of Koh Tao. The food was so so good there again, that I actually ended up ordering two main courses because I just couldn't get enough. We ended up meeting a few more French people that stopped by for a French drink called Ricard, so we tried some of it as well...it was a fairly interesting liquor, but kind of tasty. After spending a few hours there, it was back to the room for one last night, and time to pack up for Bangkok.
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| mmmm delicieux! |
The next day we were up and ready to head off to Bangkok. We grabbed our taxi in the morning, and arrived at the pier to grab our luxurious boat ride to Chumpwon. The boat ride was actually really choppy and several people became quite sea sick on it, as it was cruising fairly fast and getting some pretty good air off some of the waves. When we finally arrived, I had to avoid some of the vomit in the aisles to get off the boat, as apparently someone couldn't quite make it to the toilet in time! So we get off and have to walk across probably the longest pier I've ever seen. Like seriously, they couldn't have parked the boat any further from the shore than possible! So we hang out there for an hour or so before boarding the bus for Bangkok. The bus took us another 8 hour or so and we arrived in the Khao San Rd area, which I'm fairly familiar with from a previous trip to Bangkok. Hilde knew of a cheap guesthouse on the road parallel to Khao San that was fairly cheap, so we ended up finding that place and booking a room.
We were pretty tired from the long journey, but decided to grab some dinner and then head over to Khao San Road for some beers and to check out the sights. Dinner was a stop at BK since I hadn't had any fast food in ages, and was craving a bit. I decided to make a monstrous burger out of a Chicken Tendercrisp sandwich, and a Double Whopper with Cheese....it was awesome but terrible for my health of course! We ended up settling into a place that had some cheap beers and met a couple who had a giant bag of insects, so they were sharing those with us. The insects were considerably smaller than the giant scorpion my friend Dan had bought for me several years earlier on Khao San Rd so they went down a bit easier. After finishing up there, we decided to stop by a fairly rowdy place where a bunch of people were dancing on chairs, so we settled in there and met a few new people, including some old single guy who had two Asian women flirting with him a bit, which was getting him quite excited. It ended up that they were actually a mother and daughter, so we hung out with them for awhile and had some good laughs. We also ended up meeting some Italian dudes who were kind of creepy, but Hilde liked them, so they hung out with us. After awhile Hilde wanted to go check out the nightclub, so we popped in there, but it was super dead so we just wandered back around to a few more pubs, before going back to the club. It was super packed by this point, and a lot more fun, but I was already getting pretty tired, so we just hung out there for 30 minutes or so maybe, and then went back to the hotel for the night.
The next day was pretty quiet, as we just hung out using the WiFi for quite awhile. I managed to get a hold of my Brazilian friends Henrique and Nick, who I had met in Montenegro earlier on my trip, and found out that they were in Chiang Mai and heading off to do some trekking, which I was really interested in. I figured I would be up there in the next day or two, and made plans to meet up with them eventually, and head off to Laos with them. We then just wandered down to Khao San for some massages (without happy ending), and then I tried one of those funky fish spas, where they have a bunch of skin eating fish that munch on your feet and legs....it's quite an interesting experience. So after the massages we just grabbed some dinner and decided to make a bit of a party night out this night, so we ended up wandering down to Khao San again, and ended up back at the bar where people were dancing on chairs again. They had a pretty good 2 for 1 cocktail special, so I figured we should grab some Long Island Iced Tea buckets...well that ended up being a rough mistake, as they were so damn strong. They must have put about 12 shots in there, because when they finally hit, wow were we drunk. We saw quite a few of the same ppl from the previous night that were again at the same place, including the mother and daughter, and this one hot babe who was wearing some neon framed ray bans with clear lenses, and I liked her look, so I decided to go get my own pair of neon frames with clear lenses, as I had seen some earlier on the walk to Khao San.
