9:53am Monday, January 15, 2007
A few notes…the pictures that are up are slightly out of order you may have noticed. This is because Mo had her camera set on Canadian time and I had mine set on Japanese time, so there was a 14 hour difference between the two. That’s why they look a little bit out of order, cuz they’re in order of dates, but set at different times. Another thing, this is by far the longest blog I’ve ever written, so I hope you have a few days. Remember this is also for me too, so that when my kids, grandkids whatever ask me to tell them a story I can just give them the link to this site. LOL
And the last thing….
ATTENTION: I do not edit any of my blogs, sorry it’s just not worth my time. I know that there have probably been some horrendous spelling errors or grammatical errors, but most of the time I’m just trying to bang this thing out as quick as I can and there is no way I’m going to go back over it, so no one can from this moment forth complain or judge me for any of the above mentioned errors as they would be in breach of this contract. (see that was a run on sentence).
Alright,
Thailand time. I’m finally at work after getting over a horrendous stomach flu last week. It put me out for 4 days, Tuesday through Friday. I was feeling a bit better Friday but decided to milk the whole not going to work thing as I knew I wouldn’t have any classes, and here I am Monday morning and what’s that…no classes. Anyway, Thailand…I just went to label the pictures and realized that after uploading Mo’s that there are more than 700 pics…so that is not gonna happen. I figured I’ll just write a really long blog and you guys can try and figure out the pics by yourselves. As well, Mo’s are at the end, so all of a sudden the trip will slightly begin over again with less pics of Mo and more pics of me. Here we go….
We left Fukushima the night of Wednesday December 20th. We had drinks with Alex and Pete who were also taking the midnight bus with us. The bus left Fukushima at 12:40am and arrived at Narita around 6am. Our flight wasn’t till 4pm and I know you’re say…why Brent, WHY? Well, there are only two buses to Narita from the Fuk and the other leaves at 10:30am and gets there at….you guessed it….4pm…slightly problematic. So we had to brave it out. Why no bullet train? It’s a little bit expensive and we would have had to take the bullet train to Tokyo (2 hours) and then another train to the airport (an hour) and we would have had to carry my bag, and Mo’s 2 bags the whole way (annoying). The bus just allowed us to toss the bags underneath and chill out. Alex and Pete were in Terminal 1 (the international one) while we were in Terminal 2 because we were flying out on JAL (a Japanese airline). So we chilled in the airport for 10 hours…it was a joyous occasion. I ran into some JETs I knew from the prefecture…that was all there is really to say about the entire ordeal.
The flight was nice, 7 hours, a bit cramped but TV screens in the back of each chair with a nice selection of movies and games. So it wasn’t too bad. We landed in Bangkok…there are pics…some of mine are dark cuz I haven’t read the book on my camera so I don’t know how to take good night pics yet, so most places when we were out at night we used Mo’s camera. Okay, now when we walked out of the gate, I was immediately swarmed by tons of thai people asking if I needed a ride somewhere or asking me to come and sign up for something. I saw a bunch of other people there so I thought it was something that I had to do. Notice that I said I and not “we,” no one said anything to Mo, just me. Apparently I look like a sucker. Mo dragged me away. We found some cabs and there was a nice line where u tell the woman where u want to go, she writes it on a sheet and it’s a guaranteed metered taxi, which I had read was important. Now the map that we had, seemed of small scale and placed our hotel like “5 MINUTES FROM THE AIRPORT,” ya, think again. A 25 minute cab ride through what seemed like the most intense thai ghetto you’ve ever seen finally ended with us in front of this very nice hotel, check the site for room pictures. We immediately went to bed as we had landed at around 9, messed around in the airport for a bit and it was now 11 or so and we had a flight at 6:30 the next morning. We crashed out, got up at around 4:30 or something like that and booked for the airport.
