10 hour Bus rides are more fun when you're throwing up

Disclaimer: I have no camera anymore, so all of these pics were stolen from various people

After Koh Tao I headed back up to BKK, where my plan was to fly to myanmar, but my plans were thwarted my an imbecile in the Bainbridge post office who incorrectly mailed my credit and debit cards, resulting in their non-appearance in Bangkok the day before my flight, and lots of freaking out. So I missed the flight, waste of 100 dollars, and had to sit it out in Bangkok for a few days, which I was incapable of, so I got on a bus to Laos to meet up with all the peeps who had gone up the day before (friends from NYE). In retrospect I'm kinda glad my cards didn't come. I f they had come I would have go to Myanmar for three weeks, and probably not have gone to the Philippines at all, which would have been a travesty in my opinion.

I committed two grave mistakes en route to Laos: 1. I ate green curry, and 2. I went with only enough money to pay for the bus ticket, not enough to get me across the border and into Laos. My plan was to get off the bus in Thai at the border, get my money, cross the border myself, then meet up with the bus in Vientien and take it to Vang Vieng.

Within 30 minutes of the 10 hour bus ride I was throwing up all over the downstairs part of the bus, which luckily was vacant (I had gone down there once I could tell I was going to be sick so as to spare the feelings and olfactory senses of the rest of the passengers). I was incredibly fortunate that there were two girls from LA on the bus who took pity on me and took care of me, brought me water, bananas, etc. It became clear when we got to the border that there was no way I could get off the bus and make it there myself, I had a fever and could barely walk because I was so weak. These girls, who I had spoken 2 words too, paid my way across the border and into Laos ( I have since paid them back). Amazing what good people are capable of.

I ran into more problems when I got to Vang Vieng, but again I was saved again by benevolent (drunk) foreigners. I was so out of it, having been throwing up on buses for 15 hours at this point, that when I tried to read the room list to see which room to knock on, I read room 21 (age) instead of the actual number, so of course I couldn't find my friends. A drunk guy who was standing by playing with a puppy took pity on me, and his sister, who was with him, took me back to their room and put me to bed in one of their big comfy beds after giving me painkillers for my fever and water. So despite having the shittiest luck ever.. and getting food poisoning like three times in the past months, I had really good luck with people helping me.


Vang Vieng is beautiful, surrounded by huge limestone cliffs

Found Liam the next day and then proceded to lie in bed for four days with a fever while he tubed every day, coming back every nigh completely dead drunk and incoherently raving about how he had had the best time of his life, etc etc. Not fair. He also dislocated someones shoulder by falling on top of them off the water slide. haha, I guess thats not funny...buuut it kinda is.



Basically you just rent these tubes for five dollars and then float down the river and get wasted. The bars along the way throw ropes out to pull you in if you want to come, and then there are rope swings and zip lines, and all manner of things that you can get drunk and make bad decisions about. I never got to go, but I'm thinking about going back in march before I leave, just so I can tube, because I feel like I really missed out.

NYE on Koh Phagnan, or: the most ridiculous night of my life

I know I titled one previous post "the craziest night of my life", but NYE surpassed the November full moon party in sheer hours spent awake and partying by a full day.

Before I launch into the description, which will surely make my parents cringe, I just want to give a shout out to the amazing 40 bhat feta cheese sandwiches which I lived on for all 5 days while I was there, or at least at the times when I remembered that red bull is not a substitute for food. Across from chicken corner, amazing. Loves.

NYE Rampage:

7 PM: buy many tubs of body paint and paintbrushes, eat feta cheese sandwiches / spend a few hours pre-gaming and turning my arm into a masterpiece. (there are black lights everywhere, so the paint lights up like crazy)

9pm: Make beeline for kate moss fuck bucket and begin to consume massive amounts of alcohol.

