Thailand 2: Sun N Fun adventure begins

Koh Phi Phi makes a mess of you and me…
The train ride into Bangkok was pretty uneventful except for the man across from us who kept letting gas pass throughout his sleep; no joke, the guy was a methane factory…fortunately he wasn’t a smelly methane factory but gassy none the less.
We met up with Kathy’s dad in Bangkok and we all went to the airport together; Kathy’s dad (Fred) headed to Calgary and us to the island of Koh Phi Phi. We flew into Krabi and spent the night there before catching the morning ferry to the island. The ferry ride is an hour and a half and that’s about as descriptive as we can come up with because I was smooth sailing…literally. Once on the island we checked out a few places before settling on a nice bungalow at Anita House. We promptly spent the remainder of the day on the beach tanning, swimming, and relaxing and the beach was just a short jaunt from our place. ….what luck. We decided to hit up Reggae Bar later that night as Lindsay remembered from a previous trip that they do muay thai boxing shows. The show started at 10 pm and we were there ready to cheer the fighters on buckets in hand at nine. Let us describe the bucket; this is a small plastic pail that children use to make sand castles on the beach with. Fill this with ice, a few shots of liquor (your choice on kind), a shot of pop, and three straws… and now you have yourself the infamous bucket. This was the beginning of the end; please draw your own conclusions…I will however say that the beach by our place is also the party beach and you will be happy to know Kathy and I arrived home safely with only minor cuts and bruises.
Morning arrives with a thunderous boom, oh wait that’s our heads…damn buckets. A quick scope of the room has it that Lindsay has no flip flops which she swears were stolen, not misplaced and our room key is now gone. We used the room key to enter the room earlier that morning and it has somehow gone missing in the last few hours while we slept. The issue is that the room key controls the air con as well as all the power in the room and also runs a replacement charge of 1000 baht or $37.50 CAD. We searched our room for several days but had to pay the fee as the key was gone and nowhere to be found. We checked out after three nights because the parties go until 6 am every morning and even though they play our favorite songs you can only take Rihanna’s Disturbia and thoom thoom thoom echoing through your bedroom for so long.
We changed our return boat ticket to go to Phuket’s Patong beach so we could explore another part of Thailand neither of us had previously been to. This ferry ride was quite eventful as we were rocking side to side because of turbulent ocean conditions and the stewards on the ride actually handed out barf bags to each passenger. Needless to say we arrived and made it Patong beach where we checked into the Merrison Inn for 4 nights. It is during the hotel search where we met Team America, consisting of Matt, Brian, and Steve.
Kathy worked out a deal with the very nice and new hotel for a rate of $600 Baht per night equivalent to $20CAD. During our stay in Patong beach Lindsay purchased new flip flops to replace those that were “stolen” and Kathy got herself a shiny new skin color of red or in her eyes…pink. Regardless she had to put my aloe vera in our fridge to help the pinkness.
We enjoyed several activities during our stay such as wave jumping and tanning as well as Bangla Road. Bangla road is the main party road and you can get anything from all inclusive drinks, ping pong shows (which if you don’t know what this is, we aren’t describing it, please google it yourself in private), as many lady boys as one heart desires, or just a genuine girl for sale good time. We did make it down to Bangla Road with team America one night where we were informed that they were happy to have us with them as we were like bodyguards for them and this insured they were not accosted by every female they passed. We went to a small karaoke bar that had a pole in it for dancing. Lindsay had once taken stripper school at a bachorlette party in Calgary so Matt challenged her to a pole off…planning to do a couple good spins Lindsay accepted. Matt went first and his show can only be described as the best male pole dance either one of us has ever seen (this was actually a first for both of us…but still it was a great dance). He was called superman and spongebob by the karaoke host and one guy commented to Kathy ”That guy sure knows how to work a pole”…let’s say Matt won as Lindsay isn’t much for full out shows on the pole. According to Matt, those from California are more free and are able let themselves go…Lindsay is A Ok with not being free and self go letting. Honestly this was the funniest thing we saw this trip so far. You probably would think the action stops there but no it continues…Matt, Steve, Lindsay and Kathy hit Tiger Bar. His is a great place, really expensive (for Thailand – drinks were $5.50 CAD) good music, lots of people, in general a good time. When we arrive we are walking to a new part of the bar with Kathy and Matt leading up ahead and Lindsay tailing behind Steve by a few people and watching the lady boys in action. Lindsay turns ahead to watch where she is going only to see Steve pleading for her help as he is getting accosted by the Thai ladies who has swarmed him like bees do to their prey…this is where she realizes that in addition to being annoyed by DVD sales people, tuk tuk drivers etc…men have to worry about being groped and constantly hounded by women (wow sucks to be them). If she had not have seen it first hand she never would have realized what lengths these girls go to, to get the attention of the white man. Lindsay looked up and saw 2 sets of what were believed to be women literally ripping Steve in half trying to get him to hang out with and come sit with them. Lindsay put her hands on Steve’s hips and the girls parted like the Red Sea. Thank God that doesn’t happen to women because these boys say they experience this numerous times a day as girls try and get them into massage parlors as well as bars.
