Monday, November 24, 2008

The Leader of the Pack (Vroom, Vroom)

I think it's seriously, seriously funny how when you first arrive in Asia, you're so overly cautious about everything. You worry about weather the fruit at breakfast is safe, you scrutinize every water bottle (sure, it's bottled, but is it the right kind of bottled?), you avoid touching potentially-rabid stray dogs and ordering any drinks with ice cubes in them. And that all lasts about 3.7 days and the next thing you know you're provoking likely-rabid monkeys, climbing treacherous cliffs and jumping off them, and popping wheelies on uninsured mopeds. OK, that's a lie, I never popped any wheelies, but Blair, Ange and I did rent mopeds with no collision or third-party insurance (and that's why I don't tell you about these things until after I do them, Doug and Lucy) and drove them around Phuket for several hours over two days. Patong Beach on Phuket is exactly the kind of place you want to leave pretty much the moment you arrive, and on Phuket, apparently $6.00 Canadian buys freedom.

It was a pretty terrific day, heading up North to try to find a beach where sea turtles are supposed to lay their eggs at this time of year. We may or may not have found the beach and we never found the turtles, but it was a fantastic day nonetheless, cruising along the coast and through little Thai towns where there were no tourists in sight (and if you have seen Patong, you know why that was incredibly refreshing). We did find a beach where there was no one in sight for kilometers, save lots and lots of hermit crabs.

There were definitely some incidents of confusion over which side of the road to drive on and of being in situations where strange Thai traffic rules were a complete mystery to us. At one point, I found myself in the middle of an intersection with cars waiting to turn in all directions, and I had no idea who had the "right of way", which is a bit of a foreign concept to Thai people...so I once again set women back 30 years and pulled out that winsome facial expression combining helplessness and sheepishness that always gets me out of speeding tickets--knock on wood--and the Thai motorists all laughed and waved me through. There were definitely a couple incidents where my life flashed before my eyes a bit, and in retrospect the idea of driving a vehicle with no protection for yourself or others is a little dodgy, but I'm glad we did it.

What's the worst that can happen, right?

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

So...do you think Leo DiCaprio will be there?

I don't know about you all, but I find that every summer you get at least one day that stands above the rest in its summerness (summerishness?). For me, it almost always involves being on a body of water in a speedboat, on waterskis (yes, Kristin and Jen, people DO still waterski in the 21st century), or on some kind of flotation device. This trip has had some summery days for sure, but today was pure summer.

Shoot, does it sound like I'm rubbing it in that I'm in a place that feels and looks like summer and you're probably all wearing your winter jackets already? I'm not trying to, but if you were put off by the number of times I used "summer" and its fake derivatives in that first paragraph, you should probably stop reading right now. And you definitely shouldn't look at my latest photo album on Facebook...

So today, The Crew (me, Kaje, Andrew, Blair, Ange, Andrew's cousins Ian and George, and their friend Karen) chartered a long boat from a guy named Kitty (pronouned Ki-Tee with emphasis on the second syllable, but I'm gonna spell it Kitty) and spent the day out on the water, going wherever struck our fancy. We started the day with the obligatory trip to Maya Bay, the beautiful little cove made famous by The Beach. Unfortunately, with Leonardo DiCaprio movies comes notoriety and with notoriety comes crowds and with crowds comes rubbish. Honestly, the beach was lovely, the water was gorgeous, and the limestone rockfaces surrounding it were majestic. But we went snorkelling and it takes away from the experience a little when you see reef sharks (a little creepy, but cool!) and immediately thereafter see an Orange Fanta can on the ocean floor. Hmmm...does it sound like I'm complaining? Cause it really was paradise. But it was not the best stop of the day.

When we'd had enough of The Beach, we gave Kitty a holler and he and all his Thai buddies emerged from out of nowhere, all wearing just their skivvies. For some reason, we left in a different boat than we arrived in and our boat was full of empty beer cans. Kitty's friends gave the guys on our boat free beers and kept yelling "Al-oooooooooooh-ha!" to us as we departed. It wasn't aloha for long though cause they followed us for the rest of the day, pulling up next to our boat and hanging out. They were a pretty funny crew.

