The Beach
Tuesday, June 12
We flew to Phuket today. Beautiful views from the airplane- gorgeous water, trees, islands, etc. We checked into our hotel, the Kata Villa right on Karon beach and then immediately hit the beach. We enjoyed the water and sand and waited for our 8th person- Joern, to join us. When he arrived we got ready and hit the town. We took a taxi into Patong, which is the main tourist beach. We had a delicious seafood dinner, fruity drinks (mine came in a coconut). We then went to a Muy Thai boxing match. Not my idea of a fun time, but hey- it was one of those things you had to see in Thailand. It was sooo hot in the place, we had to sit up on the second level to see anything. It wasn’t too exciting, I honestly expected it to be a lot more violent. It was a lot of hugging and knee kicks to the ribs, rather than the kicking you expect. Oh well, it was an experience. After the boxing we wanted to hit the local bar. We found one place that inside had about 30 little bars. Each of them had a girl (or ladyboy) dancing on top, usually with a pole, wearing next to nothing. Oh-kay. So we found a place where we could all sit together and get some drinks. We had a lovely dancer named Meow (seriously) and she invited all of us to take a turn dancing with her. So funny. We didn’t get too crazy on our first night, but it was a lot of fun.
Wednesday, June 13
Today we spent a long day on the beach, soaking up the sun and doing a lot of swimming. The waves are perfect- nice and big, but not too rough. At about 2pm we had had enough of the sand, so we swam a bit in the pool. I went to have a suit made for my aunt and visited the internet café. Wednesday night we decided to not go out, but to get some beers from the minimart and play cards. We played a few games, but ‘Spoons’ turned out to be our favorite. It reminded me of when all the cousins would play at the farm in Iowa. Good stuff. We played until about 2 am when Joern came up with the great idea of having “Elephant Races” on the beach. What is an elephant race you ask? Well, it’s a relay race where you wrap your arms around to make a “trunk” and spin around 10 times before you run to a line and back. After lots of falling down and laughs, we stopped after 2 races (my team won both) for fear of someone getting injured. We took a quick dip in the ocean and finally went to bed, since we were getting up early the next day to go snorkeling.
Thursday, June 14
Today we booked a tour to go out on our own private boat and do some snorkeling. We visited 2 islands which were just gorgeous. We added to our already sunburned backs- it seriously doesn’t matter how much sunscreen you wear here- getting burned is inevitable. It was a great day. Thursday night was our last night with all 8 of us- Joern, Luis and Sachiko were heading back to Bangkok on Friday, so of course we had to go out big. We had a beautiful dinner by the ocean while watching the sunset and found a little bar where we thought it would be a good idea to order by the bottle. We had lots of drinks, great conversation and did some dancing. We stumbled home about 4am and decided to stay up until Joern had to catch a cab at 5:30am to head to the airport. We played some spoons in Greg and Yamil’s room. However, when Joern got up to go get his stuff from he and Luis’ room next door, they realized everything was gone. Both their suitcases, computers, phones, wallets, passports, everything. We have no idea who could have done it, especially from right under our noses. We feel so bad for them. They were both able to get back to Bangkok and then got the rest of their travel documents there, however they had so much stuff stolen, it is so awful. It definitely put a damper on an otherwise perfect vacation.
Friday, June 15
After getting some rest after all the drama, we woke up and tried to go to the beach, but it was so hot and sunny and I was so sunburned that it just hurt too much. So, we took it easy, did some shopping, watched a movie ($2 DVDs) and booked our boat to Phi Phi for the next day. Friday night we went to have sushi and then we played mini golf. It started pouring rain during the middle of the game, but we still had a good time. We ran home to our hotel in what only could be described as a torrential rainstorm. As we would find out the next day, this was a bit of foreshadowing for the weather for the rest of our trip.
