Thailand cont'd

Thailand was entirely awesome. In the interest of time, I won't go into excessive detail. My two excellent travelling companions and I did manage to fly to the island of Ko Tao (pictured above) after a bit of a hairy spot: one of us (I shant specify who) forgot to bring along the credit card used to purchase the plane tickets to the island in the midst of all that late-to-catch-a-plane rush, meaning we nearly couldn't board the plane. It being my birthday though, a little birthday luck must have kicked in, because our counter lady for Bangkok Air let us make a printout of the credit card statement and use that to check in instead. So we made it. I spent my birthday laying on a beach from paradise and drinking mai tais.

The next day we decided to venture to the other more remote side of the island, and after negotiating some pretty steep hills in a hired truck, made it to a picturesque private cove with a small beach and an awesome garden/bar/restaraunt. I went snorkelling for the first time ever and saw a reef shark.

After 2 days there, we went to Ko Phangan island by ferry, early in the day, to pick up some neon paint and fluorescent bead necklaces for the Dec 2, 2009 full moon party on Hat Rin beach. This, folks, is an event. An all-night crazy dance party on the beach stretching probably a kilometer and a half up and down the sand, absolutely chock full of spoled suburban co-eds delighting in the wild expenditure of their parents' money. There were also a few cool people.

Basically though, my partners in crime and I wandered up and down the beach all night drinking out of buckets (bucket vendors spring up in massive rows along the beach and throughout the town for this event, all the bucket vendors have named their business something vulgar and profane, and they all mix a bottle of alcohol with 2 mixers into a plastic bucket with ice which is distributed with several straws to carry around and share amongst friends.)

We danced, we tired at 3:00am, wandered back, got a cheeseburger on the way and called it a night. The next morning I got up at 8:00am to go open up my safety deposit box and could still hear the party going down on the beach.

All in all an excellent trip. I love Thailand - everything was so clean, and all the people were so friendly. Except for one tuk tuk driver, who Stanley got into a fairly fierce debate with over his knowledge of the location of the real Samboon Seafood.

Stanley: "You know where it is!!! You know!! You know!!!"
Driver: "I no know! I no know!"
Stanley: "You do!! You are a liar!! You know where it is!! You take us to the wrong place because you get commission!! I saw you, you know that man!!!"
Driver: "I see you later! I see you later! I no know that man! You crazy!"
Stanley: "WHATEVER"