We hit our flight on time and in an hour (we both slept the whole flight) we landed in Ko Samui. As we were coming in towards the island all I could think of was that it was just like a movie, I know I know, movies imitate real life, real life does not imitate movies…or do they? But anyway, the island was just like nothing I had actually, in reality seen before, all tropical and everything. Just amazing! We landed on this little tiny airstrip and then stairs were wheeled up to the plane and we all just walked down off the plane onto the tarmac. I’ve never done anything like that before. After that we climbed in what looked like these trolley cars on wheels that were driven by an upgraded screw driver. They drove down this little road beside the landing strip and stopped beside small grass hut. I wondered what it was until I was a sign that was wood and had “Arrivals” carved into it. This was where we got our baggage. Another screw driver driven trolley cart showed up and started to unload our bags onto the conveyer belt from the early 1940s and soon we were off into the wild blue yonder. As we exited the open air grass hut I was immediately swarmed again, you need taxi, you need taxi, you need taxi. Finally we took one, I payed 500 baht, which after being there I little while realized was ridiculous. (100 baht =’s 3 bux, roughly) The first taxi ride was INSANE to say the least. You realize quickly that the whole “there are no rules in Thailand” really means, THERE ARE NO RULES IN THAILAND. The cabbies do like 140km/h down any road pull out to pass on a curve with cars coming towards them….it’s nuts!! Within about 15 min we were out front of the hotel and it was about 8:30am. We checked in and got into our room. It was the most amazing room I have ever seen. With a little moat/pool outside (I think it’s a moat, others who will remain nameless thought it was a pool), see the pictures as they will give you a better idea than I can. So we went and had breakfast at the restaurant in the resort that was right beside the pool and the ocean, after that we went for a “romantic” walk on the beach. Mo got some black crap on her shoe tried to wipe it off, it ended up being something like oil or slime or whatever and she then proceeded to wipe it on me. I could feel the love the entire time. We washed up afterwards and headed out to find booze. We found a string of bars and some convenient stores. So we scored a bottle of wine and 6 big beers, you know, like 40s. The bottles were 50 baht each….SCORE! Although they weren’t that good, LESS OF A SCORE! We went back to the resort and chilled outside our room on the sweet patio by the moat and got into the beers, keep in mind it was about 1pm. We talked, professed our love, blah blah blah. I ended up passing out around 5 or 6pm and slept till about 10. In the meantime, Mo went to the ocean and drank some more and had a long bath, with more drinking involved. I woke up, she went to bed…and I watched TV a bit and then crashed again myself. I know, it wasn’t much but it seriously was the perfect start to a lazy vacation.
The second day we got up at some time…you have to remember it’s been almost a month since this happened and a lot went down in between our 2nd day in Ko Samui and now. I’m pretty sure we just lazed around the resort all day, had our buffet breakfast, blah blah. That night we ventured out to Harry’s Bungalows and Restaurant which was next door. The area we were in…Mae Nam was on the northern tip of the island which made for a good view from the beach and meant that the area around us wasn’t too packed with touristy things. There were 3 restaurants directly outside the resort and about a 10 min walk away was a stretch of about 6 different bars. So, Harry’s was the closest and it was dead. Actually everything was dead until the 25th. We were the only people in there and they had some intriguing glasses to say the least (see pics). They also had this old thai guy playing all the classics (English classics) and we eventually got drunk enough that I was like…hey I want pictures of us with this guy. We had been clapping after all of his songs etc. So after getting very very drunk at Harry’s and it being empty I asked our not too pleased all night waitress if they were closing and if we should go and she was like YES! So, we were done at Harry’s for the night, but that didn’t stop us. We moved over to Luna Hut. You’ll see this place in the pictures, it had like white wood all around it and was kinda set up on a pond. This became like our Thailand Snooty Fox. The food was really really good, the people were really really nice (more than I can say for Snooty, lol) and it was right in our “backyard.” So we proceeded to get even more drunk, I think I drank every type of thai whiskey that exists and went back and forth from red wine to beer and red wine to beer, while Mo drank girly drinks all night, as her glass from Harry’s definitely shows. We were at Luna Hut till God knows when. There are some pics that I don’t remember taking including the two people that worked at Luna Hut just standing there. Who knows…
