Monday, September 30, 2013

Day 57- I Feel Like This Is Where They Would Film "Swamp People: Thailand Edition" If There Was Such A Thing

Waking up on Monday morning, I started my day off the way I normally do: sitting on the toilet while a frog stares at me hopelessly while he tries to slither under my indoor/outdoor shower door, only to realize that his green slimy girth is preventing him from maneuvering under said door.  Either way, it is ridiculously hard to focus on pinching out a loaf when you have this bug-eyed amphibian staring at you and making "ribbit-ribbit" noises as if to say, "just let me in and I will make all your troubles disappear".  Not happening frog!  More than likely the frog was probably just bored as there were only three occupied villas in the entire resort, so I probably just seemed like the easiest target to piss off on a muggy Monday morning.


Looking out at the beach from our resort.

Aloe and Bacardi Breezers. What more could a girl need in life?

Despite our near death ridiculously embarrassing experience on our motorbike the day before, Colleen and I were not yet deterred on two-wheel transportation.  We decided to drive a good hour and a half or so outside of town to find a waterfall we had been told about.  With our trusty map, the two of us set out and before we knew it we were whizzing down the freeway looking like Harry and Lloyd a la "Dumb and Dumber".  Driving mopeds on the freeway is pretty standard stuff for most people in this part of the world, but for a couple of cakers like us, it can be a slightly terrifying experience as large trucks and other assorted automobiles zip past you at high speeds.  Eventually after surviving the highway, we found ourselves on some pretty shady back roads (see: rough dirt roads) and had been travelling for over an hour and a half.  Factor in that we were miles from any real form of civilization and there were dogs (obviously rabid) barking at us anytime we pulled over.  For once in my life, common sense prevailed and we decided that it was in our best interest to turn back as the roads were getting rougher, the houses fewer and farther between, and the fuel was over half spent. Meh, I'm sure it was an ugly waterfall anyway!  During this whole adventure, I would like to point out that my lovely, albeit extremely white girlfriend was wearing a coat in the +33°C weather to protect her skin from the sun as she was still recovering from her severe case of sunburn.  What a trooper I tell ya!

Back country.  Keep your butthole tight!

Like a boss.

Nice outfit...if you were Amish.
Rolling back into the town of Ban Krut, our fuel was now almost on empty and as soon as we hit the outskirts of town our moped started to "putt".  Since neither of us know anything about cars and/or bikes we were not sure what was happening.  My guess was that we were either out of gas or had gotten a flat tire.  So, we pulled over, bought a couple rounds of watermelon popsicles and assessed the situation.  Shortly thereafter our back tire started to deflate and I can only thank Buddha for how lucky we were to get a flat tire in town and not out in the middle of the sticks, where we would have possibly been facing a twelve hour walk, all the while pushing our motorbike in the blazing sun and possibly getting harassed by Thai bush people (not sure if this is a real thing).  Instead, we pushed the bike a hundred or so meters down the road to the local gas station, which in actuality was a woman selling glass Pepsi bottles full of gasoline in front of her shanty.  She instructed us to walk the bike around the corner where there was a repair shop.  Back in Canada, such things as visiting a mechanic scare me, normally because most of them are shysters and love to rape you financially.  I wasn't really sure what to expect here, especially since we were foreigners.  When it was all said and done, we needed to get a new inner tube for our tire and we were presented with a bill for parts and labor totaling....$3.50!  Yes, this was some of the best bad luck ever!

The happening town of Ban Krut.


With our newly minted tire, we decided to head back to our new favorite restaurant in all of Asia, Kasama's, to grab some lunch.  It was then off to the pharmacy to pick up some Afterbite.  I am pretty sure with all of the products Colleen was purchasing, we could almost open up our own pharmacy, as we were now toting around Afterbite, three different types of Aloe, sunscreen, tattoo sunscreen, bug repellent, bug killer, and bed bug killer.  It's safe to say that if anyone took a match to either one of our backpacks we would be quite fucked (see: blowup).  Following our misadventure earlier in the day, Colleen and I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing which entailed me going for an extended walk by myself along the beach. Yup, just a man by his lonesome, walking the beach with some stray dogs and millions of sand crabs.

