(no subject)
alright,
so, we were at koh samui. saturday we got up to our delicious free continental breakfast buffet at the open air restaurant overlooking the pool and the beach. the guys all rented motorbikes and we took off for a large beach a little bit away from our hotel. we immediately piled into the ocean (it was sooo WARM!). there was a pretty strong tow but we rented a couple body boards and floated around. alvaro, diego and i took a long walk along the beach, resulting in diego looking like a lobster and me having some attractive red racing stripes. enda got unbelievably burned.. the irish don't have much tolerance for such things, apparently. fortunately i'd brought a ton of spf 50 with me. (i gained a new nickname on this trip.. by the end the boys were calling me mary poppins because i had a huge canvas beach bag with me everywhere and ended up carrying sun screen, sunglasses, cameras, books etc for everyone. anytime someone needed bug spray or bandaids, i was prepared.) when we met up with everyone, christian, emy, alvaro, diego, enda and i treated ourselves to authentic thai massages on the beach. (cost us an entire 4 dollars! good god!) it had been pretty cloudy that day and as soon as we started our massages, the sky errupted into a massive downpour. perfect timing. the massages were something else.. i'd never had any type of massage, but with a thai massage, they contort your body in all sorts of weird positions and even massage your scalp and your butt. kind of awkward to have some one massaging your butt, but it felt good! they also tore up an aloe plant and rubbed the skin all over diego after our massages, victor came back with delicious currys and pork dishes and we had some beers on the beach. after our meal, we all piled on the motor bikes and drove around the island, stopping to see the giant kanon and the giant buddha when it started raining again. got back to the hotel, had a huge meal of seafood and cocktails, took showers and then some of us headed to the night market for a bit. we then of course had to check out the local night life.. we followed some australian girls to an area packed with bars and clubs and had a great night together. we narrowly avoided a fight when alvaro told some guy we met that his girlfriend was a "lady boy," but otherwise no mishaps. diego, enda, chris and i were the last to come home around 5am.
sunday we awoke to rain, which canceled our planned snorkeling trip, so we decided to explore the island. we all got on the motorbikes again and rode around. enda and alvaro stopped off and went bungy jumping.. pretty scary. we rode all around the island that day, sometimes in the rain (not the safest..). i had one of those moments where you reflect on your life and the present moment and think "jesus, i'm lucky." i was speeding around on a motorbike on a tropical island with alvaro, my best friend in japan, seeing all these beautiful things, and then at the same time the extreme poverty of the local people, and i felt so lucky to be where i am. i felt so lucky to be seeing these things when so many people i know will never have the chance.
and then i almost died.
figures! we had all decided to see some waterfalls, so we headed inland on the bikes. the middle of the island is all jungle and mountains (this is where those shots of the jungle and elephants come from.) so we were going up and down some hilly regions, when al lost control of the bike and we went off the road into a ditch, narrowly avoiding a tree. fortunately, we were going rather slow and neither of us were hurt except for some scratches. it was actually pretty funny because i landed on my back with my arms and legs straight up in the air like a dead bug. we recollected ourselves and got to where we had to travel by foot to the waterfall, hiking up the mountain in our flipflops. i'm sure you can tell where this is going.. needless to say, i took another spill, this one pretty nasty, sliding down a rock and falling back first a couple feet into a river and a bunch of rocks. needless to say, i wasn't too pleased. thankfully, i again wasn't hurt and al was a gentleman and immediately jumped down into the river to help me up. graceful as always. the waterfall was pretty cool, but it got dark pretty quickly and we took off. once we reached our bikes, we tried to head up into the mountains to see another waterfall, but it got way too steep and scary, and we had to go back down the mountain in first gear without brakes. we spent the rest of the evening driving around the island, stopping at random beaches to collect coral and shells. chris took a really nasty spill off his bike at one point as well when a truck cut him off and he slid on some gravel. we headed over to a huge reggae bar that was having a birthday party and wandered around the surrounding bars, but by then i think we were all pretty tired. the bars were filled with prostitutes and suspicious white men.. a very different atmosphere than anything i've ever experienced. we stopped in one bar for a drink where a very .. not nice looking guy and a young thai girl were getting a little raunchy. then a little thai girl of about 5 or 6 years wearing a little dress came walking in the bar with a ton of flowered necklaces to sell to bar patrons. she walked straight up to that man and his prostitute and interrupted them to sell him a necklace. she was walking around all alone to these places trying to make a couple dollars. it was disgusting. we left soon after and went back to the hotel.
monday morning after breakfast we boarded a van, then a ferry, then a van, then a plane, and were finally back in bangkok. we spent the night cruising the suamlum night market again.. we all came back to our meeting point with a million bags. everything is so cheap it was hard to not! emy and i have a nice little collection of jewelry now.
tuesday (valentines), emy and i got up early to return rebecca to the airport. scary experience.. the guy that takes care of victor's house drove and apparently he's just learning how to drive. vic's dad was yelling instruction in thai the entire way. then the car broke and we had to take it to the dealer and take a REALLY scary cab ride home. in thailand, there are no traffic rules. if you can't decide on a lane, drive in as many as you can! if you need to merge, don't worry about anyone else, go for it! hopefully, they'll stop. if the car in front of you is braking, just cut into the lane next to you! stop for no man! i almost peed myself. we took a nap back at the house before we went into bangkok to see about arranging bus tickets to cambodia. unfortunately, we had a bunch of problems and some arguments arise.. the border to cambodia is only open from 9am-5pm and it would take 6 hours to get from bangkok to the border and then another 6 hours from the border to angkor wat. but, from the border to angkor wat is only 200 kilometers! they told us at the travel agency that the roads are so bad and that they have to watch out for highjackers and it takes the bus 6 hours to travel 200 kilometers. so we said no thanks. we spent the afternoon visting wat pho and wat arun (two temples), took a very daring ride on these weird motorcycle taxi things that have three wheels and no doors where we could fully appreciate the vast amounts of pollution in bangkok. alvaro has some videos i'll try to upload later when i get them. after that we headed downtown and went to an indian restaurant. everyone allowed me to order since i'm obsessed with indian food, and we ate ourselves silly. some men from pakistan next to us were quite impressed with the amount of food we consumed and started chatting with us. they said they were in town for a political meeting. following dinner, we went to the top of the highest building in bangkok, 83 stories high. the 83 story has a rotating viewing platform, and as i'm pretty much terrified of heights, i wasn't too excited. made me feel pretty queasy. we got free drinks since it was valentines day, which made me feel even better, and we headed home to look at each others pictures.
wednesday we all piled in the van and drove to pattaya, and took a motor boat to an island that no one remembers the name of. we spent all day on the beach and in the ocean tanning (getting burnt) and enjoying the view. i think my two favorite places to be in the world is the front of a motor boat going flying along on an ocean, and on the beach just watching the waves. i love the ocean. the entire time we were at the beach, i was ridiculously happy. i also enjoyed some older japanese tourists wading around in all of their clothes, hats and all. japanese people really hate the sun. through out our trip we ran into several groups of japanese tourists and spoke to most of them.. they were always quite surprised when a group of random white kids started talking to them in japanese. (we met one japanese guy backpacking at one of the ruins.. he had befriended some thai merchants and was yelling at us "hey gorgeous! hey handsome!" to get us to come check out the statues they were selling. i told him in japanese that we were foreign exchange students in japan and he was pretty surprised. he yelled "i am from the land of samurai!") that night enda and victor had to head back to bangkok to catch flights, leaving chris, alvaro, diego, emy and i to our own devices with our driver for the next two days. we tried to check out the bar scene but it was a lot of the same.. pattaya is apparently where every single nasty older white man goes to find thai female company. i've never seen so many older white men in my life with young asian women. the mexican boys started to get quite protective of emy and i. i didn't return the favor when some ladyboys started hitting on alvaro.. it was too funny. we ended up at a restaurant/bar where i had a really obnoxious blue drink with some fruit hanging out of it and some italian man singing opera.
