(Farley and I climbed a mountain on that baby moped)
Phuket was nice. Many European tourists with petite Thai hookers. I was glad that Farley had a mode of transportation and could take me to the more authentic parts of the island. We visited Big Buddha. It is so large that I started experiencing vertigo when I looked up at it. It made me think of that Libertines song, but it also made me want to throw up. We tried our luck at the beach, but the water temperature is actually hotter than the air temperature (which is always above 90˚F). We hit some Asian markets and ventured around Phuket Town. The best food I had was probably in Phuket. Pizza from this random touristy place, chicken rice from a street side restaurant, and pork noodle soup from a stand. The chicken rice was literally some boiled chicken on a pile of rice with some salty hot sauce and a little cup of broth and a side of garlic and mint. No English menu. The best way to go. I actually don't think I've ever consumed so many rice products in my life in one week until this trip. And I'm Asian. So that is impressive. The rice noodles are the best I've ever had. EVER. There’s nothing worse than overcooked noodles, and that was never the case in Thailand. The pork noodle soup was just deliciously savory broth with fish balls, mint, various parts of a pig and rice noodles. May I also include that Farley and I often ate for under 3USD per meal. Pad Thai was also a favorite of mine, although I'm sure it was American Style. I can't help what I like. Oh. If you weren't already aware, Thais are gastronomical masochists. They put chilies in EVERYTHING. Whole chilies, crushed chilies, chili oil, chili paste and then they provide a whole slew of chili happy condiments on the table to spice it up. Chilies in vinegar, chilies in fish sauce, some dried chilies. I'm not that much of a pansy when it comes to hot food, but I accidentally ate a whole chili in my Thai chicken salad one of the first two days I was in Phuket and Oh. My. God. I cried, I bitched, I ate ketchup, put sugar on my lips and made Farley be nice to me for the rest of the day. I think it was actually one of the most painful experiences of my life. It temporarily put my taste buds out of commission, probably for a good 20 minutes. After that I always picked out the whole chilies before diving into any plate of food. It's funny now, but it was very un-funny at the time.
(that's how many chilies I felt like I ate that day)
After beating the jet lag and sort of planning out the rest of our trip, Farley and I headed off to Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee, it still makes me laugh, so go ahead). We took a ferry to Big Pee Pee. We sat on the bow of the boat and enjoyed the view... or at least I did until my flip flop started to slip off of my foot and I had to lunge forward to rescue it, which caused my $300 prescription sunglasses to plunge into the depths of the ocean. It was a simple choice. Save the $5 flip flop (which I ironically got rid of two days later anyway) or lose my wonderful red "bitch goggley" sunglasses. One point ocean; one new pair of knock off Ray Ban's Jenn.
Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh are dramatic limestone jungle islands. Lots of hardcore rock climbers come out to risk death. It was amazing to see these vertical rock faces plunge directly into the water, surrounded by idyllic Thai longtail boats and white beaches. When we got to the island, it was time to find our little bungalow on a beach up the coast of the island. There are no cars on the island, so our only options were to hike up and over the mountain or take a water taxi. In attempts to conserve money, and because we were told the walk wasn't bad, we took the hiking route. I had my first reservations when I saw the almost vertical, Wall Of China-like stairs up the mountain. Yes. MOUNTAIN. Women with small children were descending from the summit, so it shouldn't be that bad right? Well, they didn't have backpacker backpacks on. I've never sweated so much in my life.When we got to the top, I was too sweaty and hot to enjoy the picturesque view. I half-heartedly snapped some pictures and we went on our way, only to find that our paved path now morphed into narrow dirt paths in the jungle proper. There were 3 rather uninformative signs pointing to various beaches. They were all placed one behind the other so it was unclear as to which sign coincided with which path. We took one, hiked through the mountain for about 30 minutes and miraculously arrived at our bungalow. I felt bad for Farley because I was a whiny little bitch, but that was only because I sacrificed around a liter of blood to the mosquitoes on the hike. I was itchy for the next five days.
