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Published: April 29th 2008
Dude Looks like a Lady!
Check out them Knockers!entry (Clover)
Oh the hedonistic luxeries of S.E. Asia and at a fraction of the cost. This part of the world begs for people to over indulge and be bad. I hate shopping an I want to shop here.
Our island hopping up from Maylasia landed us in the major party island of Phuket, Thailand. Phuket, pronounced pooh-ket not the way we would naturally want to pronounce a "ph" word. You know what I mean.
Phuket is the land of crazy 19 year old backpackers and fat, hairy, old men sporting banana hammocks(speedos for those people not familiar with the term) and a young Thai woman on their arm. The latter is rather yucky I have to say. They seem to proudly display hairy beer guts with pride...it is like some odd pale creature that crawled from it's darkened cave. A thing no one wants to see and everyone has heard about. Shivers...
We stayed in Phuket long enough to get our next destination laid out and to catch a local show. The tranny cabaret show. The Simon Cabaret Show. Come on, don't judge too harshly. It was a display of the worst lip sinking I have
Shee'sha and naan bread!
Takin a break from the madness of Thai New Year! ever seen but I honestly had a great time. There were a lot of pretty costumes to. Lots of sparkle. Scott and I both dressed up for the occassion. The first time almost since leaving the States. I think that when a lady/man sees "real" woman they look at us and wonder why we don't dress up to show off what we have. Most lady/boys put women to shame with their outfits. And us women could greatly benefit from a few dress tips from them. But after all was said and done my one thought was "you may have the rhinestones but I have the diamonds 😊"
After the show all the lady/boys lined up in the exit hallway and guests could pick out who they wanted their picture taken with. For a fee of course. I picked out two for Scott and I. It is my opinion Scott doesn't look very relaxed in the photo. Lol. We were running low on small bills so one of our "girls" got a nice tip and the other one an okay tip. He/she may not have been the real deal but "she" sure had the woman demon stare down. I can
only imagine the cat fights they have back stage. Whoa nelly!
From Phuket we flew into Bangkok. I think for both of us it was sort of a mile stone. Before we started our trip we discussed where we thought we would have our first travel break downs and where our mile stones would be. Bangkok symbolized the middle of our travel plans. Arriving at Bangkok was supposed to symbolized we were becoming travelled people. I suppose that is what has happened. I know now I can haggle with a taxi driver when he won't turn the meter on anyways. Scott knows to sit back and let me try to be as endearing as possible to get a us a good taxi fair. I'm not sure I pull off cute or endearing but I am able to haggle them down in price.
When we crossed over the Maylasian/ Thai border things felt very different. As in much more laid back and mellow. However being ripped off in Maylasia probably colored my veiw point of the country unfortunately. I think when we crossed over the border I felt more relaxed. It might have something to do with me never
The Choas of Thai New Year.
It's all about water fights and smearing white mud on the faces for the 5 days of partying during the Thai Lunar New Year. knowing if I was going to be judged harshly for wearing a sleevless shirt or short. Maylasia is very muslim and sometimes you get some very uncomfortable stares when dressed a certain way. I always carried a shawl with me in Maylasia just in case. Most of the local girls were wearing a head scarf, long sleeve shirt with a t-shirt and long skirt or jeans. They must have been roasting. When we crossed over the border all the staring went away and I felt like I could relax again. I never dress that revealing anyway but it was odd to feel aware of every bit of skin showing.
Our Malaysia to Thailand border crossing was rather different to. That part wasn't very relaxing. All the way up from the lower west side of Malaysia we island hopped up into Thailand. Lots of ferry boats. A few of them making me a tad green. Anyhoo, when our ferry crossed over into Thai waters everyone on the boat handed their passports over to some guy on the boat. Tossing them into a plastic bag. Eek! All the gringos cast worried glances at one another and nervously made jokes about being
The Simon Caberat.
Boys being girls :) thrown over board and left behind. Our Destination was an island called Koh Lipe. It was raining when we got there. On top of that there was no peir to unload onto and the water was rather choppy. It was in Koh Lipe we discovered the "un-charms" of the long tail boats. A long narrow wooden boat loudly pulled up along side our ferry. Everyone quickly hussled their belongings out into the long boat. The boat tottered back and forth as each person got in and the rough water rocked us back and forth.