the next day we took another trip to a different island, this one being name koh samed. the boat driver was really amusing.. every time he'd start the boat he'd yell " 1 2 3 GO!" and we'd take off while he played REALLY loud techno music. he even played the numa numa song (is that as popular in the states as it is here?? its our theme song for japan). we once again spent the day on the beach soaking up the rays. i think if i had the opportunity i'd definitely be a beach bum. when we got to the island, some man walked up to us demanding we pay for beach badges because he said it was a national park. we didn't believe him and followed him to his office and ended up paying.. now as i write this i looked up koh samed on wikipedia and it says it is indeed a national park. we were really used to people trying to rip us off by then, i guess! diego and i ate lunch together and had a nice time chatting and sitting on the beach together. the water was really warm and the sand was so white.. the entire vacation was straight out of a movie or a postcard. i think i thought places like that didn't really exist. it was just what we all needed after being in such a high pace high stress environment like japan for so long. none of us really wanted to come back. but, we had to.
the next day on friday we spent the morning shopping and walking around pattaya. alvaro emy and i fit in an hour long massage (al and i had a head and shoulder massage while emy had an oil massage.) after seeing the women in pattaya, i was getting even more generous with my tips and gave the girl who gave me my massage a 150% tip (which was still only like 4 bucks). she was really thankful, i was kind of sad. after that we piled in the van and drove to the airport. we all gave big tips to our driver who had been with us the past 4 days.. he was only 31 and although he knew zero english, he was really nice and fun and we all really appreciated his help. we changed into our warm clothes in the airport, grabbed some food, and went back to japan. when we left bangkok it was 92 degrees. when we touched down in kyoto it was 35 degrees. none of us were too excited.
i think thailand is my favorite place on earth. the people were so friendly and fun and the area was so beautiful and had such interesting history.. not to mention it wasn't freezing. it was such a good experience for me, i think. i've never seen such poverty.. i saw houses that were just pieces of scrap metal and chicken wire and boxes that people had nailed together in the mud, literally. we're all so sheltered in america.. i'm seeing that more and more every day. diego and i were talking about that and he said that the poorest people in america were still a million times richer than the poor in places like thailand and mexico.
i don't think i can stress enough how important it is for everyone to travel, now. it doesn't seem real until you actually see it yourself, and i think this is stuff everyone should be exposed to, especially americans. we can sit around in our bubble in athens with our little bars and shows and make fun of how someone dresses and complain about whatever george bush just said and how our vp shot someone, we can sit there and watch the elections and cry at the results, but we really don't know how lucky we are. you'll never know until you see how other people live, and see how thankful they are for what they have. i think when i come back to the states i'm going to have very little tolerance for people sitting around bitching about the government, etc, unless they're actively trying to change what they don't like. did you know that in thailand there are pictures of the king in every store and on every street? and that if you speak badly about the king you can be publicly beaten? how do you think you'd fair for one day in the states if we had the same rules? (not that there isn't reason to speak badly.. wtf cheney??????)
that aside, i'm going to korea on tuesday the 28th for a couple days. i've caught the traveling bug and want to go as many places as possible. since i've come back from thailand i've spent my time running errands and hanging out with my friends. i started my job yesterday and it was pretty fun. kuriharo-san took me to another geisha bar on thursday, and i'll write about that a little later. i should be getting the internet the first week of march.. we're cheating the companies because they usually have 2 year contracts but since we're leaving in 6 months, we just have to pay a cancellation fee.. so naturally we're going with the company that offers its first 3 months free of charge. andrew comes the 11th for a day, then cody and susannah come the 12th for a week, then MAYBE another trip out of the country (don't want to jinx it) and then my family comes for a week and then four more months and i'm back in fair athens eating pizza.
