Howling at the Moon

Ah, diving on Ko Tao was simply amazing. Not only did I learn that diving is completely fun, though a little pricey, I also made great friends there that I'll never forget. In fact, we all had such a great time that the lot of us traveled to Ko Phangan together to continue our adventure and to keep the good camaraderie going strong. These weeks were among the best for me.

Somehow the dorm got up and moving at the early hour of 9 to catch a taxi to the port. I guess it was more of a pickup than a taxi but they don't have seatbelt laws here so anything goes. I'm just happy to get a ride early in the morning when the drivers aren't as drunk. I've heard stories about how much the taxi and tuktuk drivers drink while on duty and it's terrifying. The penalty for being caught is a $10 ticket though you could probably bribe your way out of it with $5.

The boat from Ko Tao to Ko Phangan was filled to the gills with backpackers and while there weren't enough seats to go around, the real demand was for deck space so the girls could keep tanning. They just can't seem to get dark enough, though the few Asian
girls on the boat covered themselves with umbrellas since they can't get white enough. I just can't care. My favorite moment was when the boat pulled up and a huge crowd of taxis justled to snatch us up for the longish ride into town. They were downright comical.

Anyways, we got into town and conveniently ran into Diane and Paul before settling on our accommodation. We chose a large group of bungalows a short walk out of town and close to an upscale bungalow community that had a large and free pool with a cheap bar next to the beach. The bungalows there cost three times as much but were nice looking and had AC. Ours were concrete pillboxes with steel bars over the doors and windows and a single fan in each room. They were good enough for us though... who wants to spend all day in their room?

After dinner we went to the aforementioned pool to attend a big party that was scheduled for that night. It was kind of low key when we got there at 10 but after a bucket and a couple hours it really picked up with tons of people in the pool, the bar, and some spilling out onto the beach. The drinks were pretty cheap and I think that everyone was gearing up for the Full Moon Party that takes place two days later so it got out of control. Water was splashed everywhere and I worried for my camera. There was a small pier going out into the sea and couples were doing as they pleased on it under the flood lights. Diane and I took a walk down the beach and in the shadows of the trees on the sand, more people were getting lucky in the sand. It was a completely scandalous evening.

When I woke up the next morning in my bungalow, I became aware that someone had taken my laptop, ipod, and watch out of my satchel some time in the night. The room was locked at all times with a key that only I and the management had copies of so I've got my suspicions but generally it's a mystery what happened. I did my best to play it cool but mostly I'm just disappointed. I hadn't had anything stolen from me while traveling before as is true for most people I meet. I've got travel insurance though so it might all be covered. In any case, it's a convenient time since Erika is coming to visit in a few weeks and can bring me a new laptop that's currently on its way to her house.

The local police told me that they don't do theft reports for insurance claims and that I'd have to go to the other side of the island to the main police station. Taking a taxi would be too expensive so I rented a scooter and bought fuel for $5. I didn't want to rent a scooter here at all since the roads are in poor condition, there's frequently sand on the pavement, they drive on the left, there is a lot of traffic, and because every third tourist on this island has got bandages on and most of those injuries came from scooters. It's crazy how dangerous they are... but they are an awful lot of fun and it's difficult to see much outside of town without one. One of the most prolific businesses on this island are the ER clinics that usually claim to have xrays and quality surgeons. Some of them just specialize in wound treatment.

That said, I got the scooter and made my way around the island with a pretty poor map. There's a lot of traffic on the main road and it gets really steep at times. I'm pretty sure this kind of road would never be made at home, but I'm not there. Eventually I found the police station and most of the officers were out front watching a local soccer game. They had me write out my side of the story, copied it into Thai, and gave me a copy for the insurance company. It took about 10 minutes before I was on my way. Once I got back I returned the scooter as I wasn't keen to ride it again. I love scooters but this place isn't safe.

