Drinking

June 6, 2014

Sihanoukville

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, balloons, Cambodia, Drinking, sihanoukville

Now for the first time in what seems like ages, I’m actually having fun. Despite an almost constant thunderstorm and pouring rain, I am having an amazing time in Sihanoukville. It involves drinking, of course.

We stay at Monkey Republic, which has a nice bar and restautant area with a good atmosphere, although no one really seems to be socializing. It makes me feel bad for the solo travellers staying here, and at night, while we’re having a cider at one of the tables, I notice a girl sitting by herself at the bar with no one to talk to. After a while, I hit the bar and order a drink and ask her to join us. Her name is Kirsten, and she’s from Melbourne, but on a 6-month long trip around SE Asia and Europe. We talk about Greece (of course), and get increasingly intoxicated while at it. A girl from Canada, Lauren, joins us at the table, and Sara goes to bed soon after. We decide to go to Utopia, where we enjoy a drinking game and some balloons, while a weird Cambodian guy creeps on us. We leave after he becomes too annoying and head to the beach. Kristen and I are dancing and having our own party, while Lauren goes to talk to people. Not too long passes before we head to JJ’s Bar and go crazy. I am home around 3 at night, after a visit to Jimmy’s kebab stand.

The day after, Sara and I cross the street and go to TopCat Cinema and watch Don Jon, and then we get some food. The cinema is more like a place full of small rooms with AC and blankets and a PC full of movies and TV shows that you can choose from, and you can buy snacks from a vending machine and even order (happy) pizzas! Most of the food around here is western and good, so we get really fat during our stay. Then we end up drinking ciders at the bar with Kristen again, and the two of us go out to the exact same places, buying tons of balloons. I accidentally pop or let go of a few. I’m home at around 2 after my by now usual kebab.

Then comes the next day, and it rains even more than ever. Sara and I have a Sex and The City marathon at the cinema for a few hours and then take a nap. We hang out in the bar area, Kirsten joins us and since my hobbies are drinking wine and judging people, we get ourselves a glass and I get Tinder. Fun fact is I get a job offer at JJ’s because I match one of the guys working there.

Well, bottom line is that Kirsten and I get a bit drunk and want to go to the night market, but I tell her about a guy I’ve noticed at lunch and at the bar. He’s all by himself and no one talks to him, and I feel really bad, but just don’t really know what to do or say. She convinces me to go ask him if he wants to come. My stragedy is to buy us a shot of tequila and ask him if he wants one. And so a night of being really drunk begins yet again.

I try to stick to balloons, as I have to get up and pack for our bus at 6, but I end up feeling… sick. I go to a quiet place at the beach and get sick, all while watching the thunder getting closer to the beach. It’s beautiful. I also smoke an entire pack of cigarettes that I have somehow acquired, because it replaces the bad taste in my mouth with another bad taste. I don’t last much longer after that, and I get my kebab and hurry home at around 1.

I wake up at 6.15, realising that I have set my alarm for 7 instead in my drunken state. I hurry up and finish packing, but I feel more and more sick. I try to throw up, but not much is coming up. It’s pouring more than ever outside, and the restaurant is still closed, so my hope of waiting for the bus after check-out with some fruit is gone. We get to wait with our backpacks in the shed that is the reception, and the bus is surprisingly almost on time! We start driving, and it’s really upsetting my stomach. I’ve brought a tiny plastic bag with me just in case, and after less than an hour of driving, I quickly get it out of my bag and watery vomit pours out of me. I try to make as little noise as possible, to avoid people noticing or getting sick. Then I notice that my bag is leaking and my lap is getting soaking wet. I have no idea what to do. I just hold on to the bag and feel even worse, until Sara finds another bag that I can dump the leaking one into. It helps, but the damage is done. I am soaking wet and reeking of vomit. We have to drive like 5 hours until we reach Phnom Penh and switch to a bigger bus to Siem Reap. I am slowly drying, the freezing AC making it hard to do, but at our quick stops, I get out in the heat and eat rice and soy sauce to stabilize my stomach and try to dry off as much as possible.

We continue another 7 hours on this bus, and I feel a lot better, but still smelling awful. We get picked up at the bus office and are driven to Angkor Wonder Hotel. I get a shower and throw out my red India pants with the horrible smell on them, and we have some dinner on pub street before crashing. It’s been some hectic days and I need rest.

May 16, 2014

That time I thought Sara was dead

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Drinking, laos, scary stories, tubing, unfortunate happenings, vang vieng

So, on our first day in Vang Vieng, we pretty much think there is only really one street here and tha’s it. We stay at Easy Go, which seemed nice at first, until we have to endure another night in a fan room, which makes us soak the beds in sweat. I wake up, feeling severely dehydrated and unable to do a simple task like showering or brushing my teeth, so we decide it’s time to check out and go to Central Backpackers. Most restaurants play Friends all day and night, so we honestly spend two days just chilling on a bed of pillows, watching TV. I’ve been in this weird state of laziness since Bangkok, and I haven’t wanted to drink or really meet people since then. It’s quite awful.

This is what paradise looks like to the lazy backpacker

On our third day, we decide to go tubing, which is what this place is known for. We meet two Danish girls, Siw and Christine (random that I found another one, since it’s such a rare name back home), and an American guy, Tyler. We all go to the first bar, shotgun a can of beer, have shots, play beerpong and then we go out on the water.

At the next bar, I play flipcup, have cocktails, more shots and probably another beer. You get a nice little bracelet for every shot you do. By the third bar I am wasted. I lose Sara in the grass somewhere between the third and fourth bar, and after drinking at the fourth for a while, I get worried. I have just assumed she was going to catch up anytime, or maybe she’s met some of our friends on the way on gone back to the other bar. A guy I’ve been drinking with goes out to find Sara, but after 10 minutes it starts raining. A lot. He doesn’t come back, and the girls at the bar start to get pissed with me that their friend in’t back, so I decide to swim against the current in the rain to find her.

I am calling out her name, but nothing but the hard rain responds. The river is cold and dark, sometimes really deep, sometimes I can feel my feet stick in the gooey mud. I am scared, because I don’t like deep and dark waters, and because all that I can think of, is how I have to call Sara’s parents and tell them that their daughter has drowned. I swim for at least half an hour (since I wma searching very hard, and the weather makes swimming more difficult) before I reach the last bar we’d been to. It’s packed with people, and I look everywhere, crying hysterically. Suddenly, a few of the people I have been drinking with see me, and run over to see what’s wrong. They try to comfort me and tell me that she’ss alright, but I don’t believe them. I’m drunk and scared. A couple of french guys come around and jokingly say (in a french funny way – so without a smile on their faces) that she is probably dead and it’s my fault for not taking better care of her. Of course this upset me even more, and one of the girls takes me away from the crowd and tells me to go home.

I cross the river to get to a bar with no people in it. A big local family is sitting there, and as I approach them for help to get a taxi, I break down. Still, they take me to a taxi and demand 20.000 kip. I am tired, sad and desperate, so I just hand the driver money. As he’ss about to drive, three very demanding spanish girls jump on board and only pay 10.000 each. They keep asking him to drive faster so they can get their deposit for the tubes back – I realise I have lost mine at the fourth bar, when I went out swimming to look for Sara. After they’ve been dropped off, the driver doesn’t bother stopping at my hostel: he tells me to get off at the same place as the girls and walk in the rain. I try to argue, after all I have paid double, but he lets me out, and I walk barefoot in a bikini in the rain, crying.

I walk up to the room to find Sara asleep. I don’t even feel relieved, I just feel anger. I startethrowing things at her to wake her up and show how upset I am, but her side of the story is different than mine. She feels that I have abandoned her, and I am the bad guy. More upset than ever, I walk out, go to a restaurant and have dinner and watch Friends for hours. I calm down quite a lot, but not enough. I stay up till about 3 at night, still very drunk, and buy an amazing burger on the street just before falling asleep.

Best burger ever

Bracelets from tubing

The next day, I get Sara’s version of the story. She called for me while we were approaching the fourth bar, passed out in the tall grass by the river, then was taken to some local’s home, where she vomited, before being driven back to the hostel and helped to bed.

The yearly rocket festival Bun Bang Fai is happening that day to celebrate the beginning of rain season, but we don’t bother leaving the restaurants.

At night, people get what they wished for: rain. And lots of it. It’s storming, massive lightning bolts appear all over the sky, and the rain is brutal. The power goes out for quite some time. The ground floor is flooded. The door to our room on the third floor can barely stay closed from the strong wind. I guess no street food for me tonight.

All in all, Vang Vieng was an experience.

May 14, 2014

Slowboat to Luang Prabang

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Drinking, laos, luang prabang, slowboat

This is such a boring thing to write about, much like the trip itself. It takes two days of sailing on the Mekong River to get to Luang Prabang, only broken up by a night in Pakbeng.

The slowboat trip is fairly uneventful. Beautiful view, but 8 hours on a boat isn’t purely entertaining. On the first day, Sara, Kaleigh, Max, Andrew and I bring a bottle of vodka and end up having quite the party in the back of the boat. On the second, I sleep as much as I can. Oh, and we pass a dead, skinned animal in the river and I’ve finally learned that death smells foul.

I’m not really impressed by Luang Prabang. We check into SpicyLaos, in a decent dorm with no AC, which is awful. We decide to upgrade and get AC, even though it costs extra.

The hostel offers a free cup of snakewhiskey to the ones who dare. I dared, and my mouth tasted like rotten meat for the entire evening. That’s what happens when a snake has been in there for 5 years, I guess.

The next day, we go with a group from the hostel to Kuang Si waterfalls and it is so amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. First, we go to the bear sanctuary.

That’s a bear cage

We then go swim in one of the pools with a smaller waterfall, which makes it OK to cross off another thing on my 22 things list:

#17: Shower under a waterfall

At night, we have some beer and a hookah at Utopia, which is a really cool bar, and also the only one of two bars in town. And it closes at 23.30! Fuck that. But at least the view is nice.

Sunset at Utopia

Besides the waterfalls, there is a nightmarket and some temples, all things that we are bored of. We’ve spent three days here and now we are heading to Vang Vieng, which I am just so ready for. I am so bored!!

April 22, 2014

Koh Tao

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Drinking, koh tao, pubcrawl, snorkelling, thailand

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.

April 16, 2014

“Another!”

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, balloons, Drinking, koh phangan, thailand

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.

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