A brief interlude

Bangkok is busy, seedy, crowded, but full of good food, and after getting our fill, we too headed out.

Khao San Road (Backpacker Street), Bangkok



Haven't got your Obama shirt yet? How cool is it that our president is pretty much an international rock star? I seriously passed this place a few hours before I took this photo and he had several more t-shirt designs that had sold out.

First post-Bangkok stop: Ko Pha Ngan, the Full Moon island. Known for it's outrageous parties over the last 20 or so years, Ko Pha Ngan is the "it" place of Southeast Asia. We were there a few days before the big festivities began but enjoyed ourselves none the less. In fact, I think coming in a few days before made it better because there were less drunk people to navigate around, things were far less crowded and bungalows were still available (and about 300 Baht cheaper).

He's got the greatest smile. :)

The beach was really nice and we spent quite a bit of time just sitting there doing nothing but reading books and sleeping. And the sunburns weren't too bad either. In the evenings, we'd fall asleep early or go out for a drink and watch the crazies jump through hoops of fire or do jump rope with a rope soaked in gasoline and lit on fire. Jeremy has been to the island before (about the same time last year) and did the jump rope thing back then; he wanted to do it again but after seeing a few guys get a flaming rope tossed on their back or the clothes catch on fire, I begged him not to. How that restaurant remained upright and not in a pile of smouldering embers remains a mystery...

We only stayed 3 days and then headed back to Bangkok on the train. That was a LONG journey. When we were about 80km from Bangkok, an accident occured on the tracks in front of us (perhaps a derailment?) which forced the train to sit on the tracks for 4 hours before they finally decided what to do with us. The solution was put everone on busses and take them to the train station in Bangkok. Of course it took a couple more hours to get the busses there after the decision was made (this is Asia, remember) and then another hour to fill them and decide where they were going, and then several more hours getting to Bangkok but avoiding the freeways. A nightmare. Our plan had been to get in early and catch the only train out to Pattaya to meet J's uncle but now we had to take a bus (which turned out to be a local bus and not a direct bus, so the ride to Pattaya became a 3.5 hour affair of stopping and going every 200 meters or so).

But we made it and have stayed two nights here in Pattaya with his uncle and his girlfriend. They are super nice and have treated us to luxuries we could only dream about: having a driver for the day, eating a three course meal, air conditioning, unlimited and FREE internet access. It's been good fun here. Yesterday, his uncle took us around Pattaya and showed us the tropical gardens (pretty cool) where we watched an elephant and Thai culture show, a large engraved Buddha in a hill side, and then took us downtown Pattaya last night to see the seedy side and get some pizza. (Pattaya is where Thailand's sex trade industry started back in the 70's when American GIs would come on leave from the war and look for some weekend lovin'.)

Jeremy walking on ants at the gardens.



I think this is the only photo I took within the gardens themselves, and it's not even of a plant. I should have taken more.



Cheeky elephant...



How cute are they? I LOVE elephants. Even though the show was a little like the circus, it seemed that all of their elephants were happy. And well fed. Holy cow! They get a lot of bananas from the tourists! I watched one elephant shove his trunk right into a sitting girl's lap and snatch up her ENTIRE bundle of bananas and swallow them in one gulp! She screamed but later laughed; it was too funny. :)

I can't say that Pattaya is a beautiful city or even has much to offer the casual tourist other than a few good restaurants, some fancy hotels and countless Thai girls willing to be your "girlfriend" for a price. Jeremy and I watched the whole thing with a curious disgust that lies somewhere between entertainment and a train wreck. I'll definitely write more on this later.

But for now, we're shipping out and heading to Ko Chang, another pristine island loaded with bamboo bungalows and hammocks in the palms. This place is significantly more low-key than Ko Pha Ngan, so much that J is calling it "Slow Chang." And it's a bit off the usual backpacker trail so maybe we'll get some cheap accomodation and a beach to ourselves. :) We'll be there for a week and then we're off to Cambodia! So if you don't hear from me for a while, just know that internet on the islands is expensive and hard to find and that we'll be in transit a lot over the next week. But good photos to surely follow. Happy Tuesday!