Finally, a Nice Beach!

Awkward camera pose in front of the

Patong Beach sign. You're welcome, internet.

This might seem hard to believe, but travel is exhausting. Cry me a river, right? I'll be the first to admit this is totally a first-world problem (despite my presence in the third world at the moment). Don't get me wrong, it's incredible. But exhausting. Today was my first real vacation vacation day. I mean... this whole thing is kind of a vacation, but today was the first day in long time without tons of traveling or a crazy schedule of sightseeing, without a schedule at all really,  just a day to relax. And it. was. awesome.

That big, yellow thing in the sky is a parasailor. So. Cool.

I woke up on the later side and met up with MM and his German friend and we grabbed a quick bite to eat on the street before walking down the whopping, grueling five minutes to the beach from our hostel. Life is hard sometimes, you know?


The beach here is gorgeous. I mean... I'm on a beach in Thailand. There's absolutely no comparison to be made between this beach and the ones I saw in Bangladesh and India. We walked down a ways and found a good spot a little bit away from the crowded area (though none of the beach was really all that crowded). We paid to rent some beach chairs/umbrellas which was well worth it. The water looked fine and it felt great. The sun was pretty strong today so we definitely felt it. The water was warm enough to feel good being in but cool enough to help with the heat.

The beach was full of people trying to sell stuff. Mostly food and trinkets. But there were also these women carrying buckets of aloe. Not aloe in a bottle, but actual leaves (are they called leaves when they're aloe? They're huge.) of aloe. What they do is cut the aloe leaves, and this disgusting slimey ooze leaks out which they then rubs all over your body. You come out looking like a dinosaur just sneezed on you (and I'm not talking a dainty sneeze here, I'm talking the kind where your friends get super grossed out because you don't have a tissue or even a tissue substitute that could handle the quantity of snot you just inadvertently ejected from your body), but I imagine it feels great.

We spent a few hours on the beach, mostly lying down in our chairs, but I also went for a walk for a while. On my walk, I ran into LI, the mysterious Norwegian girl from the hostel last night. We chatted briefly about my upcoming meditation retreat and there was a glimmer of "ooo maybe I want to do that with you" so we decided to talk more about it that evening.

When I got back to my friends, I discovered that the German girl was Icarusianly fried to crisp. Which, ok here's the thing, if you're complexion leads you to often be confused with Casper the Friendly Ghost in your daily life, and you've been that way all of your life, shouldn't you know how to apply sunscreen by this point? I guess not. As it so turns out, one of those Thai aloe ladies was getting aloe handsy with the three European dudes sitting next to us, and when she saw the sad state of our German friend, she took pity and decided to use her last two aloe leaves on her for free. Which was incredibly generous of her and something I'm sure our German friend very much appreciated (and needed). Soon thereafter, we all headed back to the hostel.

Also this was a thing I found on my walk.
Which, obviously I had to share with
the world.

I wanted to explore Phuket a little more, so I headed out on my own to go for a walk later that afternoon. There are few things more striking walking the streets than the sheer number of massage parlors there are here. All of them have between two and eight women standing or sitting outside of the doorway trying to entice you to come inside. In front of one of them, one of them actually grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go when I tried to pull free. Aggressive. And then they acted like I was the weird one from wanting her to let go of my arm. This is a totally foreign culture to me. While I was in Cambodia, a fellow traveler told me that she had talked to one of the massage women there, who told her that they actually hate foreigners. Which struck me as odd at first, because... doesn't most of your money come from rich foreigners? But she said that they hate them because those dudes are terrible, terrible people who treat them with no respect. Oh, right, that, yea, okay I get it now. It's a sad commentary on and reality of the global sex trade. The other thing that struck me as I walked through the streets here is that, aside from the massage parlor women, the vendors here weren't nearly as aggressive in their sales tactics compared to the people I had encountered in Cambodia, which made for a much more pleasant experience of just walking around the city.

A little slice of home.
Again.

That night, I went out to dinner with BK (the Texan) and NS (the French girl). Remember how I said the French girl had given me a super cold reception? It turns out it was because she thought I was someone else! Apparently the night before last, someone who had been staying in my room got really sketchy with her friend BK. Womp womp. Mistaken identity at its worst (...probably not it's worst, but definitely not its best). It struck me as odd that two girls who were so young from totally opposite ends of the world were traveling together, but I think they knew each other from college. Yet another reason why it's worth the investment to send your kids away from college if you can. I doubt this would have happened if they had been living at home. I'm a little biased here, but I stand by my point. Dinner was fine, good company, meh food. BK and NS told me they were traveling to an island off the coast called Koh Phi Phi (hehe) tomorrow. Today hammered home the fact that I definitely didn't want to spend another three days here, so I decided I was going to join them on their island adventure tomorrow.

We walked around a little after dinner. And much to my surprise (though I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this anymore), we found another Swensen's!

We also explored a little bit more of Bangla Road. Remember that go-go bar I mentioned yesterday? Here's a closer look:

Note the creepy, old, white dude with two young Thai women at the table.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon sight here.

Inside the go go bar. It turns it's this place is
enormous. There for sure were over 100
of these "tables"/dancing poles.

Every so often, a huge chuck of bubbles
would go flying overhead

Back at the hostel, I met back up MM, LI and some other people in the hostel. One of the guys in the hostel has been staying and working here for a few months and he suggested heading to this famous rooftop bar place... called Famous, which sounded pretty cool. So about six of us headed over. We were a pretty eclectic group: American, Norwegian, Chinese, English, and a couple others in the mix. The place was about a 10-minute walk from our hostel. When we got there, we took an elevator to the roof and found... a kind of empty rooftop. Which was fine. We got drinks and headed over to a table. True to it's word, there was a foam party area, but with absolutely no one in it. The place was beautiful. I bet during the high season when there are a lot of people here, this place is probably awesome.

The bubble room. Doubles as an inflatable
boxing ring and the spare air mattress for all
of the Jolly Green Giant's friends from out of
town.

A few minutes after we got there, it started POURING rain, so we moved to a covered section. And then the power went out. Ha! Of course it did. Which meant that the bubble maker also stopped working, so about 10 minutes later the foam room was just a giant wading pool. No matter. We hung out for another hour or two, waiting out the rain and having an incredible cultural exchange. It turns out the Norwegian girl is also Muslim. And China isn't necessarily the totalitarian state you think it is. But sometimes it is. And even among educated people in Sudan, there's debate about whether or not a genocide actually happened. The fact that that's even a question seems ridiculous to me. This was probably the thing about the whole evening that surprised me the most.

After the rain let up, we walked back toward the hostel. But we weren't really ready to call it a night, so we headed out to the beach. Which was still beautiful and mostly empty. I was talking with LI about my plans to join the girls at Koh Phi Phi tomorrow and she decided to tag along as well. Then she dared me to go into the water. I'm not one to back down from a dare (... questionably true at home, but always true when I'm on a year-long adventure to explore the world), so I stripped down, got rid of my phone and wallet, and ran in. Even at 3am, the water was warm and incredible. Here I was, in the Indian Ocean, under the stars in the middle of the night. And it was amazing. This was one of those "life is good moments" that I won't soon forget.

I eventually made my way back out of the water, and joined my friends who were hanging out at a nearby bench. We hung out for another hour or so before heading back home for the night.

Goodnight world, you continue to surprise me in the best possible ways.

CONTINUE ON to Phuket Part 3: Out of Phuket and Not Soon Enough