Our second stop was a cliff jump on a nearby island to Ko Phi Phi Don (where we were staying). George and Ian went to the very top and did flips and dives off it, but it was a treacherous climb (a nearly vertical rockface with spikey limestone formations that could have done some major damage if you took a big fall) and I was proud of myself for jumping at all. Karen, Blair, Ange, Andrew and I all did the little jump, but it did not feel little at about 25 to 30 feet. When I hit the water, it did a number on my ears (they still hurt), so I figure it must have been big enough...

Stop #3 was Monkey Beach, which was pretty cool but a little scary. Unlike the monkeys on Railay, most of the monkeys here were male and super aggressive. When our boat approached the beach, dozens and dozens of monkeys came running and were waiting expectantly for us--or more accurately, for the food they clearly knew we had with us. Kaje had a bag of bananas and one of the males started coming towards her and she got freaked out and dropped the whole bag, which naturally got ransacked in moments. She was disappointed to have missed out handing out the bananas piecemeal, but I don't blame her for dropping the bag. Those monkeys are small, but they are so intimidating. Anyway, things soon were crazy on the beach, as the Thai boys in our brother boat arrived and provoked the monkeys and gave them cans of Leo Beer, which they drank before tearing open the cans and licking out every last drop. I was a bit horrified about them drinking beer (can monkeys metabolize beer?) but I couldn't help but laugh at their holding these cans that were 1/4 the size of their bodies with their little hands. I went further onto the beach to try to get a picture (again) and got attacked by one (again), this time getting monkey arms wrapped around my leg. I had to kick and shriek "What are you doing?!?" to get this one off me, and I stayed in the water from that point on. Blair and Andrew got attacked too, and Blair ended up getting one wrapped arouind his leg too. Unfortunately for him, he got a big cut on the back of his ankle in the process, which may or may not be a bite. A little freaky, but assuming that he doesn't die of rabies, it'll be a great story when he gets home.

For our final stop, we just anchored out in the water to watch the sunset. Didn't take long for our Thai friends to pull up and tie their boat to ours and start the party. If water and booze don't mix, no one has told the Thai people that. I kept diving into the water cause it was just soo nice, but I started to psych myself out, feeling like a shark was going to appear out of nowhere and rid me of one of my legs. The others wouldn't lower the ladder for me though and I started getting more and more freaked out. Didn't help taht one of the Thais dove under and swam up under me and grabbed my leg. I guess I was asking for that one...

We are back on solid ground now, and there's really nothing left to do but eat, have a beer, and go to bed. The bars are all closed on Phi Phi because Thailand is in mourning. We know it's someone important related to their beloved king, but because of the language barrier we keep getting different stories. What we know is that the King's sister/brother died three days/one hundred days/a year ago. Regardless, there's no music and the island is quiet. Time for bed...

Chels

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Oh, so THAT's what they mean by "Rainy Season"

OK, OK, I get it, BlogFans. You want another blog. What's the cause for the delay, after I promised more frequent blogs? Well I'll tell you. If I had written five days ago, it would have been the most depressing pity party of a blog I would ever have written. There was some misery, my friends. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me, given that I'm back in Paradise, but things were bleak there for a while.

So we met up with Blair and Ange in Bangkok a few days ago, and helped them through jetlag and culture shock by wasting days trying to find stuff to do and getting driven around and screwed over by tuk tuk drivers who ultimately got us nowhere. Thankfully, we met an awesome, wonderful, kind-of crazy waiter who was about one snip away from becoming a LadyBoy who steered us back in the right direction....just not in time to see anything before it all closed. Frustrating, frustrating city!!! So we went on a tour our last day in bangkok, or rather near Bangkok because I was starting to get hostile. The tour involved going to the famous Floating Market (made famous on America's Next Top Model Cycle 7), which honestly was a massive disappointment. I thought it was a legit market that locals frequent, but it was just another tourist trap peddling the same old junk, only at this market you're trapped in a boat driven by someone else, so you can't walk away when you're not interested and are subjected to their harassment against your will. I was at the back of our boat, and even our boat driver kept harassing me to buy bracelets from her, and I obviously couldn't escape. So I didn't buy anything or even look at anything just on principle, and the end of our little tour, for which we'd already spent the equivalent of $5 each (yes, a small sum of money, but a lot over here!! Our pettiness over small sums of money over here makes me feel kind of guilty...) our boat driver rowed us into the centre of a dirty canal and demanded that we tip her. Obviously, we were in a bit of a vulnerable situation, and she clearly knew it. We had Ange and her very effective 'tude with us though, and she got us back to shore without our having to produce our wallets. All in all: not cool.