From the long boat we were taxied to the island and deposited at a ram shackle open air bar called the Barracuda. This was the imagration office. Some people ordered beer some ordered coffee and everyone glanced around hoping to catch a glimps of our passports. As un organized as everything was we did al get our passports back stamped and ready to go. No questions asked. It was nuts. Certainly the strangest border crossing we have been thorugh.
Moving on, back to Bangkok. A mile stone for our trip. As it turned out we showed up in the city during the Thai New
The streets during Thai New Year.
mud in your eye and ice water down your back Year. Scott new about it before hand but I had no idea. For them the new year is like 2555 or something. Um okay...well when the new comes around for them they celebrate the occassion with a huge water fight. And the smearing of clay on each other and every one walking by. Originally the holiday was for one day but it was extended for five days. Which was every day we intended to be in Bangkok. Hmmm...
The center for the revelling is Khao San road. Which if anyone were to look it up it is the area every foreign traveller goes for entertainment, food, lodging, travel visas and trouble. Well for the new year it is where all the locals and visiting travellers crowd in and make a wet mess of everything. The shops close down and all they sell are beer, water guns and packets of white clay called "powder." It is about four blocks of chaos.
We went down to Khao San on our second day in Bangkok and the first day of the celebration. The streets were packed but we were able to get around relatively easy even if we were being assaulted
Around Wat Phra Kaew
Emerald Buddha and Royal Palace. by people with Winnie the Pooh water guns and little buckets of clay from all sides. We managed to find a shisha bar with some of the best garlic naan bread I have ever had. I love naan bread. It was so funny people watching. Everyone was laughing and screaming. There were old folks and little children intermixed among all the young people. Most of the locals didn't bother dressing well. In fact most of them were where pajamas.
The second day of the celebration we wanted to go to the temple of the jade budha. Of course we had to walk right throught the "zone" to get there. We walked straight through the Khao San area and by the time we broke through the crowd and got to the temple we were covered in mud and dripping wet. We had to buy a bottle of water to wash our faces off. It was crazy.
The temple was really pretty though. Very shiny. Every surface was murals of glass and tiles. And oddly we seemed to be the messiest people there. It seemed like every other person had some how avoided getting splashed and splattered. They must have
taken a taxi. A few of the guards laughed at us. It was funny enough so we laughed with them.
When we wondered back to our hotel were found a locals market. Ever since we got to S.E. Asia Scott has been smoking these long skinny green cigars made is Burma. They look like they are a cigar made out of one huge green leaf rolled up on itself. We hadn't been able to find them since getting to Bangkok. Scott scoped a guy smoking some on the street and quickly got him to point to where he got them. We traded him our two soda cans and two cigars for the help. One thing that has really bothered me about Asia is that I can never find a trash can and it is because there aren't any. Most of the trash is just thrown somewhere. It feels so wrong. I can't even get myself to thrown a bit of paper trash on the ground.
So Bangkok was pretty cool and it was exciting to get to see one of their popular celebrations but after the first couple days I had had enough. One night we went out
Vertigo Club.
Quite the vantage point from this bar on the 61st floor. to a nice place have a drink so we dressed up and caught taxi. When we got back Scott wanted to go to the 7-11 down the street from our hotel. I was doomed to get doused. If you are dressed up you are even more so a target. A woman walked up to me and dumped her bucket right over my head. I didn't flinch and I didn't look at her I just walked straight back to the hotel dripping and changed. I was mad. It was actually pretty amusing. We still hadn't eaten yet so I changed into some normal clothes and we ventured back out in search of food. Scott took one look at my face and said he pitied the next person who got in my way. Sure enough some one did. He was short little guy who came up behind me and dumped a bucket of water on me. I think I went blind red for a second because before I knew it I had turned around and I had the kid in head lock and I had snatched his bucket away from him. He and I were both laughing but my laugh was a
vengance laugh. I filled up his bucket and chased him down the street getting him square in the back. And then came back to get his friend who was squirting Scott with his yellow pistol. All of his friends watched and laughed and gave me the thumbs up. I walked away with triumph in my step.
My triumph was stolen when I recieved one of the worst haircuts I have ever had. If you get you hair cut in S.E. Asia be prepared for your hair to be pointing in all directions and most of them a direction you don't want. Scott said he liked it but he was being nice. Grow hair, grow.....
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Lucky Charms
Dave B
Great Entry!
I loved your entry. I think your Hair looks fine Clover. Glad you guys got you passports back! Are you getting tired of traveling yet? I started getting tired after about 15 months. When will you be back? It is nice sleeping in the same bed more than 2 nights in a row! take care and be safe!