Later we are dancing and the song “I’m not a girl comes on” we both thought this was such a great song to play in Thailand since this is reality for so many of the ladyboys in this country. The playing of this song becomes the second funniest thing that night, as Matt spots 2 flamboyantly gay gentlemen sit at the table next to us singing their hearts out. This is when Kathy bets Matt and Steve a beer to go and dance with the two flamboyant boys. Kathy being dead sober is excited to watch them make fools of themselves. They dance over to the boys and end up getting a few love nips on their arms, kisses on their necks, and a proposition for later. We all leave immediately and Kathy chalks up her only beverage purchases to well worth it.
We want to mention that every now and then a strange power outage occurs on Bangla Road, one second we are on this busy street that’s well lit up with lots of lights, music pounding and hundreds of people talking and the next second nothing but blackness and silence which recovers quickly, like 3 seconds later. We mentioned earlier that you are harassed by tuk tuk drivers, store clerks, and massage parlors which are all trying to get your business but one store clerk takes the cake….normally they ask what size you want when you look at something and when you ask a price they say something extortionate and then immediately follow up with, “what you give me?” It’s annoying that’s why this guy cracked us up…were walking along and some guy tries grabbing for Lindsay’s arm to take her back to his shop to show her some items, she says no were not shopping tonight to which he yells out but I’ve got Michael Jackson underwear....as tempted as we were to check them out, we kept walking, laughing all the way. It is up in the air as to whether the undies were for men or women; I guess we should have looked.
Our final day brought us back to the beach as it was yet again another sunny day and we were looking for the perfect cool down. We were minding our own business and tanning when we started hearing a lot of commotion from the guys who rent out chairs and jet skis. 4 men were pushing a jet ski into the water and a woman was waving from down the beach. It turns out that a young boy had gone out too far where the waves are quite rough and had to be rescued. He must have been sucked out because another wave jumper had grabbed him and was holding him up but couldn’t get him into shore; the waves are tough so you had to be careful going out to far in them. The jet skiers got to him in record time and raced him back to shore. It was a feel good end to a feel good trip but this ends our first entrance and installment into Thailand as we move forth to the Perehntian Islands of Malaysia.
Our departure from Thailand is anything but graceful. We booked a mini bus to Hat Yai so we could catch the overnight sleeper train to Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur. We are picked up at 7:15 am by mini bus #1…we take the Patong Beach tour at no additional cost before making a roadside switch to mini bus #2 aka leaky air conditioning bus with lunatic driver who brings tailgating to an entirely new level. We get to Krabi province and are moved to mini bus #3 for 4 hours and are in the back seats where the roof slopes down and Lindsay cannot sit up without her head being in the roof, in fact if we hit a road bump her head slams into the roof, how exciting. Once in Hat Yai we get to the train station only to learn that there is one a day and we weren’t on it and tomorrows gets in too late the following day to make our flight to the island. This brings us to where we are now, on an overnight VIP bus to Malaysia - a luxury compared to the mini buses.
We will see you next time with Malaysia’s Perehntian paradise blog.