p.s. for another point of view, here is enda's entry about our trip to thailand on his lj
so, we were at koh samui. saturday we got up to our delicious free continental breakfast buffet at the open air restaurant overlooking the pool and the beach. the guys all rented motorbikes and we took off for a large beach a little bit away from our hotel. we immediately piled into the ocean (it was sooo WARM!). there was a pretty strong tow but we rented a couple body boards and floated around. alvaro, diego and i took a long walk along the beach, resulting in diego looking like a lobster and me having some attractive red racing stripes. enda got unbelievably burned.. the irish don't have much tolerance for such things, apparently. fortunately i'd brought a ton of spf 50 with me. (i gained a new nickname on this trip.. by the end the boys were calling me mary poppins because i had a huge canvas beach bag with me everywhere and ended up carrying sun screen, sunglasses, cameras, books etc for everyone. anytime someone needed bug spray or bandaids, i was prepared.) when we met up with everyone, christian, emy, alvaro, diego, enda and i treated ourselves to authentic thai massages on the beach. (cost us an entire 4 dollars! good god!) it had been pretty cloudy that day and as soon as we started our massages, the sky errupted into a massive downpour. perfect timing. the massages were something else.. i'd never had any type of massage, but with a thai massage, they contort your body in all sorts of weird positions and even massage your scalp and your butt. kind of awkward to have some one massaging your butt, but it felt good! they also tore up an aloe plant and rubbed the skin all over diego after our massages, victor came back with delicious currys and pork dishes and we had some beers on the beach. after our meal, we all piled on the motor bikes and drove around the island, stopping to see the giant kanon and the giant buddha when it started raining again. got back to the hotel, had a huge meal of seafood and cocktails, took showers and then some of us headed to the night market for a bit. we then of course had to check out the local night life.. we followed some australian girls to an area packed with bars and clubs and had a great night together. we narrowly avoided a fight when alvaro told some guy we met that his girlfriend was a "lady boy," but otherwise no mishaps. diego, enda, chris and i were the last to come home around 5am.
sunday we awoke to rain, which canceled our planned snorkeling trip, so we decided to explore the island. we all got on the motorbikes again and rode around. enda and alvaro stopped off and went bungy jumping.. pretty scary. we rode all around the island that day, sometimes in the rain (not the safest..). i had one of those moments where you reflect on your life and the present moment and think "jesus, i'm lucky." i was speeding around on a motorbike on a tropical island with alvaro, my best friend in japan, seeing all these beautiful things, and then at the same time the extreme poverty of the local people, and i felt so lucky to be where i am. i felt so lucky to be seeing these things when so many people i know will never have the chance.
and then i almost died.
figures! we had all decided to see some waterfalls, so we headed inland on the bikes. the middle of the island is all jungle and mountains (this is where those shots of the jungle and elephants come from.) so we were going up and down some hilly regions, when al lost control of the bike and we went off the road into a ditch, narrowly avoiding a tree. fortunately, we were going rather slow and neither of us were hurt except for some scratches. it was actually pretty funny because i landed on my back with my arms and legs straight up in the air like a dead bug. we recollected ourselves and got to where we had to travel by foot to the waterfall, hiking up the mountain in our flipflops. i'm sure you can tell where this is going.. needless to say, i took another spill, this one pretty nasty, sliding down a rock and falling back first a couple feet into a river and a bunch of rocks. needless to say, i wasn't too pleased. thankfully, i again wasn't hurt and al was a gentleman and immediately jumped down into the river to help me up. graceful as always. the waterfall was pretty cool, but it got dark pretty quickly and we took off. once we reached our bikes, we tried to head up into the mountains to see another waterfall, but it got way too steep and scary, and we had to go back down the mountain in first gear without brakes. we spent the rest of the evening driving around the island, stopping at random beaches to collect coral and shells. chris took a really nasty spill off his bike at one point as well when a truck cut him off and he slid on some gravel. we headed over to a huge reggae bar that was having a birthday party and wandered around the surrounding bars, but by then i think we were all pretty tired. the bars were filled with prostitutes and suspicious white men.. a very different atmosphere than anything i've ever experienced. we stopped in one bar for a drink where a very .. not nice looking guy and a young thai girl were getting a little raunchy. then a little thai girl of about 5 or 6 years wearing a little dress came walking in the bar with a ton of flowered necklaces to sell to bar patrons. she walked straight up to that man and his prostitute and interrupted them to sell him a necklace. she was walking around all alone to these places trying to make a couple dollars. it was disgusting. we left soon after and went back to the hotel.