Christmas Eve, I imagine we slept in a bit, to deal with a bit of the drinking from the night before. Then we walked into Mae Nam city, it wasn’t really much of a city, more like a single strip with some random vendors, a 7-11 and some guys in taxis. It took about 25 min to walk in and it was a pretty good time. We had seen posters around that said that Chaweng (the major city on the island) had Muay Thai fights on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday nights. So we decided, what better way to spend Christmas Eve in a tropical climate then to go into Chaweng and see grown men beat the crap out of each other in the way which was traditional to the country we were in! Sounds great eh? So as we left the hotel to walk to the major road and try to catch a cab, we saw this couple from the hotel in a jeep and lo and behold they offered us a ride into the city. So we had to sit in the back but it was pretty cool of them. When we got to Chaweng we invited them to dinner, but I don’t think English was their first language and they declined. So we had dinner, checked out some shops and headed towards the Muay Thai “stadium.” Now, there had been trucks driving up and down the main strip in Chaweng that had this recording playing….it was like…. “Supa fight, Supa fight, MUAY THAI at best stadium, Chaweung, get the ticket earlier, get the ticket earlier, don’t forget, it party…Supa fight, Supa fight” It was absolutely hilarious. Anyway, when we got there, there were no cars, no people nothing…so we almost left but a man said go and see, go and see. So we went up to the stadium and this little thai woman with fairly decent English (they all could speak English to some extent, but hers rivaled the English of the manager of our hotel. Anyway, turns out that there had been fights the night before and now the next set of fights were on Christmas Day. We booked tickets for the VIP section, we got to sit on couches, and decided to shop a little. Chaweng was fricken crazy. There were guys on the street with monkeys, boas, and iguanas and as you walked past they tried to put the monkey or whatever on you, then they’d take your picture for 400 baht. I really wanted to get a picture with a monkey and the entire time we were there I kept saying…I am going to get a picture with a monkey, but I never did (insert sad face here). So we spent the night shopping, I bought a man bag and honed my haggling skills. We stopped and had a drink at a bar called the 3 monkies bar and then hopped back on the shuttle. The people that had come with us into the city and came back in the shuttle were all Canadians and they asked us how we had got out of the mandatory Christmas dinner at the hotel…whoops. We had figured the MANDATORY CHRISTMAS DINNER would you know….uhh…be on CHRISTMAS!! But ya, so apparently we missed that. We went back to the hotel and went to bed.
Christmas Day I really don’t think we did much, woke up, had breakfast on the beach, lounged by the pool and got tans, etc. That afternoon we went into Chaweng a little bit early to check out some more shops…as we were walking around…what happens….oh ya….my brand new bag from Thailand BREAKS….like seriously….a bag that I bought from a random vendor in a little town in Thailand didn’t even last a day….what are the chances of that….lol. We tied my bag and at a later date I got the love of my life, center of my universe, apple of my eye seamstress to fix the bag, I think it’s like quadruple stitched. Anyway, we may have bought some more things, I can’t remember, all we did the whole time is look for things to buy other people and on very very rare occasions we actually buy things for ourselves…well, I bought stuff, Mo on the other hand didn’t buy much at all (seriously, I’m not even lying, I know, I know, hard to believe but it’s true, she seriously didn’t buy that much for herself at all, SERIOUSLY!) Anyway, we headed to Muay Thai after dinner and sat down in our VIP seats. The lowest seats were like big wooden stairs like they have at Ivorr Wynne, middle were like the cushioned metal seats, or bar stools at tables closer to the ring, or our seats which were couches that were slightly raised. 4 hours of fights made me glad to have the couch. Once again it was kinda dark, so Mo took most of the pics although I took some sweet videos that I’ll link here once I get them uploaded somewhere.
The first fight, believe it or not was between two kids, like we’re talking 8 year old kids, not kids like, oooo I’m so old and 16 is a kid, no no…straight up kids, like they had taken off their diapers and thrown on Thai boxing shorts. We wondered what kind of establishment we had got ourselves into….IN THAILAND OF ALL PLACES!! So ya, it actually wasn’t that bad, like it wasn’t like a street brawl, the kids were both trained and knew what they were doing so it was like one kid pounding the other kid, but actually the kid in blue kicked the crap outta the kid in red. Mo has pics of them both and I got a video. They went the full 5 rounds, 3 minutes long each, it was really good. After the first fight, this section in the cheap seats called Space Thai began to fill up with Thai people. They really made the whole night. The rest of the place was just filled with random foreigners who didn’t know what the hell was going on and they just kinda sat there and watched. The Thai guys weren’t even sitting in their seats, they were standing beside the ring and yelling at whoever was fighting, go OOOO EEEEEEHHHHHH every time there was a clinch the fighters would knee each other in side. The fighters did get older and then younger again and did watch another pre-teen fight. All in all it was a good night, oh, although, we got there at 9 when it was supposed to start and it actually didn’t start until 10 and that hour in between was boring cuz they showed some movie about Muay Thai that was supposed to be informative but at the same time had techno-tronic beats kicking behind it and it gave more time for the one creepy German dude beside us to stare at Mo, which was delightful. And don’t like at me…him and his buddy were huge and the dude was wearing a complete white linen get-up…you don’t mess with that. Anyway, it ended around 1:30am and we hit a cab back to the hotel and passed out.
