Thailand day 13

I arrived at my Bangkok hostel at 5:00am. For some crazy reason the hostel is called Khaosan River Inn hostel even though its not on Khaosan rd and its not in a river. I woke up a receptionist called 'herro' who was fast asleep on the floor with the rest of his family right by the main entrance. They were very friendly and gave me the full tour of the 3 room hostel.

I took a 3 hour power nap and when I woke up I bumped into a British backpacker who was just checking in. His name is Luke Stratford and he's from Kent. Apparently Kent is not the same place as 'old Kent rd' from monopoly - don't worry, I asked. We decided to travel to Chatujak markets together using public transport. The bus was an overcrowded metal tube with 4 wheels crudely stuck to it, but at least it got us there in 1 piece for only 8 Baht.

I had hardly any space in my main bag to buy clothes or souvenirs but I had quite a bit of money, so I decided it was only appropriate to splurge on food. Soooo much phad Thai...

Afterwards we decided to go to Wat Pho to see the reclining Buddha. To save money we took public transport, which included a train and a boat - definitely more enjoyable than a Taxi. It was a 100 Baht entry fee, but it was totally worth it. The golden statue is massive! I think I overheard from a few 5 year olds that it was the biggest Buddha statue in the world.

Amazingly Luke and I weren't sick of each others company yet so we deided to walk to Khao San rd. There I managed to buy a singlet and even more Phad Thai. We then went to a pub and ended up making friends with an attractive girl from the Czech republic called Hanah. Over the course of many beers (not Chang beers, thank God) we got to make friends with a few more people; Sarah and Cassia. Sarah was a black German girl with an American accent and Cassia was just Brazilian. They were a lot of fun. Towards the end Cassia and I were quite drunk and decided to make a feast out of deep fried scorpians, maggots and cockroaches that were being sold from a cart right next to us. The local who sold us the insects was undoubtably in shock because all other tourists only ever have 1 insect as a novelty thing, yet without question or pause we made a full blown meal out of what was on offer. Just for the record; scorpian tastes like salty duck and chicken, the cockroach tastes gooey and salty, and the maggots taste like expired potato chips.

Oh yeah, we also ran into 2 really cool south Korean guys at the pub. They were surprisingly extraverted and showed us this really cool drinking game called 'appartment'. So much fun.

By the end of the night Luke and I were quite drunk so we thought it would be a good idea to share a motorbike home. It was 5:00am at this time so the roads were quite empty. This caused our driver to accelerate to speeds of 70km/hour. A really scary thing when you're dipping in and out of consciousness without any protection whatsoever. Our crazy driver just shouted out the slogan "no police, no problem!" whenever he went through a red light or started riding on the pedestrian walkway. At one point we actually started driving into ongoing traffic to make the journey faster.

It didn't matter how much beer or samsong I'd had that night. When I got back, I was sober as a judge.

Thailand day 12

I woke up this morning and found a tic crawling across my face. I overacted a little and crushed it with my shoes with an unnecessary amount of force an unnecessary amount of times.

My ferry to Krabi was scheduled to leave at 1:30pm so I had some time to mess around and walk around the beach one final time.

On the ferry I sat next to a middle aged Sweedish guy. We got talking about Europe and in the end he suggested I go to Denmark, not Sweeden, when I visit. He was bold, had a walking stick and sounded a little like Yoda so I think I'll take his advice.

When I arrived I walked around hopelessly trying to find the bus station which my hostel receptionist advised me to go to. My efforts were useless though because I later found out that the bus station was a 15-20 minute drive from the dock. This event and many others have given me the lasting impression that the average Thai person is really shit at giving directions and reading maps. In the end though, it turned out to be a good thing because I haggled with a local to drive me to the bus station on the back of his motorbike. I had all my luggage on me too so that made the whole experience pretty awesome. More than once I caught myself grinding my sandles along the road as we overtook a car or sped around a corner.

I rocked up at the bus stop and lazily approached the counter saying 'can I go to Bangkok, please'. I was in luck because they had 1 seat left. 1st class, baby!

The bus was frustratingly long and was scheduled to arrive at 4:30am (yes, am) the next morning. We stopped over briefly somewhere for food and I noticed there was some kind of car promotion party just around the corner. I spent 19 of the 20 minutes I had walking around the fnacy cars watching Thai models seductively dance on some of the larger cars.

Thailand day 11

I woke up this morning excited for the day ahead. I had payed $100 to go on a watersports adventure.

First we had breakfast with the rest of the travelers. I met 2 south Africans there who where extremely friendly. I talked to them for hours during the trip and got to know them really really well. I think one of their names started with an 'R'.