That night was to be our last in Ban Krut before heading further south, so naturally we had to go to our new favorite restaurant in the world, Kasama's for the last supper.  Hoping to enjoy a peaceful dinner, our dreams were quickly dashed when we discovered we had some crazy guy sitting at the table beside us who was yelling at everyone in Italian.  After asking the owner what the guy's deal was, all he could confirm for us was that the dude was in fact a few noodles short of a full Pad Thai (sorry, I had to test out that joke!).  Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, we were not able to figure out what the Italian Stallion was raging on about, other than the fact the he had some type of gruesome leg injury and kept pointing it out to Colleen and I.  This went on for an extended period of time until the owner thankfully summoned us over to the bar after we had finished eating and we watched "Guinness World Records" with him.  I never thought that a viewing of "Guinness World Records" would save me from a dire situation.  I always kind of figured it would be the other way around. 

Back at our resort we were greeted by one of the local stray dogs who was waiting for us outside of our room.  Taking pity on him, I decided to feed him some barbecue chips and a glass of water.  Apparently, malnourished Thai street dogs do in fact not like barbecue chips and are quite picky about what they eat.  So, instead of eating, the cute, sad-eyed, street dog who walked with a limp parked himself outside our door for the remainder of the night and waited for me to give him a non-Frito Lay's based product.  But alas, I had nothing else to give and we shall assume the dog went on to live a happy life.

~Brentski~

"Fine, don't eat my barbecue chips you dickhead."


Friday, September 27, 2013

Day 56- Women Are Good For Three Things: Cooking, Cleaning, And Not Driving Mopeds!

Waking up the next morning, I was relieved to see my girlfriend had actually slept through the night in her "bug sheet" and I must admit that the specialty bed linen she was sporting was starting to look like a good idea after discovering a multitude of fresh invertebrates in our room that morning.  Our "resort" (I use that word rather loosely) had a complimentary American breakfast, which was surprisingly not bad providing you don't mind your breakfast meats a little under cooked.  Come to think of it, almost everywhere we had eaten breakfast in Thailand so far featured vastly undercooked morning meats.  Ah well, hadn't killed us yet!

Local traffic.


Now that my growing belly was sufficiently full, we hit up our flamboyant resort manager who had told us the previous day that he could arrange a moped/motorbike rental for us.  With that in mind, the hotel manager and the laundry man/gardener/guy who I have no idea what he really does took off on a motorbike together and returned a short while later with our sexy new rental.  I had not driven one in a few years and Colleen had not driven one ever, so it was safe to assume that shit was going to go wrong somewhere!  After giving us a quick minute-long tutorial in the parking lot of the resort, Colleen and I were on our way.  Since we were staying about a ten minute ride out of the town centre, we had a bit of time to acclimate to our little rice rocket before we saw any real traffic.  Our initial tour of the town went surprisingly smooth as we checked out some of the beaches and did some shopping.  Feeling like I was now the Mario Andretti of back country moped drivers in Thailand, we ventured onwards and headed towards a gigantic Buddha statue that was nestled on top of a huge hillside cliff overlooking the ocean.  Upon approach we were greeted with some intense inclines on some of the hills and quite frankly my girlfriend did not trust my driving skills enough to let me drive her up these verticals.  So, while I enjoyed the benefits of modern technology and glided to the top, Colleen was left to march her ass up the hill like a peasant-woman.  I must say though, she almost had the last laugh though because as I was nearing the top some people were lighting off firecrackers that sounded like gunshots and I nearly had a heart attack and crashed the bike.  Apparently, it is good luck to light off firecrackers near Buddha statues or some shit.  Would have been nice to know beforehand.  At the summit we did the typical tourist things (eat ice cream, take pictures, wonder why everyone loves this fat-Buddha fellow so much) before heading on our way to fill our stomachs again.

Happier times.  Before we hopped on the bike of death.

How could I not score women? Look at me!

