Advertisement
Published: January 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Sà-wàt-dee!
Thanks for your message Uncle Barry. I'm glad that I am bringing back memories of your trip from my writing and pictures.
We are officially back in Thailand and have been for the past 6 days. We crossed the border back into Thailand on the 18th without incident and traveled for about 6 hours by bus to Bangkok where we stayed at Lily's place for a night. The following day we met Kam's girlfriend, Katie, and then went out for some Thai traditional massages. This time we got them for an hour and half, but my experience was not quite as good as the first one. It seemed like the woman who was giving me the massage would space out every so often because she would almost stop rubbing completely. Maybe it's a new technique i'm not aware of 😊
We said goodbye to Lily again and caught an overnight bus to the southern region of Thailand. A 10 hour bus ride to be exact, with no toilet paper! Needless to say, I made it to the rest stop without a problem. We then waited a couple hours for a long boat to take us to the
island Ko Pha Ngan, which was a 2 1/2 hour ride. It was an incredibly long travel day, but it made relaxing on the beach and snorkeling that much better.
We bought some snorkel equipment after settling in, and walked about 500 ft from our bungalow to the ocean where we commenced with the snorkeling. The tide was out so it was very shallow and murky in the area, but we did see some large black sea urchins with a crazy flourecent eye at their center. We also saw some blenny scooters which are small bottom feeder fish and a littering of sea slugs.
That night was my first experience in sleeping in a hammock and I slept well. I think it might have had something to do with the almost complete lack of sleep the night before, but rocking back and forth put me to sleep almost immediately. I felt like a baby again 😊 I woke up the next morning with my butt grazing the ground. Apparently the hammock stretched over night.
The next day we took a taxi to the north west corner of the island which had some better snorkeling according to the
locals. We snorkeled and relaxed on the beach for the rest of the day and didn't return to our bungalow until that evening.
I did not have such a great snorkeling experience because my mask would fog up every couple minutes. Plus we were continuously stung by tiny jelly fish that left a small burning sensation on the skin. I did see some larger striped fish, which I do not know the name of, but I didn't see much because I didn't get out to the main area of aquatic life. I was content reading my book and writing in my journal though and soaking up the warm sun rays. I think I could get used to this life 😊
Once low tide came, we walked along a sandbar to a small island that we briefly explored and found a puppy to pet. Bonus!
The following day we took a taxi to a waterfall that was not really flowing because it is the dry season now, but it was still fun to clambor over rocks, finding spiders and alligator lizards along the way. Guess what we did next? We relaxed on the beach some more! Who would
have thought.
That night was sensory overload for me. We went to the infamous Full Moon Party of Ko Pha Ngan. I do not know how long these have been going on for, I heard one local say about 10 years, but according to the Lonely Planet, there can be upwards of 30,000 people on Hat Rin beach during a full moon. We had to find out what it was all about so we took a taxi from our bungalow with 10 other people who were either drunk, on mushrooms, or both.
We arrived at the beach to a throng of young white people dancing the night away to techno-trance music. It was a pretty incredible sight. The beach was roughly a quarter mile, full of people who were either dancing, peeing in the ocean, stumbling, falling, passing out, or just meandering and taking it all in. I was the latter, even though I am well known for my dance moves, I decided not humiliate everyone there 😊
Fireworks were shot off every so often, sometimes a little close for comfort. People were getting flourecent paint, buckets of alcohol were being sold, and fire dancers were entertaining
everyone. We bought a couple buckets of alcohol, which are several different mixtures of either rum, whisky, vodka and then either sprite, coke, red bull, lime. The concoction is mixed into what appeared to be a plastic pail, that a child might use to make a sand castle with, straws are stuck in, and then it is carried around and consumed rather quickly.
After traversing the beach and standing with dozens of other guys peeing in the ocean, we plopped down and were mesmerized by fire dancers. I really wish I had my camera because some of the things they were doing were just incredible. We had read that people's belongings are frequently stolen during these parties so I opted not to. However, I'm sure you could go on youtube and find some video. Maybe even from the party we were at. I did see some video cameras 😊
I don't think I moved for about an hour while watching two guys manipulate the fire. One of the objects they used was a staff that they would dip both ends in lighter fluid, (probably kerosine), light the ends, and then proceed to spin the staff faster than I
have ever seen a human spin a staff before. In front and behind, over and under themselves. By itself the moves were cool, but with the added bonus of fire, (I'm a sucker for a good fire show), it was simply incredible. As the staff was spun the flames took on the effect of a spiral trail. Very cool.
The other tool they would use were two chains that were lit on fire on the bulbous ends. These were spun in time with the music, getting faster or slower with the beat. One of the fire dancers particularly liked to pull the chains in to half their length, hold his hands out in front of his chest and spin the chains in a vertical circular path. What was even cooler was that people from the crowd would lie on the ground in front of him with a cigarette in their mouth and have the fire dancer spin the flaming chains within inches of the people's faces to light it for them. I am so upset I didn't have my camera 😞
We took a taxi back to our bungalow around 2 and I stayed up for another hour
or so enjoying the view of the ocean under the full moon. It was very pretty and peaceful after a night of intensity.
Today was very lazy. We pretty much relaxed on the beach almost the entire day and I got some sweet sunset pics. Alright I gotta go so I can upload pics.
Daniel
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 17; qc: 76; dbt: 0.0695s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb