Koh Tao

So... I've discovered where I'm ending up at the end of this trip. Koh Tao was wonderful! The weather was perfect, the beaches were gorgeous, the water was clean and clear, the natives were polite and not pesky, the other travelers were very fun to hang out with, and the semi-permenate foreigners were very wonderful and chill, the parties were lively, and as a added bonus, there was eye candy everywhere you cared to look, a fair few where even topless! The line between Thai and Westerner was blurred here, as both would work in the bars, dive centers and restaurants, and everyone would hang out and get along. The island was small enough that it had a great small feel, I've been told that during the busy season that it can get very busy and crowded, but we were there during the low season, and the beaches and streets were wonderfully deserted. However there were still enough people around that you could make friends and have fun at the parties and bars. The whole island really only had one main street that ran from the South end to the North end along the more developed West coast of the island. From there you'd take treacherous dirt side roads that were in all sorts of disrepair to get up the hills and through the woods to the more isolated parts off the island. You could walk up the West coast and main beach in probably about an hour of pleasant strolling, which was about 2/3 of the height of the whole island. As far as my separate adventures on Koh Tao, I've had quite a few!

- Scuba Diving

I decided after much deliberation to splurge and spend the money to become a certified scuba diver, something that I've always wanted to do, and Koh Tao is world renowned for it's great diving, and it is one of the cheapest places in the world to do it. I've not regretted it. Snorkeling was nothing like it, and it was not difficult at all to do. Most everything they taught you, was to keep breathing, push this button to go up, to keep breathing, push this button to go down, to keep breathing, and what to do if something went wrong. The group of guys I took the course with ended up becoming good friends and we hung out pretty much every day. From left to right they are Casper and Emil, two great guys from Denmark that have known each other forever and have been on many travels together as well, then Hailing from London is Andy, a really fun guy and an amazing football (as in soccer) player (well, since I'm American, pretty much everyone kicked my ass at football). Our instructor was also very cool, he was a Thai guy named Off that was living on the island, and was insanely experienced, he said he had trained about 3,500 people to dive. Not only that, but he would hang out afterwords sometimes and just be a friend as well as an instructor.
The first dive wasn't terribly exciting, it was just a dive in the pool to get used to and try all of the potential trouble situations. Things like, having your mask fall off under water, losing your regulator (what you breath through) and then clearing it of water, etc. However, over the next two days we went on a two dives a day (that's four more for those who totally suck at math). The first day we saw a few blue-spotted stingrays, moray eels, a puffer fish, an entire school of yellow tail barracuda, as well as a sea turtle (which won the spiffiest of the day award). The next day (Monday the 19th, October 2009) we saw more of the same, except for at least a half dozen fucking grey reef sharks (they weren't actually having an orgy, it was just cool so I... nevermind) that were all about 2.5 to 3 meters in length (7 to 9 feet). Since we could only descend to 18 meters we swam around about 6 meters above them and watched as they roamed about just above the seabed. In between the shark dive and the last dive on playing around and in a wreck all four of us had a smashing time jumping off the 2nd story deck on the boat into the perfect water, doing all kinds of crazy ass stuff.

- Playing with Fire

Every night there were a bunch of guys playing with fire up and down the main beach. For most of the time it was just fun to watch and hang out while chatting with people. However on Sunday (Sunday the 18th, October 2009) there was a party at the AC Bar that included the best fire dancers on the island, I was actually told that every Sunday they have one of these shows. This time it wasn't just pleasant to passively watch as you chatted with friends, but a full on show. These guys were amazing too, the average tools of amazement were sticks on fire, and the chains with balls of fire on the end, however they would also break out ropes on fire and swing those around and at one point they lit a huge 6 or 7 meter rope on fire and swung it like a giant flaming jump rope of death! Then they jump roped with it! As an added perk, all of this offered some fun pictures using a slow shutter speed!
I attempted playing with fire one night (not the huge night, just in case I pulled a dipshit move like lighting my hair on fire), using one of the fire staffs. While I wasn't by any means amazing, I didn't light anything on fire and no one threw tomatoes or other rotten vegetables at me, so I consider it a success.

- Thai Ladyboys

Finally the subject you've all been waiting for! Yes they are here, and yes they look pretty damn convincing, and no I haven't gotten pretty far with one before I realized that she wasn't a she after all (however, with how convincing they can be, and with as drunk as I've been, and with as drunk as I will probably get, it could happen, so don't make too much fun if it does). We went to the Thai equivalent of a drag show on Monday night (Monday the 19th, October 2009). The show was free, all you had to do was buy a super expensive drink (all of the beers were 120 baht ($4ish)). The show was more then worth it though, I've been to a fair amount of drag shows in the states and this one kicked the shit out of everyone of them. The dances were well choreographed and well preformed, the lip syncing was on time and they knew all the words (something surprisingly rare), they costumes were extravagant, the only thing they skimped on was that all they wigs looked like shit. Also, as you can see, most of them were very convincing, one (the girl in white) even had some nice boobs (we asked afterwords, they were silicone), and I'll honestly say that the chick in the blue dress is hot. As you view these pictures bear in mind that yes, every single one of them is/was a man. At the end of the show they pulled 3 men out of the audience into the back and threw them in drag and had them dance around for the last number, and one of them happened to be my traveling companion Dalin (what are the odds that they snag probably the only gay man in the room)! Don't worry though, he has a great sense of humor and fun and so he totally rocked it up there. An interesting side note, I was getting flirted with the entire show by they guy in the really bad makeup (he was supposed to be ugly for the sake of humor, because... you know... ugly people are funny), he kept eyeing me and coming over and making all kinds of gestures, not all of them entirely appropriate to mention on this rated PG blog.