Saturday, June 16
We left Phuket bright and early to catch a boat to the Phi Phi islands. It was pouring rain nearly the whole trip and the boat was quite rocky. They were even passing out sea-sickness bags, luckily none of needed to use it. It cleared up a bit by the time we arrived on Phi Phi Don, which is the one inhabited island of Phi Phi. Phi Phi was one of the places that was hit hardest by the tsunami in 2004. Although much of the island is rebuilt, you can still see some of the mess leftover from the destruction. A few empty storefronts, boarded up windows and lots of empty lots full of trash. We headed to our hotel at the end of the island and found our rooms to be quite a hike up a hill. Luckily there was a little motorcycle cart to take our luggage up to our rooms. They were very simple bungalows, no A/C or hot water, but hey, I’m used to it! The weather wasn’t great, but we spent sometime at the pool, which was definitely the nicest part of the hotel. We made friends with the bartenders- from Australia, Singapore and Sweden and they suggested some places for us to go that night. We had dinner at a decent Italian place and hit the bars. We went to an Irish Pub where they had 2 for 1 buckets, which are basically a big bucket of alcohol. Yum. We went a few more places and had a great night.
6/17
Today we slept in a bit, and although the weather wasn’t great, it wasn’t raining so we took a “boat taxi”, which works pretty much the same as a regular taxi. You tell the driver which islands you want to go and for how long and he gives you a price. They are these big long wooden boats that are propelled by a small motor. We first headed to Phi Phi Lay, Maya Bay which is where the movie ‘The Beach’ was filmed. The water was pretty rough and I won’t lie, I was pretty scared. We made it there and had some fun swimming around. We had to pay 200 bhat (6 bucks) to get on the island because it is a “national park”. It was very beautiful, but really looked nothing like ‘The Beach’. I imagined it to be much bigger. When we left, we noticed a lot of trash on one side, which was really sad. We then headed towards another side of Phi Phi where we did some great snorkeling. There were beautiful corals and some funky fish, including one really ugly one that looked like a rock. Our last stop was ‘Monkey Beach’, which surprise! is full of monkeys. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any food to give them, but we got there at the same time as another group which was feeding them watermelon and bananas. They were about 15-20 of them and even a baby, which was pretty cute, but we found out they were quite aggressive when Greg got a little too close taking a picture. They hissed and started chasing him and one even scratched him on the leg. Once all the food was gone they started hissing more- they were pissed we didn’t have food! Then, when they realized there was no more food to be had, they all scampered back off into the trees. We headed back to the main island, got some food and relaxed a bit. We took it pretty easy in the evening, having dinner early and having some drinks by the pool.
6/18
We woke up to pouring rain, which pretty much didn’t stop all day. We took a boat to Krabi, where it was still raining. We checked into our hotel, which was on a pretty remote beach, and with nothing to do because of the rain, we watched a movie and I took a nap. We headed into town in the evening to have dinner and do a little shopping, but nothing too exciting. We came back to the hotel to play cards, but the power went off about midnight, so once Greg’s laptop died, we had no way to see so we all went to bed. The power came on an hour later- thank goodness because it was so hot without the air. How exciting.
6/19
Yep, still raining. Really ready to go home now. We took probably the scariest ride I’ve been on back to Phuket. A tiny van, crammed with 11 people, plus the driver and all of our luggage on top. The driver talking on his cell phone and speeding through the pouring rain. Awesome, probably the longest 3 hours of my life. So glad when we got to Phuket and checked into our hotel on Patong. We walked around a bit, the rain had stopped, but it was still pretty yucky weather. We had some margaritas by the beach and went to a dance club called ‘Banana’ that was pretty fun.
6/20
Left Phuket to go back to Bangkok. Spend a nice last evening with my Scottish host family and did all my packing. Everything fits (although I had to throw a lot away)!
6/21
Left for the Bangkok airport just before 6am, took a flight to Taipei where we had a 3 hour layover and then were on our way to Los Angeles. 12 hours later we arrived in what I can say with confidence is the worst airport in the U.S., at least in my experience. My 5 hour layover actually only gave me a half an hour to sit down with Christy and buy her dinner for her birthday before we parted ways, she had to wait another 10 hours to catch a flight to Pittsburg, poor thing. The flight to Denver passed quickly and I touched down in the best city in the world with a huge grin on my face. It was great to see my mom and sister at the airport and it will be great catching up with the rest of my family and friends this next week. I have a week off before getting back to work. I am enjoying the break, but I am very excited for next semester and all the great things to come.