The next day (Boxing Day) we had breakfast and sat out in the sun for a few hours, hence the pictures of me all red. After that we headed down the road to the temple that was right near our hotel. It was a beautiful temple although they were doing construction on part of it. There were monks all over the place. I was amazed that even here they had a statue of the king. The Thai king is EVERYWHERE in Thailand, rightfully so, but literally on everything that is built or inside every restaurant, etc there is a painted picture of him or a statue, or something. There is more evidence of this in Bangkok but he was EVERYWHERE. Anyway, it was a beautiful temple. The pictures can describe it better than I can.
The 27th we slept in past breakfast, probably hit Luna Hut or the Resort restaurant for lunch and then hung around outside our room taking random dips in the moat. As we were walking out the door the phone in our room rang. It was my buddy Alex, we had let him know where we were staying as he had decided to randomly travel throughout Thailand by himself for the break. He was in Mae Nam, so we had him take a cab to our hotel and we went to Luna Hut for dinner. We then went out to the random strip of bars after that and proceeded to get proper drunk. We ended up talking to some Thai girls at the bar who taught us some Thai and some dude named Gregory (how I remember that, I don’t know) who did something on a boat and was from Alaska, planning to spend 3 months in Thailand. We chilled and drank until the power went out and we still continued to hang out…the power going out didn’t faze the Thai people at the bar and when we asked why it went out, they didn’t know. All of the locals LOVED Mo… “oh you look Thai, oh you’re so beautiful, Mister your wife is soo beautiful” Everyone felt the need to call her my wife, which was comical and we all know…a little scary…Mo as my wife…AS IF!! LOL, JK Anyway, eventually we went back to the resort and Alex scored a cheap little bungalow on the beach down the street.
The next day, Alex showed up way to early and we told him to shove off. He came back later, we got up and had lunch and then chilled out by the pool, went swimming in the ocean…I think this is the first time I’ve said we went swimming in the ocean or the pool, but we were in both everyday…and I swam, where as Mo kinda stood in it a bit and every once in awhile had me cart her around. We read a bit, blah blah. Alex went back to his place to nap a bit, Mo and I hung out a bit more, then once again we went out to Luna Hut for dinner and once again hit the little strip of bars for drinks and pool. This night got absolutely ridiculous cuz we discovered red bull and whiskey…whoops. There was a little bell to buy the bar drinks (it wasn’t a big bar) and it was pretty much like 4 Thai women just sitting there, we were thinking they were prostitutes…they were fawning over Mo all night again….not that she minded…I’m not gonna lie, I rang the bell a few times. The first time I did it this older woman from the convenience store across the street came over and I obviously let her get a drink and she immediately fell in love with….no not me….obviously….Mo…this is a recurring theme (did I already say that?). This woman from this night on was always waving to us and telling me her literal quote was always “my wife is very beautiful,” then “my girlfriend is very beautiful” she didn’t know how to use “you” so I always had an old woman telling me that her girlfriend was very beautiful and asking me where her girlfriend was. She was a nice woman none the less. One day she saw us walking and she was on her scooter, she stopped and asked if we needed a ride somewhere…like I said, just a very nice woman. Oh, and the 3 people on a scooter thing that’s nothing, we saw like 3 adults holding almost new born babies on one scooter…it was crazy. But I digress…anyway, it turned out that this nice old woman’s daughter worked at Luna Hut and she showed up at the bar we were at…she then developed quite a liking for Alex and we got out of there soon after as Alex did not want to end up with random Thai girls. 2 days after when we saw the girl again she even asked about Alex and had remembered his name….he is a sexy man!
Alex left on the 29th to go back to the mainland as he was leaving on the 1st early in the morning. We slept pretty much all day trying to get rid of the two day hangover. I’m pretty sure that that was a take it easy day, as I don’t have any pics from it and neither does Mo.
