We woke up late. I walked to the beach and played with dogs in the surf for hours. I stayed there so long that I ate lunch at the pizza place, played with dogs some more, and then ate dinner there when Andrea and Cristina showed up.
I suggested that we walk down the beach to the little island/sandbar on the edge of the cove. It rained on and off while were wear walking out there, which was fun but I was worried about my digicam dying. We stopped to watch fishermen catch tiny fish in a net and was saw some kind of bird grabbing fish of their own. We got scared of the sea snake town on the south side of the tiny island. It started to get dark, so we headed back and had a second dinner. We then walked back to the hotel and ate mangosteen, lychee, and lagun (I know I got the last one wrong, but it's close enough) that Andrea had found somewhere. I practiced rolling cigarettes. We drank Beer Lao until after 4am. A frogpal showed up and let us catch him and take flattering photos of him on top of leaves. It rained at some point and we got into the pool while it was raining. It's hard to think of other times when I've been so happy.
Woke up to cloudy skies. Bought some $15 sunblock at a pharmacy. Sunblock bottle was about the size of a Tictac box. Was mad about that. Was also mad at self for not bringing more $3 sunblock. But also did not want repeat of red hands syndrome from last week. I looked like I was wearing red gloves. That tends to bother people for some reason. While walking back from pharmacy, saw italians in a restaurant. Stopped in to plan our day with them (I'm not keeping track anymore, but this is another time when I ran into people I knew). They were set on going to Kho Phi Phi to scuba. I was convinced that everywhere in the area was cloudy/rainy and that the scuba was going to be garbage. But since I didn't have any firm plans of my own, I was happy to tag along to Phi Phi just for a change of scenery. After Andrea made some insane expensive transnational cell phone calls, we found that all the hotels on Phi Phi were closed. We then spend 2 hours in an internet cafe to find the same answer. Luckily the cafe sold beers and had AC. I bought us a couple rounds and made the executive decision that we should sit in the cold air and say "fuck it" to the storms of Phuket. I made another sales pitch for my favorite beach on Phuket (I'm going to leave it un-named because it's totally unknown and only in every guidebook and only visited by 9 million westerners per day). My pals grudgingly agreed. We got a rental car and drove up there. The sea was amazingly choppy and it was windy and not quite cold but as cold as Thailand can be. No one was thrilled. I suggested pizza to make us feel better (my solution to every problem is either pizza or beer or both). We drove to Nai Yang beach, which used to have the best brick oven pizza place on Earth. Unfortunately it was gone. So we ate at some other place and I learned that italy has really tiny cigarette packs. Some dogpals joined us for dinner and we all started to relax about the plans and enjoy the fact that we were in paradise, even though it wasn't the paradise we had wanted.
We found a lovely hotel called the Phuket Airport Hotel. Which is way nicer than it sounds, because it is within walking distance of the beach and it has a beautiful swimming pool. We checked in very late, but I think we were the only guests so the staff fired up the kitchen and seemed happy to let us charge a tremendous amount of stuff to our rooms. The rooms, by the way, were amazing. I think it was like $20/night, which was out of my budget but what the hell. I had a bathroom that was way nicer than my bathroom at home and the room was clean.
I had bought a ticket to Phuket before even beginning the trip, so I had to stick to the schedule. I wasn't totally looking forward to going because the forecast was for 5 days of rain on the island. N, J, and M (the people I met in Siem Reap), were in Phuket and Krabi, so I was hoping to meet up with them somehow. But other than that I was dreading the idea that I might spend 5 days holed up by myself in a hotel. Rain isn't so bad if you're in the city, but when you're in a hotel on the beach it really limits your options.
I got off the plane and it was an absolute downpour. I hadn't planned on how I was going to get to a hotel (and I hadn't made hotel arrangements), but I saw an idling bus outfront of the terminal so I ran for it.
There were about ten soaked tourists on board, and it looked like everyone was thinking the same thing I was ("Maybe I should just go back inside and get off this rainy island.").
I was sitting across from an Italian couple (Andrea & Cristina). I think we started talking about the rain and hotels and maps and stuff. They had the italian version of a thailand guidebook that I had ditched somewhere along the way, so I borrowed it to look for hotels. At some point, I mentioned that I had petted a tiger and then I showed Cristina my tiger photos on my digicam. And our love for animals gave us something to talk about for the next hour. (Cristina thinks that the english word for 'bat' is 'batman', because of the movie.)
