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

Phuket: Where Morals Go To Die

Thank you, stereotypically Asian-style cartoon! It's great to be here!

I decided to take a shuttle from the airport to my hostel since it would be cheaper and I assumed it would probably take about as much time (in retrospect, I really had no basis for making that assumption). I was mostly right on both fronts.

In the van, I met this blonde Australian girl who is also exploring the world. She is traveling with a friend at the moment, though I got a really weird vibe going on between them so I assume their travels together did not end up being as awesome as they had originally anticipated. Whoops! She was super cool, but our itineraries didn't overlap at all, so about 20 minutes later, I hopped out of the shuttle onto Bangla Road, never to see her again. Story of my life.

Like most of the hostels at which I've stayed, I chose this one because it was highly-rated and because it was close to where a bunch of other hostels were, which is generally a good indication of it being in an area that is relatively safe and has cool stuff to do. It turns out Bangla Road is INSANE. I hopped out of the shuttle and onto this street filled with people. And lights! So many lights! And more ladyboys than (most of) you have ever seen before in your lives! And go-go dancers. And so many dudes soliciting tourists to come see ping pong shows. If you don't know what a ping pong show is, for the love of God, please DO NOT Google it. Some things can never be unlearned. The worst part is that these guys keep making this popping noise with their mouths after they approach you saying "ping pong show!" [Pop Pop]. WORST.

The biggest fake tiger I've ever seen.
And I've seen A LOT of big fake tigers. (...no I haven't.)

When I got to where my hostel was supposed to be, it was no where to be found. Instead, I found a go-go bar with a GIANT fake tiger roaring at me. What IS this place?!

I must have looked totally lost, because a few minutes later a stranger walked up to me and asked me if I need help finding something. So the thing about traveling alone in a foreign country is that you have to be super-vigilant at all times because you don't want to be that guy that is stupid and gets robbed and/or mugged and/or scammed. And especially when I'm carrying a 35-pound backpack, I'm in a particularly vulnerable position because I basically can't defend myself and/or quickly exit a dangerous situation. But sometimes you also have to fall back on the idea that most people are mostly good and want to help you out. Luckily, this situation was the latter. I told the guy what hostel I was looking for and it turns out he was an American guy who happened to know the owner of that hostel, so he pointed me in the right direction (which was basically across the street from the GIANT tiger) and I was on my way. Turns out Google Maps was actually right, but this hostel just sucks at signage.

This street is FILLED with people on a
Wednesday night. Don't you have other
things to do?! I guess Bangla Road IS the
thing to do on a Wednesday night.

After I checked in, I met a whole bunch of people in the hostel. There was my new English friend, MM, and his German friend who he met a couple days ago while traveling. There was also LI, the somewhat mysterious girl who is from Norway but is racially and somewhat ethnically Iraqi. There was also the girl staying in my room from Texas, BK. is basically the second American I've met while traveling, which seems crazy to me but... I'm pretty sure that's a true statement. We chatted for a while, she seems pretty cool. Later that night, I met her French friend with whom she is traveling, who gave me this super cold reception. What's the deal?! Whatever.

The night was still relatively young at 10:30pm and I just gotten to Thailand, so there was no way I was ready for bed. MM and I went to go exploring Bangla Road, which isn't really that big. We ended up at this bar pretty close to our hostel. When we got there, this kind of older Thai woman approached us and offered to play a game with us. Basically, there's a giant tree stump, and the game is to take turns trying to hammer in a nail into the tree stump using the back-end of the hammer. Whoever hammers in their nail first wins. She then tried to get us to wager that the loser buys the other a drink. I'm not one to buy drinks anyways, but this totally screamed scam to me (some Google searching the following day confirmed as much). In any case, we did play the game sans wager, and we both got destroyed by this woman, who had obviously had a lot of practice playing this game.

It turns out that these kinds of games are pretty common here as a way for the bar girls to get people to buy them drinks / give them money / spend more money. It is also common for men to pick up these bar girls to take them home. When that happens, the dude has to pay a "fee" of sorts to the bar for allowing the woman to leave work. There was a disturbing amount of gross, old white dudes with young, attractive Thai girls all over Bangla Road. Which I guess is what you expect when you come to Thailand, but... it's just so blatant. I guess it makes sense. I mean, who is going to see you when you're out in Thailand? Not your friends or your kids or your wife. You can do whatever you want out here because this is certainly not real life. So it makes sense that these dudes don't feel the need to hide what it is that they're very obviously doing. Prostitution has technically been illegal in Thailand since 1960 but enforcement of that particular law is... basically nonexistent. Surprised? Nope.

We didn't spent too much more time there and actually did call it a night around midnight or so. Five days of this? I might have to rethink my travel plans.

CONTINUE ON to Phuket Part 2: Finally, a Nice Beach!