Day 61- Chasing Whiskey With Laughing Gas; Always A Good Idea

Sadly, I must admit that I am not the brightest firefly in the sky.  With that in mind, after finishing breakfast Colleen and I decided that we had to rent a moped for transportation around the island.  Despite our crash and flat tire experiences the previous week in Chumphon, we were not yet jaded on the idea of motorized two-wheel transportation.  For the bargain basement price of $27 for four days, our hotel lent us a brand new motorbike that had only 700 kilometers on it and not a single scratch.  All I had to do was sign a waiver with ridiculously high fees if I damaged the bike and turn my passport over to them as a form of deposit.  I'm sure nothing was going to happen to the bike; after all I'm an amazing driver.

With my pockets one passport lighter, Colleen and I were now free to travel the island of Koh Phangan on our motorbike.  There was only one problem: Colleen is terrified of going up and down large hills.  And there are a shit ton of hills on the island.  After deciding to walk down the first hill immediately outside our resort, she quickly realized that it might be better to try and face her fears of hills as opposed to walking up and down steep gradients in the sweltering heat.  A few hills later, she started feeling a little more comfortable, and eventually the two of us were putting around the island like a couple of reject Hell's Angels. 

Our first stop of the day was Phaeng Waterfall.  Located in the middle of the island, we had heard there was about a 40 minute hike up a fairly steep incline through some gnarly bush trails, but once at the top we would be rewarded with some terrific views.  By the time we reached the summit top of the hill, Colleen and I were both dripping in sweat and cursing ourselves for deciding to go hiking.  I must give an extra shout out to Colleen who completed the trip wearing flip-flops.  Bravo.  It was definitely worth it though, as we were rewarded with some magnificent panoramic  views of the island from the top of the trail. 

Looks like it's going to be a fun hike in flip flops.

 

 



Got my hiking shorts on...



 

After refueling with Gatorade, we saddled back up on our bike and headed over to a nearby archery place.  Despite the place being empty and there being staff sitting around doing nothing, we were told that we could not partake in our "Hunger Games" impressions as we were not part of a tour group.  Add to this that the archery place also had some elephants chained up (riding elephants is big tourist business in Thailand) that looked miserable as shit and it was overall a crappy experience. 

PEOPLE, SERIOUSLY, DO NOT SUPPORT THESE TYPES OF BUSINESSES. SAD TO SEE.

 

Since we had actually woken up at a decent time, we had a whole day to do stuff, which was a pretty rare occurrence for us!  After the archery fail, we biked on down to the southern part of the island and decided to check out Haad Rin, the beach that is home to the world-famous Full Moon Party.  Sadly, we would not be able to attend the monthly party as our timetable did not lineup.  Seeing as how there was no party to be seen for a week or so there was not a whole lot going on.  Just beaches, bars, hostels, tourists, and other boring shit.  Never one to sit on a beach and catch a tan, I needed a little more action in my life, so we decided to check out the gun range that was just down the road.  If you can't fire a bow and arrow, might as well do the next best thing and fire off a round out of a 9MM.  Upon entering the shooting range, it was clear this wasn't the classy operation that the Gun Range I had previously been to in Las Vegas was.  This place had more of a "dingy warehouse with spent needles and cheap hookers" kind of feel.  After a quick discussion, Colleen and I decided that we would just fire off one round of ten bullets, five each.  We were given a quick tutorial, although most of it was lost in translation as the gun master and I spoke different languages.  Eventually I stepped up to the plate and BANG I fired towards the target.  Only problem was that my shot was nowhere the target.  Recoil is a motherfucker.  After firing off a few more shots, it was time for Colleen to step up.  Well, it was supposed to be.  Now, she was scared.  Let me quickly point out that Colleen grew up firing guns as she participated in biathlon in cadets as a kid.  Me, I had only ever fired a gun once before and like this time it was in a shooting range.  So, I ended up popping off the last few shots, and when it was all said and done, I had hit the rather large target sheet a grand total of zero times!  Guess, I'm going to have to keep serving bacon and eggs for a living.  With my tail between my legs, the wifey and I headed back to the resort, but not before stopping off at some pizza joint that appeared to be run by the Russian Mafia.  Yes, the Russian Mob has a solid foothold in Thailand.

No idea what he is saying. Just nodding along.

0 for 10 when it came to hitting the targets. I should give up on life.

Poser.

Constipated? Nah, I shot my foot off.

Back at the quiet surrounds of our resort and Haad Salad Beach that evening,  Miss McParland and I enjoyed dinner at another of the beachside restaurants before heading back to our room to start getting ready for our real mission that day.  You see, while we may have been missing the Full Moon Party the following week, the ever-enduring entrepreneurs of Koh Phangan had created the "Half Moon Party", which takes place a week before the big dance.  Instead of being on the beach, it was set in the more central jungle part of the island and had grown to be the second biggest monthly party on the island.  With that in mind, Colleen and I did a bit of pre-drinking in our room (cause that's what lame couples do) before heading out around 11:30pm to find a cab.  The only problem was that it was 11:30pm and we weren't exactly in the party zone spot of the island.  Starting to feel a little anxious that we might not be able to arrange a ride, we headed down to the beach and tried to see if we could find any signs of human life.  Thankfully we stumbled upon a group of about ten dudes from France who were just about to be heading out the party.  It truly was a blessing from the party Gods.  With that in mind, we all piled in to the back of a small taxi cab pickup truck and were on our way to the party!  Upon discovering that we were Canadian, the heavily intoxicated Frenchmen decided they needed to sing every Canadian song they could think of.  Surely, there is nothing finer than a bunch of drunk French dudes singing Bryan Adams and Celine Dion while you rumble down a jungle road in the bed of some Thai dudes pickup truck.  After their stunning vocal performance, they insisted that I now had to sing them some French songs, and sadly they only ones I knew were from Grade 4 French Class and were aptly titled, "Louie La Grenouille" and "Violette A Bicyclette".  It truly was a sad state of affairs.  In the end, they let Colleen and I off the hook by coercing us into singing a duet of the Canadian national anthem, to which I am most certain we did not do our country proud.

Last photographic evidence before that Half Moon Party. Things just got sloppy from here.

Thankfully, our karaoke session came to a close and we eventually arrived our destination; the Half Moon Party.  Located in the middle of the island, it appeared as though we had just stepped into the movie "Jumanji".  Either that or we were at just at some gigantic jungle rave.  It was probably the latter.  Within seconds of stepping out of our ride, we were hounded by dudes who only knew one word of English "MDMA".  Now, I am not pro or anti-drugs, but I am definitely anti-drugs in foreign countries with a reputation for police corruption and drug snitches.  Sorry drug dealers of Koh Phangan, I would only be getting wasted on alcohol tonight!  After paying our 500 baht ($17 Canadian) entrance fee, Colleen and I proceeded to take advantage of our one free drink and scope out the scene.  There were thousands of people everywhere, many of them covered or working on getting covered in body paint.  I am most certain that drugs and alcohol had nothing to do with this.  After hitting up the porta-potties, our next stop was the bar.  Anyone familiar with Thailand knows that many of its big parties are famous for their "bucket" drinks.  Basically, you get a little sand castle making bucket that is filled with a mickey of either Thai whisky, gin or vodka and is topped off with three cans of Thai Red Bull.  In short, they get you obliterated.  Seeing as how we had been drinking before arriving, after one bucket each, Colleen and I were both feeling quite fine.  Yes, fine.  Yup, that shit is gotta be working if my white as is dancing.  Somewhere along the way (started getting foggy) we decided that it would be a good idea to buy a few balloons that were filled with "laughing gas".  As I recall, we logged a solid shift at the "laughing gas bar" huffing back balloons filled with nitrous.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  Around this time, things got really blurry for me and Colleen filled in the rest of the details.  As follows:

- On a trip to the porta-potties for some reason Colleen and I went in together and upon emerging from the shitter, I announced to the large crowd outside the bathroom that my girlfriend and I were in fact, not having sex in the bathroom.

- Later on in the evening, while I was thirsty, I hocked Colleen off on some random chick to dance while I went and stole beers.  Yes, I was stealing beers in a third world country.

- We got a cab home around 4:00am and I KO'ed in the cab super hard.  Apparently, the cabbie did not know where our resort was and was she was starting to lose her shit.  She threatened to dump us off on the side of the road, before she somehow after much searching and yelling at us (we couldn't understand shit anyways) found our resort.

And that's how I won my nomination for boyfriend of the year.

~Brentski~

Day 60- Look The Staff Are Handing Surprise Bags And Free Cocaine! Wait, Those Are Barf Bags And Smelling Salts...