We got off the bus in Phuket Town and hung out at a cafe for a couple hours and drank and looked at stuff online. I talked with some australians who were near the end of one of their irritatingly-long 6 month vacations. They were really nice. Eventually, the italians and I decided to take a truck/bus to Patong. The bus was crowded when we got on. And more people got on. And more people got on. And still more go on. And people got on the roof and the sides. We were completely packed in an unable to move, but it was like 10baht for a long trip through the mountains, so what the hell. When we got to Patong, the sun was setting on our dreams of finding a decent hotel and beach for the night. The sun was also setting in the non-metaphorical sense. The three of us sat on the sand and looked into the ocean. I had no idea what I was going to do. I wasn't making any plans because I didn't think any of my options were very attractive. The italians spoke quick, beautiful words to each other while I watched skinny dogs flop down in the sand. Andrea approached me and said that he was going to rent a car to drive to Krabi and asked if I would like to come along. I was shocked by the kindness of the offer and also pleased that I don't look like a serial killer to italian people.
I'll spare you the long story of us not finding a car. I checked into a very dirty hotel room, showered, and headed out with the couple to a wonderful dinner at a seafood place. We picked out the fish before eating them. I've never done that before. Luckily they were already dead. After spending about 8 hours at dinner, we walked around the awful redlight area (Patong is the tackiest, fratiest beach in Phuket) until we found a weird little german quarter. There were old expats playing a card game outside a bar and they were all speaking german. The bar itself looked like something from Munich. We sat and drank and smoked and it felt like the three of us had been friends for ten years instead of ten hours. I don't know what our plan was for the following day, but I know that it didn't work out.
Even though I had gotten a straight razor cleanup the week before, I think this point in the trip marked the longest I've ever gone without shaving. It turns out that my beard comes in red. Which is horrible. So I guess it's good that I never grow it out. Anyway, the taxi drivers and dudes selling cheap suits used to yell "USA" and "Australia!" at me. They started yelling "Hello Irish!" and that's when I knew I needed a shave.
So as I said, I woke up feeling terrible. Met Dave and Annelise and headed to the JJ Market. It was insanely hot, as usual. I bought too much stuff so I ended up carrying around a dumb black dufflebag all day. If I remember correctly, we got to the market not too long after it opened and we stayed until like 1-2pm. It was a long day. The kind of day where you do enough before noon so you should really just go home and take a nap. Except home was thousands of miles away and there was no way I could have taken a nap in my horrible room.
So we all went to the big mall in central Bangkok. I can't remember the name right now but it's new and fancy and they were having some kind of nerdfest downstairs about those roleplaying games that you play with cards.
I ate about 900 Auntie Anne's pretzels. The chain in weirdly popular in Thailand and the pretzels aren't stupidly expensive like in the US. We saw whatever the third Bourne movie is called. You have to stand up at the beginning of movies for a little 30 second thing about the king. The movie was pretty shaky and awesome. Now that I think about it, I think this is the only time I've been in a movie theater in a foreign country.
It was raining when we left, and I think I was pretty soaked by the time I got to the Atlanta to check on the bags that I had stashed there. The English guy who lives/works there was really cool and told me that I could store stuff there for as long as I wanted to. It was late by the time I made it back to my hotel, so I probably just crashed. I have barely any pictures from this day, so who knows.
I found out that I could take a small shuttle van directly from the guest house back to bangkok, so I decided to go for that because it would save me money on taxis in the city. I also decided to stay on Khao San Road because it's a cliche and I hadn't done it before. When I got out of the van, I was exhausted and out of it (for some reason). I was completely disoriented, which is strange because I kind of know my way around at this point. I blame lack of sleep and whatever brain-eating parasite I got from the river water. Anyway, I found myself asking someone how to get to Khao San, which is the equivalent to asking someone in anaheim how to find disneyland.
I checked into some janky hotel I'm not going to mention because it's too horrible. The room was like 8$US, which seemed cheap at the time and seems incredibly overpriced in hindsight. I put my laundry near the powerful AC (foreshadowing) on a pink rope I had purchased back in hong kong.
I wandered into the late afternoon Khao San sun a battered and broken man. I bought some bandage for my hand and happily noted that my limp was not nearly as bad as it was the night before (my ankle wasn't broken, of course, just really banged up and swollen). I bravely ignored the no-stinking rule of the street's cheapest upstairs internet cafe and went inside to check my email. While I was there I met Annelise. She introduced me to her husband, Dave, and the three of us agreed to meet up the next day to visit the JJ Market. Dave and Annelise rule, by the way.
