First 24 Hours
June 20, 2008This blog is the tale of my adventure in Thailand. In just 24 hours, it has already been quite an adventure. So I went to the airport and flew from Columbus to Chicago. I was only in Chicago for about 1 hour and proceeded to board the 12.5-hour trans-Pacific flight from Chicago to Seoul via Korean Air. I was fortunate enough to sit in the emergency exit area and had a nice 6×6 area in front of me to stretch my legs and walk around. Furthermore, I had a folding out touch-screen TV! This is the best flight I’ve ever been on (except for the 12.5 hours). It had about 30 new Hollywood movies, 8 classic Hollywood movies, like 1 Japanese movie, 2 Korean movies and a Chinese movie. I ended up watching like…Fool’s Gold, Charlie Bartlett, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and Vantage Point. They also had short programs that were like 30-60 minutes, included an episode of House and Prison Break. In between movies, I even was able to play Tetris with other people on the plane via LAN. The next thing about the flight that was pretty sweet is the food. It was the most fancy airplane meal I’ve ever had. We actually got actual silverware, not plastic sporks. Also, there was free wine and beer with my meal! I got to drink an entire can of beer after my meal for free. Finally though, the flight was over and I was more than happy to get out of the plane only to have to get on another 5-hour flight 2 hours later…
This was the last flight, Seoul to Phuket. When we were starting to fly over Vietnam, I saw this flash of light in the distance that caught my eye. I then looked out the window, waiting to see if it would happen again and I saw this huge deep orange-yellow glow that flashed for about half a second. Well…what would you think it was??? I looked like a bomb went off. I kept seeing this and was flipping because it looked like footage from Iraq. After about 25 minutes, I finally saw an orange line and confirmed my suspicion that it was just lightening. But come on, I’ve never seen lightening that was orange-yellow, isn’t it usually white-blue? Anyway, we finally arrived in Phuket at like 12:30am local time on Friday (1pm Thursday EST). I was waiting in line to get through customs for about 25 minutes and was looking at the baggage claim in the distance and didn’t really see my bag, as it is a pretty obvious bag (green burlap military bag) and figured “well…my bag probably didn’t make it.” And after I got through customs a lady has a sign with my name on it like a limo is waiting for me, except to tell me that my bag didn’t make it. It is going to get here Sunday night supposedly. Sucks because my swim suit, towel, and obviously clothes are in it.
Anyway, everything in the airport is closed and this kid tells me he can get me a taxi so I agree despite the fare being a little more than it should be, but there weren’t any other taxis around. A couple minutes later this pimped out Honda Civic rolls up and I get a ride with a Speed Racer and his sidekick. It took about 30 minutes to drive from one end of the island, where the airport is at, to the other end, where the camp is. After the ride I realized that traffic laws were essentially non-existant here. There is an invisible middle lane that runs down the middle of the road. Every intersection is more like a yield than stop. I also haven’t seen one police car patrolling. They drop me off and it is like 2:30am, of course no one is at the camp and lights are out, but there aren’t any doors, it is all open. I wasn’t ready to sleep, so I walked down the street to a bar I saw before I got dropped off. It was a big grass hut bar. I got a beer and solicited by a call girl. “So wah beer you lai?” “You wan to go to disco?” She sat next to me the whole time I had my beer, but I knew her game! I left and then was walking down the street almost to the camp when a pack of wild dogs starts to surround me raptor style…I shooed them away but it was still kind of strange. Oh and there are like 5 bulls across the street that just eat grass. And because of the wind blowing towards the camp, plus the bulls across the street…well you can probably figure it out. It doesn’t smell great. I then laid out my blanket from the airplane on the boxing ring and slept there for about 2 hours. I woke up at like 5:30 and read some Harry Potter and waited for people to show up.
Since this is a really long entry, I’ll post about my first day later…Well, that was embarassing
June 22, 2008Saturday night I went out to the bar with a bunch of Irish lads! Man, it was hard to understand them. Their accents combined with loud music caused me to ask them to repeat themselves 2-3 times.