I introduced everyone to jello shots

1 am: first trip to mellow mountain

2 am: second trip to mellow mountain, have lost everyone but V now

4 am: miraculously find Adam, go with him to laugh at all the people having sex on the beach in plain sight of everyone then go play dress up in the 'costumes' that he brought from home -seriously, he brought a sailor costume, some wigs, some other shit..ridiculous. Find an awesome platinum wig that I proceeded to wear for the rest of the night and became completely unrecognizable. Then I went and bounced off the walls in the hall for a bit until I woke kelly and mazz / rest of hotel up who din't even recognize me.

6 am: sunrise, huge storm blows in off the water and everyone is dancing in torrential downpour to hardcore techno... coolest thing ever. Our group is now only the survivors: Adam, Richard, V, two crazy singapore dudes and me.

7 am: 7-11 opens, begin drinking beers again

9 am: make new friends bc al the rest of my crew are passed out or too drunk to move, go on exohdus to find the afterparty but first find Rob and yell at him for five minutes about how all aussies are pussies because he won't come with me and keep drinking.

10 am: after party up in the jungle, best part of the night- goes till noon (called back yard). This is only the real party champions. Make friends with a bunch of guys who are 6 year NYE veterens here and who are all either tripping or rolling, go to a reggae bar with them when the party is over, visit mellow mountain a few more times and just chill. Finaly at -

6 pm realize that simo has been frantiacaly calling and texting me for the past 9 hours and I'm the only one with a key to the room.

Arrive home 7pm, realize that coops has gashed his foot open and is in the hospital with no money to pay for his stitches and I have the key and his wallet is in the room. Oops, I guess I wasn't the most responsible one like I thought.

11pm: go out for farewell beers at the beach.

12 am: pass out.


woke up keen to flee the island the next day, but no such luck.....

I'll include the ferry debacle in the Koh Tao post...

Epic Journey to Koh Tao

After NYE / Full Moon partties, the main concern of the majority of party goers is to get off of koh phagnan with all due haste and go into rehab for at least four days. We were no exception, so we headed to the dock on the 2nd along with the other hundreds of people fleeing the scene, hoping to get a boat to Koh Tao. We arrived at the dock at 12 for a 1 pm boat -the boat was late, very late, one day late.

They kept pushing back the departure time until finally at 9pm they told us to go home bc it wasn't coming. So hundreds of us had sat on the dock for nine hours, eating pancakes and being subjected to the this horrible tune from an ice cream truck and all for nothing. The tune of the ice cream truck still haunts me. Seriously. We heard it once in the Philippines and we both had flashbacks. Kelly and Maz decided to go to Koh Phi Phi instead, leaving me a bit stranded, but as always I made new friends to travel with pretty quickly. (actualy, other people befriended me, I guess it wasn't really my doing :)

We came back the next day at the same time, to just as much uncedrtainty as the day before: they had stopped selling tickets, people were saying the boats were still canceled etc. Luckily the boat showed, and on time too! The ride there was CRAZY, huge waves, people were crying and wearing life jackets. I was completely soaked by the time we got there from the waves splashing over the rail, but over all it was fuuuun.

Koh Tao was the same as usual, pretty chill, good food and good times at choppers and lotus. Deon (one of the aussies) managed to split his head open and luckily coops was there because simo wanted to put band aids on it since he though going to the hospital would be too expensive. Coops knew you don't fuck around with head wounds so he took Deon to the clinic and 20 stitches later he hadn't died and was able to party the next night. champion.

Only picture taken by anyone I think....

My bag got stolen at lotus one night so I lost my camera, cell phone and liam's cell phone, which I feel a bit bad about, but whatevs, put shit in my bag at your own risk.

Koh Samui, or: where NOT to spend your vacation in Thailand

Ugh I can't believe I'm actualy having to rewrite this post for the second time. I wrote all of these posts on a computer in Malapascua during the torrential downpours which have lasted the past two weeks, but then somehow it didn't translate onto my flash drive in a readable manner, so here I am rewriting...AGAIN. Also, I got no pics since my camera got stolen on Koh Tao. Rough life.

