The Descent into Madness

Friday morning came, and we were ready to make a move.

Koh Phagnan, for all its beauty, was beginning to wear on us with its "Endless Spring Break!!!" attitude, and as our taxi arrived we were inspired to set our minds free and explore something more meaningful. We were on our way from the South of Thailand up to the North (Chaing Mai), which would take us some 15,000km and about 24 hours from the trunk to the head of the "elephant." A boat, a couple planes and a few taxi rides later we'd be resting comfortably in the cool, mountainous regions of some of Thailand's most historically and culturally rich land. Fittingly, this was the artwork adorning our ride from our hotel. I'm pretty sure she isn't wearing any bottoms.

So off we were into the night, our early-morning flight to Bangkok requiring that we take a sleeper ferry, which the woman at our hotel sold us on with: "you even get your own beds!", something - as you've seen in previous posts - is never a guarantee. And technically, she wasn't lying. The problem was this: the "beds" were 1-inch thin mattresses stacked next to each other in 2 rows of 80, in a room with 5-foot ceilings, 170+ inhabitants and very, very little air. The next 7.5 hours were filled with several near mental breakdowns, a tense argument between a Scot and Israeli who both had been assigned Bed #18, and a below deck run-in with a middle-aged Thai man that took the phrase "invasion of personal space" to a new level. (I'm still not quite sure if he wanted to kiss me or kill me, and even worse, I'm pretty sure I would have opted for the latter).

But we survived and advanced, knowing that the experience would somehow make us stronger, if only for the fact that I now strongly, strongly despise night ferries. Our journey pushed us onward to Sura Thani "You're Only Here Because You Want to Be Someplace Else" International Airport (where airport security is mainly rooted in the honor system). After drawing the ire of the sole night security guard who we awoke from his peaceful slumber, I treated myself to some of the best sleep of my life, seen here.


The next 18 hours or so is a blur, summed up best by these faces, and the fact that the highlights of our day included riding a combination people-mover slash escalator, and betting on what time which flight's gates would open for check-in. (I would eventually realize that it worked on a system of 2 hours before departure, but somehow still manage not to make any money off this information.)

Bleary-eyed and delusional, we finally arrived, and after finding a cheap hotel with two beds, a real shower, and a television show that plays an all-day stream of bootleg movies, for which they inexplicably create their own opening credits (I don't understand this on so many levels), we dubbed Chaing Mai the greatest place on the face of the earth. Two thoroughly disappointing meals and one horrible night market experience later, we cried for the fall of our dream city. But, at least this happened:


We're off to find the beating heart we know this city has.

Full Moon Party (The parts that I remember)

Now, I have been to parties before. This was just like the rest of them. Music, sweaty people, and awkward dudes staring into the crowd hoping that a girl will magically come and ask them to dance.

But one thing set it apart....

the Bucket.

This is how the bucket is made:

Ingredients:

-Cola

-Ice

-Red Bull

-AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF WHISKEY

-Roofie and/or Extacy optional.

Here's the big victim of the night:

Eugene Yang (shown left) began his night with one bucket.

One bucket became two...

Two buckets became:

We found him randomly on the beach on the way back to his hotel with corn in his hand.

To be honest, the story continues with a passed-out Stubbs who wouldn't wake up in a locked room, a ladyboy at the door, and the strangest walk home but this is the picture I have of the full moon party in my head.

No more buckets for me, or I'll end up on a beach somewhere with ladyboys and corn.

Lesson learned.

The Day the 1980s Died

There's several ways to get burned in Koh Phagnan.

First off, of course, there's the sun. The heat here gets brutal during the day and peaks late afternoon in the Florida style, leading to a nearly unshakable sweatyface. Then, there's the gas stations, served up in these Malatov Cocktail-style bottles that can both fill your motorbike and help defend your life in case of stray dog attack or the occasional bloody coup. Hot sauce is rampant on every street food stand, often only vaguely distinguishable by color, and dousing your falafel with a little extra flavor is a sometimes rewarding, sometimes disastrous game of Russian Roulette.


And if you're up for some late night heat, there's always the Jump-Rope-On-Fire game, which consists of two Thai dudes lighting a jump rope on fire and then daring drunk tourists to a semi-deadly game of double dutch. Here, two guys step up to the challenge...unsuccesfully.

All those things, we've taken in stride. We've taken the heat, and stayed in the kitchen. But nothing - NOTHING could have prepared us from the burn we recieved on an otherwise chilled-out night enjoying a few beers on the beach in Haad Rin.

The perpetrator?

Connect Four.

Here's the situation. You're sitting around with your boys, enjoying a few Singhas and a couple good laughs, when a sweet-looking 12 year old girl approaches you holding that classic game of wits you remember so fondly from your childhood. Dough-eyed and innocent, she offers you a challenge.

"Hey man, play a game?"

