Khao Sok: Three months on the road
I’ve been travelling for three months now. Does that seem like a long time? I don’t know — hard to say. It kind of does, in that I’ve seen and done a lot of schtuff. And it kind of doesn’t, because what’s three months, really? But it’s been awesomeness, dude. Doodarooskis.
To bring you up to speed… I left Vietnam and flew to Bangkok, where I went immediately from their brand new fancypants airport to an overnight bus down to Koh Phangan — location of the infamous full moon party. My first night I got far too drunk (damn Thai-whiskey-filled buckets!), and ended up sick in bed the entire next day. The entire day, and night. The day after that, I recovered slightly, was able to keep some food down, and went to bed early. The next day was the full moon.
As you can probably glean, I wasn’t all that gigged up about it.
Now, when you’re in a party atmosphere, it sucks being sick. I suppose it sucks anyway, but more so when everyone in the main, chill out area of your guesthouse are being loud and drunk and, y’know, having fun. It wasn’t too terribly annoying, since everyone there at the Blue Lotus (Hey Kel!Pong is great, he says hi, while Shana was back in the States, so I didn’t get to meet her…) was really nice about the sicky who couldn’t hold his liquor over in the corner. Sheeeeet…
In fact, I think my lickitysplit travel stylee had just caught up with me — going from mountainous, chilly Sapa to humid Hanoi to Bangkok to Koh Phangan to extremely drunk in a 72-hour period was probably none too wise. Or, I’m just making excuses. Point is, drunk people are idiots. As proven by the actual full moon party, which ain’t my scene to begin with and I have no idea why I had it in my head that I needed to go see it: (a) the music sucks — all that rave DJ crap — and (b) the people are all really young, slightly obnoxious and mostly from England. They go to this place just to get fall-down-in-the-sand shit-faced, and that’s it. I don’t know, I guess I figured there might a place I could find that would be more my kinda place — a downtempo vibe, or a rasta bar, or some such — but I just wasn’t even up for exploration when it got to that point. Alas.
So I caught an overnight boat back off the island (an experience, to be sure — I slept on a pile of life jackets, let us just say), and then a bus here, to Khao Sok. Which is a relaxing and gorgeous national park in the middle of the peninsula, with a mellow vibe, a rasta bar and cool people. Oh yeah, and a giant rainforest.
Yep, yesterday I took a 15km hike into some of the world’s oldest rainforest. Apparently according to some botanist, the jungle ’round here (and on down through Malaysia) is an older belt of rainforest than the Amazonian and African ones. The hike consisted of going to a pleasant swimming hole, seeing a white-faced monkey, then a waterfall, then a hike through leech-filled mud flanking the river bank, then more swimming. Quite nice. I never got leeched, luckily — but man are those things creepy! I did get bit by tiny fish in the water, though — jerks. I’ve also got a giant monitor lizard named Giancarlo living on my front porch, but he’s a good thing. He eats the big gnarly bugs that would otherwise cause a total gnarly bug infestation. Also, I’m not sure his name is actually Giancarlo, since I just made that up.
And today, I woke up, went to a swell cafe where I met an English girl named Hannah and a Thai guy named Wit Longbeard — okay, his name is Wit, and he has a Father Time-level beard going on — but that’s how he refers to himself. Of his friends’ place in Krabi: “Tell them you know Wit Longbeard.” Etc. If you have a picture in your head of an awesome, jungle-aware Thai dude with a long grey beard, no moustache and a big smile, then you’ve got him. So we all went and hung out at this spot on the river where there is a rope swing, a cave and monkeys climbing all around all over the place. Lots of monkeys. It was awesome.
Next, I meet up with my buddy Tony on Monday, in Krabi, which should be great. And so here we are, three months in. Stay tuned for photos of Vietnam. And a quick special shout-out goes to Michelle and Joe, who just had a daughter — my niece Kate! Many congratulations to them. And I hope everyone else is well, as well. Much love!
Tags: full moon, Koh Phangan, Thailand
ismateo
You tell Wit Longbeard he’s dangling on the precipice of trademark infringement … I kid, I kid. But I do hear dogmeat is good for hangovers, yep, french fries and dogmeat, aka, the happy meal.
I’m currently growing a beard. I got mashed potatoes stuck in it over thanksgiving. Which was good for leftovers. I wonder if Wit has leftovers in his beard from thanksgiving. Something tells me no.