Now because of the stuff that we had bought and needed to buy we realized that I needed another bag or we in general needed one and we had realized this early on. So I decided that even though I got a crappy man purse or whatever (it’s just a messenger bag by the way) that I would buy a backpacking bag, because the first night we were in Chaweng I saw these dudes who were just finishing a deal and I was like…how much did u pay for that and the guy was like 1300 baht, which is amazing…but he was like….the guy started out at 3000….so…I was determined. We went into Chaweng to have dinner and then shop. The main street of this place was just filled with random stalls of vendors. If you ever wanted something that had Diesel written on it, this was the place to go. Chaweng was the most tourist friendly/scary place to be. Every time you went in any place you were immediately approached and told what a good deal you would get, blah blah blah, they never stopped. Even restaurants were like this, people stood outside them and tried to give out flyers and tell you how great of an Indian restaurant it was. One guy even went so far as to try to actually pull me into the restaurant…we had seen him a few times and he was joking around but still. Suits was another big thing, tailors were everywhere and right outside the shop they had guys of their own trying to get you in there. I found it strange that they always tried to shake my hand until I did it. Cuz then they don’t let go and you’re forced to listen to the little spiel about how good you’d look in a suit and how much you need one. But anyway, as we walked down the street, who do we run into but Rob (something, it starts with a D) now Rob is from Hamilton and was in the JETs that came over with me. He was placed in Osaka and is the nephew of a one of the higher ups at Taylor Steel that I knew. How weird is that, on the other side of the world, in a random country on a random island on a random street I run into this guy with a few other Osaka JETs. So I said hello, blah blah and we walked on. Later on we ran into them and I asked them if they wanted to have a drink. So we found some bar and went in. We got to talking and apparently they had been in Ko Samui for like 6 days or something. Rob had been out every night and Mo started talking about Lady boys and how she loved drag shows. Well it just so happened that Rob’s crew of about 9 Osaka JETs had been frequenting a lady boy bar just cuz it’s the thing to do in Thailand. He and his friend took us there, we had drinks then watched a terrible drag show with the worst lip syncing I have EVER seen cuz hey….they don’t speak English and they’re lip syncing English songs. After all the lady boys came over and chilled with us and we ended up at a few clubs with them. We actually had to get them into the first club because there was a no lady boy policy unless they were with someone, so all of us with 2 lady boys on each arm marched into this place. We left soon after, beers from that club in hand and to another place. This next place was full, unlike the first. Although these clubs were absolutely massive…open air obviously cuz that’s what everything in Ko Samui was like. It was a pretty good night. Mo sat and chatted with one lady boy while I was dancing around with the other two. Mo was loving the whole night cuz she loves drag queens. By the time we got out of the club and left it was 4:30AM, we did have a lot of fun though.
We were quite the hungover for New Years Eve. We got up late had lunch. This time we actually made it to the MANDATORY Gala. It was really very nice. Although I didn’t take many pictures other than pictures of us, me looking sexy most of the time or us pretending to be wowed by the fireworks. There was a huge stage set up on the beach, Thai dancers, they were cool. Although they had like a duo that sang like all this adult contemporary stuff and I don’t know about you but I hate that stuff in general anyway. You want to throw a band in front of me and have them go at it, cool. I do not want to see a middle aged couple sing “I had the time of my life” in sequins and shiny spandex. But whatever, it was ok. Although they did keep interrupting the music to make kids come up and play games, which were hilarious to watch. Not the games, but the woman singer trying to actually get people to volunteer now that was funny. She was speaking English although I think there was one family that spoke English as a first language so all the other kids spoke different European languages, too funny. Anyway, it was a nice night. We did get to light a lantern that is supposed to symbolize bad luck for the new year floating away. Those huge lanterns just continue to go up…and there were literally hundreds of them in the sky all night. We never saw one come down, they probably were littered in the ocean on the other side of the island. So ya, we eventually headed off to bed around 1 or so. We were beat from the night before.
January 1st we just hung around the hotel and went into Chaweng so I could buy a backpacking bag….finally. We had dinner there and that was about it. Oh, btw, it’s now Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at about 10am. I didn’t finish this whole thing the other day and I just want to get it done and over with now. So ya, bought the bag, had dinner, that was about it.
