Thailand (or Thigh-land as my less that mature dad likes to call it)

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Hey everyone. So my vacation time is over and I'm back to work in the UK now. If I hadn't told you, I took a month off to spend time in Canada and Thailand. And if I didn't tell you this either - I've been living and working in the UK since the beginning of the year. I'm clearly not the best at keeping in touch, so I'm sure this is the first time some of you have heard from me in months. But this was a pretty wild trip so you may want to hear about it. Especially if you're planning a visit there yourself, which everyone should be doing at some point. Thailand is a pretty amazing country.

You may be too busy/impatient to sit through a spiel about my trip, but since I have no pictures from the trip to pass on and look back on, the next best thing is to write it all down. See, my camera was pickpocketed in Barcelona so I figured that was a sign that expensive electronics and a fool like myself are soon parted. I didn't buy another one after that and don't plan to until I show some more maturity. Baby steps.

So back in May or June I figured a nice long vacation would make up for the quintessential euro backpacking right-of-passage that I missed after university. I saw some of the best and worst of Europe in my work and long-weekend travels in the early part of the year, so I figured experiencing a very different culture would make for a better vacation. Plus, my brother Curt was planning a trip to Thailand to clear up some business regarding the condo he bought there, so it seemed like the obvious choice. Swiss Air is the main carrier going from Western Europe to Thailand and at $1000CDN actually cost less than my flight from London to Toronto during the peak season, so we jumped on those flights. After I finished off my contract with Barclays Bank in mid-July I headed home to Canada for a week to hit up my uni buddy Keith's wedding, which was a blast, and to chill on the beach at the cottage with family. I had to make a mad dash to Pearson from Elliot Lake, which was a nice speedy 6-hour drive on very little sleep. After that it was back across the Atlantic, then over to Zurich and straight to Bangkok after that. Arriving pretty dishevelled after about 24 hours of travel, we had to make another 2 hour trip south of Bangkok to the absolutely backwards city of Pattaya. Let me tell you, that place is either heaven or hell depending on how you look at it. It's billed the beach resort city for the Bangkok elite, but it's 90% populated by fat old dudes looking for the easy score with the hordes of north-Thailand country girls flocking south chasing the big baht. But taking in the seedy Vegas-style atmosphere is actually pretty enjoyable, as long as you steer clear of the katois (lady boys) and leave the girls in the beer bars where they belong. The beach in Pattaya is nothing great to speak of, but there's at least a hundred different ways to spend your day on the beach, not the least of which involves a coconut in one hand and a beer in the other. Still, I wouldn't recommend the place for a beach holiday, because the beaches further south have to be seen to be believed. After sticking out 6 days in the city that sleeps all friggin day and parties retardedly long all night, we headed back up to Bangkok to catch the red-eye train down south along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand to the city of Chumphon. At first the train seemed relatively safe. A little rickety, but not too worrying. But on a trip to the toilet we encountered a group of very drunk, very non-English speaking Thai dudes passing around 2 bottles of Sangsum (Thai rotgut whiskey that gets you wicked smashed, priced around $1.50CDN for a 26er). We couldn't understand what they were saying but the bottle thrust in our direction made it pretty clear that they wanted us to drink with them. So we had a few smashes from the bottle thanked them and quickly returned to our seats. They weren't having any of that, so they followed us back and dragged us back to the rickety platform outside between the train cars. After a few more nervous smashes from the bottles it turned out that they were actually really friendly. Just really drunk. They were a bunch of soldiers on their way to an army base down in the far south for exercises. We communicated as best we could, and they mostly pointed to the various namebrands of their clothing and said "You like? Good! Good!" and everybody compared tattoos. Then the one dude, of course it had to be the drunkest, reached into his pocket, pulled something out and pointed a what I quickly figured out was a gun straight at my chest. He pointed it at everything and everyone in sight, including the stewardess and himself. He even pointed it an armed train guard who walked by and just sort of rolled his eyes. I guess that's commonplace on the nighttrain in Thailand, to have a drunk soldier train a gun on your head. But by then the Sangsum was working its magic and I wasn't so worried. I headed back to my seat. Curt stayed and in the morning told me they did drive-bys as the train slowed down on the platform, sending people running for their lives. Maybe it wasn't so commonplace after all?

