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Published: March 20th 2008
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After stubbing my toes too many times to count, spliting open my small toe, ramming my head into a rock and ripping off half of my toenail on a bamboo bridge I've learned the importance of slowing down. A safe journey is paramount to enjoying the destination.
My crossover into Thailand went off without a hitch. I collected afew stamps and then hopped on a five hour train to Hat Yai. The trainride was a great way to see the countryside and I had a nice chat about muslim women of Britan with a Saudi-arabian woman. She thought I was on my way to meet my husband in Phuket because it would be rediculous for a young woman to travel through Thailand alone...oops. Although the south of Thailand is apparently plagued by civil unrest at the hands of muslim extremests I thought it was very nice and orderly. The city of Hat Yai was difficult to navigate thanks to the poor map provided by the Lonely Planet, but once I made my way to the bus station I was fine. I spent my evening getting lost in a maze of chinese market stalls selling everything that didn't make it to North
Americe (brand name clothes that had poor stitching and the like). It'll take me a while to get used to the prices here, ferrero rochet is around 70bhat, and my train ticket was only 41bhat.
After staying the night in Hat Yai I caught a bus to the coast and transferred to a ferry en route to Koh Phi Phi. I managed to convince some Scandinavian girls to share a room with me to save money and we tracked down a bates-motel-ish accommodation fro 450bhat/night. Koh Phi Phi is an island full of young twenty-somethings trying to find the answers to all of life's questions at the bottom of a beer bottle or thai bucket, not quite my style. Despite the effects of the Tsunami the island was packed to capacity. It was as though there ws no Tsunami at all, but once in a while an alleyway would lead to some half-surfaced foundation and piles of bricks and wood from some once-standing resorts. It's strange to think of how much destruction the little island took, it gives me the odd sensation of vacationing in a graveyard.
The girls and I spent our time catching rays on the beach and
touring the neighboring island of Koh Phi Phi Lei where "The Beach" was filmed. We also had a chance to visit monkey beach where the monkeys live off of the rubbish the tourists leave behind. The water here is crystal clear and the fish come in clouds of colour, excellent for snorkelling. In the evening we raced up to the peak of the island with 5 minutes to spare before the sun sunk below the horizon. The run up to the top was worth it though and I went snap-happy with my camera.
In Thailand people celebrate the full moon party, the half moon party and the black moon party, so if you manage to catch a week without a huge throng of tourists making their way through piles of beer bottles on the beach you hav some kind of luck. We tracked down a free BBQ one night before a half moon party with life music and fire dancing. The fire dancers here are amazing, winning awards across the country. After only two and a half days of Koh Phi Phi we were ready to leave and we made our way to Ton Sai beach just south of Ao
Nang, climbers' paradise. The beach was great but there were only restaurants to eat in so I had to break my budget of $1.25 per day for food. It was worth it - best phad thai ever! We spent our days hiking to Rayley beach and the Phrenang caves and watching the climbers. I badly hurt my foot so I wasn't able to go climbing which was sad, but it was still nice to be in the outdoors-y atmosphere. Eventually it was time for the girls to leave and I was on my own again on my way to Koh Penang on a night ferry. I slept on a reed mat in the lower level of the boat which was only four feet tall so everyone had to crawl, it was interesting. In Koh Penang I met up with Vanessa, one of the girls Andrew went to school with. She was good enough to give me free accommodation for two nights and showed me around the island - she'd already been there for two weeks getting a tattoo. We spent the first day playing volleyball and swimming in the pool of the resort next door and in the evening she'd
heard about a concert at a temple so we made our way to the north of the island. The concert was amazing. It turned out to be more of a carnival to raise money to rebuild the temple and there were movies playing on big screens, puppet shows, tonnes of food and a full reggae concert. I fought plate-fear and tried some fried cockroach, maggots, and crickets. They were all pretty good, the maggots were like french fries and the cockroach was really salty. While we were watching the concert we met a guy from Quebec who myself and Frankie, one of Vanessas friends, got into a fight with about the fact that Quebec was not its own country. This was a point the French-Canadian refused to accept, but we had good arguments and after about 15 minutes of yelling he stormed off in defeat.
Tomorrow is the full moon party on Koh Penang and I'm very happy to be leaving in the morning to take my diving course in Koh Tao.
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Colin
non-member comment
Vive!
Now far be it for me to say a Quebec nationalist would be out-argued, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he didn't likely change his mind. I'm curious what your argument was.