I met up with the group lazing around the bungalows and in the evening we made it out to the main beach to see what kind of party was going on there. The Hat Rin beach as it's known is not so large. It goes out from the bars for a good 50 meters but isn't half a kilometer long. One end of the beach has large boulders blocking the way and a huge lit up sign advertising the Full Moon Party. The other end has a few bars on a cliff that serve magic mushroom shakes. That stuff's not for me.

The middle of the beach has several bars that run up against the sand and also several dozen booths selling buckets and competing loudly with each others prices and extras. Some of them give a free shot with each bucket, some give garlands of flowers, and one that I saw also sold betel nuts. They're a kind of tree nut wrapped in a leaf and it's the local take on chewing tobacco. It stains your teeth red after repeated use and gives you a pretty strong buzz though I never saw a good time to try it. Each bucket vendor will write his name and a tally on your arm so that you get your 5th one free. It's not easy to do. My bucket of choice is made of vodka, redbull syrup, and coke and usually goes for $10 though you could get a cheaper whiskey one for $6 that will leave you hurting the next day. $10 is not small change but they go a long way.

Most people hang out on the beach and the various bars pay fire dancers to bring them closer to their particular bar. Some dancers have a wooden pole with fire on both ends that they hellicopter around their body and occasionally toss in the air. Others have two flaming balls on the ends of chains that they spin around in hypnotic patterns. I saw one girl that had one large ball on the end of a long chain that she spun around and would fling out at people just a girl in Kill Bill 1; the teen girl with the spiked ball. Awesome. This picture is on Will going a little spinning of his own.

We also saw a huge flaming jump rope that the drunks could jump into and eventually trip over. One guy did it in the nude and probably got burnt. I heard that there was a flaming ring that people would leap through but that people would get stuck on it all the time. Sounds painful. I also saw a flaming limbo bar but I only did it when it was quite high. That thing is hot! I heard that one guy grabbed it with both hands and bit it. A bystander 'saved' him by punching him in the face and knocking him down for his stupidity. Scary stuff.

Some of the other guys in our group went to the 'mushroom mountain' and had a wild evening. Their review was that it was all just way too strong and they didn't try it again. I made it home around 4 in the morning and couldn't get into my room so I stayed in someone else's bungalow. Timo got home even later and I think that Paul saw the sunrise. We had a pretty late start the next day.

The moon was now full and the next day was the main event. Not much happened in the day since everybody napped and only came out to eat from a particularly good schnitzel place and drink loads of water. Dan met up with an American friend of his, Chelsea, who had us come over to her bungalow in town after dinner so that we could get fully prepared for the party. It's traditional to wear as little as possible and to use florescent body paint for the full moon party. Even if you don't wear it, it'll be rubbed off on you and that shit stains so you might as well buy some cheap neon shorts and skip the shirt. It's never cold at night here anyways.

We spent a hood hour painting each other and waiting for the hour to get later before we entered the huge throng of people surging down the street towards the beach. It was unreal how many people were there. The moon parties draw in tourists from every part of Thailand for the epic event before they all disperse the next day. Some of them come for the few days before to enjoy the buildup which is just as fun while others stay just for the night. We made sure to stop into a club filled with blacklights to get a few pictures. I've got to try and get some from Diana... hers turned out better.

The party was everything from the night before, but without so many fire dancers since there just hasn't room for all that. It's said that around 10-15 thousand people were there crowding that small beach and we probably rubbed shoulders with all of them because by the end of the night most of my paint was gone. I don't have anything more to say about it other than that I didn't go that crazy really... and I didn't make it to sunrise. That's just not my thing and the walk back to the bungalow in the heat of the sunlight is said to be miserable. Oh well.