Stop two was the Tiger Temple, which I liked a lot but also felt a bit uneasy about. The story is supposed to be that monks saved orphaned tigers and then took on more and more tigers until tigers were being born and raised at this place. We were told that the tigers were drugged to make them docile, which the organization claims is not true, and I am inclined to believe them. I've read about how "vicious" animals raised by humans lose their basic reasons for being aggressive, and it wasn't like you were just allowed to go in and hop on a tiger's back. You had to be careful and not wear anything dangly, etc. But the tigers were just laying there, most of them drowsy, and you got herded around by volunteers who took your picture with each tiger. It was just a bit photo op. The tiger cubs were better because you could approach them without being pressured to move on, etc. I'm glad I got to see the tigers--especially the cubs--up close and personal, but there was something a little sad about it all. Next we went to see the famous Bridge Over the River Kwai, which was cool to see but does not make for very interesting blogging. After Laos, the massive tourism of Thailand is turning me off a little. Not that I'm not loving Thailand.

That night, Blair and Ange and I boarded a bus and got the heck out of Bangkok while Kaje stayed alone for aday cause she wanted to meet Andrew at the airport. So Blair and Ange and I took an overnighter and a ferry to Koh Tao, an island in the Southern Gulf of Thailand. Exotic and tropical, yes? NO. The island is beautiful but looked nothing like the photos because it poured rain the entire two days that we wre there. And when I say poured I mean POURED, like you go out for a second and you're drenched. The kinds of showers that we've seen already but last only for twenty minutes to an hour. These showers lasted for two solid days and let up only on the second night for a short while. Naturally, there's not a lot to report about Koh Tao, except that I went out sans Blair and Ange the second night and had a blast dancing at a beach bar with a bunch of guys from Australia, Canada, Israel, Denmark, and Sweden, and ended up administering impromptu First Aid to drinking injuries at 4:00am. It's strange, because I have all this fun with people and I have barely been exchanging information with anyone. It just seems silly to become Facebook friends with them all when you've spent one night hanging out, but then it almost seems unreal.

With no sunshine in sight, we left beautiful Koh Tao for beautiful Koh Phangnan, home of the famous Full Moon Party, and got more of the same. Kaje and Andrew joined us there, and we sat in misery in more torrential downpour, even worse than on Koh Tao. We stayed in some bungalows down the beach from Coral Bungalows, where there's a great set up, so we would go there for meals and to hang out. There were times though that it would be raining so hard that I had to wear my bathing suit and make a run for it, carrying my clothes in a ziploc bag and losing another pair of flip flops (third this trip) in the process. It was a little exhilerating for about three hours, and then it got to the point that it seemed the only point of getting out of bed was to eat and watch movies at Coral. Our second day there, I watched five movies. I also shared a bungalow with a 6'9'', 20-year-old boy from Hawaii who we met getting off the ferry and who seemed normal enough but who tried more than once to crawl in my bed with me despite my very clear signals (like telling him I was not in the least interested in him--he asked) that he shouldn't. Anyway, all of this together made me very supportive of the group decision to jump ship on the Full Moon Party. I don't care if it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We were five of the very few people actually leaving the island, but we were rewarded when we came here, to Railay, in the Andaman Sea. It is not an island but an isthmus (??) and is absolutely gorgeous. And although we have a bit of daily rain, we have seen sunshine for the first time in over a week. And I have a sunburn to prove it. Apparently, Angela, you DO need to rub in spray-on sunscreen. Haha. We've been spending our time here celebrating Ange's 25th birthday, which was meant to be spent at the Full Moon Party, but which we've been celebrating in the sun instead. The first night we got here, we had a lovely but very expensive dinner and then went to a Thai boxing match in the middle of the jungle. It was kind of cool, but having worked for a head injury specialist, I really think that boxing is among the stupidest endeavours a human being can partake in...but that's just me. Last night was Ange's actual birthday, which we spent on the beach and then Kaje and I gave her birthday present--corn row braids, Bo Derek style!!!! She was thrilled, and has been shakin' her beads and singing Bob Marley and getting our money's worth. We had another superb meal and drinks with a couple of couples that we met here and then I FIREDANCED!!! I'm not even going to try to describe it to you because there's video that says it all. Except to say that it was probably not a good idea after 3 litres of Beer Chang. But I got by without serious injury and only made a little bit of an ass of myself.