We then hopped on our boat and visited a small tucked away beach area filled with monkeys. The beach was creatively named 'monkey beach'. We brought food and drinks to give them something. The monkeys were very cute and clearly had become accustomed to humans because they came right up next to you to take bananas from you. Sadly a lot of other tourists fed the monkeys coke and sprite, and whilst I'll admit that its adorable watching them struggle with the aluminum can, I'm not sure of an animal that size can handle the sugar content of 5 soft drinks.

We then went to Maya beach which was part of a small island right next to Koh Phi Phi. It was beautiful. The surrounding mountains of rock looked completely uninhabitable because there was no horizontal living space, only vertical jagged rock. However we found that some mountain dwellers did live there and they climbed up and down the mountain using poorly attached peices of bamboo as ladders.

We then floated past a place called Viking cave. Apparently it was where a huge nest of sparrows lived. According to our guide the Chinese pay $4500/kg for sparrow eggs.

Next we had lunch by another beach. The beach was different to all the others because it had small piles of rocks stacked on top of each other. Our guide taught us that if you wear a lifejacket as a nappy then you can lean back on the water and rest a beer on your chest. I perfected the method after half an hour.

Afterwards we went snorkling around a few different locations. The visibility was pretty decent and allowed me to see; coral, fish and a few sharks!

We ended the trip by going wake boarding and water skiing. We had about 15 people on the boat and only 2 people were able to stand; me and one of the south African guys. Although to be honest I only stood for about 2 seconds before I collapsed backwards into the salty water.

Later I had dinner and drinks with a few more people I met at the hostel. They we're British this time! They were very friendly and extremely social. By the end of dinner we had grown to a crew of 15 people. All 15 of them wanted to play flip cup and beer pong at a bar nearby. I joined them but left shortly afterwards. I was tired and I honestly could not stand the taste of Chang beer anymore. It's a disgusting, watered down, flavorless and expensive drink - #tropicparadiseproblems.

Thailand day 10

I woke up quite hungover so I decided to go to the supermarket to buy something with a lot of water. After buying and drinking a few Chang beers I was ready to start the day.

I spent the first few hours of the morning contemplating whether I should go to a different island tomorrow. I went so far as to research Koh Samui, find a good hostel and see if I could find cheap travel deals.

In the end I decided to stay in Koh Phi Phi and invest in a water skiing and island hoping activity.

I spent the majority of the day just walking around and getting a better feel of the island. I climbed to 'the lookout' and took a few good photos. Beautiful.

Later I managed to have drinks with a few Germans, Canadians, and British people in a a Mexican pub. It was really interesting to find out that all of them at some point had traveled to Australia. They all view it as the end goal tropical paradise. Ironic saying that while in Thailand, eh?

I decided not to drink any beers today because I wanted to save money. As a result I went to the boxing arena to watch travelers beat the living shit out of each other for free alcohol. I met a cool Canadian girl and American guy there.

About an hour of watching boxing from around a corner I got the idea that I could get a better view if I was the one fighting. I volunteered and was matched with a guy from Brazil made of muscle. Needless to say, he knocked me out in the first round. On the bright side, my nose isn't broken, my teeth are still there and I got a free bucket of alcohol!

I was pretty woozy afterwards so I decided to call it a night and go to bed.

Thailand day 9

My bus stopped abruptly at 7am in Krabi. I then took a 500 Baht bus and boat package to Koh Phi Phi making the total cost about 1300 Baht ($52 which isn't the best I could have done). It was all worth it when the boat started arriving at the shore.

The view was beautiful; hardly a cloud to be seen, and clean transparent sea water everywhere. I'm definitely going to go swimming later.

Finding my hostel proved to be quite a challenge since a third of the information booths didn't know where it was, another third were convinced it didn't exist, and the rest lazily pointed in contradicting directions. Eventually I found it tucked away in an ally next to a smoothie stand. Its called center point hostel and its pretty good. I'm staying in a 10 bedroom dorm  and the people seem to be friendly and social. Finally I think I can meet some people and go out for a drink with them.

In the afternoon I walked around to find cheap food. I found one small restaurant filled with locals selling food for half the price as the other restaurants. It was awkward eating there coz all the locals stared at me. Afterwards i made my way to the beach. The sand is beautiful, clean and amazingly tourist free. I assumed it was because travelers prefer to drink beers in the pubs, but then I discovered a much larger beach on the other side of the island where everyone hangs out.

I purchased dinner and a 630ml bottle of Chang for 130B ($5). Not bad for a tropical paradise, eh?

Later on I met two German girls in the hostel. One was called Leah, and the other one started with 'f'. They were pretty cool - they told me about how they'd traveled all around Australia over last 3 months while we were drinking in a pub that was also a Muay Thai boxing arena. I really enjoyed the place because if travelers volunteered to fight each other (and lasted 3 rounds) then they were awarded a bucket of free beer. I'm seriously contemplating doing it, but I'm terrified I'll be matched up against some massive American meat head that's been practicing Muay Thai for his entire life. I also don't think my travel insurance covers 'voluntary stupidity'.