Big Buddha. He's kind of a big deal in these parts.
Back in town we opted to check out a Thai-Italian restaurant called Kasama's.  We had read about it in one of our guidebooks and I must say it did not disappoint.  It was a cute (yes, I just used that word) restaurant with friendly staff and awesome food.  For whatever reason, maybe it was all the sun getting to her brain, after lunch Colleen decided that she wanted needed to learn how to drive the motorbike.  I tried to tell her that maybe learning to drive a moped on the main street of a town was not the wisest of ideas, but alas she persisted and I gave her a quick tutorial on how to use the throttle, brakes, ignition etc.  Eager to drive, Colleen assured me she was good to go, so we strapped on our helmets and she got in the driver seat while I hopped on the back and clung to her for dear life.  Within a split second of Colleen starting the bike up, we were both thrown off the bike as she floored the throttle all the way back.  Now picture this: The two of us looking like the dumbest tourists in the world laying in the middle of the street while our motorized vehicle is about fifty feet away with nobody driving it!  After we were thrown from the bike it took on a mind of its own and eventually crashed to the ground.  I wish that was the end of the story, but alas it wasn't.  When the bike hit the ground it fell on the side which had the throttle handle so the bike continued to go at full speed, but now it was just doing sideways donuts in the middle of the road, all the while getting scraped to shit!  In my panicked state I rushed over and after getting molested by the bike with a couple of brutal shots I was eventually able to get a hold of the throttle and turn the damn thing off.  By this point there was a handful of Thai people standing around looking at us and one man came running over and told me that he was going to teach me how to drive it.  After some hand signals between the two of us, I was eventually able to inform him that I was in fact a moped master and it was just a failed driving lesson with my significant other.  Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt in the incident, as we both sustained only minor scrapes and cuts and a couple of bruised biker egos.  The bike on the other hand was now home to a few scratches, but that would be a problem to worry about in a couple of days when we returned it!

Local taxi cabs. Would not work too well in Inuvik.

Back at the resort, I decided to nurse my wounds by going for a lonely beach walk.  Colleen was not up for it given her recent accident combined with her still brutal sunburn.  That night, we went back to Kasama's for dinner, and yes for those of you wondering... I drove both ways!  I had some Italian-Thai fusion pasta which was delicious while Colleen, well she had three jumbo margaritas.  On the ride home, Colleen who was feeling quite fine after her three swimming pool-sized margaritas keep asking me if I was okay to drive.  You know what's more annoying than being trapped in a car with a drunk person while you are sober?  Having them on the back of your moped...a moped they already crashed that day!  Just kidding dear, you're the best moped passenger ever.  Back at the resort we had a couple more Bacardi Breezers (the choice of real men worldwide) before I nestled the burn victim into her customized bug sheets.  After all, she was going to need her rest, we had a big day of moped riding ahead of us!

That only counts as one standard drink right?


Colleen in Kasama's.

Any restaurant that has a bathroom filled with porn gets an "A" in my books.

~Brentski~
 

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Day 55- "Nice Log Penis Boys"

Our last morning in Hua Hin started out like every other morning there; a visit to the Best Western's fruit fly infested buffet! Can you say extra (and alive!) nutrients?!  Despite the winged companions at breakfast, I could tell Colleen was sad to be leaving the comforts of our four-star room as we were to be heading south that day to a little town called Ban Krut.  We did not know much about the place we were heading to, other than that it was a small town with a few beachside resorts and it was south of Hua Hin which was the direction we wanted to go.

With our bacon and eggs polished off, we summoned a cab to take us into town to the train station.  The driver told us he would be there in ten minutes.  Fast forward forty minutes and the cab had still not arrived so we loaded into the complimentary hotel shuttle which was making its scheduled run into town.  Just as we were about to leave, the cab finally rolled up and started getting angry with us!  "Yes, douche bag driver, it's my fault you gave me a time and exceeded it by 400%.  Asshole".   For once, I actually put my foot down and we took the hotel shuttle, although by this point we were getting quite nervous as to whether or not we were going to make it to the train  station in time.  We arrived literally the minute the train was scheduled to depart, but as with everything in Thailand it was running 45 minutes late and I was able to breathe a little easier (or as easy as you can when it's 35°C out and you are carrying around a gigantic backpack).  As luck would have it, there was also some kind of event going on across from the train station with free ice cream and drinks!  Yup, things were definitely starting to look up.