The last full day that we were in Ko Samui was by far one of the best days all together. We finally rented a scooter (I had been a little bit apprehensive about this, I did explain the driving situation already). But whatever, we got up at around 10, had breakfast and grabbed a scooter from a place beside Luna Hut. It was 6 bux for 24 hours and it cost an extra 2 bux to fill the tank. The gas they had was in liquor bottles…WEIRD. Anyway, we decided we would just jet around the island see some waterfalls, etc. We had a little map and there is one road that goes all the way around the island with some roads to go down etc. It was a blast! We started by looking for a mountain road but missed the turn off so we headed to the west side of the island. From there we headed up towards a waterfall and temple. There were also elephant rides, but that really didn’t appeal to me and Mo didn’t think we had the time if we wanted to see the whole island. We did get pics of tons of elephants though. The first waterfall was a 2km hike, we soon found out and because of Mo’s apparel and the HUGE spiders (that she loves so much) that littered the trail we decided not to make the trek. Instead we hit up the temple. There were some monks, a giant white Buddha, etc etc, all set to the backdrop of thick jungle, very cool. Oh, and when we pulled into the parking lot for this place I almost smashed the scooter into a car…hey I was still getting the hang of it, cut me some slack. The whole time we were on it Mo kept busting out the back seat driving like….c’mon it’s cooler when we go fast…blah blah. By the end of the day I had us zipping around at about 60 or 70 km/h but for the first part I was steady at about 40 to 45. 70 was when we had the thing maxed out. Oh don’t worry Mom’s, Dad’s and Grandparents….we opted not to wear helmets….we had to look pretty.
Anyway, we moved on to the next waterfall. We missed the first turn that said waterfall 1, but soon came to a waterfall 2 sign. We booked up the road and the next thing you know we’re looking at a dirt path. We saw some people on scooters come out from it so decided it was off-road time. We went down this bumpy dirt path for awhile and came to a stop with a restaurant and a few houses (one being purple). There was a huge lake like puddle in the path and after watching others go through it we decided to go for it, little did we know that this would be the easiest of things to come. After winding along this path, we came to a river, well, more like a stream, but whatever, it had planks spanning across it, Mo took pics of me on it on our way back. We did it the first time with both of us on…that was fun. The planks were only about a foot and a half to 2 feet wide. There were two, probably used by a car, but ya, we went across. Next the path split 3 ways. The first way we tried ended in a dead end. The 2nd was such a steep hill that even with just me on the bike we couldn’t get up it. I had to turn the bike around and obviously quick with the cam Mo was there to catch me in the act of trying to turn this god damn bike around on a lovely steep hill. We took the 3rd path…finally…and came to what looked like a barren camp of rebels or something like that with smoking piles of brush everywhere and a little stream. There were some rocks and a sharp drop over them, although we couldn’t get close enough to see over because of the brush etc. There are a few pics from the pirate camp. We then went back out the way we came, following the dirt coloured brick road back to the emerald city that was a normal road. This is where Mo attempted to drive the scooter. She wouldn’t do it by herself and what ended up happening was me on the back reaching around her and actually driving myself. It was comical to say the least. She then decided against trying to drive again. We went back to the Waterfall 1 sign and then went up that road. This time there were not dirt roads or anything and it looked far more touristy. We did get a pic of an ox or water buffalo or something of the sort that was wallowing just off the road. It kept looking at Mo when she was taking the picture and all I remember is her freaking out going…I don’t like that he’s looking at me, I don’t like that he’s looking at me. Finally I slapped her around a bit and she took the pic and we were on our merry way (that was just a joke). This road had taken us to the bottom of the waterfall. There were a few vendors selling random things on the way to the waterfall. There were also people swimming in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall and it was very picturesque. We didn’t swim cuz…we just didn’t want to. Both of us have swam under waterfalls before and we decided that once you do it, you really don’t need to experience the “thrill” again. As we left, again we stopped to Mo could take pics of the elephant trekking that was going on at this waterfall. We then jumped back on the road and soon stopped at a temple. We were still on the west side of the island. It was a pretty cool temple and the pics will show it in detail. We took off from there and headed to the south end of the island.
