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Published: January 24th 2009
I know it has been a while since my last blog, but I have been so busy working on my tan that even the thought of sitting on a computer while writing a story about my travels is exhausting. Well.... Here it is and it's really long.
After staying in Vang Vieng, Laos for roughly a week, we flew south from Vientiane to Phuket, Thailand with a lovely layover in Bangkok. From Phuket we jumped on a boat that would take us to Koh Phi Phi Don (big sister island to Koh Phi Phi Lay, the island where Leonardo DiCaprio took the life of a troublesome shark in the movie "The Beach"). The Phi Phi's and the surrounding islands wreak of natural beauty.
Upon our arrival to Phi Phi Don we were greeted by our friend, Jonny Van Dyck (AKA "J Dazzle"), who was waiting with bells on over his bright ruby red burn which eventually turned into a tan. It turned out that the resort we had booked was the biggest and best on the island thanks to Whibbs (AKA Swayze, AKA Patrick Whibley). We even got the Beautiful corner suite which hosted an outstanding view of both
Lunch on Phi Phi
(Left to right) Whibbs, Me, J Dazzle, and The Bear. "The core crew"bays and the east hill of the island.
It didn't take long to get settled on Phi Phi Don. It has an amazing night life and incredible food, although each of us had our fair share of food poisoning during our stay. I just so happened to be poisoned on non other than Christmas day evening by an overly spicy massaman curry chicken from a restaurant where a cat sleeps in the fridge due to the extreme midday heat. The curry actually tasted really good. I won't get into details, but it was a several hour onset of pure evil.
During the day we hiked to the gorgeous viewpoints, rented Kayaks and paddled to deserted beaches. On Christmas Day we wore Muay Thai boxing shorts and Santa hats and rented a long tail boat to take us on a snorkeling trip around Phi Phi Lay, "The Beach" island. That island is much more stunning in real life, good to see that even the camera tricks of Hollywood can't match natural beauty of that magnitude. On Christmas eve, Craig and I went scuba diving around Phi Phi Lay. We did 2 dives around massive coral shelves and saw turtles,
Phi Phi Kayaking
Its funny that Bessie has his paddle in the water because I don't remember him paddling at all. sea horses, went swimming through caves and much more.
When dusk came, we seemed to be in a routine of eating a Thai meal, grabbing a bucket of red bull, coke and Sang Som whiskey, and then making our way to the Reggae Bar, where tourists could jump in a boxing ring and beat on each other for a free bucket of booze!! Hahaha Hilarious!! After the Reggae Bar we would be ready to continue the party down on the beach at the popular Ibiza Bar where the fire dancers were always going strong. The crowd would always be invited to join in with the fire limbo and fire skip rope. A lot of travelers had burn marks from getting involved.
I decided to visit the barber shop while we were on Phi Phi just to get a shaved head. It was honestly the most memorable haircut ever. I thought the guy was crazy when he asked for 300 Thai Baht for something as simple as a shaved head, but I would soon find out that he deserved much more. This guy's attention to detail was unreal. After he finished shaving my head and cleaning up the back
and sides, I thought he was done, but oh no.. He then started shaping the front of my head with extra special care. After this, he asked me to sit in a fully reclined seat and proceeded to lather my whole face including my ears with shaving cream. Now he began working his magic with an old school razor, he shaved my entire face including my ears, hahaha. Thinking that he must be done at this point, I reach for my wallet, but he motions for me to take a seat back in the original chair. I'm thinking, "What on earth could be next?" Turns out that this guy is an amazing masseuse. He performs a neck cracking routine and a head, neck, shoulder and arm massage. Outstanding!! I paid, "Samon", the barber his well deserved 300 Baht + a 200 Baht tip after he finished clipping my nose hairs. What a guy.
We decided to cut one day off our booking on both Koh Phangan and Koh Phi Phi to experience the party on Chawaing beach in Koh Samui. I have to thank Jonny Van Dyck for having the idea to go there and "The Bear" (AKA Craig
Bessie) for convincing me that it was, in fact, a good idea. After a 2 boat and 2 taxi trip we arrived at our destination, Chawaing beach.
That night we went to the famous "Ark Bar", which is a restaurant on the beach that plays the best house music in Thailand. They have a table of fresh seafood, caught that day, at the front of the restaurant. You can hand pick your seafood (which was a squid, some Tuna, and a snapper all 3 times we ate there) and then tell them how you want it prepared (which was chili squid, garlic butter tuna, sweat chili tuna, and fried chili snapper each time we went). Those were, "Ark" bar none, the best seafood meals that I have ever had.
Locals would walk by Ark Bar with massive fireworks and sell them to drunk tourists who would light them off right in front of the restaurant. Most of the time the fireworks would blast into the air to add to the atmosphere, but there were a few occasions where the drunk tourist would somehow let it blow right beside the tables. When this happened, everybody would hit the deck,
Scuba Diving at Phi Phi Lay
Our guide's name was James Bond because these were the real thing. I'm talking like huge fireworks.