Today, the couples went kayaking and I went to the beach. It is gorgeous here. GORGEOUS!! There's huge limestone cliffs and towers sticking out of the water. Today I was laying under a tree (nursing my sunburn) when all of a sudden the tree above me was FILLED with monkeys. There were probably two to three dozen of them, including a mother with a brand new baby clinging to its belly. They weren't skiddish at all and we could approach them and feed them bananas (what else??). SOOO cool! I got a little too close to the mama/baby though, taking a picture, and the big guy (I'm guessing the Alpha Male of the group, fromthe way he was acting...) came racing towards me and took a swipe at me. It terrified me a lot. Seriously, though, very unexpected and cool (but HOT!!!) day at the beach.

George, Andrew's cousin, is supposed to arrive tonight, and not a moment too soon. Although it's fun travelling with a group (and staying five of us in one big communal bed meant for four) and although doing so gives me extra independence to take off on my own sometimes, which I do enjoy doing, I am beginning to feel like I'm tagging along on the world's longest double date. Not that we're not enjoying ourselves, cause we really, really are. After the monsoon, any time that we're dry is a good time.

I feel as though I'm missing heaps, but it's been too long and I'm doing this freestyle, sans notes.

Hope everyone is well!!! Miss y'all!!!

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Cancel that.

Yeah, I've changed my mind about Lao/Thai massage. L-O-V-E them. Our last night in Laos, Kaje and I were mangled from our tubing debacle. I felt like I was in a bad motor vehicle and/or waterskiing accident. So at Kaje's encouragement, I decided to give Lao massage another shot. And W-O-W was it ever fantastic. For $5.00 each, maybe the best massage I've ever had (really, really hope my RMT isn't reading this...). The guy on the other side of the curtain from Kaje and I was making noises that suggested that he was receiving a whole other kind of massage altogether...

Kaje and I are back in Bangkok now, where we've met up with Ange and Blair. Time's up, will blog again tomorrow!

xoxo

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

If there are no photos, did it actually happen?

What's this? Another blog so soon? Yes, that's exactly what it is. I need to write about tubing in Vang Vieng before the euphoria subsides and the memory of the day fades away. We took no camera, so besides the scrapes and bruises and the mud still in our ears and belly buttons, there are no mementos to remember the day by. Best write about it while it's still fresh.

We knew the day would be either terrific or terrifying when we arrived in Vang Vieng and we were sitting in one of the town's many, many covered but open-air restaurants (all of which play Friends DVDs on repeat) and our slow boat friends who had beat us to Vang Vieng would walk past and tell us of near-death experiences, lost possessions, and sore muscles. One person said it was one of the best days of his life, and I was a little skeptical.

But wow. Seriously, one of the funnest days ever. You rent a tube and get driven to a launch spot, where you drop your tube in the Mekong. You're not on the river for very long though, cause within probably 100 ft. you come to the first bar. At each bar, you're helped by Lao people in the water or thrown a rope with a waterbottle on the end of it. Each bar has either a zipline, a trapeze, or a slide that results in you dropping or falling into the river, and the first trapeze is supposed to be the scariest. I decided that I needed to try them all, and the first one (with only one mojito and half a beer in me to dull my nerves) was terrifying. I can't even really guess how high the first one was, but it was high. It was so difficult to make myself jump off the platform, because everyone at the bar (maybe 200 people) is watching each person go and either cheering for a good go or laughing at the belly-flops and mishaps. I did not want to be a mishap. I had finally prepared myself and had the trapeze solidly in my hands, but there were several tubes leaving the bar at that point and I had to wait for ages until the passed. I was shaking by the time I had to go and was afraid that I lacked the upper-body strength to hold on long enough to swing all the way out, swing back, and then swing back out and drop. Thankfully, my turn was successful and I instantly wanted to do it again. Some of the others weren't as exhilarating, but I did them all.