Waking up, it was fair to say that we were slightly excited to get out of Chumphon and head out to one of Thailand's (and arguably the world's) most famous islands, Koh Phangan . We arranged a van shuttle through our hotel to get to the catamaran-ferry port.  Now, if you are anything like me, when you hear that word catamaran, you don't think of monstrous boats a few hundred feet long that hold hundreds of passengers, but that is exactly what these were.  When our shuttle bus driver dropped us off at the ferry terminal, we handed him 300 Thai Baht ($10 Canadian), as we were told to pay the driver by our hotel.  We couldn't figure out why the driver was looking at us and the other couple who had taken the shuttle with such a delightful look on his face when we handed him the money.  I'll let you guess.  A few minutes later while we were purchasing our tickets for the ferry we were informed that we were supposed to pay them (the ferry company) for the shuttle.  Naturally my complaint that we had already paid the driver fell on deaf ears and I was forced to pay again for my glorious van ride.  I can only assume the van driver's family was going to be eating steak and lobster that night at my expense, or at the very least some fine ass noodles!

Within a few minutes of boarding the ferry, it became quite clear to Colleen and I that it was going to be a rocky couple of hours on the high-speed catamaran.  Almost the minute the boat left the dock, the staff were handing out barf bags and smelling salts to any and all takers.  There was an older lady sitting in front of us who was physically sick and was sweating like I imagine people perspire after they get some weird ass disease from the bugs in Africa.  Add to this that Colleen and many of the other people in our vicinity were holding on to their barf bags for dear life, and well, you get the idea.  Colleen repeatedly kept saying that she wasn't going to make it,  to which I loving replied "you've got nowhere to go dear, we are in the middle of the FUCKING OCEAN"!  True love is a beautiful thing.  I kept encouraging the wifey to hit the smelling salts as if it was pure Peruvian coke, and before you know it we eventually reached Koh Phangan with our  stomachs barely intact.

Offloading at the ferry dock on the island was another adventure unto itself.  Seconds after we got off the boat and collected our luggage we were swarmed almost instantaneously by what felt like hundreds of taxi drivers, tour operators, hotel staff, etc that were all vying to get a piece of our Western wallets.  The whole thing was quite overwhelming and we eventually stumbled upon some guy who was holding a sign with our hotel's name on it.  While we had no idea what his taxi rate was or if he secretly liked to kidnap white folk, by this point we just wanted to get away from all the other annoying vendors outside.  Fortunately, he was a van cab driver who was rounding up people who were all staying at hotels on the same part of the island.  Since we were staying quite a distance from the ferry terminal, we got a first-hand look at the beautiful, windy roads and gargantuan hills.  Oh, and we also got to pick up our van driver's kids at some random bush house along the way! 

Haad Salad Beach aka Colleen's idea of Thailand.

Slightly nicer than Chumphon.  Ever so.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived at our destination, Salad Buri Resort that was located on Haad Salad.  Instantly, it was fair to say that the views were the best we had seen on our trip so far!  The resort was nestled into the northwest corner of the island, which was one of the quieter areas on this notorious party island.  Most of the rooms, were actually small villas that appeared to be balancing rather precariously in the hillside.  Ours was naturally at the top of said hill, and over the next few days we would have many a good walks up and down the European-inspired cobblestone steps.  Once we were settled in, we decided to just have dinner along the beach at our resort's restaurant.  Unfortunately, the staff were the most over-bearing/obnoxious waiters I had ever experienced and we couldn't eat our food fast enough.  Eventually, we were able to shake our waitress and made our way down the beach to one of the other local beachside restaurants where we nestled in for some drinks with a view.  Despite almost barfing her intestines out earlier on the day, it all seemed worth it to Colleen now, as she remarked, "this is my idea of Thailand".  Slightly more expensive than my idea, but hey I won't complain!

Looking out our villa's window.



Where the hell am I supposed to sleep?!

No jungle huts for us...sadly.

 

~Brentski~

Day 59- Does This Beard Make Me Look Fat?