KOH SAMUI

Again here is the Thailand map so you can see where Koh Samui is. Pretty much in the same place I went before, just slightly more south. Its the biggest of the three islands, and also the most touristy.


Went to Koh Samui to see Coops and Simo, no other reason really, since I had only heard bad things about it, and I'm not going to lie, after spending 6 days there I was ready to move the fuck on to Koh Phagnan. The problem with Koh Samui is that its more upmarket, has too many prostitutes and lady boys, too many families, too many asian package tourists and basically has no redeeming qualities whatsoever other than that I discovered my talent for wii bowling. Being with 10 guys I spent a decent amount of time between strip clubs and bars, and then getting kicked out of the bars for being highly destructive.

Pretty sure this picture was taken while pooling money to buy Geebzy a stripper

Hookah was a novelty, apparently they don't have it in oz

The only funny incident I can remember (since this was now more than a month ago) was when this girl who was on E got up on our table at the beach and proceeded to take off all of their clothes. She was roughly pulled off 5 seconds later by her irate husband... haha.

Pink Palace Reuinion

Despite the fact that I really have no love lost for Bangkok I went 3 days earlier than I need to just to see some friends from the Pink Palace. 3 nights on Koh San is not really my idea of an awesome time, but it will be worth it I guess. Without much ado we all managed to meet up, which I’m not going to lie was a little weird at first since I hadn’t seen them in 6 months and couldn’t understand a word they were saying for the first few hours since I haven’t hung out with aussies in so long and the accent is fucking thick, I think its worse that Irish. Things got back to normal after a few buckets.

We spent most of the night at a bar with a sign that read ‘Very Strong Bucket, We Don’t Check ID’… which is pointless since ID doesn’t exist in Thailand, and if it did you could simply go next door and get the guy making fake IDs and diplomas to make it for you. The night was pretty loose; the end is my first REALLY blurry night since moving to Asia.

Next night we went back to the same bucket place where the proprietor was overjoyed to see us.    

Simon lost rock paper scissors to the devil child (who I think is an institution on Koh San since I see her every time I go which is turning out to be far too often) and had to buy five roses from her, which was still only 100 baht.  

Then they decided it would be a good idea to get their eyebrows pierced, so we went back to the place where I had had mine done and I ended up getting my cartilage pierced as well– I think I need to stop with the piercings soon cause I’m accumulating them at an alarming rate.

Showing off our new piercings

Went on to get loose at a club in Koh San and then ended up not going to sleep for a long time after that back in the room even though they were leaving at 7 to go to Trat.

God Save the King

One night in Bangkok and the worlds your oyster

One night in Bangkok.... pearls ain't freee...

So in our less-than-24-hours-in-bangkok we:

1) Walked around a lot.. which was good because before I had not gotten off of Koh San = very bad traveling skills

Street food in Bangkok, view from the skytrain

name of a boat on the river

Best last name ever.. esp for being an author
View of Koh San from the roof of our hotel
View of BKK from our roof

Shrine along the road, these are everywhere in Thailand, every house has one in the front yard

BKK river

2) Saw a Nile monitor


Night of the 22nd

Tristan got a giant fish tattooed on his back

I got my eyebrow pierced again - parents are going to love that one, I bet they thought they were through that stage

We witnessed the seedy underbelly of Thailand / SE Asia at a strip club that made me so sick I had to leave. It was all fat white 50 year old men and the girls all wore numbers for easier identification and purchasing.. made me completely disgusted so I left and made new friends on Koh San instead. We were supposed to be going to the strip club just for a little while for fun and then moving on to a club, but a few of the sleezier guys from Tahoe were more serious about it and actually bought strippers...served them right later when I saw that they couldn't get into the hotel with them and had to go elsewhere.

Missed our bus at 8 am - we all went to bed so late there was no way we were waking up for our bus at 8 am - good thing we hadn't bought tickets. I think all of us knew in the back of our minds we weren't going to make it on the bus. I personally was walking still walking around Koh San at 5 am with my new brit friends trying to find a tattoo parlor that was open so they could get tattoos.

