Our bus to the ferry picks us up at 8. We drive for ages, before we get to the pier. It’s like 4 PM when we get on the boat, and it’s completly full. It’s an unpleasant day journey to say the least, but at 7-ish at night we arrive at our hostel, Buddha Lounge, in Koh Samui. We have dinner and instantly crash in our beds.
The next day, after several naps, we head to Chaweng to do some shopping for Songkran (Thai New Year) the next day. But it’s already begun. We are soaked within minutes, and I am scared that my camera, phone and ferry ticket will be destroyed, so I hold on to my bag for dear life. We see no other option than to buy a watergun now instead of later. We get two big ones for a total of 600 baht, and we particiapte in the fight for a while.
We go back to the hotel and chilled out for the evening. Our American roommate tells us about Peru and the amazing experience he had with Ayahuasca. We’re completely into his story for hours.
The next day, we are picked up at 6.30 in the morning to go to the pier, so we had needed the rest. This is only a short journey though, so three hours later, we’re at our hostel in Koh Phangan.
“You go to the cinema every day“, the receptionist jokes as we head out for another movie. It’s our second day in a row. We haven’t done any sightseeing or real exploring for some time; it’s exhausting and just temple after temple after beach after fort. Our days are empty and boring, so we go to see Noah in 3D starring Russell Crowe. What a piece of shit that is.
Before the movie, we go to an australian restaurant and get day drunk. I have a burger. I’m insanely full. But then, we walk by all those little shops that have smoothies and milkshakes, and they have the oreoshake that I’ve been craving for a while. In my belly it goes, and I think my belly’s gonna pop. Then we’re at the cinema: popcorn time! I have no self restraint.
The cinema is located in a busy shopping mall, and everywhere you look, a white, fat and old man will be holding hands with a young thai girl – or boy. Most of them seem to go to the cinema for a day date. One especially fat guy, basically an apple on legs, sits next to Sara with a really young local boy. I don’t know whether to find it funny or sad.
After the shitty movie, we head back to complain to everyone in the common room about it. Sara is feeling sick, and goes bed early, while the crowd on the floor thins out. Suddenly, we are three people left, and we agree to see a ping pong show – without animals this time. We meet my roommate Jennifer and her friend Nadia on the way, and they join us. We have a few buckets around different bars before going to a decent stripclub. The ping pong show has the lady pulling out razors, whistling with a flute, throwing darts at balloons that I’m holding, and smoking cigarettes. After that, the strippers pull me on stage, and the guys join me. We just do a bad dance and laugh our asses off, before I head to bed; it’s an early day the next day.
It’s a cloudy, yet hot day in Phi Phi. We have just hugged Tori goodbye, and we’re standing on the pier with our heavy backpacks on, confused. There seems to be no system, no way to tell which ferry is taking us to Patong. Suddenly, in the midst of our frustration, a super attractive guy approaches us. He is confused too. He has an accent I think is Australian, but it turns out that he’s English. I was never good at differentiating those.
We talk for some time about where we are staying in Patong (of course he’s not staying at our hostel), what our plans are (pretty much the same), and then Sara and I see the ferry, and we go to board it, while he finds his friends. Before we leave, he says “see you later!”
But we never see him again.
I’m bummed. Patong is full of people, but I haven’t seen anyone I would look at twice. And I know he’s here somewhere. But where?
On the ferry, we get an entire row of seats to ourselves. We hop under my blanket, as the AC is making us cold. A cute little boy, no more than two years old, is in the row next to us with his parents. He keeps walking over to me, smiling, touching my hair. I am trying to read my book, The Night Circus, but I’m too tired, and I fall asleep. That’s when the little boy decides to throw a tantrum for the rest of the trip. He even walks over to me and screams directly into my ear. Suddenly he’s not so cute anymore.
After getting off the ferry, we share a car with some people to Patong Beach. Some of them could have been the cast of Geordie Shore, with their barely there clothing, fake nails and lashes, and big suitcases. I guess backpacking isn’t for everyone. They put on a cheesy 00’s R’n’B/pop playlist and start singing along, while the rest of us are suffering in silence. They haven’t booked anything in advance, so they have our driver take them around some hotels, so they can ask for room prices (seriously? If you’re that cheap, stay at a hostel instead). It takes ages to actually get to the part of Patong everyone else is going to.
After a walk on Bangla Road, through an alley filled with thai women offering massages and eating lemongrass, we find the entrance to Patong Backpacker Hostel. The owner, Mama, is crazy and adorable, and everyone loves her right away. She shows us to a room that we share with Jennifer from Germany, who is always either out or in bed reading.