I must admit, I did enjoy sleeping a nice, proper, luxurious hotel bed, although Colleen and I quickly realized that we probably should not have booked two nights in Chumphon as there was absolutely nothing for visitors to do in the town.  With that in mind, we enjoyed the complimentary breakfast buffet.  I must say, one of the nice perks I have noticed in Thailand is that just about every hotel includes breakfast in the price, which is not only a great money-saver, but is also highly convenient as I do not have to take my half-asleep ass down the street in search of dirty sausage.  After stretching breakfast out for as long as we could, Colleen and I realized that we still had an entire day to kill, so we did all normal people do: shaved my beard into a wide variety of styles and had our very own "Zoolander" style photo shoot.

I call this pose "Magenta Steel".

So dreamy.

Sadly, Colleen would not let me keep any of my new facial trimmings and that afternoon I was forced to venture out into the town sans beard.  Since there was nothing interesting to do, Boss Woman and I decided to take the hotel shuttle to the local shopping centre where we undertook in numerous Thai cultural traditions such as going to "Dairy Queen" and "The Pizza Place".  Sadly, the shuttle would not be returning for another three hours which happened to be about two hours and 45 minutes too long.  I must quickly point out that most of the people in Chumphon were assholes and not particularly friendly.  Colleen insisted they were "creepy", but then again she calls me creepy for insisting that glory holes are a part of everyday modern bathroom culture.  We'll just say everyone happened to be in a grumpy mood that day.  With nothing to do but walk laps around the shitty mall and wait for our shuttle bus, we passed our time watching an obscenely fat Russian woman swat bugs off her tree trunks legs for an extended period of time.  Yup, it was that kind of day.  Naturally, the shuttle was over half an hour late picking us up because being on time in Thailand is just not acceptable behavior.



Kids, where sunscreen or this will happen!



Once we got back from the mall, we just spent the night chilling out at the hotel and counting down the minutes until our ferry out of there the next day.  Oh, and I went for a stroll along the dirtiest beach in the world.  Yup, I LOVE CHUMPHON!

~Brentski~

Day 58- When Returning A Damaged Vehicle, Always Make Sure Your "Getaway-Moped-With-A-Sidecar-Taxi" Is Laying In Wait

While I was rather enjoying the slow, laid-back, bug-infested life in Ban Krut, Colleen had seen enough.  So that morning we had our final breakfast at what appeared to be a now empty resort.  As expected, the breakfast meats were grossly undercooked and I took this as my cue to wrap the sausages and ham in a plastic bag for the local stray dogs.  Without missing a beat, I was quickly joined on my final beach stroll by my nature loving girlfriend a couple of the local stray dogs who were apparently not as adverse to eating raw pig-based products as I was.  After breakfast I went back to our room for one final round of spider bashing before it was time for the missy and I to head out.


"Well, since my girlfriend is afraid of the crabs, you'll do mutt"

With checkout time looming, Colleen and I were both afraid what might happen to our wallets, as we had to return our motorbike rental.  Some of you may recall that in the previous day's events we had an incident where Colleen wanted to learn how to drive and promptly laid out the bike on the ground with the throttle floored!  There were definitely some noticeable scratches on the bike and the one handlebar, was how shall I say this, "fucked up".  Being the geniuses that we are, when it was time to checkout we made sure to park the motorbike at the back of the (empty) parking lot.  Not suspicious at all if you ask me.  For some reason, the Motorized Vehicle Gods were smiling down on us that morning and the resort manager did not inspect the bike before we left.  He handed me back my passport which was being held as a deposit and I knew that he did not have any of my credit card details.  Believe me when I say we couldn't get in that cab to the train station fast enough!

Once free and clear of the resort, we caught a train further south down the coast to the coastal city of Chumphon.  The train was not surprisingly crappy, which is disturbing considering it was advertised as one of the better "high-class" trains.  Hmmm.  A couple hours later, without any real incidences we arrived at our destination where we would be spending a couple of days before making our way out to the much more famous island destinations of Koh Phangan, Koh Tao, and Koh Samui.  We weren't really sure that there was anything to do in Chumphon, but all Colleen knew was that we were staying in a "Western Hotel" (Novotel Chumphon) in a room with a Jacuzzi and what might quite possibly have been the world's largest bed.  Yup, the princess was getting her way.  No $5-a-night, urine stained, non-air conditioned, bug infested rooms for us. 

I'm sure, this place is only $5 a night.
 

Who am I kidding, this bed is fucking paradise!

Seeing as how there is absolutely nothing to do in Chumphon, we spent the night hanging out around the resort, eating at a nice restaurant, and watching our big screen cable/satellite TV.  Yup, roughing it, just as I had intended!

~Brentski~