(At the top of Phi Phi Don. Don't let the smiles fool you, we were miserable after climbing all those stairs ... or at least I was)It was worth it. There were probably 10 other people on the beach we were staying at, and the people who owned and worked at Ao Toh Ko Bungalows were very sweet. We made friends with Poh, a Thai bartender who desperately misses his farang buddy Ben, and spent most of our nights drawing pictures and speaking in broken English with the guy. Apparently at this bar you can order bong hits as well as drinks. We explored town for a day and spent another day kayaking around the island. Originally we were going to see Little Pee Pee, but the only way out there was on a full day tourist excursion. We both vetoed being surrounded by crispy tan Europeans and just did our own thing. This meant skipping "The Beach" beach and the beach full of monkeys. I was sad about the monkeys, but Farley and I got to pretend to be stuck on a deserted island for a when we decided to take a break from kayaking, so it was cool.
After a short return to Phuket, we flew off to Bangkok for Songkran, the infamous water festival and Thai new year. Basically people just dump buckets of water on you where ever you go from the back of pick up trucks. For some reason, they also smudge clay on your face. I think it makes you a viable target for the water throwers. We arrived late at night and slept on our towels at this really gross guesthouse. It was too much for me, so we checked out in the morning and were homeless for a while. We trekked around Banglampu (and older part of Bangkok), ate fruit and found a new place to stay. Amazingly, we ran into this dude that Farley had met up in Chaing Mai. He offered us some yerba mate tea before we headed off with him this art gallery opening in the gay friendly part of Bangkok. It was very interesting. I drank Black Russians out of a fish tank. I went to my first go-go bar and then I sweated out all of the alcohol dancing until 4:30 in the morning. At one club this guy thought I was a prostitute and kept trying to make me get a taxi home with him. That was not okay.
With four hours of sleep we headed off to a Thai cooking school for the morning. It was pretty sweet. We learned how to make tom yum soup, curries, and pad thai. Because of the previous night's festivities I had contracted a cold. Probably because I drank alcohol out of a fish tank, but anyway, my throat hurt and my stomach wasn't very happy. I tried to enjoy the food as much as possible though. It was really good. I learned that the main ingredients in Thai food are coconut milk, chilies and lime. Everything has a lot of flavor. There was this really annoying Greek guy that was supposedly shooting a television show during the class. He was really corny and made us animatedly wave goodbye to the camera. I was not amused. We ended up meeting a couple Aussies and a Brit who we hung out with for the rest of the day. We went to this giant market in Bangkok and spent many hours exploring there. You can seriously buy anything there, from piles of jeans to fake fruit, to buddha images and eerily New England-esque nautical ships.
With our new friends we decided to hit up Khao San Rd for some drinks. Khao San is home to many bars and clubs and is known as the place where the foreigners go to get really fucked up. We did that. We drank two towers of beer (that were larger than our waitress) before moving on to buckets of Thai whiskey and red bull. At our last bar we had some bucket left, so obviously we took it with us. Unfortunately, the bar owners chased us out of the bar and accused us of not paying. After about an hour or arguing and saying "WE. PAID. ALREADY" (which may or may not have been true), Farley and Nicci (the Brit) got whisked away by a tuk tuk (Thai taxi) and taken to the police station. So there I was, standing in the street without any money or the address of the hotel, drunk, with horrible images in my head of Farley getting molested in a jail cell by a slew of nasty old Thai criminals. Luckily the Aussies had some cash, so we headed down to the police station to try to bail Farley and the girl out. By the time we got there though, Farley and Nicci had just paid the bill and were home free. No one had to experience the unspeakable evils of a night in Thai prison. Thank god.Songkran kicked off the next day so we got us some water guns and headed off to Khao San Rd. I had a classic water gun with a pumpy handle while Farley opted for a giant monkey head backpack water gun, which allowed for much more water. We just walked around for hours and just soaked people and got soaked by people. What an ingenious holiday! People of all ages were having so much fun. There were pockets of dance partying all over, and foreigners and natives alike soaking each other with water guns, buckets, water bottles, etc. For the next week, we could not step outside without the threat of being assaulted by dirty water. It was refreshing though. Unfortunately, we missed the Midnight Songkran Festival because my cold was getting worse. I spent the second half of the trip with a pretty nasty cold, and I'm pretty sure that getting malaria water dumped on me on a daily basis probably didn't help my case.