When in thailand, eat the roseapples. They are great. I know you're not supposed to eat fresh fruit from street vendors, but what's the harm? (huge foreshadowing!)
When preparing for bed, I noticed that the AC had no settings. It was either off or 100% on. I was in a tiny room, so the full AC would make it uncomfortably cold in about one hour. And the only way to turn it off was to take my hotel key out of a special hole in the wall. Which means that I would fall asleep for an hour, wake up shivering and coughing (from the zero percent humidity AC air) and turn off the AC. I would fall asleep, the room would quickly return to 85 degree/80 percent humidity and I woke wake up sweating and coughing. So I would get up and put the key back in the hole. And it went on like this.
When I woke up the next morning, I was cold and miserable, and coughing like a TB victim. I think I got some kind of minor bronchitis that was really, really exacerbated by the rapid change in ambient conditions. Anyway, it was shitty.
I have no idea what happened on the 15th. I have like two pictures from the day and who knows what I did other than try to recover from a sun burn. I know that I met a german girl (Jackie) at my hotel and we went to dinner with her incredibly annoying german friend and then ended up drinking beers on the porch of our floating hotel. Which is basically the best way to end an evening. I tried to shake the annoying friend, but she was kind of needed because her english was really good.
I rented the scooter from the same lady. I gave her my passport (double foreshadowing) and headed off on the same road as before. I had read about the tiger temple and decided that it's bad or whatever, but I still wanted to see some tigers. So sue me.
I got there early in order to beat the tourist rush and was really relieved when someone told me that you get to spend up to 4 hours with the tigers, so you don't have to freak out and try to take a million pictures in the first 5 minutes. I freaked out anyway. First, they brought out an adult tiger and it was beautiful. Next they brought out a young tiger and it was more beautiful. Finally, they set loose a tiger cub and it was the best thing I've ever seen.
The cubs wandered around and did a crying growl thing and didn't really want to be picked up but I picked them up anyway because I'm not made of stone.
I stayed for at least four hours. I got to pet the adult tigers a few times. It was scary. One of them flicked its tail in my face and it felt like being punched. The amount of power in the tail reminded me how strong the rest of the animal is, so I tried to be very cool and mentally communicate to the tigers that I was a big fan and that I taste terrible.
Eventually I left the tiger temple. I think I know what people mean when they say that they are walking on air. I felt like I had just had an out of body experience. While I was driving down this lovely red dirt road thinking about tigers, I lost control of the scooter and went over the handlebars. The scooter landed on my ankle. I pushed it off of me and stood up. The pain shot through my ankle and I began to worry that I had broken it. My hand didn't feel so great either. I know the photo doesn't make it look bad. Keep in mind that I'm a devoted photojournalist and I took the photo before the bleeding started. Also, the wound got much worse, for reasons I'll explain later.
I hobbled up onto the scooter and noticed that it was scratched and some of the plastic panel was cracked in half. I thought back to the morning, when the rental lady had showed me a cancelled russian passport and said that if anything happened to the scooter she would cancel my passport. I didn't really like that idea.
I got the bike back onto the road, past a van full of chinese tourists who had laughed at me when I was lying beneath the scooter (I hate you so much, china!). I drove up the road a few km and came upon a little snack place. I just wanted to stop for a few minutes and get my head together before trying to ride all the way home. I bought some water to clean the dirt off the scooter, bought a pepsi for myself, and sat down to think. The lady who ran the little shop noticed that I was bleeding and pointed to my hand. I pointed to the scooter. She nodded knowingly. A few minutes later, she came back with a tiny vial of alcohol and some other assorted first aid supplies. I can't remember the last time I've felt so thankful.
I cleaned the wound with alcohol and some papertowels I had in my bag. I then made a bandaid out of duct tape and paper towel and wrapped my hand as well as I could. Once my heart stopped pounding, I gave the lady back her supplies and paid her for the drinks plus a 200% tip. My ankle still hurt like a bastard as I limped back to the scooter.
When I got within a couple blocks of the rental place, I carefully snapped the plastic back together so it wouldn't be immediately obvious that I had wrecked the scooter. I took the bandages off my hand. When I walked into the shop, I had to take weird steps so I would not appear to be limping and i had to keep my right hand at my side so she wouldn't see the blood. I took my passport with my left hand and got the hell out of there before she could do a thorough check of the bike.
On my way to the guest house, I bought a sack of beers and prepared myself for an evening of sitting still, speaking in broken english to the german girl, and staring at the water. Which is exactly what I did.
------- ps.