When the train finally arrived, we were ushered into our car by very serious "train-men" or whatever it is you call railroad employees these days.  When reviewing our train options the previous day I had discovered that this was one of the nicer more expensive trains, which was actually quite shocking because the train actually resembled a big piece of steel shit.  I was afraid to think what the lower-class trains were like.  Actually.  I must say they did feed us on our train ride, although Colleen and I both passed on the rail food, as one of the first lessons I ever learned in life was don't eat railway food.  I believe I learned that one right after the life lesson about not masturbating too much or it will make you go blind.  The highlight of the train ride (unless your name is Colleen) was when a little beetle-like creature somehow found his way to where Colleen and I were sitting.  This naturally led my girlfriend to go into a crazed panic-state, complete with shrieks and accompanying jumping up and down.  At least all the old Thai women sitting around us were going to have a good story to tell their families that night at the dinner table!

Now that's the Thailand I've been looking for!


Is that a tank top underneath your dress? My bad, it's the world's worst sunburn!

A couple of hours and one near-death-experience-at-the-hands-of-a-bug later we arrived at the Ban Krut train station.  It was a far cry from the cities we had been experiencing for the last couple of weeks and it was a welcome relief to see that the entire township's taxi fleet was waiting for the train.  Yup, three motorcycles with sidecars attached to them.  I was actually enthusiastic about getting to ride in a sidecar, as it has always been a life mission of mine.  I set my goals high Mom.  What can I say.  We instructed our barefoot motorcycle driver as to which resort we were headed to and voila; twenty minutes later we were standing at the front door of Baan Montra Resort.  It was a somewhat isolated resort, with eighteen villas located right off a quiet beach.  Now this was the Thailand I was looking for.  The biggest surprise of the day had to be the owner-operator, who was the most flamboyantly gay Thai man ever.  Nice enough guy I must say, just kind of caught me a little off guard out here in the middle of nowhere.

Tropical trees.


After showing us around the resort a little we were led to our room which was surrounded by things like trees, brush and plants.  Or in Colleen's eyes... BUG DWELLINGS!  Upon entering the room, her worst fears were realized as we quickly discovered that there were hundreds of bugs both dead (mostly) and alive (a few).  As anyone who has been following this blog knows, Colleen instantly lost her shit and I was quickly put to work trying to round up as many carcasses as I could.  She promptly sprayed the entire room with Raid, bug spray, and bed bug spray.  Eventually after an hour or so of spraying, removing dead bugs, bug-proofing the entire villa, and me trying to convince Colleen that it would be okay and I would never make her "stay in nature" again if she just made it through these three nights, we headed down to the beach for a lovely stroll.  Most of our walk we were stalked by a couple of dogs that I was pretty sure were going to eat us, but eventually they gave up on us when they discovered that the only things of interest we had seen in over an hour of walking was a few dead squids, lots of crabs, and some kids who had buried their friend in the sand and given him a "log penis".  Real mature guys!

That kid is packing some serious heat below the belt!


That dog is just casually waiting for us to stroll by so he can kill us.

That night we were pretty tired out from our all our bug killing so we decided to just have dinner at the resort's basic open-air restaurant.  Back at the room, Colleen quickly wrapped herself in her "bug sheet", which was apparently a sleeping bag liner that she had gotten from a co-worker and was supposed to keep bugs away from you while you sleep.  Technology these days! First electricity, now blankets that repel bugs! Unbelievable!