We stayed on the island one more night since we knew that we'd need hangover recovery time and for the most part we just relaxed and drank a lot of water. Most of the afternoon was spent in one of the many TV cafes showing Family Guy. In most heavy tourist areas in SE Asia you will find many many cafes endlessly playing Friends and Family Guy for weary travelers. I guess those two shows must appeal to the most kinds of people. Who knew? They were on PhiPhi and Ko Tao as well. When Chelsea showed up she had bandages all over her body and had apparently fallen off her scooter earlier in the day while going to return it. Timo found her after her ER visit and went to the scooter rental place where they spent 2 hours haggling over the price for the damage. I think she ended up paying over $800 for the whole incident and is going to fly home a week early. Poor girl. That night we went to the beach again but only to briefly see it before we went back to the pool party beach to fire off what was left of my roman candles and enjoy and single beer on the sand.

Finally it was time for us all to part ways. That's the nature of the Full Moon Party... everyone goes towards it but then scatters off in all directions. Timo went back to Ko Tao for more diving. Paul and Will went to Ko Samui to relax on the sand. Dan and Lance went to Kuala Lumpur to fly to England for work and Ameile left a couple days before to catch a plane to India. My Thai visa was set to expire the next day so I decided to make a border run to Burma to add 15 days to my stay. My plan was to travel with Diane for a while before I went to Cambodia so we said that we'd meet up in Phuket the next evening.

The cheapest way for me to do the border run was to take the night boat to the mainland and then to ride a series of buses. The boat ride was 6 hours long and dropped me off at 5 am. It was a cold and windy night on a hard mattress but still better than the night train down from Bangkok. After a couple bus rides with two travelers doing the same thing we arrived at the town of Ranong, a short boat ride from Burma. Our cab driver took care of all the details, shepherding us through the Thai customs, onto a longtail, through Burmese immigration, and back to Thailand. It wasn't too painful. I slept through a 6 hour bus ride down to Phuket and met up with Diane at the hostel.

It was her 23rd birthday so we did our best to celebrate but Phuket town was quieter than I could imagine. We found a great and cheap restaurant where they oddly didn't sell beer and then went to a bar next to the hostel for a light drink. After playing Connect 4 a dozen times (she's good) we saw the young group next to us produce a birthday cake for one of their girls. I'd have sworn that they couldn't have been older than 14 but we learned that they were 18 and drank pretty heavily. While Di was in the bathroom I told them that it was her birthday also and they produced ice cream, cake, and a candle for her as well. Sweet.

The next day, and the day before for that matter, it rained all day but we still forced ourselves to go out. The last time I was in Phuket, Timo and I didn't see much more than the festival and food stalls. We skipped the most popular part of the island, Patong Beach. Diane and I took a bus there and found it to be a long a beautiful beach coupled up against a seriously seedy and touristy bar town. We braved the rain, walked around the downtown areas of it, and had some overpriced drinks. Later in the evening it filled up with vacationers and pushy peddlers selling taxis, sex shows, and knockoff watches. I hated the place but I'm glad that I saw it. We vowed to leave town the next day.

After breakfast and a little internet access we haggled ourselves a ride to the pier and caught the boat to Ko Phi Phi. Yea, I've been there before but the plan is to just be there a few days before going to a new island, Ko Lanta. It should be nice. We got bunks at the Rock hostel just as before and went out to my favorite restaurant on the island where they took good care of us. In the evening we visited the Slinky beach bar and got a couple free buckets each as part of a promotion. I don't think that I'm ever going to pay for a bucket again on this island. I'll let you know how that goes.

My Life Under the Sea

I've been on this island of Ko Tao for a week now, and I hardly even noticed since I was having such a good time. Honestly though, the days have blurred together a bit and though I could go through my pictures and MAYBE remember what happened each day, I'm just going to cover the highlights in no particular order and maybe that'll be more interesting anyways.

I did do a few things before I got to 'memory loss island' however. Timo and I spent one more day in Phuket so that we could visit the government tourism office (TAT) to get information about bus and boat schedules. It's difficult to find that particular office in the huge town, but if you get your information from a travel agency (which are everywhere) they will want to sell you the tickets at a higher price and will hire a taxi to take you to the correct station from your hotel. I don't care for it because it's about 50% more expensive but honestly loads more convenient. In the end we got ripped off on the taxi ride to the bus station because of a hard rain so we probably could have done just as well with the agent.