- Muy Thai

The last night on the island (Tuesday the 20th, October 2009) I went to see Muy Thai, it was a bit expensive but I'm here to have these kind of experiences. It was 8 fights and lasted about 2 hours, not all of the fights were crazy intense, but half of them were really fun and pretty brutal, the last match ended with a knock out when one fighter hammer-struck his opponent right at the base of his skull while he was bent over. Another guy caught an elbow in the forehead, which split his head and blood ran dramatically down his face for the rest of the round. I met a British girl who had been working on the island as a underwater camera operator and made videos of other divers for them to buy. She was fairly into Muy Thai so it was fun to go with her because she could point out things I otherwise would've missed or just not known too much about.

Other minor adventures include partying, drinking a bit, having a minor accident on a rented scooter, hanging out with a cute Thai girl then finding out she was another working girl which made me immediately think "dammit, I should stayed with the shy one", and also I've made my unofficial-and-probably-soon-to-be-broken-rule "just stick with western chicks". I've also got a pretty good all over tan going (well, my ass is still white), Dalin said I'm starting to look Italian.
I'm now on the island of Koh Pha-Ngan, home of the famous full-moon parties. We'll see if we actually stick around long enough to attend one though. However there have been no adventures or stories on this island yet, so stay tuned. Also, leave comments or message me on facebook or something, I'd love to hear from everyone and I'll try to send as many personalized e-mails as possible, but internet access can be hit and miss, and often charged by the hour.

Drinking in Bangkok.

Today's topic is: getting totally drunk in Bangkok. I thought I would try this out of 100% scientific research experimentation purely so others can benefit from my experience and wisdom. Okay, and also because you can't go to Bangkok without partying it up at least one night. It went well if you consider that I succeeded in my goal, which was to get drunk and go to a club full of cute Thai girls and dance with at least a few. However that was about the only thing that was successful. I basically was just along for the ride the entire night, I'd already had a few beers at my hostel before going to the club (a place called Gulliver's Travels), mostly because I figured it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper there, which ended up being spot on. Dalin had left earlier that night that go find his own nighttime excitement at another part of town.
I got to the club sometime after midnight and immediately got a beer and started to dance on the practically non-existent dance floor for about 10 seconds by myself before I wasn't dancing by myself anymore, and since she was pretty cute I was very okay with this (who wouldn't be), we danced for about 10 minutes or so then would go our separate ways and I'd go dance with another cute Thai girl. Basically the first hour followed suit, eventually I ended up dancing with a very cute girl who if I'm going to be totally honest I have fairly strong suspicions that she was a working girl, mostly because she seemed very intent on me drinking more and had me buy both of us a few rounds of drinks. By this time I was getting pretty far gone, however I did know what she was doing and had enough of my wits to know she wasn't going to win.
We ended up at another club which was quite nice, unfortunately I was too fucked up to know where the hell I was going so there is little chance of me finding my way there again. Here she ordered a bucket o' beer, which was basically a plastic sand castle type bucket full of beer and a few straws. She kept drinking and required me to drink too, but I was way too smart for her.(or at least it seemed that way at the time), get this, I'd only pretend to drink! Ha Ha! About 3:30 in the morning we ended up in front of my hostel which she couldn't go in because it didn't allow Thais, probably to keep working girls out. I didn't mind, because I wasn't giving her any money and any sex at that point would've been terribly sloppy and unfulfilled.
At this point I'm not sure what happened, I didn't pass out because I managed to get up all 5 floors of stairs and get into bed. Actually, I became coherent 6:00 this morning downstairs on in the lounging area without pants or shoes on (I did still have boxers) and had one of the workers of the hostel telling me that I needed to go or her boss would get mad (man, this is embarrassing to be writing this down afterwords, but I just figured everybody will just be jealous). I made it upstairs again and crashed in my bed again totally confused and a bit worried because I didn't know where my money bag, shoes and shorts were, but I eventually located them at the foot of my bed and fell into a very relieved sleep.
To add to the confusion of the morning I also woke to find that my eyebrow piercing had disappeared during the night (don't worry, $3 fixed that), and I had no clue how. I don't think it was stolen, because out of all the things she could have taken, getting a piercing doesn't seem like the easiest way to go, and I still had everything in my pockets (I made sure to leave anything valuable back in my room) and my watch and the rest of my bracelets and necklaces were all intact as well.
Needless to say, the rest of the day was a dedicated recover day, and I figure that the next time I will drink will be this month's full moon party. Dalin and I will be heading down South to the islands, probably tomorrow morning.

First day in Bangkok.

I'm now in Bangkok, and just arrived super late Friday night. Its been an adventure just getting here. First off, the flights went well, I even got first class from Seattle to Japan. Best moment on that flight was just after we'd gotten on the plane and sat down the desk agent got onto the plane and chewed Dalin and I out, as well as two other standby travelers for our dress.
"This is first class... not economy," she told us while looking down here nose, "you need to be wrinkle free and clean cut, and you," she looked at me here with total disgust, "are not clean cut."
I wanted to tell her, "Hey, I just shaved what more do you want?" but I felt that that would've been immature.
As far as Thailand goes, lodging is less then $2.50 for me a night and a meal is less then a dollar. I could go into an snooty sitdown place and maybe the price would go up to $3.00, maybe. We were told that it was Buddist day by many excited and helpful locals on the street on Saturday (10-11-2009) so I spent most of the day taking Tuk-Tuks around the city seeing gigantic Buddah after gigantic Buddah, and each one of these was surrounded by many not so gigantic Buddahs, with even more small Buddahs (they sure like Buddah). We also saw a team of Mui Tai guys practicing kickboxing, even though we were trying to find a free match that was apparently going on because of the holiday.
All in all though I don't think that Bangkok is going to be home for long, its dirty, crowded and loud, so while its fun for a bit its not my cup of tea.