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| Partying in Bangkok |
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| Hilarious mother |
So I ran off to get these glasses, and found a pair of neon orange ones, bartered the guy down to a good price ($3) and ran off to the bar with them. We ended up hanging out there for quite a few drinks and then wandered over to the nightclub again, when the Long Islands really hit hard....we had maybe another 2 beers and then had to go grab a late night snack from McDees. When I arrived there, one Aussie guy was outside and we started chatting a bit and he said “hey mate, how's your eyes?” and poked me in the eye! At this point I realized that the frames didn't have any lenses at all, but it took me over 2 hours to realize that ha ha! So we just grab some food and go back to the room, and wow was it ever spinning. I didn't get ill, but Hilde did during the night, so we learned our lesson to not mess with the Long Island buckets. We ended up sleeping in past check out time, but no one from the hotel bothered us, so we figured we would just stay one more night there and look into leaving the next day. We just lounged around for most of the day, not really feeling like doing much, and looked into a few prices and options for heading up to Chiang Mai. Our hotel had a travel desk, but it seemed like their prices were a bit higher, and Hilde found a cheaper place down the block. We decided to go for dinner and then book a ticket for the next evening via bus, but after dinner we found that all the bus tickets were sold out for the next day, damn! We checked everywhere, and every place said the same thing. So we just decided to hang out and have a pretty quiet night and try and figure out what to do next.
Hilde was kind of running low on time, and figured that by the time she got to Chiang Mai and did some trekking, then got back to Bangkok, it would be a bit too tight for time, and I wanted to continue north, so we booked separate trips for the following day. I managed to find a cheap flight up to Chiang Mai the next evening, and found out where the Brazilians were staying so I could go and meet up with them. We also couldn't get a room for another night at our guesthouse, so we had to go wander around for a new place, and ended up at a place called Ben's Guesthouse, which ended up being a really nice place, with the most comfortable bed I've had in the last few weeks, so it was good to find a place like that. The price was about 800 baht a night, which was 250 more baht than the previous place we had stayed at, but still pretty good. After checking in there, we just hung out for the rest of the afternoon, not really getting up to much, as Hilde was still feeling pretty ill from the Long Island night. We just had a quiet night watching some Breaking Bad, and relaxing.
The next day I had to arrange for my airport bus, and sort out a few things, including visa photos, obtaining American money, and doing a bit of last minute shopping. I found an automatic visa photo booth just down the block from where we were staying, and took several takes before I had some printed off, then realized I was smiling in the photos and that they would likely be rejected ha ha, so I had to spend another $4 to get a second set made up. I then spotted a Casio watch that my mate Wes had shown me back in Latvia, that had this awesome LED light display, that made for a little party on the wrist. Wes was always bragging and showing off his sweet watch, but recently he had lost it in the ocean while swimming in Hawaii, so when I found the same watch, I couldn't resist buying it and putting up a taunting video onto his Facebook page. Eventually it was time to pack up, say my goodbyes to Hilde, and head off to the Bangkok airport. I had booked my flight with Bangkok airways, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they had a very nice airport lounge, even though they were a discount airline. I enjoyed some nice time in there before my flight, then was off to Chiang Mai.
I arrived in Chiang Mai fairly late, as I did have a delay in my flight time, and managed to find a taxi to my guesthouse. I didn't realize it, but as we were leaving there were a few people still waiting at the airport for taxis, and my taxi driver mentioned to me that Chiang Mai taxis stop running around 11 pm, so he would be the last one at the airport, and that those people would end up having to walk to wherever they were going, unless they had a pickup...damn that sucks! I was dropped off at the hostel where the Brazilians were staying, but wasn't too sure how to get a hold of them, but as I was checking in, Henrique came wandering through the lobby and grabbed me, and told me that we were off to the bar for awhile ha ha. They had booked me a ticket for Laos the next morning, so it was going to be an early morning, especially since I was going to get up at 5:30 am to try and stream some NFL playoffs on my computer. We ended up meeting a few Canadian girls that they had befriended in Chiang Mai, including one girl who was from Saskatchewan. The other 3 girls were from BC, and we ended up heading to the Reggae Bar for a bit, but it was pretty tame from the previous night according to the guys, so we just found some outdoor lounge type bar, and hung out there for a few hours. It was a fun chat catching up with the guys about their adventures, including their terrible time in India, and their trekking stories from Nepal. We all ended up hanging out until about 2 am, when we made our way back to the hostel.