We ended up being able to catch a later bus to the border, and it was the first time I have walked across a border, correct me if I am wrong parents.

Next post: Sihanouk Ville or the most awesome place ever

Koh Tao: Diving, Hitmen, and Choppers

We left Koh Phagnan behind and moved the party to Koh Tao, a smaller island about 3 hours north of Koh Phagnan. All of the travelers we had been talking to were saying that Koh tao was the "real"Thailand. Its much smaller than Koh Samui, which tends to be more upmarket, and Koh Phagnan, which tends to be more party, and is supposed to have a much more chilled out vibe than either. It is known for its diving, so the crowd generally flocks here for the cheap certification courses.

The boat ride there was crazy packed and we ended up sitting on top of the bags outside, which ended up being the best seat since we escaped the puking downstairs and the spray along the side of the boat from the waves.

On the boat we made friends with a big group of kids who were teachers in Korea and are taking vacation since their contract expired, and a few travelers who worked in Tahoe... altogether I think it was the most Americans I have hung out with while traveling / even seen while out here.

Got to Koh Tao, which was very chilled out compared to Koh Phagnan, less party and more happy pizzas if you know what I mean. My main complaint was that although the island was very small it was exceedingly difficult to get around because the roads were all washed out - something im sure they fix in Dec when all of the tourists show up. As a result we spent most of our time in the main town area, which although fun, got very boring after 5 days.

The main beach - I can't remember the name, but its where most people, including us, stay.

Awesome sign that is in most restaurants in Thailand

Cool clouds from the beach.. the weather wasn't that perfect

Full Moon: insanely cute puppy that hung out around the ganja shack that was across from our bungalow

We did rent ATVs one day and go for an adventure, which turned out to be much more of an adventure than we were expecting to have because of the deplorable road conditions. I luckily picked the one guy who rides motorcycles so I was relatively safe compared to the others. Verber almost killed himself by going over a cliff and his ATV had to be retrieved from the bushes several times by Owen, our resident ATV expert / farm boy hick who is 28 and does not have email. All of this was worth it because we got to go to two awesome beaches on the island: X and Freedom Beach. Freedom Beach was my favorite and if I ever came back to Koh Tao I would do it right and stay there for two or three nights instead of spending all of my time in the main town.
Cool salt water "pool"we found when we hiked across the island a few days before

ATV crew. From Left: me, Emely (Swedish), Melody (Korea teachers, brit), Tristan (Korea techers, Canuck, Sarah (brit), Tinkerbell (Tahoe), Owen (Tahoe), can't remember name, Verber (US), Sanna (sweden).
Rescuing Verber's ATV from over the cliff. Without Owen, dude in red hat, we would have been screwed, he fixed the chains when they popped, McGyvered ATVs out of ditches, and rode them up the really rough bits when no one else could get them up.
ATV-ing. We swam out to the island in the background and the crazies did some cliff jumping

Freedom beach...mm.. sublime beauty

More freedom beach

Hitmen!

We also unfortunately had a lot of not so fun drama on Koh Tao involving a hitman from bangkok who was on the run from the police.

Apparently the guys were all at choppers (our usual spot) and saw a Thai guy dragging a western girl out by her hair. They went to go stop him as I would hope any decent guy would do, which caused lots of yelling but no punched were thrown. They ended up chasing the guy down the street to the end where he grabbed a butcher knife from a food stand and threatened them with it then ran off - We all assumed it was over after this.

The next day Verber was checking his email by himself in a cafe and the guy stormed in and punched him in the nose then ran away. There was blood everywhere and Verber was in a state of complete shock and shit ton of pain. I ended up taking him to the hospital (which reads: Dengue checkup, malaria checkup, Pregnancy check, HIV check, over the door - gotta love Thailand) at midnight while both of us were drunk so that he could try and get painkillers, although im dubious of whether he needed them since he was so drunk already.
After a lot of questioning, we discovered that everyone knew him but no one would turn him in and everyone said the police were worthless. T he owner of choppers told us that he was a hitman that was wanted by the police in Bangkok, that was why he was in Koh Tao and not to mess with him. Overall it was a really scary / messed up couple of days, especially since the boys hadn't done anything but try and help the girl. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief when we got on the boat back to BKK.