So the protests. You've probably all heard on the news or seen the images of Red Shirts vs the army. We were in Bangkok for a big chunk of it and kept hearing different embassies from all around the world telling people to avoid traveling in Bangkok. Although the presence of military force was visible, and we did see many of the roads blocked off by the protester's buses, people went onto celebrate the new year. Red Shirts are supporters of the ousted president, they are being paid by him to leave their homes in rural Thailand to protest in Bangkok. Farley really wanted to check out the protests though, so we walked through the Red Shirt camp one morning. It was eerie and we could tell that there had been stuff going on the night before. Lots of shields fashioned out of lamp post covers and trash strewn everywhere. Later in the day though, as we were taking a tuk tuk back to the hotel, we saw a smoldering bus. And then another. And then a wall of troops advancing. We hopped out of the taxi to get a closer look, just as protesters began setting another bus on fire. It was very exciting, but I was feeling shaky with adrenaline. I kept hearing small explosions from the tires popping on the bus and the smashing of flower pots (civilians were throwing these at the army). At one point we ran away, following the lead of many of the motorists. They got scared because someone threw a maltov cocktail. Farley and I chatted with a Bangkok native (who had a water gun as protection) that apologized to us because we were seeing Thailand like this. We had been in Bangkok earlier that day, and everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was shut down. No stores were open, besides one mall and several McDonalds. Bangkok had declared a state of emergency and the media described the city as a "ghost town" which was about right. We road the Skytrain over the city all day, and noticed that there were just troops with machine guns guarding everything in anticipation of another protest.
We left Bangkok the next day for Ayutthuya, an ancient capital in Thailand. We spent a couple of days biking around the ruins and trying to avoid being splashed by more water. Songkran was still going strong there, and it was the one place that we went in Thailand that was almost completely devoid of tourists. We got stuck in traffic for a very long time because the highway was congested with pick-up trucks carrying drums of water and Thai people splashing each other with water. People there were absolutely obsessed with Farley. While we walked around town people were just beaming and like "Ahhhh!" and would just hug Farley. They were extremely friendly and desperately wanted to share their whiskey with him. This one little kid emerged from inside a bar, threw his hands up and shrieked at him. It was really bizarre. They all smirked at me, thinking that I was his Thai hooker. The trip ended on a mellow note, although I've never been in a place hotter than Ayutthuya. We passed out one afternoon in our non-airconditioned room because you actually just can't function in that kind of heat. It was a bit hard to sleep in this city because at night all of the strays, bugs, chickens and other animals would make weird and loud noises. It sounded like a nature sleep tape gone horrible wrong. I actually just woke up and laughed at how absurdly loud it was.We flew out of Bangkok the next day and spent a night in Phuket before my flight the next morning. We got ripped off by an airport hotel guy, but karma worked its magic, and somehow we ended up not paying for the overpriced room that night at all. Now I'm back in Australia, sitting in the all too familiar café with my shiny Apple laptop, thinking about how I have to finish a book by tomorrow. I've never been so out of my comfort zone before Thailand. I was sweaty all the time and had to wear the same dress 3 days in a row because I had sweated through all of my other clothes, I got a terrible cold, and a burn from a motorcycle muffler on my leg... not gonna lie, I bitched a whole lot, but I am so glad it all happened to me.