We pulled into the port city of Chumphon at about 6am and huddled into a baht bus (pickup truck taxi) and headed for the pier. We caught the 7am ferry across the Gulf of Thailand toward the island of Koh Tao, with the intention of doing some island hopping and scuba diving. The sights along the way were pretty impressive, with literally hundreds of fishing trawlers coming in with the morning catch and all the friendly little kids waving at all the farungs (foreigners) on the ferry. My sunglasses escaped overboard into the sea, so I had a beer and didn't worry about it too much. The weather had been cloudy since we got there anyway and didn't show any signs of changing. After 3 hours of cruising we got to Koh Tao, which is the smallest of the three big islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Koh Tao translates to " Turtle Island", which is fitting name because the island is round with a two big mountain peaks sticking up in the middle running from north to south coast. The whole island is green and I suppose it does look like a giant turtle shell. Either way it was a very impressive sight, and as we got closer we could see that there was actually pretty developed little community on the near shore of the island. We grabbed our gear, hopped off the boat and started combing the island for a place to live and a place to scuba dive with. We ended up taking some bungalows in a quiet section of the beach, about a 15 minute walk from the madness of the party bars near the pier. Definitely a good choice, and definitely something recommended to anyone who makes a trip there. As Curt already had his Open-Water certification and would be doing free-dives everyday, I checked out a scuba shop and signed up for my Open-Water course. It was pretty intense, and took 4 days with a total of about 10 hours of classroom time and 5 dives. But holy hell it was worth it. The coral reef dives were mind-blowing and on my last day, hungover and with only a half-hour of sleep in me, I went shark-diving. I wasn't able to get too close, but I spotted quite a few gray reef sharks, about 7 feet long and pretty nasty looking. The dive training itself was fairly straightforward so it's definitely a must-do for anyone who has the time to do it on a trip to Mexico or Thailand or Australia (being the main dive instruction vacation spots).

We stayed in Koh Tao a 5th night to recover from the early mornings and long nights and then hopped the morning boat to Koh Phagnan for the full moon party. Being the high-season (tourism-wise; the weather isn't the greatest in July/August) the party was supposed to be one of the biggest of the year, and it turned out that damn near every resort on the island was booked out. After checking out some pretty amazing treehouses and bungalows that were all full, we happened across a place at one of the furthest resorts from Haad Rin Beach (where the chaos of the party goes down) that had 2 rooms free. We dropped our gear and headed out to rent some motorbikes to tour around and see some of the island with. Turns out this island was much bigger than Koh Tao, so after going about 30 mins along the coastline we ran into some seriously steep hills. The bikes we had were only 100ccs and had absolutely no brakes so things got pretty hairy when the traffic started to back up. I got into a tight situation and had to ditch my bike to avoid crashing into another newbie biker and burnt the shit out of my leg on the hot muffler in the process. Turns out those things get damn hot chugging up the hills with a fatass like me on it. I had to hit the clinic for some firstaid and quickly realized that it was a good thing I did my scuba diving already because I wouldn't be doing anymore with my leg all bunged and bandaged up. In the clinic we met literally a dozen other people who had destroyed their bodies that day on bikes. Seems the local sport for the Thais is watching the foreigners kill and maim each other on the coastal and city roads. After my patch-up we headed back to our bungalows as night was falling and passed some poor soul who had smashed his bike into a car and appeared to have a serious head and neck injury. I realized I got off easy. Back at the bungalows we met some German backpackers and chilled with them that night because a huge storm had blown in and the rain was coming down at 45 degrees. Now, the islands do have power, much to my surprise as I wasn't expecting much beyond treehouses and candle-power. But the power lines on the islands have a tendency to crackle and pop and blow-out every now and then. So I wasn't planning on walking under any of them in a rainstorm. So we just got hammered on Singha and played some bizarre German drinking games, none of which any of you would really be interested in knowing. Jammed on the guitar a bit and then crashed. The next day was the day of the party but to kill time we rented some more reliable bikes and made our way all the way down to Haad Rin to check out the party set-up. The beach was rocking and I tried to imagine it with about 25,000 people crammed onto it. But it didn't compare to the sight when everybody actually packed in later that evening. We headed back to the Bungalow, had some curry and beers for what you'd pay for a couple of stamps back in Canada and headed down to the party with our German friends in tow. We got there and it was wall-to-wall mayhem. Everybody was drinking buckets (a mickey of booze dumped into a sandpail, without the sand - for a little while at least, with a couple cans of mix and a Red Bull fired in for good measure). We headed over and picked up a bucket from the friendly ‘Fucking Good Buckets!’ merchant (pretty accurate slogan) and got the night going. After a good session of sucking back booze through a straw until your eyes roll back in your head we headed out to go mingle. And met half of Ireland and Norway. The beach was endless crowds of dancing hammered retards for as far as you could see. Which, after a few buckets, wasn’t very far. I’m not really sure what happened over the next 8 hours but I’m told it was quite enjoyable. As the crowds started to filter out around 6am we caught light of the Magic Mountain bar on the far side of the island and made our way over, keen on trying one of the mushroom shakes that I was recommended to me by a dishevelled bearded atrocity some of you might know as Dany. So as I choked it down the sun suddenly rose. A little bit too fast. The temperature change was a little bit alarming and the feeling of intense heat on your clammy booze soaked skin is probably a lot like what a vampire might experience. But then again, that was probably the mushrooms in the shake. After a few “this isn’t working”s, I could only sit motionless, trying desperately to figure out how to get to bed and away from the sun. And the miles of lady boys, bombed out partiers who don’t realize the party is over and sea of facedown people on the beac hwho just gave up trying to get home, lay between me and that little jungle bungalow I needed so badly.