After a fancy dinner with steak (first cow in a month!) and piña coladas served in coconuts, Sara feels a bit ill and needs to lie down.
I want to go out, but accept that my she isn’t feeling well. I then decide to Skype Aga while Sara goes to sleep. A few hours later she changes her mind, and we have a massive argument about things that we’ve kept to ourselves for a while. Finally, we just hug it out and go out with the other people from the hostel. People I haven’t even spoken to yet!
We’re a big group, starting at a bar with a tiny stage and two stripper poles. The girls, me included, sit on the edge of the stage, completely into our mojito buckets and rapping along to Macklemore, while the guys are on the poles.It’s a different world in Patong.
At some point, we end up at a ping pong show. I’ve always imagined a woman on stage, completely naked and lying down, just popping out ping pong balls. Instead we sit, with a beer in hand, and witness an old woman in a camisole pulling out nails and razors, and popping out fish, turtles and budgies. She even puts the budgy back up, only to pop it out again. At this point, my mouth drops open, and my eyes meet two other guys with the same expression. We leave immediatly.
Sara and I take Mark, who got the pleasure of being stripped down and tittie-rubbed by the topless dancers entertaining between the ping pong lady’s bits, to Tiger Bar. It’s a piece of art in itself, but a water is 140 baht, and there are no cute guys in there. We sit at a table with a girl dancing on a pole, and suddenly she reaches for my hand. After a couple of times saying “no”, I take off my shoes and join her for a few minutes. I love this girl so much, I give her all my 20s in tips, and she gives me a kiss on the cheek. She has me all figured out.
We do a bit of club hopping, before we end up at a McDonald’s. Full and exhausted, we crawl to bed at 4.
I wake up the next day feeling alright, although a bit smelly. Everyone is going out for breakfast, and we end at McDonald’s when two girls from California decide they want something else – and so does Sara. The group splits up, and we walk in the blazing heat for a while, and end up at a restaurant at the beach. I am starving at this point, and order two different things, but by the time it arrives, my hangover hits me. A bad headache and severe nausea, and I run to the bathroom across the street, pay 5 baht to use it, and then nothing. I can’t throw up. I am irritated, tired, and I have no appetite, but the girls force me to eat my sandwich before I pass out in my bed.
We both wake up at around 2 o’clock. Our plan to go to Phuket for the day isn’t happening, so we decide to look for a cinema. A 5 minute walk later, we’re in this huge shopping mall, and we have 20 minutes to find the cinema before the movie starts. We finally find it, buy two tickets to Divergent, and get our bag of popcorn. The cinema is beautiful here, and the seats very comfortable. The only thing that’s different from what I’m used to is that we have to stand up for the King’s Anthem.
After the movie, we have a pedicure and manicure and a nice dinner, before we hang out with a beer and some people in the common room at the hostel. We go to Bangla Road by ourselves and have a drink, but we’re just not feeling it, so we go home and fall asleep at around 1.
Since my days after a night out usually consist of me in a fetal position on the cold, hard bathroom floor, hugging the toilet and occassionally crying for my mom, who isn’t there, I take it relatively easy on our first night in Phi Phi. Relatively. Sara and Tori don’t.
We have breakfast around noon, several naps and no drinks at all the next day. Sara and I don’t want to stay at Flower Bungalows anymore, so while she is hungover and I dizzy from the blazing heat and excessive sweating, we go to virtually every hostel, hotel and guest house, trying to get a good deal. We see many nice ones, but most are around 1800 baht per night, which is out of our budget. We eventually decide on Tara Inn at 700 baht, and move there the following day.
I love having a proper bathroom, a nice bed, and a place to put all our shit. All my clothes are at the very bottom of my backpack, so I have to get everything out of there all the time, and I can’t be bothered to repack unless we’re leaving, so four months worth of crap is spread out on the floor at all times.
We basically just drop our stuff at the room and decide it’s time to actually see something while here. Tori wants to take us to this beach that is supposed to be half an hour away and much nicer, but she ends up showing us the wrong way to the wrong beach. I’ll tell you why we don’t mind in a bit.
It’s around 40 degrees, and the humidity is the worst I’ve ever tried. You can’t possibly keep yourself hydrated, as the sweat is running down your back and your face at an impossible pace. We walk a bit out of town, Tori and I barefoot, up some incredibly steep hills, that seem to go on forever. At one point, we see a nature trail with signs pointing to the viewpoint and beach, so we go that way. The trail is obviously just dirt, pebbles, dried, sharp leaves, and twigs. It’s uncomfortable, painful even, to walk on.