The atmosphere was so fun, and we drank and laughed and floated and met new people and people we'd met earlier in our travels. So much fun. The fourth bar was the mud bar, which was the most fun. It was pouring rain and there was a big mud volleyball pit with waist-deep water and mud where we played (yup, ballers, I played volleyball) and tackled each other and splashed around. I kept jumping out of there and going off the zipline at that bar to clean off, but by that point I was getting pretty inebriated and the current was pretty strong. Thankfully, I had a little Lao helped who kept throwing me a ring and pulling me in and every time he gave me the "I love you" signal and told me he loved me. He was so cute. And he saved my life probably three times that day, so I guess I love him too.

So if you're thinking that perhaps people tubing down rivers drunk and swinging off very high apparatuses into a fast-moving river (while drunk) is recipe for disaster, and I had pretty much come to that conclusion myself by the sixth bar, at which I fell off the trapeze prematurely cause I could no longer hold on. Thankfully, I paced myself a lot better than some of the other people, some of whom passed out in their tubes, etc. Kaje ended up puking on my leg, but I was so muddy and wet by that point that I really didn't care. Then, suddenly it got really really dark very suddenly and thinks got a little scary. We all grabbed our tubes and were ready to head out but they wouldn't let us cross this bridge, so they had free boats (kind of just a wooden raft) that we were supposed to use to cross. Upon the arrival of the first boat, about ten of us crowded onto it and the boat sank and Kaje and this British guy, Edward, started floating away into the dark. I was freaking a bit and yelling her name, but then I got pinned under the boat a bit against the rocks and by the time I got unpinned, I couldn't see Kaje any more. So I got across the river and was screaming after Kaje and she eventually casually came strolling up, all smiles, saying that Edward saved her life. We were both a bit too drunk to fully grasp the gravity of the sitaution, and we headed home for maybe the most hilarious shower I've ever had, Kaje and I spraying each other with the nozzle and trying to get the mud off of us. We didn't have a late night, cause nine hours of drinking was enough for us, and I really wanted to do it all again (with a camera) the next day. The next morning, though, we woke up hungover and mangled and it was pouring rain, and we weren't entirely sure that we could match or top our first Vang Vieng tubing experience, so we headed out.

I just wish we had taken a camera!!! It's really best that we didn't, because if we had, we doubtless would have lost it. In the course of our tubing day, we lost: both our shirts, both our pairs of flip flops, a few thousand kip, Kaje's tube, a couple layers of skin, a little bit of dignity, and nearly Kaje.

Perhaps it's for the best that there are no pictures...

Monday, November 03, 2008

How many years in Laos prison for kidnapping?

Thank Buddha for ginger gravol. Kaje and I just got off a bone-rattling journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, our current location. For six hours, we drove at a death-defying speed in a "VIP" van packed like a sardine can along switchbacks, with goats, cows, pigs, chickens and children all over the roads and often narrowly missed. There are kids playing everywhere in Laos, including right on the roads, and they are one of my favorite things about this country. They run out to the road and wave and yell "Sabaidee!!" and have the brightest smiles. You'll drive by them when they're riding their bikes and they wave so enthusiastically that they get distracted from riding. I love them. Actually, I feel like a bit of a creep cause I can't stop staring at them, especially the little girls, and taking their pictures. And the monks too. I almost re-sprained my ankle the other day cause a bunch of young monks walked past and I fell off a curb trying to get their picture. I haven't considered at length what kind of trouble I would get into for kidnapping one, but alas I have no room in my backpack. If I were male and about thirty years older, I think this behaviour might be considered a problem...

