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Published: November 29th 2008
Koh Phangan
Extreme Jenga!My last night in Koh Phangan -- and last real night in Thailand and Asia -- was unbelievable, but in an unexpected way. I ended up going to the pool party with a Swedish girl from my guesthouse. But neither of us really felt like it was our type of crowd or music, so we left early with the vague plan of just going to sleep. On the walk back though, we passed a raggae bar with one group of people around a table so we went in, got a drink, and joined them. It was a group of about twelve English people and they were awesome.
Seemingly, we didn't really do anything exciting. We just lounged out on a bunch of pillows and been bag chairs on the floor until well after sunrise. A highlight of the night involved playing what they called "Extreme Jenga." I hate Jenga but this was unbelievably fun (and intense). We topped the night off by going to this much talked about schnitzel place. The food was great probably just because we were drunk, and I thought they talked it up way too much.
The following day I took a ferry over to
Christchurch
Cathedral Sqaure the mainland and then an overnight bus back up to Bangkok. I spent half a day there shopping and then took a minibus down to the airport. Those of you who read the news might have seen the chaos, and yes of course it was the day I flew out. I also originally flew into Asia via Bangkok on October 7, which was the day the first riots took place. What can I say, the Thais get a little carried away when I visit. On the drive, as we approached the airport, there were lines of hundreds of cops marching down the highway with those big riot sheilds and helmets. They had the traffic narrowed down to one lane and they were looking in each car. I was really tempted to start snapping pictures but they were pretty intimidating and I didn't know if it would fly or not. As we finally got to the terminal, we saw fires up on the highway. It was madness.
While in Sydney for a layover, they weren't going to let me on my connecting flight because I didn't have proof of onward travel outside of New Zealand. I explained to the lady
Scenery
The drive out of Christchurch that I've been traveling for five months and I've never had to show proof on onward travel. She was as condescending as possible, continuously saying things like "Welcome to the new world" and "Americans were the one that started it." I had to bite my tongue and not say "we also started the aviation industry too, which is about equally as irrelevant. She ended up walking about 30 minutes to go pick up a printout that Air Pacific faxed over, so I couldn't say anything back to her really. I ended up checking in just as they started boarding.
So I got to Christchurch in the end. And my bus driver from the airport to the city center, one of the first people I dealt with, wasn't much friendlier than the Aussie airport employee. He refused to accept my $20 bill for the $7 fare, saying that he's not a bank. I didn't even think he was serious at first, but he opened the back door and shoed me off. I told him I hope not all Kiwis are like him. On another note, British Airways and Emirates are two of the best airlines I've ever flown. Each of
Christchurch
Botanical Gardens them have a great entertainment screen for each seat. Dozens of movies on demand!
I ended up at Base Backpackers, a really nice hostel pretty much as centrally located as possible in Christchurch. I immediately met a group of English and Canadians and we partied it up in the hostel bar that night. I also booked myself for a hop-on-hop-off bus throughout the country for the next two weeks.
The next day, everyone from the group the night before left except for Simon, from England. He did quadbiking during the day and I wandered around the town. It's really like some kind of a utopian society there. It's the kind of place where cars stop at crosswalks for you, people smile and say hello when you walk past them, and there wasn't a single piece of trash anywhere on the ground. So all of this was of course good but there wasn't really much to do. I went to the botanical gardens due to lack of activities, something which is really uncharacteristic of me. I also checked out the art museum, which was decent.
That night, I went to a HUGE pub for thanksgiving dinner with Simon.
The sign out front had a sign saying "Thanksgiving dinner and NFL and draft beer deal." They had possibly the biggest TV screen Iv'e ever seen (literally about 30 ft.) and the place could have fit a couple hundred people. But we were the only two customers in the whole place, and it was about 8 pm. It was eerie.
We ended up back at the hostel bar but it wasn't as good as the night before. I went to sleep because I had to be on the bus at 7 am the next day.
The next day, I woke up at 7:15 am. I have a new watch because I lost my old one and the alarm didn't wake me up. I ran downstairs, and they told me I had a couple minutes. So I ran from the hostel to the bus stop and waved the bus down as it was driving away. I would have missed it if I was 10 seconds later.
The hop-on-hop-off bus works much like the deal in Vietnam, but this itinerary is a lot more structured. So most people stay the same amount of time in each place and stay
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More from the drive with the same driver. Our driver is a Kiwi named Gump, and he's possibly the funniest person I've ever met. Everyone has a nickname (mine is Vinnie; Gump likes Vinnie Jones) and he constantly trashes the Aussies as much as possible. Our group is really good and it consists mostly of the usual: English, Germans, Americans, Canadians and Australians.
The first day, we stopped at some bushman museum. The guy who ran it was out of his mind. We watched a video explaining that some people brought deer to New Zealand from Europe a couple hundred years ago. Anyway the deer started ruining the landscape over time, so the government started hiring hunters to take care of the problem. But then activists got involved and instead of killing them, they invented ways to catch the deer and farm them. The video went through all these different methods, which included these huge net guns that they shot out of helicopters and, I'm serious about this, ended up with them literally jumping out of helicopters and tackling the deer to the ground. They would then hog tie them and tie them to the bottom of the helicopter and fly them to
a farm. I'm telling you, these people were in their own world. Later, we ended up at a rainforest resort nearby to the Franz Josef glacier. We had a good night out with our new travel companions the first night. We spent a lot of time in the hot tub and then bar hopping around.
Today, we woke up bright and early (too many early mornings lately!!) and went out to the glacier for a full day glacier hike. It was expensive but the reviews were great. We walked out there and the view of the glacier from below was amazing. It was in a huge canyon of some sort and there were waterfalls in every direction. Our guide Johnnie -- from Delaware -- said the glacier was 10 km long or something, but it really didn't look that long. Anyway, we geared up, and got used to walking around with crampons, which are these ice spike things that you attach to your boots.
The glacier moves and changes every day, so there's no set path. The guide just kind of improvises all the way up. So we would follow Johnnie until we came to a wall of
Franz Josef
Our first view of the glacier ice that we couldn't get around. Then we would wait and he would chop a staircase out of the ice with his axe. Sometimes, if it was too steep, he would set up ropes to help us up. And he would always do it ridiculously quickly. Like 10 steps took him not much longer than a minute.
All in all, the hike was AMAZING. Definitely a highlight of the trip and one of the cooler things I've done. We got down into these deep crevasses where it wasn't even wide enough to put one foot in front of the other. You could drink the water right off the glacier. And down below, ice chunks the size of a bus kept falling into the river and eventually damming it up. Eventually the pressure built up and the dam of ice exploded, sending a huge gushing river of huge ice chunks and water flying down the river bed. Johnnie said it was the first time he saw this from the top of the glacier in a year and a half on the job. And we saw it happen twice. Oh, and this is one of only three glaciers in the world
that are in a rainforest.
So we went back to the hostel and relaxed. Tonight people are trying to arrange a jam session, which could be cool or not worth doing, depending on if they want to play cheesy cover songs or actually jam. And tomorrow, we head off down to Fox Glacier.
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