On a lighter note we had a really fun last night and hung out at a little beach hut / bar were a group of Argentine guys were playing. We all danced and sang until the wee hours of the morning and I got to practice my abysmal Spanish a bit, which after all the Spanish guys figured out I could at least understand them I became their pet and they made me take copious jager bombs with them.

Next post: one night in Bangkok and the worlds your oyster, the bars are temples but the pearls aren't free

Full Moon Madness!!!

Disclaimer: the pictures from full moos party are not going to be on this thing till Sanna posts them on facebook since I didn't bring a camera with me to the big party.

Full moon was definitely the most crazy night of my life to date.

First though a little description of Koh Phag Nan to appease my parents so this isnt completely about drinking. There are three islands off the eastern coast of thailand that are the spots most tourist flock to if they want to do that coast (the other coast is the koh phi phi, phuket coast). There is Koh Samui, which is the largest and slightly more upmarket, Koh Phag Nan, which is medium sized and is considered the backpacker "party"island, and Koh Tao, the smallest, which has some of the best diving in Thailand. The boats to the islands first land at Koh Samui, then Koh Phagnan, and then finaly Koh Tao, resulting in Koh Tao being the least touristy and Koh Samui the most. Sidenote: all of Thailand is one giant tourist clusterfuck, so don't expect to get away ANYWHERE here, this is why I was not such a fan of Thailand.
Despite its reputation for drunken backpackers, theft, and full moon parties, Koh Phagnan is still ridiculously beautiful. The island is pretty large, taking about 45 minutes to get from north to south, but this is party due to the roads. The north of the island is supposed to have the nicest beaches (I never went), and the south near Haad Rhin, where the full moon party is held, is supposed to be overclowded and kind of shitty. We stayed on the west of the island, but if you are just going for the full moon, its much better to stay near Haad Rhin because the line car ride home at 8 am is a bitch, and most likely all of your money will have been stolen at some point so you wont be able to pay for it.

The south of the island, as you approach Haad Rhin area, has the most amazingly steep hills that you have to cross before you can get to the beach, and that whole area is the least developed and most beautiful. If you were not too picky about being on the beach it would be cool to stay up in this area with amazing views of Haad Rhin and the harbor.

Above is a tiny pic of Koh Phagnan. The isthmus in the bottom Left hand corner is Haad Hhin, home of the full mood parties, and you can see from the topography that there is a huge mountain seperating it from the rest of the island. We stayed up on the middle right hand side, which was nice, but nothing special; at least it was really cheap.

Pics of where we stayed which was ok but not that great, and as you can see the weather was kinda shit.

OK now on to the Big Partyyy:

Our crew started out being two Swedish guys, the Swedish girls I was already hanging out with, and Aussie dude, and two Chileans.

On the islands you get around in line cars: trucks which have extra seats inserted into the truck bed with an iron roof over the whole thing where they usually store bags, and in our case...extra people. The 40 minute ride into town was pandamonium - we had all had consumed a few buckets and beers at that point and were feeling pretty jovial. Buckets: drinks come in actual beach buckets in all different colors and are usually about 5 dollars for a vodka and redbull bucket with about 7 or 8 shots. Back to story: We sang songs the whole way, hung off the back of the car and and the bravest of us (Sanna, me, Aussie and one of the Swedish guys) went up on the roof so we could see the island better as we were wizzing along at 50 mph.

When we got up on the roof we did not know of the existence of the hills, and - when we hit these I was doubting the sanity of our decision to ride there since it was like a roller coaster with no seat belts while trying to dodge overhanging tree branches at the same time.... but it was still awesomely fun, probably one of my favorite few moments from the night. Unfortunately when we climbed down someone had kicked one of my rainbows out of the back of the truck by mistake during the ride, so even before getting to the party I had managed to lose my shoes and had to buy another pair for 100 bhat.