Okay tip: plan your attack before the hallucinogenic fieldtrip. We wandered endlessly, barely knowing which way is up let alone home before we were pointed to a baht bus going our way. The trip back was worse than a round-the-world flight, with endless connections and haggling over prices. PS. The Irish are cheap. They’ll haggle over a quarter for an hour out of principle. Granted, the ride was overpriced, but it was already 9am and the sun was beaming down hot and I felt no great love for my fellow human beings at the moment. Rather disgust, really. There’s nothing like a massive overindulgent party to really make you feel love for your fellow man. And blind hatred when you see them in the morning light.

We eventually made it to town and had to wait another hour until the bus filled up enough to head North toward our bungalows. Our chauffeur for the morning might as well have been an F-1 driver, because he took the turns so sharply I nearly pissed myself. He must have enjoyed himself at the same party the night before because he looked rougher than I did. Eyes bloodshot and fidgety like a crack addict. Still, he was going my way. Long story short, we made it home. I can’t say it wasn’t an interesting ride home. The shrooms wore off enough to allow me the power of speech, and I used it to laugh my ass off at some of the characters on the bus. The Israeli guy, who got jumped by a bunch of English guys and had his wallet, money and passport stolen, who proclaimed “I hate people from ”. To which the guy on the bus from took serious offence. And the trainwreck of an Irish couple that looked every bit the part of people that go to Thailand just to party and get taken advantage of because they’re drunk, rude and quite honestly deserve it. And, well, me. Because I made a terrible choice choosing my beverages that night.

I had the lovely pleasure of peeling off my nasty leg dressing when I got home because it was not doing me any good in the state it was in. Thankfully my nervous system bailed me out halfway through the gruesome procedure and I passed out. Curt smacked me around a bit and poured a bottle of water on me, finally waking me up. I saw the water and figured I had pissed myself. I pretty much gave up on myself at that moment, but after crawling into bed and sleeping a few hours I woke up feeling relatively normal. Proud at having conquered the Full Moon Party and not having drank those pussy shit regular sized drinks.

We took the ferry to Koh Samui that afternoon, hopped a motorcycle taxi to the airport and flew out of Terminal 1 at around 2pm. When I say ‘Terminal 1’, I really mean ‘That straw hut a few feet away from Terminal 2’, because that’s exactly what the airport is. It’s all made of bamboo and roof thatching. Pretty wild to see and it shakes all to shit when the planes take off.

It was only an hour back to Bangkok (definitely beats the trainride) from Samui and the scenery out the window is amazing. We landed and high-tailed it back to Pattaya for the last 2 days of our trip. Curt took care of the final paperwork he needed to do, we hit the town for one last big night then dragged ourselves back to the airport the next day. I couldn’t say I was happy to be leaving, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d really want to stay if I had the choice. But that probably had more to do with the pace of my vacation that the content.

The End.

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Photos

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Early morning ferry to Koh Tao.

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3 hours on a ferry.

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It doesn't look like paradise in this weather. But unfortunately, that's all we got for 3 weeks.

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Crazy hammered Thai soldiers with guns. I look happy, but I'm actually pissing myself.