This is a random pic of a guy who made the best mango/coconut/red bean sticky rice bundles. I couldn't get enough. We also made a trip over to the government immigration office to ask about visa extensions. We both flew into Thailand so by default we were given 30 days visas. For some reason people of certain countries, those who apply in advance, and a lucky few are given 60-90 day visas on arrival but Timo's flight is 4 days after his visa expires and I just want to stay longer so at some point we're going to have to do a border run to get an extension on the visa. If you cross into Thailand by land you get a 15 day visa but this is enough for the two of us. It looks like we can do the run to Myanmar and return to the islands or to Bangkok for less than the government wanted for a single 1 week extension. So I guess we'll do that soon but I don't look forward to it.

The next day we made our way to the bus station and I think that we had planned on walking but the rain was just too heavy and we're not as waterprooof as some backpackers make themselves. Timo only bought an umbrella the day before after we walked for a couple hours in some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen. I already had one so I just laughed at his sogginess. Anyhow, the bus ride was long and the follow up ferry ride to Ko Samui wasn't so interesting either. I hear that Ko Samui is a pretty popular destination but what we saw was extremely quiet.

The ferry got in kind of late in the afternoon and we took a shared taxi out to the area of the island that we though would be cheapest for a single night. The taxi ride was fun though... it was a covered pickup and it was so full of locals that we got to stand and hang onto the back. It was a lot of fun. We found a bungalow on the beach near to the pier and wandered around for a while before calling it a night. This town is pretty spread out along the beach and feels a lot more quiet than Ko Phi Phi. At night you don't cross paths with a huge number of people and I feel like I see people that I know from the dorm or diving all the time. It's low season here so it's more quiet than normal.

The next day we took the early ferry to Ko Tao (Turtle Island) and shared the boat with a HUGE group of Chinese models and their stylists. They were gearing up for a photo shoot on one of the islands that we stopped at along the way. On arrival, we checked into the hostel that we had heard about and set off around town to find a dive shop. You see, this island is one of the most popular places in the world to get scuba certified. I've always wanted to get certified because I have a tendency to go to tropical places from time to time and snorkeling just isn't enough. It takes 3-4 days to get certified to do the 'fun dives' so I've never had the time to put into the endeavor and also this happens to be the cheapest place to get it done. The rate was the same all around town, $300 for the 4 day course, and free lodging included. We shopped around half a dozen shops but ended up going with the one that would give us a free stay at the hostel. We get more friends that way.

We ended up staying for 8 nights at that hostel and this is the point that I lose track of the days. I'll just give a run down of the highlights of the island instead of going through it day by day. First off, the people in our dorm have been great. There are 8 beds in the room and the first night we had the room to ourselves but it started to fill up after that. Some of my favorite people that I've met there (in no particular order) include Paul, Dianne, Lance, Dan, Ameile, Will, Tiran, and Timo of course. Paul is a young Irish guy (he's got good spirit) who moved in on the same day as Dianne, an English girl who loves crime stories and keeps a conversation just at my pace. I like that and they're also both on long trips. Lance and Dan are Aussies who are traveling together for a while before they move to London for work. Ameile is a young girl from Quebec who's been a tour leader through Turkey and Iran among others and is generally cool as hell. Tiran is also Canadian and works in Quebec... he's nice and I need to get to know him better. Finally Will is an English guy who's staying at a nearby bungalow but hangs out with us anyways. He's really funny. I've had many nights out to get to know them all and I loved it.

One of the nights I went out with Timo, Paul, and Dianne for dinner and then drinks. That was a wild night... we started out slow drinking beers in front of 7eleven but ran into some ladyboys in the street handing out flyers for a 22:00 show at the Queen Bar. Timo was highly resistant to the idea of going to a ladyboy show but Paul was indifferent and Dianne and I really wanted to see it. Why not do something different?