Sunday I woke up and went to get some breakfast, fried eggs, hash browns with bacon and cheddar melted on them and then went to Patong Beach to go surfing. Got my board and went out into the water. After about an hour or so I was feeling reallllly dehydrated and thirsty from the salt water. I went back in to return my board was so thirsty I started coughing. The cough soon turned into eggs and hash browns spilling out onto the sand while the Thai surfers behind me are laughing their heads off. Then I got a water and was ok…but yea, pretty embarassing throwing up in front of them plus an American couple returning their boards as well. Then I came back to my room, watched the Battlestar Galactica movie Razor and went to get a hamburger for dinner. Still don’t know really anywhere to eat yet except for one place. It’s a good place though, owned by this American guy who used to work for NASA. He worked on a bunch of rockets in the 60s and 70s and patented a bunch of technological inventions. Now he has his own wholesale food distribution company based in Bangkok to supply American style food in Thailand.
After I got back from dinner I watched Down Periscope with my roommates and went to bed at 10pm. This morning my luggage was finally here so I started my first day of training! About 30 minutes into it, I went and threw up. Just water, and once all the water was out in the sand, I just dry heaved. It is sooo hot here. Well not so much hot as much as humid. It’s like 90% humidity. I haven’t felt clean since i’ve been here. Even after a shower I feel sticky. Oh well, I didn’t come here to enjoy all the comforts of home!
Best part of a Thai foot massage: Having two feet
June 25, 2008Yesterday morning I got a Thai foot massage after training. Words cannot describe how incredible it felt. It calmed my whole body and I just felt sedated. I was sitting in a really nice lazyboy recliner and had my feet on an ottoman where she was working on them. Like first she warmed up both my feet and then put some Icy Hot type of cream on my shin, calf, and foot on certain spots and then rubbed it in with some oil then wrapped my foot up while she worked on my other foot. My wrapped foot felt like it wasn’t even there it was so relaxed. I almost passed out during it. And! It was only $8 and it lasted an hour…so worth it.
Yesterday was the first day that I was bad weather here. The monsoon was really hitting hard (as you’ll see in the video below). It was pouring for about the whole day. Because of this, we had some visitors coming inside our room yesterday and today. These millipedes are only slightly poisonous, according to a tour guide that saw me poking one at Proem Thep Cape the other day. My biology teacher at Denison said that they are cyanogenic, meaning they produce some sort of cyanide compound, thus they are poisonous. They are only crawling around on the floor though, so I don’t think I have to worry about it going in my bed. Plus I don’t think it would bit me just out of curiosity? Let’s hope not. They are pretty heavy as well, so that limits their ability to climb.
Here is what the monsoon was like yesterday, lots of water:Koh Phi Phi
June 30, 2008So last weekend I went to Phi Phi Island!! If you want to see some of the nicest beaches in the world…go there and enjoy. It was also where the movie The Beach was filmed, with Leonardo DiCaprio. Well actually, there are 2 islands. Phi Phi Don, which is the larger one, has all of the hotels. Phi Phi Lay is the smaller island, which is actually a national park.
The small bus (minivan) picked us up at about 7:15 and took us to Chalong Pier where we caught a big ferry. It was about 1.5 hours to get to the island. Once we got there we jumped off the back and were able to snorkel in a small area for about 45 minutes. Then we got back on the boat and they took us to a small beach for a lunch buffet. They told us that we could walk to our hotel or take the boat to the main pier. Apparently everything on Phi Phi is only a 5 minute walk ‘that way’. They said it would only take about 5 minutes to walk to the hotel from where we were. We had to walk over a bunch of big rocks, pass 2 beaches, endure about 85 degree weather and we finally got there after about 25 minutes. It was actually only about 5 minutes from the pier as we found out the next day. We should have just taken the boat but I enjoy an adventure and an adventure it was.
When we finally arrived at the hotel we were supposed to pay a 1000 baht deposit on our room (about $30). One guy with us thought he lost his wallet so we didn’t end up having to pay the deposit. So we got the room key and went to our bungalow. That, too, was interesting. Especially the bathroom. The lock on the bathroom was backwards. You had to lock it on the outside and if it was locked you couldn’t get out of the bathroom….brilliant engineering.
Then we went around looking for a long-tail boat to take us to Phi Phi Lay to see THE BEACH that was so famous. We haggled our way down from 1400 baht (~$42) to 900 baht (~$27) for the guy to take us there, stay for 3 hours and come back. So it was only like ~$9/person–pretty good. So we went there, it was really nice looking but once you got into the water there were lots of like old coral rocks. Nothing sharp, but annoying to walk on. It wasn’t just plain sand. There was the only complaint I had. Oh, and we jumped off the long-tail boat and this ‘park ranger’ guy told us we had to pay 200 baht to go to the beach because it was a national park…so if you are planning on going there, keep that in mind.
