Did that little girl just call me a ladyboy...?
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2007
1
9
19
Trip End
Mar 14, 2008
Bangkok,
Thailand
Sunday, December 9, 2007
When we last left off, we were on Don Det in Southern Laos chilling out in hammocks and playing King's Cup until the wee hours of 10pm when the whole island would shut off its power and everyone would have to go to bed. On our last day though, we heard a couple of rumours about a party going on on the neighbouring island of Don Khan as a kick-off for a huge boat race going on the next morning. Naturally we were curious so we asked around and sure enough it was legit. We were planning on going, but we were pretty tired so we just decided to chill and play King's Cup on our patio instead. Then just before 10 we see these Laotian people on their little scooters cruising up the little path and they shout to us "You come party!" So obviously we did the right thing and got our good friend Mr. Pho (the guesthouse owner) to take ten of us on a night boat ride over to the party. It turns out that they had hauled in a huge stage and tons of stereo equipment and some live music onto Don Khan and they were even allowed to party past curfew. They even had a carousel! So there we were, about 15 or 20 foreigners with probably 1000 locals having the time of our lives. It was definitely a memorable experience especially getting on the child-size carousel and most of us falling off to the delight of the locals. So that was our farewell to Southern Laos. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that a slimy new-born calf with it's umbillical chord still attached thought that our buddy Jason was it's mom and started chasing him on its wobbly legs. The mom cow was pretty pissed off, but the owner got the calf back before she freaked out too much.
The next day we started our long journey back up North to Vang Vieng for some more tubing and rope swing action. We wound up spending another 7 nights there making it 15 nights in total which is pretty ridiculous. We wound up making friends with some Australians who were "working" in one of the guesthouses owned by an Aussie ex-pat. Their guesthouse had a ping-pong table in the backyard as well so obviously we spent a few nights there playing some beer pong. We also decided to get our acts together and try and get back in shape so we went on a couple of 20-minute morning jogs. We hit up the river every day we were there, but we skipped the whole tubing part and just tuk-tukked straight to the main swing bar and so we just played some amazing beach volleyball all day with a few breaks to hit up the swings. We learned some new rope-swing tricks as well, Karl had one where he would swing and then put his legs up around the handle and ride it with the backs of his knees and then with just his feet. I managed to perfect the backflip, but the double still needs some work. I wasn't too keen on practicing it too much either because hurts pretty bad when you bail. My ribs are still pretty sore, but well worth it.
We left Vang Vieng to Vientiane on the last day of our visas and got out of the country with two hours to spare on yet another night bus to Bangkok. Just a side-note for anyone who hasn't taken a night-bus in Southeast Asia, they are the stupidest things in the world. They say they're going to play "Special DVD Movie Show" which turns out to be terrible Thai Pop music videos, but I didn't even mind that part... The worst part is that they absolutely blast the air-conditioning all night long so that even in shoes, pants, a sweater and a blanket you're still freezing cold the whole night. Sorry about the rant, but I had to get that one out of my system.
Since we got to Bangkok we haven't really done much. We went to the big mall called MBK and went to see "The Golden Compass" which actually wasn't too bad. We also checked out the Porsche, Ferari, Mazerati and Bentley dealerships in the mall as well. They had a Bentley there that was worth like $700,000... I was going to ask for a test drive, but I think that the flip-flops and dirty shorts and t-shirt gave away the fact that my credit wasn't quite up to par... Next time I'll wear a suit. Other than that we've just been cruising around Khao San Road enjoying watching all the drunken tourists have their fun. Last night we watched Man U destroy some other team in a bar while we were talking to a hammered 65 year-old Austrian guy who was travelling Southeast Asia by himself for 8 weeks. He said he drinks at least 7 or 8 beers each day and was always out until at least 3 in the morning. Really nice guy, hilarious to talk to. This morning we booked our way down to the SCUBA diving mecca of Koh Tao which is an island in Southern Thailand. Altogether, the four days of lessons, the transportation to get down there, our accomodation and our PADI certification cost $240... So we're off on another night bus tonight (damn it!) and we start our lessons tomorrow morning and I can't wait. Haha, Karl apparently has a bit of a phobia of things underwater so that should be pretty interesting...
To end things off I'm just going to throw this question out there to anyone who's been to Bangkok and more specifically to Khao San Road... Does the 5-second rule count if you drop a spring roll on Khao San? Please get back to me on that one.
Mustache coming soon.
