Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Hey all, I find myself writing from Thailand and thought I’d just give a quick update as to the what’s what.  This will be a quick one that pretty much goes all over the map.  I landed here late Halloween night, got ripped off by the taxi driver, found a decent place to stay and had a really great sleep in my own room, something I haven’t done for a good while.  I spent a couple day’s in BKK, wandering around, eating the food and smelling the smells.  It’s a pretty bizarre place and at time I felt major sensory overload so I jumped out of town as quick as I could down to a place called Krabi, which is in the south.  I’m meeting my cousin here and we plan to do some climbing.  I’ve been here a couple day’s now and am rather borred.  Don’t get me worng, it’s a beautiful place and all, great beaches, decent snorkeling, gorgeous resort, neat little bars with a real chilled out air in them… all the things that I really don’t have much an interest in.  So I’m eager for Mike to show up and try out some climbing.  If I enjoy it I’ll stay, if not I’ll go.  I had made a promose to myself when I left Oz not to get myself into a situation where I wasn’t having fun and couldn’t leave but sure enough at my first stop here in Thailand I’m doing just that.  For shame.

Enough bitching, which I seem to do a lot of.  Thailand is pretty cool and pretty bizzare all at the same time.  The main place that all the tourists go is a place called Khoa San Road, which is like a place that a bunch foreigners decided to set up camp and make a place for their very own right smack dab in the middle of a bunch of poor Thais, they all turned around and decided to sell all the foreigners stuff.  It’s pretty strange to walk off the main roads where there’s hundreds of white people everywhere, into the side alley ways and see the Thais’ living their daily lives in the middle of all the hovel.

Everything is fairly cheap here but not that cheap; Street food is a bargain and super good, and accomidation is inexpensive.  I had my own room with toilet and shower for 190baht, which converts to like less than $6 can. 

So right now I’m in Krabi, spent the first day unwiding, the second sitting on the beach and hanging out with an Isreali fellow I met, Meoard, then yesterday I took a tour of the neighbouring Islands, went snorkeling and sat on the beach some more.  I am now officially beached out and care not to see another one for quite some time but I guess I will since the bungalow I’m stayin in is right on it.  I was told that when the tsunami came it went as far as my hut so I should be good if another one happens.  My hut that I’m staying in is pretty rustic to say the least.  It’s basically a wooden hut with wicker walls, a bed and a mosquito net.  Oh and there’s a chair.  But it’s all mine for the bottom price of 150b ($4.60 can).  The food on the island is alright but it ain’t no street food and not as cheap.  Anyways, today I went to a different town around the bend and marched around, sat at cafe’s, at street food did a bit of shopping and talked to, or at least tried to, some Thai’s.  They’re good people and I’m finding that if you even make the slightest effort to learn a few phrases and words, you’ll get a huge smile.

My internet time is just about up so I have to leave it at that. I hope to get a proper update in the next little bit but it might be another week if all goes well with climbing and might noly do an update in BKK.

Oh yeah, and here’s a slew of Pics

Tags: Thailand

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 4:05 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.