We ended up going to a different pub/club and sat next to 2 other German guys. (Why are there so many Germans in Thailand? Are there any left in Germany?). They were taller than me, more muscular than me, and knew fluent German. About half an hour later they all started speaking German to each other, so I politely left.

I ended up running into a bunch of Canadians who were pretty cool. I enjoyed talking to them quite a bit until they all unanimously decided to go on a hunt to a pharmacy to buy/make riddilin.

I was pretty drunk and tired at this point anyway so I decided to go for a walk along the beach back to my hostel.

Thailand day 8

I left Grace's place in the late morning to go to Siam via train and monorail. Siam is supposedly where the heart of the city is but strangely there wasnt much there except giant booming malls like MBK which sold the same stuff side streets did for 5 times the price. I noticed people started playing the game 'spot the hobo' as soon as I entered because I was sweaty and had all my bags on me as I walked around the mall. 

I caught the monorail again to a place called Phrom Phomg where I could get a personal Muay Thai lesson for 800 baht (yeah I know, that's like $32!). I really liked it! I honestly think I'm a few lessons away from becoming a killing machine!

For lunch and dinner I purchased 5 bags of fruit. God they're so good! How do they make mangos, pinaples and apples taste so fresh and juicy every time! Individually the bags are cheap but combined it cost 100 baht. That's the problem with cheap food - you don't know when to stop consuming. Its like happy hour in Australia - you drink twice as much and spend the same amount.

In the late afternoon I went to Mochit to catch a night bus down south to Krabi in the hope I'll be able to find a boat to drop me off a Koh Phi Phi island. It's a night bus that leaves at 6:30pm today and arrives at 11am tomorrow morning. (I'm actually on it right now using the time I've got to catch up on my blog).

I'm planning to go island hopping over the next few days. I've heard Koh Phi Phi has a good party scene and is good for Muay Thai fights. Likewise I've heard Koh Samui has a good relaxed bar scene and Koj Tou is great for snorkling.

I'm finding my spontaneous travel planning philosophy is actually putting quite a bit of stress on me to organize everything in time. This is only because its quite difficult to easily get things done in a county that doesn't speak great English. As far as Thailand is concerned I'm going to start organizing my time at least 1 day in advance. Maybe when I get to Europe I can start being spontaneous again :)

Thailand day 5

We booked an all-day activity with Jumbo trekker today. We left at 8:30 in a large van filled with 6 other people. Two of them were Canadians called Kevin and Kristen.

Our first stop was the 'Long neck village'. Females in this village have been wearing rings around their beck since birth to make them longer. I honstely thought that neck elongation was only an African thing, I guess I was wrong. The price was 500 baht to enter per person so we didn't go in, instead we joined bunch of local children playing soccer with a barely inflated ball and a tyre for the goal. I'm glad we made the decision not to go in though because according to the Canadians it was very fake and an obvious tourist money sinker. Plus the kids were awesome, one of them is going to be the next ronaldo (that's the name of a famous soccer player, right?).

Next we went to see the elephants. You got to go right up close to see them which was awesome. Because there were 9 of us and only 3 elephants two people had to sit on the seat and one person had to sit on the neck per elephant. I was lucky enough to sit on the neck. It looked like I wasn't hurting the elephant, but I couldn't be sure. I tucked my legs behind his ears and we were off. Elephants are really hard to ride - they move a lot and get distracted by everything. I almost fell off a few times. We went on a fairly short ride; only up a gentle dirt incline, down a muddy passage and back up a shallow stream. Afterwards we got to feed them and pat them. Very cool.

Next we went to go for a hike. It was pretty nice and the view was alright but it only lasted 20 minutes and you could tell the path had been walked a million times by tourists before. The waterfall at the end was pretty cool though.

Lastly we went to go white water rafting. I didn't pay any attention to any of the safety instructions before going so that made it even more exciting. Occssionally you'd see giant clumps of elephant poo float by the boat so that gave everyone the motivation they needed to do their job and paddle correctly.

At this point we were pretty good friends with the Canadians so we invited them out to drinks at a recommended pub/ club called Zoe's in yellow. The company was nice, the drinks were good and the hangover was real. There was no bathroom though so you had to walk nextdoor to pay 5b to do your business in a disgusting hole in the ground - it actually would have been cheaper and more enjoyable to crap on the street. On the bright side we got to learn a really cool Canadian drinking game called 'cunty' - it involves flicking a coin between finger goal posts at an empty beer bottle.