monday morning after breakfast we boarded a van, then a ferry, then a van, then a plane, and were finally back in bangkok. we spent the night cruising the suamlum night market again.. we all came back to our meeting point with a million bags. everything is so cheap it was hard to not! emy and i have a nice little collection of jewelry now.
tuesday (valentines), emy and i got up early to return rebecca to the airport. scary experience.. the guy that takes care of victor's house drove and apparently he's just learning how to drive. vic's dad was yelling instruction in thai the entire way. then the car broke and we had to take it to the dealer and take a REALLY scary cab ride home. in thailand, there are no traffic rules. if you can't decide on a lane, drive in as many as you can! if you need to merge, don't worry about anyone else, go for it! hopefully, they'll stop. if the car in front of you is braking, just cut into the lane next to you! stop for no man! i almost peed myself. we took a nap back at the house before we went into bangkok to see about arranging bus tickets to cambodia. unfortunately, we had a bunch of problems and some arguments arise.. the border to cambodia is only open from 9am-5pm and it would take 6 hours to get from bangkok to the border and then another 6 hours from the border to angkor wat. but, from the border to angkor wat is only 200 kilometers! they told us at the travel agency that the roads are so bad and that they have to watch out for highjackers and it takes the bus 6 hours to travel 200 kilometers. so we said no thanks. we spent the afternoon visting wat pho and wat arun (two temples), took a very daring ride on these weird motorcycle taxi things that have three wheels and no doors where we could fully appreciate the vast amounts of pollution in bangkok. alvaro has some videos i'll try to upload later when i get them. after that we headed downtown and went to an indian restaurant. everyone allowed me to order since i'm obsessed with indian food, and we ate ourselves silly. some men from pakistan next to us were quite impressed with the amount of food we consumed and started chatting with us. they said they were in town for a political meeting. following dinner, we went to the top of the highest building in bangkok, 83 stories high. the 83 story has a rotating viewing platform, and as i'm pretty much terrified of heights, i wasn't too excited. made me feel pretty queasy. we got free drinks since it was valentines day, which made me feel even better, and we headed home to look at each others pictures.
wednesday we all piled in the van and drove to pattaya, and took a motor boat to an island that no one remembers the name of. we spent all day on the beach and in the ocean tanning (getting burnt) and enjoying the view. i think my two favorite places to be in the world is the front of a motor boat going flying along on an ocean, and on the beach just watching the waves. i love the ocean. the entire time we were at the beach, i was ridiculously happy. i also enjoyed some older japanese tourists wading around in all of their clothes, hats and all. japanese people really hate the sun. through out our trip we ran into several groups of japanese tourists and spoke to most of them.. they were always quite surprised when a group of random white kids started talking to them in japanese. (we met one japanese guy backpacking at one of the ruins.. he had befriended some thai merchants and was yelling at us "hey gorgeous! hey handsome!" to get us to come check out the statues they were selling. i told him in japanese that we were foreign exchange students in japan and he was pretty surprised. he yelled "i am from the land of samurai!") that night enda and victor had to head back to bangkok to catch flights, leaving chris, alvaro, diego, emy and i to our own devices with our driver for the next two days. we tried to check out the bar scene but it was a lot of the same.. pattaya is apparently where every single nasty older white man goes to find thai female company. i've never seen so many older white men in my life with young asian women. the mexican boys started to get quite protective of emy and i. i didn't return the favor when some ladyboys started hitting on alvaro.. it was too funny. we ended up at a restaurant/bar where i had a really obnoxious blue drink with some fruit hanging out of it and some italian man singing opera.