Last time I blogged seems like ages and ages ago. From Bangkok we took an overnight bus to Chiang Mai, where I woke up to find that I had developed a serious, serious set of cankles. Kaje did a bit too, but I looked like I had elephantitis of the lower legs. Thankfully, they subsided after a couple days and I was saved the humiliation or torture of wearing long pants in this g.d. humidity. From Chiang Mai, we took a slow boat to Luang Prabang. The slow boat is a two-day journey on a big boat down the Mekong. It was a terrific way to see Laos, and was a lot of fun. We met lots of backpackers before and on the boat, and by the time we got to Luang Prabang it felt like we knew every backpacker we passed. Things got pretty rowdy on the boat though, to the point that people avoided staying at the same guesthouses as people from our crew. They kepy us entertained for two long days, though, so I appreciated their company. I always marvel at the drinking stamina/tolerance of Brits, Aussies, and the Irish...We did our best to keep up the first couple nights, hanging out in Luang Prabang's bars until they closed at 11:30 and then going to one of the few places allowed to sell booze after closing time--the bowling alley. That's what happens when you tear down Victoria's only bowling alley, people. I have to go to Laos to get my bowling fix. We bowled the first night among Thai locals and Lady Boys (soooo sweet...there was some disbelief among the men that this girl was really a boy, but it's all the knobby knees and the hands and feet...anyway, this ladyboy came up to me and grabbed my hair and compared it to a blonde streak in his/her hair. So sweet). That night, I only made it until 2am though. Kaje continued partying while I went home and nursed a fever. Obviously, when you get a fever somewhere like this, it's cause for concern. I laid there assuming the worst--malaria, dengue, typhoid, Japanese encephalitis--and wondering if cankles is a symptom of any of the above. Turned out it was just a run-of-the-mill cold, which is less dramatic but better, I think, for the outcome of this trip. The second night bowling, we weren't allowed to bowl because Bronwyn, a girl we'd been travelling with until today, got in an altercation with a bowling guy and called a girl who wanted to bowl with us a hooker, resulting in the people who ran the bowling alley stating that they hate white people (awwwwk-wwaaaaard....). Kaje was also going around smashing "cheers" with her beer bottle (Beer Lao...good stuff...and that's coming from a non-beer lover) and others' to the point that she smashed it and was banned from using bottles. Suffice it to say...no more bowling for us in Laos...


While in Luang Prabang, we took refuge from a torrential downpour and had our first traditional Lao massages. Mine was a touch disappointing, to be honest, cause the guy was waaaaaay too gentle. I kept wanting to say, "Come on, dude. Massage me like you mean it!" but he didn't really speak English so I just lay there doing mathematical calculations and figuring that it didn't matter if it was super gentle cause I could get ten of his massage's for the price of one of my RMT's massages at home, so what the hell? I kind of think doing math (and financial math no less) kind of defeats the purpose of a relaxation massage, but it was somehwat enjoyable none the less.



The day after our second night at the bowling alley, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and get ourselves a tuk tuk (NOT a good idea when hungover) to a nearby waterfall, which was gorgeous. We hiked to the top, which was nothing short of challenging after a 4a.m. night, but it was well worth it.



My affinity for monk stalking got an excellent outlet this morning, when we got up and participated in the monks' collecting alms. At 6:00am (took the night off from bowling in order to make it up for it), there were hundreds of orange-clad monks walking in a procession down the streets, collecting their food for the day. We bought and gave them some bundles of rice in leaves and then just watched. Some of the monks here look not a day over 8, but apparently they have to be at least 14. I'm not sure if I believe it. Anyway, they're adorable and I'd probably kidnap one of them too if I could.



I adore Laos. The people are lovely, the food is terrific, the scenery is lush and green and beautiful. I wish we could stay much, much longer!!



I've decided to try and start writing shorter blogs more often because I've been trying to write this blog for days and get it all down and every time I sit down at the computer I feel overwhelmed and my mind goes blank. So from now on you can expect more regular, shorter blog posts...If anyone is reading...



Tomorrow we're doing the famous Vang Vieng tubing experience, which many a backpacker has raved about, some saying it was one of the best days of their life...we'll see...



Chels



RETRACTION: Please note that my blog of Sunday, October 19th contained an inaccuracy. Kaje would like me to clarify that she was neither gloomy nor miserable upon arriving in Thailand. The part about my gloom and misery, however, was entirely accurate.