The show was... a lot of fun, but a bit more awkward for me than the rest of us. The drinks were double price but that was to be expected as there was free admission. We each got a drink and waited with 30 other nervous people for what was to come. Basically it was a series of lip synced dance numbers where each of the 'girls' took turns being the center of attention an the rest did poorly choreographed backup dances. One of the dancers that came out for a solo was dressed as some kind of scary old woman. She pulled me on stage and behind a curtain took my shirt before pushing me back on stage to do a hammy act. It wasn't anything indecent but a tad embarrassing and I laughed a lot. Later on in the show they pulled up 3 people including myself for one final act. They took us back stage, put us in black sequined dresses and had us do a little ladyboy contest of our own. I'm pretty sure that I won and I don't know if I should be proud of that. Why do I put these pictures on the internet??? Later in the night we kept drinking at another bar and called it a night. Wait, that wasn't the end! We also went down to the beach with 20 roman candles that I picked up in Phuket to put on our own show. Paul and I shot the candles at each other and they exploded entirely too close to our heads. It was awesome.

Probably my favorite part of this island has been the food. I don't know why the Thai food here is so good and cheap ($2 per dish) but maybe it's because of the unique population of the island. For some reason, most of the locals on the island are Burmese and the women paint their cheeks with the same wood pulp that Dad, Erika, and I saw in Myanmar. I only saw one place serving Burmese curry though, they just stick with what the tourists want. Still, the restaurants aren't as heavily themed as in Phi Phi and most of the time we just go to one of the several INCREDIBLE Thai food establishments. My favorite dishes here have been the fried curries, anything with squid, spicy salads with meat, and the best Phad Thai in Thailand. My stomach is rumbling just writing about it.

Another one of my favorite nights was a couple days ago. Timo and I had a long day of diving and ended with a night dive in the dark... it was awesome but I'll talk about that later. We got some dinner with a couple other people who stayed on land at the Thai place Su Chili before heading to the Breakers bar for a small party. You see, Timo and I (and a couple other people with us) were supposed to be at the dive center at 7:00 for a morning dive and were tasked with not drinking that night since dehydration and diving do not mix. More on that tragedy later. We were at the bar and had 'just one' Chang beer and chatting with each other. I blame Timo for what happened next. I said my goodbyes to everyone at the bar but when I was ready to go Timo wanted to stuck around for one more drink. I fretted for a minute before going to the bar and getting another beer and losing my game plan. The next thing I know the lot of us are dancing on the tables to the tune of one seriously awesome guitarist who was drawing in quite a crowd. I had some of Lance's bucket and after the show was over we went to the beach for more drinks.

I never did get that drink though... I waded into the warm and shallow ocean with Diane. We climbed onto one of the wooden long-tail boats anchored in the dark and watched the moon and stars for who knows how long before the romance became too thick for words. There was a very timely shooting star. Frankly, it was magic. We lost our sandals on the beach but didn't care at all. I got back to the dorm at 4:00 but Timo didn't get back until 5:30 and I heard that Timo kissed a girl on the beach but there's not much more to the story. Lance apparently rode on the back of a scooter, drunk as a skunk, to see the sunrise on the other side of the island and got home at 8:00. Timo and I did show up for the dive at 7:00 but were obviously in no shape to go. So we let down the instructors, but they forgave us when they heard our stories. We spent most of the day recovering.

There were more stories, like when Tiran got punched and headbutted in a bar but mostly what I remember were all of the group breakfasts, dinners, and lunches. I think about food too much. The thing that we spent most of our time on Ko Tao doing wasn't drinking (or was it?); it was diving. Like I said earlier we found a shop affiliated with the hostel that gave us a fair rate, free stay in the dorms, and also $13 worth of drinks at the bar. The four days cost $300 but at least this license is something that's good for the rest of my life and also it was hella fun.