The south end flew by and soon we were on the intensely populated touristy east side of the island. Lamai was the first stop and we found a culture center/temple there…we got some pics of a monk and some other things and then were off again. We then came to this lookout point and stopped and walked down this huge set of stairs to the some huge rocks below that made up the shoreline, we sat for awhile, took some pics…you know, just enjoyed. So we did the rest of the road that went around the island. All together this took us about 4 or 5 hours. We were going to just go back to the hotel and start to get ready but we were having too much fun, so we hunted down the mountain road that we had been looking for at the beginning of our venture. It took a few tries, we went up roads that apparently weren’t on our map and actually into some Thai neighbourhoods where we received some pretty intense “what the hell are you doing here?” looks. Finally we found this mountain road. It was intense to say the least. We headed up. Eventually we came to a point where the bike came to a complete stop and couldn’t take the both of us any further because of the angle of the road. So…after Mo declined my offer to drive the bike up the hill and have me walk, I took off up the really steep part and she walked. Now her story to anyone will be that she got off and I asked her as I sped away up the hill. To anyone who believes that rubbish and actually knows me…think about it, I am nothing but a true gentleman and Mo is simply attempting to deflect the fact that she lacked scooter driving ability by attacking me and blaming me for the intense physical stress that she had to endure. Anyway, I got a pic of her walking up, she wasn’t happy. (This is Mo, and he did TOO drive up the hill WHILE asking me if I wanted to take the scooter!! He’s lying to everyone who reads this. He made me walk up the steepest hill in the universe, and stood at the top laughing and taking pictures of my hardship! BULLY!!!) At the top was a little Thai community. We decided to go down the way we had come up because the hill going down the other side looked far more treacherous than the one that we had come up and the one we came up was bad enough. We then drove to the west side of the island wanting to go somewhere foreign and different than where we had been. The west side of the island has very few resorts and is known for being more isolated. We stopped at a bamboo covered restaurant with bamboo tables overlooking the beach and the sunset. The tide had gone out and left only little pools of water over at least 500m of sand. With the sun going down in the background it was amazing and Mo walked out to try and figure out what some Thai people bent over in the sand were doing. There are a lot of pics of this. It was gorgeous. We had dinner at our random restaurant which didn’t have a menu so we just ordered Pad Thai. I can’t remember if I’ve said this or not, but for the entire trip I think all I ate was either hamburgers (the pretty much don’t exist in Japan) or Pad Thai, along with either chicken satay or spring rolls. Anyway, we watched the sun set and then returned to our hotel to get all of our stuff ready and go for a quick dip.
January 3rd was a day that I knew was gonna go really well or really bad. We had to check out, catch a ferry to Surat Thani, and then from the port in Surat Thani we had to get to the airport that on google earth seemed pretty far inland. We knew nothing. So we were up early, had breakfast and got the resort to shuttle us to Nathon on the west side of the island. At Nathon we were immediately attacked by some people asking ME obviously where we were going blah blah…I said the airport stupidly and he was like, look bus to airport and ferry, come this way….but by now I had learned and was like….uhh…no thanks man. We bought the generic tickets and hoped on the ferry. We sat outside and hung out for the 2 hours it took to get to Surat Thani. There were tons of fishermen in little tiny ocean canoes for the entire trip. The inside of boat had a little diner kinda place and Thai massages everywhere. That’s one thing we didn’t get…the entire trip we went without getting a massage or anything, I’m really not into massages anyway, so I’m not bothered by it, but Mo on the other hand didn’t get one and she loves them, I don’t know why. Anyway, we arrived in Surat Thani….or at least what we thought was Surat Thani. It was more like a dock…in the middle of nowhere. People began to file onto some waiting buses…which we then learned that you had to have bought tickets for before hand in Nathon…WICKED! The buses were full. Another group of people had also done the same as us. They were a group of 6 Americans from California, although one guy had a Nova Scotia t-shirt on and we found out he was Canadian so we knew they weren’t too bad. We got in on a shuttle van with them to the airport which we then learned was at least a 2 hour drive away. This was a lucky break cuz the van was 60 bux and joining in with them it only cost 10 for the 2 of us. I talked to them for a bit, but eventually we all just went into reading/looking out the window mode. What was weird was that the van had 3 benches of 3 seats and one seat at the front. All the bags took up 2 seats in the back and the one Canadian turned American sat there. Then 2 of the girls, then I was told to go ahead, even when I was like…no, go ahead to one of the guys, so I sat in the 2nd row with 2 strangers and Mo sat in the first row with 2 strangers, why they didn’t let us sit together I don’t know. So, we got to the airport at like 2:30, which was also in the middle of nowhere. I was relieved that we were there and we wouldn’t miss our flight, but our flight wasn’t until 7pm…once again we played the waiting game. The airport was tiny. When you entered the front doors you had to go through metal detectors and that was it. And most of the time there wasn’t anyone at the metal detectors anyway. The 3:30 flight went out and the airport went DEAD. We kinda hung around, I drank some beers, sat outside. Around 5:30 or 6 a bus pulled in and was carrying 2 of the JETs that I know from Fukushima prefecture….weird eh? So we hung out with them for a bit and made plans to go out in Bangkok together. They were on the same flight as us obviously cuz I think it was the last one of the day. The flight was about an hour, not too bad. Back in Bangkok we hopped a cab to the hotel and checked in.