While we were waiting for our meal on the first night, we randomly ran into Jordan, a friend of mine from LA and his buddy Nir from Singapore. We also bumped into a group of guys, Mark, Matt and Chris from Dubai, England, and South Africa who we met on Phi Phi (Ark Bar proved to be "the spot"). Over the next week and a half we would be partying extremely hard with this group of maniacs.
Anyways, after the Ark Bar we migrated to a massive indoor/outdoor club called "Green Mango." Which is one of the best clubs I have ever been to. The next stop would be the Black Moon party, which was a full blown rave on a lake. It got real ugly there. I have never seen so many lady boys and prostitutes in one place.
The day after, we rented motor bikes and toured the island. We hiked to a waterfall where the elephants were plentiful and a monkey was stealing the hats and glasses off the heads of tourists. The waterfall was a beauty, it even gave us a couple
of swimming holes to freshen up.
We had one more night of going strong in Koh Samui before we headed off to Koh Phangan. The half hour boat trip from Samui to Phangan proved to be painless and thanks to Bessie, so was the check in for our brand new bungalows on the Full Moon party beach.
This beach hosted a party a night and as it was practically on our doorstep, it was near impossible to avoid the party. The nights leading up to New Years were good, but the New Years eve party on that beach was the most insane party of my life. The whole beach of Hadd Rin was covered with close to 40,000 people. There were a variety of stages playing every type of music other than country and classical. So, in other words, everybody was dancing to there favorite music all night long. The party went long into the next day, but I didn't. When I woke up around noon, I walked down the beach to get a bight to eat in town. It looked like a bomb went off, there were people passed out in amongst the debris all over the
beach. People had literally danced until they dropped. What a gong show!!
Mr. Van Dyck headed home new years day, poor son of a gun. I don't know how he did it, but it sounds like hes back home, alive and well. The next day we rented miniature road bikes with way to much power. I dropped mine on a dirt path within the first 30 minutes of driving. I was far to big for this little machine. The roads on this island are insane and the people drive like Mario Andretti and Paul Tracy competing for the gold on an Indy circuit. Regardless, we took these bikes to the limits as we raced to the north of the island where we had lunch at a chilled out spot called Malibu beach. We watched a Thai kite boarder tear it up in this bay, pulling inverted back flips and 720s without falling once. Later that night we went to the famous pool party at the Coral Bungalows. I couldn't believe that people were still partying this hard only 2 days after new years eve.
The next day, we headed back to Koh Samui for one more night on
Chawaing beach before Bessie and Whibbs had to start heading back home. When I woke up the next morning I sat on the edge of my bed thinking of how happy I was that these maniacs were going home. This was the end of the "biggest bender of our lives". To be perfectly honest, J Dazzle, The Bear and Swayze are a few of the most solid bros around and it was a pleasure traveling and partying with them. After saying our goodbyes at their taxi I went to Starbucks for a frappuccino and thought about what on earth I was going to do, now that I was alone. I needed a cleanse....
I decided to go to Ton Sai, Railay beach, in Krabi, Thailand. One of the top 5 climbing destinations in the world. I spent a week recovering from the partying. I would drink lots of water, go to sleep early, and do a 3 day climbing course. It is a gorgeous and chilled out destination with picturesque beaches, surrounded by monstrous cliffs.
My climbing instructor, "Yu", showed me the ins and outs of climbing. He quickly became confident in me, letting me lead climb on
the second half of my first day. By the 3rd day, I was lead climbing a 3 anchor, multi pitch climb. The view was amazing!! The workout was intense and my body was in pain after the last day of climbing, so I thought that since I hadn't experienced the night life in Ton Sai, I would go out for some drinks since there was a miniature full moon party happening on the beach. It was a great night, I met tons of people.
I decided to fly to Bangkok the next day to have a few days in the crazy city before I would fly to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I spent my time hanging out on Kaoh San road and at the rooftop pool, meeting new friends and running into people that I met earlier in the trip. I thought that it would be harder to meet people when I started traveling alone. Turns out that I have met more people while I have been alone than I did when I was with the boys. It's damn near impossible to be loner in the city of Bangkok. I met some people from Australia, Finland and Denmark that I
Muay Thai Santa Pose
Who got the water on the lense!!! went to a local clubbing district called "RCA" with. They were some of the most high end clubs that I have ever seen. It was where all the Thai people went clubbing, no westerners except for us.
When I arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I caught a taxi straight to the lake shore. Looked the same as last time, but now there was a big African community in town mostly from Cameroon and Nigeria. I found out that the Africans were all soccer players and I quickly became friends with them. They smoked copious amounts of marijuana for "inspiration", played pool and showed me a couple bars that they liked.
Now I've been in Sihanoukville, on the coast of Cambodia for a week, visiting friends that have been here for years (Shawn, Kelly, and Antonia plus a guy Marlin who is a recent addition to the Sihanoukville crew), baking in the sun, and getting back into towed skim boarding. The skim boarding is definitely the highlight of this place. We have a motor bike on the beach which tows the guy on the skim board at 30 km an hour for a kilometer ride down the beach. It's
awesome!!! I'm not to sure what I'm going to do next, it's a pretty casual lifestyle down here.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and New Years.
Take care
Kris
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