When we got back to the hostel, I had to have a good laugh as I realized that the hostel pool was actually shaped like a penis, but no one else had really noticed it. There also happened to be two very drunk people swimming in the pool, even though it was meant to be closed, and I'm quite sure they were likely going to have sex in there, but who knows. I got back to the room and crashed for the night, then got up around 6 am to head downstairs and start streaming some NFL playoffs. I was lucky enough to catch the Saints vs 49ers game, and wow what a match! That was easily one of the most entertaining games I've ever seen. After that game finished, it was still around 8 am, and Henrique and Nick weren't up yet, so I wandered over to grab my free breakfast and hang out until they awoke. We were meant to be leaving at 9 am, and they showed their faces around 8:40 am. Our van showed up about 15 minutes late, and in true SE Asia fashion, was far too small for the amount of people and the size of our bags to fit properly. It was bad enough leaving the hostel with the amount of people we had in the van, and then of course we managed to pick up two more people and cram them in....the SE Asians are always keen to get as much money from one vehicle as possible. We took the ride up towards Chiang Rai, with one quick pitstop for some food, and then onwards. We ended up stopping at a place called the White Temple, and wow, that is easily one of the most amazing Temples I've ever seen. The place was so incredible, and had only begun construction in the 1990s, so it was a very modern age establishment. The pictures hopefully do it some justice. One other very interesting feature of the place was the Fresco inside the prayer room, as it was a modern aged look at the path to Heaven or salvation for Buddhists. It had various pop culture characters painted on it, such as Darth Vader, Spiderman, Sailor Moon, etc. which was a very unique way of looking at the modern perils that face a Buddhist on their path to righteousness and salvation...or so I think...I could be completely full of it and not know what I'm talking about, since I actually don't really know anything about Buddhism ha ha. So after perusing the Fresco and spotting so many unique and modern characters, we wandered around for another 10 minutes and then were back to the van and on to our final stop for the night.
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| White Temple wow! |
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| Whiskey is the Devil! |
We arrived in a small town called Chiang Kong I believe, which is right by the Laos border, and stopped at a guesthouse for the night. It was a pretty simple place but nice enough, and we ended up sorting out our visa papers for Laos, which included the question “Race”, to which Nick answered “Human”...the Laos really want to know who's coming into their country! I also found that the cost for a Canadian visa was the most expensive at $42 CAD!! That's the second time now on this trip that our visa has cost more than any other country. So after getting the paperwork done and having a laugh at two Aussie guys who were in our van and found out that the rest of their group that had all their tickets and paperwork, were staying at a completely different guesthouse, we just hung around our room for awhile, meeting a few girls that were staying next to us, including two Israelis and 2 cute Canadian girls, and an English dude named Paul who was teaching English in Vietnam for the last few years, and who had an obsession with Valium, as he was popping them all day in the van ride and had a hilarious Valium dream episode where he started grabbing at air violently. Anyways, we hung there for awhile, then wandered in for dinner and I ended up playing some cards with a group of Irish people that were in our van, and made friends with them.
They were all moving to Australia to work, but were travelling around SE Asia for a few weeks before heading there. We had a few beers and played a game called pass the Guiness Poo ha ha....crazy Irish lads. So after playing some cards, I just wandered back to the room, and chatted with the Brazilians and one Israeli girl about the potential for peace in the Israeli areas, and she was quite adamant that it would never happen, and was a bit worked up that I even asked the question...interesting insight anyways. I guess we were all chatting quite loudly, as the next morning, an older American girl down the way was all grumpy about being kept up late at night by her neighbours, but ah well, we were in bed by 11:30 pm anyways. This night was one of the coldest nights I've seen since Eastern Europe in November, it was hard to believe how cold a place like Laos gets! I think it must have been about 3 or 4 degrees at most, and I had to put on my onesie pyjama outfit, plus a blanket just to keep warm.
So the next day we have some breakfast, where I found the Canadian girls to be miserable and tired since it was so cold the previous night and they didn't have any cold weather clothing since they thought SE Asia would be warm everywhere, poor girls. After breakfast we all just waited for our van ride to the border, and were the last ones to fit into a van. We were dropped off and found that there was a huge lineup waiting to get boats or to get their paperwork done, not too sure what they were waiting for, but anyways, our guy who drove us just pulled us past everyone and onto a boat. Nick was put on another boat, and had our lunch, so we were thinking we were going to starve, but it ended up that the boats were just driving 3 minutes across the river to where the Laos border was. We arrived on the other side before anyone else from our group/guesthouse, and found the guy with our passports immediately, then waited in the huge ass line to try and get our visas. Somehow a bunch of the people from our group ended up in the front of the line to get the visas, but none of them had their passports or paperwork, and thought they would be getting them from the Laos passport office, which lead to massive confusion and a huge line of people waiting for nothing. Eventually they all found the guy who had our passports, and by this time we had managed to fight our way up the line enough to drop off our forms....all in all, it was a complete chaotic mess, and it took us about 1.5 hours to get our visas sorted out, when it really should have taken at most 30 minutes....not the best organization, but oh well. So we waited for the rest of everyone in our growing group to get their visas, and then wandered over to find some cash machines.