The party is on a huge stretch of beach, prob a good 3/4 of a k long and pretty wide when the tide is out. Lining the shore are Vietnamese selling buckets, jello shots, black light paint, drugs etc, and numerous DJ booths pumping hard core techno. Even now, a week later, I think Wheeeres youuuurrr heeeead at, wheres your head at, wheres your head at, and apple bottom jeans, boots with the furrrrrrr are both permanently seared into my subconscious. Scattered all along the beach mixed in with the crowds are fire twirlers and other acrobatics so the whole place with is flashing lights, whizzing circles of fire, and reverberating music would be any acid junkies dream.

I think I spent a good 3/4 of the night swimming, and because of this lost the new pair of shoes I had bought along with my shorts and shirt - don't worry I was wearing a swimsuit so I wasn't running around naked. My favorite part of the night was swimming out at about 8 am while the sun was coming up and watching the party from the water: the whole beach was still packed and in the daylight the little bit of beach that was left looked like a mile long snake of moving people.

One of my friends wasn't so lucky and while he was passed out someone stole his pants OFF OF HIM, so he had to walk home with no money in his boxers.

The damage was catastrophic to the beach. The high tide line was one unbroken mess of bottles, buckets, clothes and shoes; no wonder there is so much shit floating in the water in thailand.

Left the party at 9 am and it was still going strong, I think they turn the music off at 10 or 11. It was one of the most fun nights of my life but something I do not need to repeat any time in the neat future... I think I did in one night normal liver and mental damage for a year.

Now things start getting REALLY epic:

I go home, can't sleep, and decided to go for a walk on the beach. I feel like crap and the whole time I am repeating the mantra: I will never drink again, over and over again in my head, you know the drill. I hear some drumming and singing from up in an empty lot about 50 m away so I kind of poke my head up to see what is going on. Turns out it is about 8 thai guys all sitting in a circle playing drums on old buckets and singing. They invite me to come joint them. Not one to pass up an opportunity to chill with locals I go. They make me take shots with them which is an almost impossible task at first, seeing as I can hardly even take shots anymore evern when im on form. I try to leave after about an hour.. they won't let me leave till we finish the whole bottle. ouch. It was really fun though and they made me sing songs for them too, so I sang American Pie and San Francisco - flowers in your hair.

getting to Thailand

So far this is everything that has gone wrong on my way out of china:

1) slept through first train

2) Last name on my plane ticket was written as Mindt, not Mundt and they almost didn't let me on the plane to kunming

3) no flights to Mandalay or Yangon s0 I bought a ticket to Bangkok instead. Thought the flight time was 8pm, at 1:30 the lady comes to find me and ask my why I'm not at the airport when my flight is leaving in an hour...rushed to the airport, and made the flight though so that was good.

I didn't spend much time in Bangkok / didn't even get off of the backpacker street since I was there for less than 24 hours, so there isn't really much to say. The one thing though that you notice as soon as you get there and is really shocking is the number of western washouts that are hanging around the street - people who maybe came for a day or a week and stayed for ten years addicted to drugs / whatever and are now begging on the street or selling bracelets.

Went out, made friends with some German dudes and we sang lots of German drinking songs, but I was still feeling mighty shitty from the epic last two weeks in Jing so I went to bed really early.. not what you are suppsed to do in BKK (haaa that was for you mado)

German guys I was hanging out with all pass out on the table at like 9 PM

Decided to go budget so I took the 12 hour bus down, which was not fun, but I met two cool Swedish girls on it who I am still traveling with, so some good came out of it. We got to Koh Phag Nan in the afternoon, and pretty much immediately started prepping for the FULL MOON PARTY! wooooo. get looose

Stupid little stickers they make you wear so they can tell if you're going to Koh Phagnan, Koh Samui, Phuket, etc.


The crowd outside on the front of the boat on the way to Koh Phagnan