Advertisement
Published: September 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Buy Your Bucket Here!
Creative Advertisement? The road has brought us to our last few weeks of beach vacation ... ever! Well certainlly (HOPEFULLY) not "ever," but for a long time indeed! Oh Canada is looming closer and closer ...
After Elephantville in Chiang Mai, we flew south to Phuket in search of some of the pristine beach we left behind months ago (when we left Thailand for Cambodia back in April). The search turned up empty handed though, as it is monsoon season at the moment and on the Andaman Coast we were greeted with downpours and cloudy skies. The four of us were still feeling a bit run down from the monsterous Bangkok Trots or the Red Curry Slide or the Alien Flu or whatever we shall call it that struck a few days prior, so we used the time to watch pirated copies of Seinfeld instead. We also celebrated our fourth anniversary and treated ourselves to some authentic Thai-Mex food. After a year of following eachother around the globe, happy to report we're still very much in love. :D From Phuket we ferried to Ko Phi Phi and then to Railey, still searching for the sunny skies, but aside from a few hours
Black Light "Tattoos"
aka a ginormous waste of money (but well spent in the opinion of a man who has consumed two buckets!) in the morning ("Trevor, it's 6am! Wake up, let's go to the beach!"), rain drops kept falling on our heads.
Operation: "My Socks Are Soggy" was subsequently diverted and we headed instead to the other side of the coast where at last Buddha showed some mercy! On Ko Samui we were treated to a glorious day with only half cloudy skies and no raindrops (where of course we donned our fancy swimwear, lubed up in sunscreen, and hightailed it to the beach!).
We also lucked out in finding a Ladyboy Caberet (think drag queen show), for not even an 8th of the price we would have paid in Bangkok. Of course, it was only an 8th of the caliber as well, but we were only looking for big hair, crazy costumes and Gloria Estefan, all of which were delivered as promised! Ladyboys are Thailands third gender, essentially males who exhibit varying degrees of femininity (Thank You Wikipedia!), and are an accepted part of Thai culture.
After Ko Samui, we parted ways with Dan and Maria and headed to Ko Phangnan for the Full Moon Party! The Full Moon Party is an all night shindig that goes down
Voila Le Party Zone!
Had Rin Beach, view from our mountain retreat before all the hoopla began! every month on the night of the full moon (catchy hey?). It's become the worlds largest monthly beach rave, with anywhere from five to thirty thousand people attending. Gong show doesn't even begin to describe it, but we had an amazing time!!! The beach becomes one big free-lovin, bucket-huggin, sand-poundin, booty-shakin family!!! The beverage of choice is the "bucket," think little kids sand pail with a can of coke, a mickey of Sangsom (Thai Whiskey) and a bottle of Red Bull. Guesthouses quadruple their prices for days leading up to the party, so we compromised by getting a place that wasn't right on the beach, or even in the town, but rather way up on the freakin mountain in the jungle (but still only $15/night!). The hike was about 25 minutes of a 70 degree incline, perhaps not our brightest move, as it was gruelling at 8:30am when we finally retired (sans shoes, someone stole Kristena's shoes!)
The following day (or later that day when we woke up), we were wandering around town, still, uh, "altered" from all the Red Bull (it HAD to be the Red Bull!), and found ourselves in a tattoo parlour. Oh yah, you guessed
it, we're both permanentlly marked for life! We had talked about it a few times this year, about getting traditional bamboo tattoos before going home, but the idea quickly passed (as Kristena is a chicken). However, before we knew it, plans were being drawn up, skin was being sanitized and Poof, No time for the chicken lady to change her mind! Trevors is a Buddhist good luck symbol written on his left forearm, and Kristena's is "Happiness and Freedom" written in Thai script on her right foot. Happiness and Freedom because after all we've seen and experienced this year, both have more meaning now than perhaps they ever have!
We also spent a few days wandering around Ko Phangnan in search for blissful beaches and once again Buddha smiled upon us because we're as crisp as bacon from all the sunshine! We found ourselves a cheap little hut and camped out for a few days, unashamedlly pool crashing the nicer hotels around us (when all that salt water got to be a bit much!).
That pretty much brings us to the end of Southern Thailand, a little sooner than we had hoped, but money is becoming a serious
Happy Anniversary!
FOUR years, whoo hoo!!! issue for us and we can live cheapest in Bangkok - home of the 66 cent plate of pad thai!
T and K
Advertisement
Tot: 0.222s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0466s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb