Second Half of Thailand

So I’m back in Beijing after the Trip to Thailand. And let me tell you, Thailand really picked up after the last short blog post. I completely fell in love with it.

Why is Thailand so awesome? Well, it starts with the people. If you’ve spent any extended time with the Thai’s themselves, Spaniards, or drunken Wisconsinites when the Packers are winning, then you have some idea of what I’m talking about. With the exception of a couple of Taxi drivers and swindlers hanging out at tourist spots in Bangkok, everybody seemed to be extremely genuine, always smiling, and always willing to have fun.

In Ao Nang, I met several excellent Thai people. Our (all plurals refer to Mike and me, unless otherwise inferred or stated) crazy stoned boat guide named Him (photos of him to be posted when Mike sends me his photos), our mellow stoned driver that took mike and me to the elephant trek, the wonderfully pleasant ladies who worked at the internet café and tourist office, and a group of people who worked at what became my favorite bar.

I have to admit that I was a little biased at the bar since one of the waitresses there, named Um (pronounced ahm), was phenomenally beautiful and we took a liking to each other (enough that I plan to take a trip back to travel with her for a while – yes, I know I’m crazy, but if you have a problem with it, just hop a flight to China and try to stop me . . . haha). But back to the point, she was wonderful, her friends (even, and perhaps especially, her ladyboy friends) were fun, our guides were excellent, and the Thai people in general just made life simple and great!

Anywhoo, the first thing that Mike and I did after the last post was slept, but then we woke up for an Elephant Trek! It was unlike what I expected. A pretty smooth ride, just rocking back and forth. Not exhilarating whatsoever. The elephants were really gentle; one was driven by a 7ish year old kid. Our elephant was mentally challenged. We wouldn’t have known from riding him, but when people tried to feed him bananas, he couldn’t seem to find his mouth, whereas the elephant next to him seemed like his trunk was a rubber band that snapped directly back into his mouth. Our elephant would curl up the trunk and miss his mouth to the left or right and try unsuccessfully a couple more times before finally hitting the mark. After the elephant rides (during which Mike was almost killed by a huge spider – not really, but we almost ran into it, and it was about the size of my hand), we went to a cave for a little bit. Alright, but not amazing.

That afternoon we laid on the beach and Mike got sunburned and lazy. After some dinner and a failed attempt at playing darts due to a power outage, we decided to sleep . . . at 8 pm. Well, the power came back on and I decided that sleeping that early was lame, so I went out to try and meet people while Mike slept and whined about his sunburn (sorry Mike, you deserve to be chastised a little). So I went to this bar where these two girls tried to get us to come the night before by luring us in with free pool. I got a beer and took to flirting with one of the girls and eventually ended up asking her out to dinner on her night off (can you guess who this girl is?). She agreed, so I considered my night a success and went to bed because I had an early boat ride in the morning.

The next day was a boat trip to islands around Ao Nang. Swimming, snorkeling, eating “yummy yummy” as our stoned boat guide called it, and so forth. It was beautiful, and there are lots of pictures from this portion on my webshots site (http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger). After that, Mike and I went back to my favorite bar, played some pool, and then went home to bed.

The remainder of our days in Ao Nang was composed of lots of dancing very late into the night, sleeping late in the day, and an occasional meal. The club that we found (where the young people hang out) was a total meat market, and I was thankful that I had decided to focus my attention on dancing with Um. Mike, on the other hand wasn’t (or was?) so lucky, and was swarmed by a mix of western girls, Thai girls, and ladyboys. It was very funny to watch since he is generally so shy unless he’s around people that he knows, but he eventually got used to it. He was also lucky that Um had some very nice ladyboy friends who would protect him when the more aggressive ladyboys attacked.

But like all good things, that expensive and physically taxing lifestyle had to come to an end, and we had to leave. Hence, we caught a ridiculously uncomfortable night bus back to Bangkok. Bangkok the second time was very relaxed. Mike and I shopped a little. Mike went home. I studied Chinese a little since I had free time. And then I went home. And that was that.

Now I’m back in Beijing and have been immersed back into the fast-paced, work-driven, quite rude Chinese lifestyle (my cab driver on the way home from the Airport kept yelling at me about how he had been driving for 10 hours . . . I should have pretended that I didn’t speak Chinese . . . it wasn’t cool), and I miss Thailand already. However, as I mentioned before, I do plan to go back! If I like it as much as I did the first time I was there, maybe I’ll take the country up as my next residence and anybody who wants to can come to visit me in a tropical paradise!

I’ll leave the post off there, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to write anymore about NYC, LA, Las Vegas and Wisco; my life is moving too quickly, and most of it was work anyways. However, I do have some photos posted from those places. Be sure to check them out here! I’ll send out an email when I’ve posted the ones that I receive from Mike.