The room was sweet, big bed, big pillows and done in a Chinese style. We ditched our stuff, showered, etc. We then waited outside the hotel for my JET friends to show up. They didn’t and we began to wander down the street towards the main street the cab had pulled off of. The next thing we knew, my friends, Tracey and Desiree had pulled up beside us…they were also with Tracey’s b/f or at least kinda b/f from New Zealand. We hopped in a cab and had learned that we weren’t exactly walking in the best part of town. Which strangely enough we had been discussing while walking down the street, you know how in strange countries and cities you have no idea where you’re walking and how you could easily walk into an area like Jane and Finch or something like that and have no clue. Anyway, they took us to like the foreigner hang out area and we had dinner and a few drinks. Mo wasn’t feeling too well and we wanted to do a lot the next day as it was our only full day in Bangkok so we called it a night after dinner and drinks. It was 2am by that time anyway.
We obviously slept in the next day….it seemed to be the theme of our vacation…but hey…it was a VACATION. We asked the concierge where to go and what to see if we only had one day in Bangkok, he gave us a map and told us where to go…it was actually a doorman I think who helped us while the concierge was busy. He was really nice as most of the Thai people were and spoke really good English…it was very different than the people in Japan and I found it quite appealing. We headed over to the Grand Palace first thing. This seemed to be the place to go. It was amazing, Mo and I together took 200 pictures…oh and I was forced to rent pants…which I really should have thought about before. They were like doctor’s pants…but purple…mo took enough pics, you can check them out. Ya, so this Palace was full of random temples and the Royal Mansion, etc. it was all very cool. THE COOLEST THING ABOUT THIS ENTIRE VENTURE WAS….the emerald Buddha. Now you’re not actually allowed to take pictures of this…pictures aren’t even allowed inside the temple that it’s in and there are guards. So we don’t have any pictures of this but it was very cool because as soon as we got there I remember studying it. If you google the emerald Buddha you’ll be able to see pictures of it. It’s actually made of Jade and is only 45cm tall, but it was atop this huge mound of other gold Buddha and other Thai like Buddhist objects. This is what one site just told me about it….
“The Temple of the Emerald Buddha is the most sacred structure in the Kingdom and the repository of the spirit for all the Thai people. The history of the Emerald Buddha itself dates back more than 600 years and also represents the struggle of the Thai people to maintain their independence from foreign aggressors.
When King Rama I established Bangkok, or Rattanakosin, as his capital in 1782 he added the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in the eastern section of the Royal Grand Palace in order to install the Emerald Buddha. During its two hundred year history the Chapel had undergone several renovations, restorations, and additions. The Royal Chapel thus incorporates no less than two centuries of Rattanakosin craftsmanship which is an expression of the essential entity of the Thai people.”
We did the rest of the Royal Grand Palace which did take us a little while, there were a ton of buildings and a ton of things to see.
So ya, that was really cool. After that we walked through a large park and over to the Democracy monument that is in the middle of an intersection. Then we hopped in a Tuk Tuk and went towards a central shopping center called…who knows what, along the way the Tuk Tuk broke down but we hopped in the one that was behind us and were off again. The shopping area was all very trendy brand name like stuff, so we quickly grew bored. We had dinner in a Thai restaurant there and then caught another Tuk Tuk over to a night market in a park that we had heard about. This place was awesome and I could have bought so much there but decided to take it easy. There were rows upon rows upon rows of shops that were set up in what seemed to be walk in closets. There were thousands of stores and the nice thing was that none of the vendors said anything when you went into their shop…you were allowed to browse in peace. It was bliss. So we shopped bought a few things and then ended up heading back to the hotel. We crashed out and were up again at 5:30 in order to catch our 8:30 flight back to Japan. Alright here I’m going to stop and post this…I’ll write about what we did in Japan and what I’ve been up to in the next one. I have to cut this somewhere. And if you actually just read that whole thing in one go…well, I tip my hat to you sir/ma’am. Peace for now.
Brent