When I got back to the guest house, I washed my wound really well with soap and water from the bathroom sink, and tried to cleans out some of the embedded rocks. As it turns out, the sink water was pumped from the river, so I managed to give myself an immediate infection. When I woke up the next morning, the wound was gray and horrible looking. I showed it to the nice german girl (she's a nurse, for those keeping track of how many times I've met exactly the right person at exactly the right time on this trip) and she that it looked bad and that I needed to get it clean for real.
I spent a half hour digging tiny rocks and dirt out of my hand with a swiss army knife. It sucked. Jackie gave me some gel betadine and a sterile pad. Her parents had made her carry a really good first aid kit. By the way, betadine is great and kills way more stuff than alcohol, so you should carry some. It's like 30 cents in thailand.
Kanchanaburi rules, it's as simple as that. I rented a motorscooter from a woman who took my passport (foreshadowing). I think I might have paid like $12US to rent the bike for one day. I was immediately terrified as I tried to pilot the scooter on the wrong side of the road through the tourist-trappy River Kwai section of town.
Things got a little worse once I got onto the highway. I managed to inch the speed up about 5 kph every couple of minutes and tried not to think about the 'asian tattoo' stories of idiot tourists walking around with huge leg wounds. Eventually I got it up to 50-something kph and felt fairly comfortable. And then it started to rain. I put my faith in the ability of thai weather to change rapidly, and after a driving a few dicey clicks up the road, the clouds parted and my clothes dried off in minutes.
I didn't have a map. Of course. I was heading in the general direction of the waterfalls. I think I rode maybe 50 km. It was amazingly beautiful. Some of the time there were limestone-ish craggy mountains covered in green jungle that looked like the more rustic parts of Hawaii.
Sometimes I drove through orchards that looked like the most fertile part of central California. And sometimes I turned the wrong way and went down a small side road into a tiny village surrounded by green where dogs were so used to having the road to themselves that they tended to fall asleep in the middle of the road.
I got to the Sai Yok Noi waterfall and stopped at a local 7-11 for supplies. I was expecting a tough hike back to the falls. It turns out that you have to walk about 100 yards and you're there. I changed into my trunks, put my camera in a ziploc bag, and climbed the short waterfall. The water was cold and completely refreshing after a dusty and sweltering ride. I stayed half-submerged in the water long enough to get cold. When you have a chance to feel cold in Thailand, you should take it. It might be a week before you get to feel cold again.
At the top right of the main falls, there is a tiny cave. It's like a cave made for one person. It's really weird and fun to get inside of it.
After sitting in the water for a while, the Korean students (from the bus a few days ago) showed up. If you're keeping track, this is the millionth time I ran into people unexpectedly. I liked the koreans because they were even more pare than I am.
I got dressed reluctantly and continued on the road. I really liked stopping at small gas stations periodically and buying one liter of gasoline the color of cough syrup. It made me think about how much farther you can get on one liter on a scooter than in a car. I don't think my car would make it around the block on a liter.
There are these tiny yellow houses periodically on the road. I think they are for travelling monks to chill out in. Something about the yellow reminded me of the netherlands and I began to feel amazingly calm and at peace as the trees ambled past me and bugs bounced off my pointless plastic helmet. As dangerous as it is, the fun of travel in thailand is inversely proportionate to the number of wheels on the vehicle.
Eventually, I realized that I wasn't anywhere close the other set of falls I had wanted to see, so I turned around and headed back to town. Along the way, I ran into a serious downpour. I didn't mind getting soaked, but I began to lose confidence in my ability to make turns without crashing, so I stopped at a roadside cafe (and natural bath products emporium, strangely enough) and had a coffee while the rain slowed.
The rain continued for the rest of my drive home, which meant that it took probably twice as long as the outward trip, but I really didn't want to crash. After trading the scooter for my passport, I returned to my floating hotel room and noticed how sunburnt my hands had gotten from holding onto the handlebars all day.
The sunblock had been almost useless. Next time I'll buy a shirt with longer sleeves.
ps. check out the bathroom at the hotel (C & C guesthouse, which is really a great place to stay). you don't get a lot of privacy for $5 a night.
and here's me doing my (nearly) daily laundry. by this point in the trip I was really getting tired of washing things in the sink.
I suggested that we walk down the beach to the little island/sandbar on the edge of the cove. It rained on and off while were wear walking out there, which was fun but I was worried about my digicam dying. We stopped to watch fishermen catch tiny fish in a net and was saw some kind of bird grabbing fish of their own.