~Brentski~
...And if the dog doesn't kill us this guy definitely will.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Day 54- All The Cool Kids Play Connect Four When They're Drinking

While I cannot speak for Colleen directly, I can only assume that the feeling she was experiencing when she woke up in the morning was amongst the worst feelings of her life as she was sun burnt on just about every piece of skin imaginable on her body, save for her lady parts.  Having said that, knowing her luck the sun's rays probably penetrated her swimsuit and torched her hoo-hah!  Since Colleen was in agonizing pain and afraid to even glimpse the sun, I was left to fend for myself for the day.  My first order of business was to go out and purchase sunscreen followed by a dip in the hotel pool.  As a swam around the largest pool I had ever been in, I reminisced on how as a child at day camp I used to wear my swimming goggles in the pool and check out all ladies under the water thinking I was being super stealth. Clearly, just as is the case now, I had no game back then and studying the female anatomy through my Speedo glasses did not get me anywhere as a youngster.  So take note young men: ogling women both above and below sea level is generally viewed as creepy.

After dinner time (see: no sun in the sky) the lobster girlfriend and I caught the 9pm shuttle in to Hua Hin to check out the night market there.  For some reason unbeknownst to us and our fellow hotel guests, our shuttle driver decided to drive around the city block containing the night markets a good half dozen times before finally stopping and letting us out.  Since none of us could communicate with our Thai driver we just all kept looking at each other as if to say " well at least if he is going to abduct us we will have a few different foreign embassies looking for us".  Although we had only been in Thailand for a week or so, it was becoming quite clear to us that most towns and cities had an abundance of markets and that they sold a helluva lot of fake Dr. Dre Beats headphones!  While the inner white gangster in me contemplated buying a pair, Colleen was busy picking out a new strapless dress as her shoulders were in such a state that she couldn't even wear a shirt with straps.  Thankfully she found a dress to her liking and we settled into a good ole fashioned market dinner consisting of two full size meals and alcoholic drinks for under $10. 

Hua Hin Night Market.




Colleen endorsing counterfeit goods. Criminal!

With Colleen's Asian street market retail therapy complete, we ventured off to the train station to try   and get some info on where we would be going once we left Hua Hin. This turned out to be a complete waste of time as I still did not know a word of Thai and the dude at the station did not look like he gave two fucks about entertaining me in his broken English. 

Since we had nothing else to do the rest of the night, we strolled down to the beach and decided to take a nice, quiet, romantic walk down the dark shores of the Gulf of Thailand while the waves crashed gently against the shore and we strolled hand-in-hand  in the moonlight.  Well, at least that's how I imagine people picturing it.  In fact, most of the walk was spent with Colleen worrying that she was going to step on some crazy sand creature that was going to emerge from the pits of the beach and consume her in one giant swoop.  Upon emerging from the beach relatively unscathed, we surfaced in some shady back alley part of town complete with rabid dogs (I assume all dogs not on leashes to be crazy, rabid motherfuckers) and sewer rats the size of some of the smaller street canines.  Colleen was left wondering if she would rather die at the hands of the sand monster or a pack of Splinter-sized rats.

"LOOK OUT FOR THOSE SAND MONSTERS!!!!"


Thankfully we made it through the gauntlet of scary creatures and found our way to the civilized part of town complete with nightlife.  And by civilized I of course mean bars packed with hookers, tranny hookers, hookers that you could not tell if they were regular hookers and/or tranny hookers, and all the old greasy white men who come to this part of the world for exactly that sort of thing!  We perused the selection of establishments and eventually tucked in to one of the bars where we had a few beverages and played some Connect Four.  No, that is not code for anything, we actually drank cocktails and played Connect Four while we simultaneously played a game of "guess which women are hookers, ladyboys, or straight up gold-diggers"!  While I wanted to invite a couple of he-shes back to our hotel room for a game of naked Twister, Colleen vetoed the idea and we decided to catch a tuk-tuk back to the hotel...just the two of us.

Yeah, that's right I won four straight. Mother would be proud.


Sidenote:  Tuk-tuks are really fucking scary when you are half-lit, your driver is probably half-lit, and you are ripping down the highway at speeds only NASCAR drivers should be doing.

Colleen is not too sure about our choice of late-night transportation.

~Brentski~