After spending 3+ hours outside and allowing my shoulders and back to get a nice maroon color, we went walking around town. There were about 100 of the same shops, selling all the same things: sandals, bracelets, necklaces, and junk. Nothing cultural, just junk mostly. We went to a couple of bars but no one was there. There was an ‘Irish’ bar that was handing out coupons or something and I asked the girls (who weren’t Thai) if they had Guinness. Nope. Well, I don’t think they can really call themselves an Irish bar! The only beer here in Thailand is, domestic: Chang, Sing Ha, Tiger; imports: mostly Heineken, a few places had Corona. The places weren’t getting crowded until about 11pm.
We decided on going to the Reggae Bar. They had a boxing ring in the middle. While we sat there they had people fighting Muay Thai…but it was fake, like WWF fake. It was fun to watch though. Then, if you volunteered to fight in the ring, you would get a free Thai Bucket! It is basically a small plastic pail filled with some sort of mixed drink. Pretty cool idea. SOOOOOOOO…..I decided to fight in the ring! During the break between rounds of the fake kickboxing, the ref walked me around holding up one of my hands and trying to get someone to challenge me. Finally, this Italian guy agreed to fight me. He was about 5 inches taller than me and about 15 pounds heavier than me. I didn’t really mind that so much but I was soooo nervous!!!! I’ve never had a fight before and I was providing entertainment for the whole bar.
They gave me some boxing shorts to wear and we had to wear head gear, boxing gloves and shin guards. There were 3 2-minute rounds. They introduced us in each corner and then the bell ring. My stomach felt like it had dropped through the floor. I started off well, had a few good jabs right in his face, a double and a could of kicks to the leg. We weren’t allowed to use elbows or knees. He didn’t have any fighting experience so he couldn’t really kick me but kept coming at me with wild punches. He had a couple good hits on my, a really good one at the beginning of the second round that knocked my head back and gave me a small bloody nose. He did better than me the second round I felt like but I came back the third round. After the third round I felt like he was going to win. I couldn’t really judge who had more points during the fight and it felt like the finale of American Idol: Ryan Seacrest holding both our hands waiting to announce the winner. And then, my hand was pulled up!!! I won! Holy crap! It was a great feeling. Can’t say the same about my nose though…It is Monday night and it is still sore from Saturday. Anyway, I won a free Thai Bucket, which I was wayyyyy too tired to drink. I just had some water and watched some more fights before we left to go back to the bungalow.
In the morning we hiked up to the viewpoint on top of the island. Only about 5 minutes away from our hotel my sandal broke so…I spent the ENTIRE DAY walking around like a native: no shoes. I walked all the way up, about 200 meters, to the top of the viewpoint with no shoes, and then back down. I stopped at this bag store that I had stopped at the night before. I asked how much the bag was and she said “I told you yesterday, 1500 baht.” And at every store you are supposed to haggle, I mean especially this store with knock off North Face bags. They had this brand: Lowe Alpine. They had The North Face bags but I’m pretty sure they are fake, I mean it is Thailand. So I go on to say “1500? That is a little expensive—” and before I could say anything else she picked up the bag out of my hands, placed it back on the shelf between the other bags and just walked back to the back of her shop and sat down. The three of us just kind of looked at each other dumbfounded…That was the worst haggle in history. She just left back into her store. It was pretty comical but rude and ridiculous. How many people are going to buy big backpacking bags on Phi Phi island, plus the fact that they are most likely fake. Then we went to go check out of our hotel. We turned in the key and they gave us our 1000 baht deposit back. Oh wait…we never paid the deposit! Ha, we looked at each other and then went on to enjoy our free lunch. Anyway, we went to the beach for about 2 hours and sat in some chairs under an umbrella…I wasn’t in the mood to get even more sunburnt than I already was. My skin felt like it was constantly being torn from my muscles by my backpack straps. It was about time to get back on the ferry that takes us back to Phuket. We were almost at the pier when 3 ladies from the hotel were waiting for us. “Oh we accidentally gave you 1000 baht!!” So we paid it back and got on the boat.
Phi Phi was fun and I would recommend anyone go there if they have the chance. I would however, recommend people spend money to get a nice bungalow to live in if they are staying for more than 1 night. Also, there were a ton of dive shops. I really wanted to go diving but didn’t have the money unfortunately. There is a lot of really good diving there. The beaches on the main island looked really pretty but were marred by all the boats parked in the bay and along the sand, as well as all the coral and rocks in the sand. The water was incredible in color though and if you don’t mind watching where you walk then the beach will be fine.