It’s that time of the month – time for a visa run, I mean. An 11 hour journey to Burma and back to the mainland for about 1200 baht. Sara and I get the night ferry from the pier to Chumpon, then a mini bus that is freezing cold to Ranong, where we go through a series of immiagration stuff like filling out forms and so on. Then we hop on a small boat to Burma. 5 minutes after I get on, I realise I have forgotten my fanny pack with my cellphone and credit card back at the immigration office, and I have to jump off the boat on to several other tiny boats and nearly fall into the water (OK, maybe not, but it sure feels that way), so I can run back to retrieve it. Thank God it’s still there!
We sail to Kawthaung, where we spend less than 15 minutes getting stamps in our passports and walking around. On the pier, we see lots of monks just hanging out. It looks really beautiful there, and I would love to explore more of Burma someday.
After sailing back to Ranong and going through immigration yet again, we get on the freezing minibus to Chumpon. Once there, we check into Salsa Hostel, where Kirstin and Henry (roommate at Jizo’s) are staying. We end up having pizza, beers and a Hunger Games marathon at night.
Next morning, after a great complimentary breakfast, we take a VIP bus to Bangkok, and get free food and drinks. Love it!
Blogging is hard when you’re bored, and hard when you’re busy living life. People who read my last post, might have noticed that I have been half-assing it lately, and it’s been a combination of boredom and being busy. Until I went to Koh Tao.
As I get off the ferry, I have to find my hostel, Jizo’s, which James told me would be like a 3 minute drive away. I decide I didn’t want to pay for a taxi then, and start walking.
30 minutes later, I have carried all my luggage up a long, steep road, and still no sign of a hostel – or civilisation. I ask every person I see for directions, and locals will tell me the hostel is 100 meters away no matter where I am, and taxi drivers will say “very far – 200 baht”. Who to believe? In the end, I see a 7-11 and go in to ask for direction, when a Thai guy offers to give me a ride on his scooter. He is my hero.
I check in to my hostel, go for a walk on the beach, and end up meeting Kirstin and then John for a few drinks and buckets. It has turned my day around completely.
I’ve got a bucket, got a bucket full of sunshine
I meet Dylan, who is doing a diving course with Kirstin, and we all go out to dinner together. I’ve decided against doing a diving course, as I don’t even like deep waters that much. As we are eating dinner at this restaurant facing the beach, we see local women walking around, trying to sell massive paper lanterns. We decide to buy one together, which we send up in the air, racing the other people. We win, of course.
We do some ballons, watch a fire show on the beach, try fire limbo(!) and then pass out. Before that, John decides to try to jump over the fire limbo pole instead of going under it, so he gets a massive burn on his stomach, and I drag him to the pharmacy, and a bunch of drunk Danish guys throw iodine on his wound and tell me to stop being such a mom.
The next day John is leaving us (sad face), and I move into Kirstins bungalow for free(!). During the day, she does her diving course and I sleep or go sit at the nearby resaturant and enjoy the Wi-Fi. At night, we just drink on the beach with Dylan and Patrick, who’s also doing the diving course with Kirstin.
When her course is done, we need to find a new place to stay, so we go back to Jizo’s. I even get the same bed as the one I was in when I arrived on this island! F6 rules. Slowly but surely, Kirstin and I are the only girls in our 10 bed room, and we have a blast with our room mates.
We end up doing the Koh Tao pubcrawl twice, both times going as Jenna and Talia (sounds like genitalia, get it?). We check out the draq queen show which has just re-opened and we are amazed by how awesome it is. We are practically screaming and giving standing ovations during the entire show, both times. We are like the most excited people on the island.
The rest is pretty much a blur, but we did get to enjoy the beautiful beach, take a night trip to High Bar, where we sat on top of a small mountain, smoking weed, snorkel by Shark Island, eaten street food (pad thai) three times a day and lots of other things. I love Koh Tao.
In Thonsala, we’re staying at Beach Village Resort. It has a pool and a nightclub and it’s actually very nice – if you’re into that kind of thing. I personally don’t like lounging by the pool or on the beach for more than 20 minutes.
The beach looks killer, though
3 minutes from the resort, there is a massive supermarket called The Big C. LOL. Inside, they have a food court, clothes, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. So much for my diet. We go there several times a day, and I’ll eat a noodle duck soup and we’ll buy some beers.
It’s as if nothing ever happens here. My days are long, but I can’t recall doing anything. We go to the beach, drink beers and pretend to be zombies to scare John. He’s such a virgin. Kirstin and I try to go exploring a bit, and end up at a food market amongst other things, but Thonsala doesn’t have much to offer compared to Haad Rin.
On our second day, Kirstin and I do shopping and take pictures wearing her taco outfit. We then do our madnatory butt photo and walk around to explore the beach, when we meet a family consisting of a young-ish couple and their baby. The woman is sitting on the sand, topless, posing seductively for the camera her partner is holding. It’s kinda awkward doing that in front of your kid. At night, we do a barbecue on the beach. We have corn, red snapper and chicken. It’s quite the disappointment, even though it sounds like heaven (right?).
Kirstin and John go to Koh Tao, while I stay here for an extra night with Aylin, James and Sara. I was going to come with them, but could tell that wasn’t gonna fly with Sara, so I stay. I do nothing at all the day they leave us, but at night we go to a hotpan buffet. All you can eat for 160 baht. It reminds me a bit of New Years Eve with my parents back in the day, but with better food.
You fry the meat on top, and boil the vegetables around the edges. When you’re done, the water has turned into an awesome soup! I definitely recommend this.
Haad Rin is crazy. In between buckets, we do multiple 7-11 runs for amazing toasties (yes, really) and accidentally stealing Chang beers. Yes, Kirstin and Sara walked out of 7-11 without paying for their beers, and it didn’t occur to them that they had just stolen beer. We randomly burst into song, mostly Beyoncé – Drunk In Love, all the time. Like, if we’re having dinner on the beach and one of the bars play the song (which they often do), we’ll knock over our chairs and dance like crazy people. Whereever you are in Haad Rin, you’ll be able to hear “WE BE ALL NIGHT! LOOOVE” constantly. We do this so much, we one night decide to get rings for our middle fingers as a reminder.
“Drunk in Love ♥”
For some reason, we end up hanging out with some douche from Canada. A real know-it-all, who doesn’t want to leave Kirstin alone, so we keep trying to escape him. He even follows us to Cactus bar to do laughing gas.
Laughing gas is fun! We stand in a circle, inhaling and breathing into a balloon until we’re too dizzy to stand, and we can’t feel our tongues. We laugh for a minute and then scream “Another!” and immeditaly head back to the annoyed bartender. About 4 balloons each later, we decide we’ve finally had enough – or don’t have enough money.
At one point, we go to the beach and have our tarot cards done. The man basically tells Kirstin and I the same thing: if we drink hot water and eat a potato every morning, we’ll live till we’re 80. We’ll meet a gentleman. We should stop smoking and drinking. Our parents have problems. Oh well.
We get some corn on the cob on the way home, while the douche follows us to our hostel. At least he’s handing out Oreos. He’s still talking shit about how he can’t join the Army for some lame reason and it’s killing him, and I look at him and think oh really? He doesn’t seem like the type that wants to move his ass at all. So I start fake-crying and telling my fake war story, because he is annoying me and he shouldn’t say those things to sound more noble than he is, when he’s full of bullcrap. Fighting a war is not a joke. So I take a piss at him, which I guess makes me the bad guy, but I just want him to shut up and think before he speaks.
As I go to the bathroom to pee and finish fake-crying, Kirstin jumps into the booth and suddenly smashes the corn into the wall, so there’s corn everwhere. Ratchet ass ho.
The day after, we decide to rent scooters and explore, for once. James and Aylin on one scooter, Sara and John on another, and lastly, Kirstin and I on the very last one. We are always soo behind everyone, that we think we have to go solo for the rest of the day. We scream out “DRUNK IN LOVE” and “WIIIEEENEEERRRR” (like Rachel does in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.) while we are driving around, admiring the beaches and palmtrees around us.
This is us at 1:20
We go to a beach, the hostel we want to book for the next day, and Thonsala. Then we go to Amsterdam Bar, where we watch the sunset in the pool.
On the way back, James’ and Aylin’s scooter gets a flat tire, so the rest of us go off road to find some help. And then we crash. Kirstin loses control of the scooter, so we fall off the side of the scooter, and land on the dirt. It doesn’t hurt, until we clean our wounds and start driving to get iodine. Then it starts to sting like a mother! This is what my leg looks like now:
We decide to head back home by ourselves, in the dark. It takes us hours. By the time we get home, I realize that I have lost my key, steal a room mate’s, and run out to get a new ribbon and a sharpie to write my bedname on it; as if it was mine. Then Sara shows up holding my key, that was hanging around my neck until I fell off the scooter. Thank God! We eat loads of food, Kirstin and I angrily pay 3500 baht for the scooter, that apparently needs a lot of repairing (there’s some mud and a few scratches on it), and then we all pass out.
It’s raining when we get off the ferry. How convenient, since there’s a big water fight today. It’s Songkran, or the Thai New Year, and it is celebrated by getting everyone soaked. Luckily, we booked the last seats on an overpriced ferry just to be there so early, that no one will be up waiting with a watergun until we’re safe indoors.
At 9.30 we’re in our hostel, Om Ganesh. To our surprise, everyone from Patong Backpacker Hostel is there! Dom, Alex, James, Binula, the sisters, so on. We all put on our swimsuits and coverups, and around noon, it starts.
This is better than Holi. In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. The streets are filled with people, pretty much stopping traffic. The little kids dump buckets of ice water on you. Backpackers gather in big hordes with colorful squirt guns and aggressively attack anyone who passes by. People on the back of the open taxis have no choice but to take what’s coming at them, while the car is slowly driving through the streets. We try not to attack people with backpacks or cameras, though. Everyone else is going to get soaked.
We have a quick lunch while it starts to rain again. I have mango sticky rice, Sara her sweet and sour chicken, which is the only thing she eats these days, and James is just tagging along. We pick up where we left off, and this time, we are drinking buckets.
With Dom, Binula and James
As the sun sets, we dry off and start the party. There is a Jungle Party, but we decide the entrance fee is too expensive, so we end up dancing on the beach for what seems like ages. As everyone else goes to bed, James, Bobby from the hostel and I head to a pool party, that is completely empty, but James throw me in the pool – with clothes on! – and we just hang in there for a while. Tired, we go back to eat before crashing. We are home at what feels like 5, but is actually 1 or 2. Oops.
The next day is the day of the Full Moon Party. Sara and I spend most of the day waiting for food. We order at two restaurants, but the waiter at the first one forgets to give Sara’s order to the kitchen, and doesn’t bother to tell me that he has cancelled mine, because they’re out of pasta. We go to place number two, which has the slowest cooks ever. For dinner, a group of us just end up buying street food. We finally sit outside the hostel with our free bucket (I accidentally drop mine and get a guy’s coupon for a bucket, aw) and free paint. Sara and I are the very first to grab a brush and get to it. We come up with some good designs, the dots I used to do at The Palace, flowers, and handprints on my bum. Hours later, everyone has almost the same design. As I always do what I call the Mandatory butt picture, I ask Sara if she minds doing painted handprints on my butt. Not wanting to get paint on the palms of her hands, she asks to me talk to the girl next to her instead. Her name is Kirstin, and she’s travelling with her friend John, aka. The Virgin. I haven’t really spoken to her at this point, but I casually ask her if she wants to help me out with that. She says yes very enthusiastically, and I immediately know that this is true love.
Bobby painting SaraKirstin painting James IDK, some guy with a massive bucket
John aka. The Virgin, Kirstin, Binula, James, Sara and me With Aylin
It’s a hot night, and the paint is coming off quickly, as we’re sweating a lot. Around 9 or 10 we do a few touch-ups and then head to the beach. That means Kirstin has to touch my butt multiple times.
At the very end of the beach, you find Mushroom Bar. Here, our new Canadian friends Kirstin and John share a shroom shake with me. Nothing happens, do a few hours later we share another one. Again, nothing happens. I don’t drink all night, but suddenly I feel drunk. I guess the shrooms are kicking in. Eventually, I lose everyone and I am on the beach by myself, partying. I get home at around 2.30, but I don’t remember much after that.
Number 20 on my list of 22 things to do: Do a drug – check!
Today, I’ve walked around in just the top from last night. I haven’t bothered to brush my teeth or put on underwear. My laziness has resulted in a party with Alex in reception, while everyone else is on the beach. We just listen to Disney songs, The Pokémon adn Thomas Train theme and Ylvis while going crazy, singing and dancing in the door to the hostel, frigtening other people.
We’re supposed to leave tomorrow. I have a feeling we wont after all.
The beach looks killer, though