Our instructor was an English guy named Neil who's been doing this for 6 years. He's a really nice guy and I felt like he really had his shit together. I appreciate it. The first day we watched a couple instructional DVDs and took some quizzes on them. They talked about buoyancy, equipment, safe practice, and a bit of theory. The next day we skipped the 2 remaining DVDs and Neil just gave us a lecture instead. Timo and I were good with the theory on the first two videos so Neil let us sail through the rest of the book learning though we did have to do chapter 5 as homework. The second day we also got to do our first dive... into the pool at our bar. We were joined by John who's training to be an instructor (Dive Master they're called). It was simple stuff. We set up our equipment, climbed in the water, and got comfortable breathing through a regulator, and did a few drill. We had to practice clearing a flooded mask underwater and balancing out our buoyancy so that we could raise and lower ourselves using only our breath. It's pretty fun.

The next day we did 2 dives in the open sea. We took the company longtail out to the dive boat. The dive boat is much larger, has a compressor to fill the dozens of air tanks on board, and a Burmese crew that takes care of the details. My favorite of them I call Mama... she doesn't speak a word of English but always points out the things you miss when you're about to jump into the ocean. I'm sure we'd all drown without her. Actually our buddy checks would find all the things that she points out, but she's helpful anyways. Before each dive you go through a steplist of checks on each others equipment that I remember with the saying Bangkok Women Really Are Fellas (BCD, Weights, Releases, Air, Final Check). The first day we did a simple swim about in shallow water and on the second dive we did the same skills as in the pool. It was fun, not tiring, and I think that anyone would love it.

In the morning we took our final book exam in the morning and I got 48/50 right. You're allowed to miss 12 questions but really it's designed so that a 10 year old could get certified as a diver with a little study. We also did 2 dives that day and at the end were certified as PADI Open Water Divers. I made a license picture where I'm smoking a cigarette just because I could. Timo and I were so taken by the whole experience that we decided to sign up for the next step in the classes, getting our Advance Open Water license. It's a good thing to have because it gives you training in a variety of other things that we'll need if we want to be able to do any dive offered in the future and that's the whole point of getting certified. It's 5 dives in 2 days for another $250.

The first day we started out with a navigation dive where we practiced navigating by compass and dive computers underwater. The computers in particular are important as they help you keep track of your body's nitrogen levels that get built up in the water and dissipate slowly back on the boat. This stuff is critical as it's what causes the 'bends' and if you haven't got the computer you have to use some rather complicated Navy developed tables to keep track of it yourself. Basically the deeper you go the faster you take on nitrogen and at 40 meters you can only stay down for 12 minutes if you use normal air. There are ways to change the air mix to allow you to go deeper and longer but that takes more classes.

We also did a PPB dive where we practice Peak Performance Buoyancy and learn to control our breath better and to do various acrobatics through hoops and such. I really enjoyed that one. The last dive of the day was at 19:00 where we did a night dive. It was a truly surreal experience swimming in the dark, following a trail of other divers with flashlights and seeing the fish sleep. It wasn't as dark as I expected it to be underwater since the moon was quite bright. We eventually did make it to the early morning deep dive after one false start, and that was a good time too.

Enough about diving. On my 7th day on the island Paul and Diane took off to go to Ko Samui and said that they were headed to Ko Phangan afterwards to attend the famous Full Moon Party. Timo and I also learned that everyone else in the dorm was going there in a coule days as well. We had such a good time with our hostel group, and I was growing quite attached to Diane, so we decided to throw out Northern Thailand and to stay in the island long enough to see this most awesome party.

We stayed another day on the island when I wrote the bulk of this post and of course decided to celebrate our advanced diving certification in the most common of ways; with buckets. The lot of us that remained went to the beach and danced late into the night. Hell of a night. I'll talk about our journey to Ko Phangan in the next post.