After about an hour of walking, we find a trail down to Rantee beach. It is steep, extremely painful and hard to climb down from, and we all get separated from each other because of our individual paces and pain tolerances. We end up at the beach, around 2 hours after we’ve left Tonsai pier, our feet red, black and ultra-sensitive from the trails and burning concrete we’ve walked on. Tori’s never seen this beach before, but she promises it’s way more beautiful than the one she intended to take us to. It’s a fairly small beach, not even a kilometer long, and only a few people are around. The sand is white and the water green going on blue, and very clear. We immediatly drop everything and jump in the ocean.
We stay here for an hour, maybe more, before we are bored of lying in the sun, turning red. 200 bahts later, we are on a longtail taxiboat back to Tonsai. I am so happy to see our shower, which only has cold water, but that’s alright with me. We have a great dinner at Papaya, where the waiter is so sweet, my heart melts when I think of him. I also have my first Pad Thai!
After dinner, we go back to get ready, supposed to meet Tori at 9 at Reggae Bar. She doesn’t show, but her friends, Brooks and Pak do, so we hang out with them, a guy from Switzerland, and two from London.
After a quick drink at Banana Bar, we head to the beach, and I meet Spencer, a guy I worked with last year at The Pink Palace! What a small world.
I am at one bucket, two Jägerbombs, and one beer before I switch to water, because I feel more sick than drunk. Thai Jägermeister is basically amphetamine, I hear.
I have a great time just talking to people and dancing, even though I’m not my usual sloppy self. I walk around for a bit with Pak, and we end up walking the streets, where we meet up with Lotion, the guy in the picture above. He’s always hanging around by Reggae Bar, and now he’s sitting by the ATM next to the bar with a group of friends. We join them and start harassing people walking by, yelling things like “BLACK TAR HEROIN! CHEAP PRICES! COME GET YOUR BLACK TAR HEROIN RIGHT HERE!”
We then sit down at a tattoo shop and have a breezer with the Thai guys working there, but they start getting a bit creepy, so we leave. Like, they think I am the owners girlfriend and he’s showing guys that talk to me his gun kind of creepy.
At around 5 in the morning, I want to go home with a burger instead of a guy, so I buy one at one of the stands by the beach and I eat it on the bed while talking to Sara, who’s been asleep for a few hours. It’s the best burger of my life. Maybe because it’s 5 in the morning, but it really is amazing.
It’s a cloudy day when we take the ferry to Koh Phi Phi. We are covered in sunblock and napping in the shade on the roof for two and a half hours, yet we end up with awkward tanlines and sunburns by the time we get off the boat.
As soon as we dock and pay the 20 baht tax for staying on the island, we head to Flower Bungalows, which is like the cheapest place in Phi Phi, but also a total shit hole. We just throw our stuff there and go for a cider at Dojo, where a guy named Colin comes up and serves us until he reveals that he doesn’t even work there. He’s a hilarious guy, and he ends up staying at our table for a few hours, talking about various awkward topics, and pulling passing people into the conversation.
We then go to a beauty salon called Anita’s. Here I’ll advise men, family members and other people that can’t stand reading about naked people, vaginas or waxing to stop reading. This is too much information.
We have our legs waxed in beds right by the window. Like, people can see us from the streets. A couple walks in for a foot massage, and they are sat on chairs directly across from us, where they can watch us getting our hairs ripped off. The girl smiles at me a few times. It’s all fine, although I have a sunburn on my knees, so warm wax and what happens next hurts like a mother. Then, we decide we might as well get a bikini wax, as showers are hard to come by, which makes shaving impossible, and we’re going to be in bikinis. I am the first one, and I’ve never tried it before, so I am terrified. Two women are working on me/holding me down, while Sara is talking to me on the other side of the curtain (they put me in a more private bed with a curtain around it, thank God). I am laughing the whole time, because of the pain and how awkward my life is. At least I have more fun than the guy getting the foot massage, as he is apparently cringing everytime he hears hairs getting ripped off my private parts.
OK, families and men can read again now.
We have dinner and a bucket at Reggae Bar, where a kickboxing match is taking place. We then head to Banana Bar, where Sara and Tori play beer pong before we get a big bunch of people to play flip cup. I am fucking awesome at it, and my team win 4 times in a row, before a few losses and then more wins. The group heads to the beach, where everyone on this island go after midnight, and it is super crowded and the music is terrible. We lose Tori and the crowd at some point and look for them while doing some troll dancing and going in the water. It smells really bad, by the way.
Our bus to the ferry picks us up at 8. We drive for ages, before we get to the pier. It’s like 4 PM when we get on the boat, and it’s completly full. It’s an unpleasant day journey to say the least, but at 7-ish at night we arrive at our hostel, Buddha Lounge, in Koh Samui. We have dinner and instantly crash in our beds.
