South and About
Posted in Alex's Blog on January 19, 2011
Anybody who’s travelled in Thailand knows what a disaster overnight buses can be, so you can imagine my delight at having to travel by five of them in one week. The plan was to head to the some beaches in the south of for New Years with some friends and then on to Laos to get a new visa from the Thai embassy there so I could spend another two months in the country. Doing this required getting an overnight bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and then another down to Krabbi, from there we would travel by boat to Rah Leh and Koh Pi Pi for a few nights. Following this it was the same journey to Bangkok except in reverse, from there I would catch a bus to Nong Kai, a town on the boarder of Thailand and Laos, before crossing over to Vientiane the capital of Laos.
Originally it was going to be just myself and Nash heading south but this quickly snowballed into five friends. Five guys all heading to the islands for New Years what a disastrously fantastic idea. So who did we have; well there was Nash a mate of mine from Canada, Nathan whom I’d met at Lanna when I first came, Luke a professional whacker from Leeds and Gareth who I’d met while training at KC. To start with we all bailed into a mini van in the center of the Old City, we honestly thought we may be heading all the way to Bangkok in the van, stranger things have certainly happened in this country. Instead we were dropped to a car park outside the city where a larger but certainly less comfortable bus awaited us.
The trip to Bangkok, exceptionally uneventful.
We arrived into Bangkok around 5am our next bus didn’t leave until 6pm, joy. The bus had dropped us next to Khao San Rd, a decompression zone for all foreigners entering Thailand. Nash remarked that it was funny entering an area where everyone else was drunk except us, and it was. Anyhow we found some seats in a small plaza and tried to get a few more hours of uncomfortable sleep
It was interesting to watch the progression of life on Khao San. When we arrived it was dark, you could hear the music blaring from bars, people mingled on the streets shifting between bars. As dawn approached things didn’t exactly stop but they did wind down a little.Vendors began arriving and putting together their stalls, barbeques were lit, and appetizing smells began to permeate the morning air. By noon the street was abuzz with life, food shops and souvenir stalls ran side by side and back to back the entire length of the road while the crowd squeezed by along the center, just another day on Khao San rd
To pass the time we headed to MBK, a mega mall in Bangkok. This thing was epic. Gareth remarked, and I fully agree with him, that you can and he had spent entire days in this place. Numerous elevators crisscrossed connecting its nine floors giving the place the look of something out of the mind of M.C. Escher. We ate some ice monster, absolutely fantastic stuff by the way, basically crushed ice full of syrup, sweets, a few table spoons of delight and a hint of magic. We eventually made our way back to Khao San rd and followed a lady on a bicycle to our bus.
We then spent our second night on an overnight bus, again not much happened.Although we did stop in the middle of the night to be ushered off the bus and have an agent try sell us all tickets, how very thoughtful of them.
Once in Krabbi, we caught a long boat to Rah Leh. It was pretty refreshing to be crashing through the open waters past prehistoric limestone cliffs topped with thick green jungle. But Rah leh proved to be a little quieter than expected, before the clock struck midnight we had already booked a ticket off the island to Koh Pi Pi.
Pi Pi is an odd place, although surrounded by the Andaman Sea you would swear it was in Europe. There is a lot of tourists here, unless you look into the food or travel shops its hard to believe it’s actually in Thailand. Nathan said this was the most white people he’d seen in 3 years. The island is completely jam packed with guesthouses, travel shops, restaurants, bars and stalls. We were lacking in the foresight department and hadn’t realized we should probably have booked a room ahead of time given that it was new years and all. Luckily we found a moderately priced guest house and settled in.
The first proper night out in new surroundings is always an interesting one. We began it conservatively enough with a few casual yager bombs. We were congregated outside the 7/11 engaged in scholarly conversation and sipping Thailand’s finest budget alcohol when we saw an intriguing sign “Fight for a free bucket”.
The decision didn’t take long.
Luke and Gareth were up first. They decided to fight each other because the thought of them fighting anyone else was just plain unfair. They put on a show for the crowd with some flashy cartwheel kicks and counters and for their troubles were rewarded with an intoxicating mix of M150, Sangsom and Coke all conveniently mixed in a bucket with handles.
Nash and I were going to fight next but the guys running it insisted I fight this Australian guy instead. Now I want to point out that I said to the guy beforehand that I wasn’t treating this thing too seriously and was looking at it as just some drunk sparring for a free bucket. Well, his reply was this “no man don’t hold back try to knock me out”. I can only assume he regretted this request as approximately 30 seconds later he ate the canvas.
Nash, though savagely drunk, had his first ever fight. He slugged it out with his opponent and danced between rounds as I rehydrated him from my bucket of alcohol, thoughtful I know. He also won which was awesome and threw some kicks as well, not bad for someone who had only learned he could do that with his legs a few weeks ago.
Nathan was up last, he fought some tattooed Italian guy, who unfortunately for him knew how to kick quite hard. But he put up a great fight and most importantly walked away with a delicious (ok thats a strong exaggeration) bucket of liver cancer.
After this we stumbled down to the beach. All along it bars were filled with people dancing, shouting, falling over just having a plain good time. Also there were fire shows going on outside just about all of the bars, now I didn’t notice this the first night as buckets have a habit of dulling your awareness of just about everything, but I did the following night. Now does it seem logical to you that when tossing around flaming sticks and balls that you should maybe keep it away from the open tank of gasoline you are using? Yeah it sort of does right, unless of course you are in Thailand, in which case its pretty much regulation that the two be as close together as possible. I love this country.
We hung out at the beach for the rest of the night and for the majority of our trip really, each night involved much of the same, stupid amounts of alcohol, stumbling around a beach, rejecting lady boys and little movement for the first half of most days.Also I managed to spend new years on a beach so that was better than the shitty club I usually go to back home, those of you from Ireland know where I’m talking about.
I also managed to get the most vicious hangover ever it involved the delightful combination of 3rd degree sunburn, food poisoning and the ever pleasant Chang over. That was not a good day.
I had to go to Vientiane in Laos to get a new visa so we parted ways in Bangkok. It’s hard to believe Laos is the capital of the country, I mean this place is tiny the biggest building was maybe 4 floors high. Anyway, not much happened there, stayed two days, got my visa, then a bus to Udon Thani and another home. It is good to be back.