I had looked in the bank at the exchange rates and found that $1 US was equal to 8000 Lao Kip, so I stopped at the machine, and plugged in 800,000 Kip, and the machine spit out the money, but then said I had a balance of 0 kip left in my account! At this point I started to think I had misread the exchange rate and had just pulled out all my remaining money, but then rechecked and found I was okay, and that the machine just couldn't show the proper balance. Later on Mike, one of the Irish lads, ended up mistaking the currency exchange and took out only 20,000 Kip, which is the equivalent of 2 Euros, thinking that it was enough money to last him awhile ha ha. So after grabbing some cash and breakfast beers (Beer Lao which is really good!), we found the TukTuks and were driven over to the river where we would be boarding our slow boat to travel down the Mekong and take us towards Luang Prabang. We hopped aboard the boat, and found that the seats were all old car seats, which made for a surprisingly comfortable ride. We had been told at our previous guesthouse that we should buy cushions for the ride, as the seats were meant to be very uncomfortable, but that definitely wasn't the case with this boat!
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| Welcome to Laos! |
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| The Mekong |
So we boarded up, and grabbed our seats and were off for a leisurely ride down the Mekong to Pak Beng. The boat was an awesome experience, as they had a little bar on there, and it was a great place to socialize and meet new people. I ended up hanging out mostly with the Irish group, going round for round on the beers with Mike, and sharing some laughs and stories with the rest of his group, which included 2 girls by the names of Brona and Fiona, and then 2 other lads named Sean and Darren. They were a super cool group and we all got along quite great. I also ended up meeting an English couple and their friend Laura (who would later take a keen interest in me). We enjoyed the slow meandering ride, with various stops along the river to pickup supplies from local villagers, and were able to see rural Lao people fishing along the river. It was also interesting to see the high speed boats that would take people up the river, going about 60 to 70 km/hr. Everyone on those boats had to wear helmets, and we had heard a statistic that 1 in every 6 of the high speed boats have a crash! They were pretty fun to watch. I remember having a guy working for me in Northern Canada 2 years ago who told me about his high speed boat trip, and when they handed him a helmet, he said he didn't need it, and the boat driver was then begging him to lend him his helmet since he wasn't using it...that gives you an idea of how crazy those boats are!
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| Hanging on the slow boat |
After about 8 hours on the boat, we arrived at our destination for the night, which I later found out was called Pak Beng. We arrived on shore, were greeted by tons of locals trying to sell us rooms, and settled on one place that was a decent price. I think it was $10 a night for a room with hot shower and 3 beds. That would have been perfect for Henrique, Nick, and I, but they had met a 3rd Brazilian named Mauro on the boat, who also wanted to stay with us, so Mauro and I just ended up splitting the room, and Henrique and Nick grabbed a separate room. We dropped off our bags, and were greeted outside by one of the owners who was shoving a clear Lao liquor called Lao Lao down mine and Henrique's throats. I hadn't known until 2 days before that Nick actually never drinks, so when the guy offered him a shot, he just passed it on to Henrique. We also had to settle our bill for the hotel and for breakfast the next morning in either Lao Kip or Thai Bhat. It was interesting to find that the lady would ask for an amount for the room in Kip that was more than she was asking for in Baht when I did the exchange rate, and that the breakfast, the rate she was charging in Baht was more than the rate in Kip, so I paid each bill in different currencies to take advantage of the discrepencies. Who said I'm not smart right?
After settling our bills we wandered into a cafe across the street, used some WiFi there, where I tried to locate us on Googlemaps and check us in on Facebook, but neither of the sites could actually figure out where the hell we were....that's how off the beaten path we were, awesome! I found that the Laos dishes are very small portions compared to what I'm used to eating, so I ended up having to order two plates of food, one of which came with the obligatory stray hair...eww. The food was quite excellent though, and we all ate vegetarian dishes, as I have been trying to eat more vegetarian food in this new year. After dinner and a few drinks, we were all pretty tired and didn't really feel like venturing out to find the local nightclub or pub, so we just settled into bed early and got a good night's sleep. I'll continue the rest of the story in the next blog.
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| Cute Laos family |
Cheers,
Rye
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