the next day we took another trip to a different island, this one being name koh samed. the boat driver was really amusing.. every time he'd start the boat he'd yell " 1 2 3 GO!" and we'd take off while he played REALLY loud techno music. he even played the numa numa song (is that as popular in the states as it is here?? its our theme song for japan). we once again spent the day on the beach soaking up the rays. i think if i had the opportunity i'd definitely be a beach bum. when we got to the island, some man walked up to us demanding we pay for beach badges because he said it was a national park. we didn't believe him and followed him to his office and ended up paying.. now as i write this i looked up koh samed on wikipedia and it says it is indeed a national park. we were really used to people trying to rip us off by then, i guess! diego and i ate lunch together and had a nice time chatting and sitting on the beach together. the water was really warm and the sand was so white.. the entire vacation was straight out of a movie or a postcard. i think i thought places like that didn't really exist. it was just what we all needed after being in such a high pace high stress environment like japan for so long. none of us really wanted to come back. but, we had to.
the next day on friday we spent the morning shopping and walking around pattaya. alvaro emy and i fit in an hour long massage (al and i had a head and shoulder massage while emy had an oil massage.) after seeing the women in pattaya, i was getting even more generous with my tips and gave the girl who gave me my massage a 150% tip (which was still only like 4 bucks). she was really thankful, i was kind of sad. after that we piled in the van and drove to the airport. we all gave big tips to our driver who had been with us the past 4 days.. he was only 31 and although he knew zero english, he was really nice and fun and we all really appreciated his help. we changed into our warm clothes in the airport, grabbed some food, and went back to japan. when we left bangkok it was 92 degrees. when we touched down in kyoto it was 35 degrees. none of us were too excited.
i think thailand is my favorite place on earth. the people were so friendly and fun and the area was so beautiful and had such interesting history.. not to mention it wasn't freezing. it was such a good experience for me, i think. i've never seen such poverty.. i saw houses that were just pieces of scrap metal and chicken wire and boxes that people had nailed together in the mud, literally. we're all so sheltered in america.. i'm seeing that more and more every day. diego and i were talking about that and he said that the poorest people in america were still a million times richer than the poor in places like thailand and mexico.
i don't think i can stress enough how important it is for everyone to travel, now. it doesn't seem real until you actually see it yourself, and i think this is stuff everyone should be exposed to, especially americans. we can sit around in our bubble in athens with our little bars and shows and make fun of how someone dresses and complain about whatever george bush just said and how our vp shot someone, we can sit there and watch the elections and cry at the results, but we really don't know how lucky we are. you'll never know until you see how other people live, and see how thankful they are for what they have. i think when i come back to the states i'm going to have very little tolerance for people sitting around bitching about the government, etc, unless they're actively trying to change what they don't like. did you know that in thailand there are pictures of the king in every store and on every street? and that if you speak badly about the king you can be publicly beaten? how do you think you'd fair for one day in the states if we had the same rules? (not that there isn't reason to speak badly.. wtf cheney??????)
that aside, i'm going to korea on tuesday the 28th for a couple days. i've caught the traveling bug and want to go as many places as possible. since i've come back from thailand i've spent my time running errands and hanging out with my friends. i started my job yesterday and it was pretty fun. kuriharo-san took me to another geisha bar on thursday, and i'll write about that a little later. i should be getting the internet the first week of march.. we're cheating the companies because they usually have 2 year contracts but since we're leaving in 6 months, we just have to pay a cancellation fee.. so naturally we're going with the company that offers its first 3 months free of charge. andrew comes the 11th for a day, then cody and susannah come the 12th for a week, then MAYBE another trip out of the country (don't want to jinx it) and then my family comes for a week and then four more months and i'm back in fair athens eating pizza.
p.s. for another point of view, here is enda's entry about our trip to thailand on his lj