She lays down the stakes, and they're simple enough. 100 baht on the line. One game. Winner take all. And you figure, hey, I wasn't so bad at this game as a kid, and really - how good could she be? And you think, hey, she's just trying her luck to make a little scratch, I wouldn't feel that bad losing my money to her anyway.

So you accept the challenge. She makes the first move.

And it's over.

For the next two to five minutes she completely destroys you in a manner so cold, so surgical, it makes Ivan Drago's training sessions look like a heart-to-heart with Doctor Phil. During the game she doesn't smile, she doesn't blink, she simply seeks and destroys, always working four or five moves ahead, and in the end leaving you devoid of 100-baht and years of irreplacable dignity.

Above, Stubbs - after running to a computer room to look up Connect Four strategy ("you can beat them if you take the first move!"), puts up a valiant effort against another one of these half-pint hustlers. The game was longer, but the result was the same. The kid gave Stubbs a coral flower necklace as a respectful consellation prize, but it hangs now around his neck as the ever-present Albatross, the constant reminder that no matter if you go for the bottom, or go for the top, no matter how hard you go for it, you're not connecting four.

The Rise and Fall of Brill and Tup

Hello everyone!

I haven't blogged in a while. I've been too busy avoiding pickpockets and ladyboys to find a decent thing to say. However, I know one thing:

Thailand is amazing. Here is the proof:
They are always keeping people safe.

For Dan however, Thailand giveith and Thailand takeith skin off your arm:

And don't forget Tup getting burned by a jump rope of fire:

Tune in for the Full Moon Party entry....

Dr. StrangeThai, or How I Finally Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Coconut

A word of advice to future travelers: Be specific.

This morning, while I was off paying for the various damages to my motorbike (apparently they have some ridiculous policy where crashing your bike is frowned upon), our friends Tup and Stubbs decided that they would head down to Haad Rin. Don decided to wait behind while I tried to convince the motorbike guy that the paint was torn off of the right side of the bike before I rode it horizontally across 15 feet of pavement.

Don and Tup decided to meet at "the pier."

Now, in East Brunswick, we have one mall. So if I told you I'd meet you at the mall at 5, we'd probably be able to pull that off pretty easily. The problem is, Koh Phagnan is an island, accesible only by boat. Such an infastructure requires the existance of an inordinate amount of piers.

Naturally, Don and Tup (seen here actually succeding in an attempt to harmonize) weren't talking about the same pier.

What followed was a 4-hour tour across the island with various reckless taxi drivers, one of whom beeped his horn incessantly at a ridiculously slow moving car in front of him that didn't actually exist, and ended up costing us the equivalent of one night's hotel stay.

But it could have been worse. We could have been on motorbikes.

The buzz here is palpable as the Full Moon Party approaches. The woman at our hotel warned us that tonight our hotel was having a pool party that would be "very loud," and there are signs everywhere preparing us for the inevitable pick-pocketing by a LadyBoy. Personally, I'm more afraid of getting hit by a 10-pound coconut, which, according to the Austrian chick at our hotel, is the #2 cause of death in Koh Phagnan. Here, Tup holds a particularly mean-looking one that we launched several times against a rock in a futile attempt to break it. We eventually decided to concede and give it our respect.

The "oompta oompta" of techno music has begun outside, so I'm off to grab Don and try to convince him it's not too early to grab dinner, despite the fact that we just recently ate lunch. Twice.

The Good, the Better, and the Ugly

Right now, I am afraid to leave this room.

It's not for fear of crime, life here is peaceful and you're more likely to be greeted with a warm smile than a hot hand. It's not for fear of rain, the weather since we've arrived has been beautiful and not nearly as sweltering as Koh Phagnan's close-to-the equator location suggests.

But something is waiting for me outside that threatens my existance more than any of the "caution" tips in Frommer's prepared me for.

It's a motorbike.

See how happy I look in this picture? Well, look closer. It's because I'm not actually on the bike. About four minutes later I nearly launched myself through the wall of our hotel's restaurant (which has excellent Lad Na by the way, but must - not - blog - about - food...) Now, Mom, Amy, stop punching the computer screen - we're returning the bikes tomorrow morning and hopefully I won't have to pay too much for the war wounds I put on the thing when I crashed it directly in front of the rental place. Maybe I can claim the ignorance of being "farang" (foreigner) which seems to get you out of a good deal of things here, kind of like Zack Morris calling a time-out and leaving the room.

So that's the ugly. Now on to the beautiful - everything else.

This is the view from our balcony. We're in Koh Phagnan, a little island off Thailand's south-eastern coast. We capped off Friday with a moderately wild final night in Bangkok, which involved, unfortunately, a horrifying ping pong show which instantly sent us into Fight Club mode (first rule of ping pong show, is that we'll never, ever again talk about the ping pong show.) After a near "we got screwed" experience that involved handing $1000 baht over to a random woman on our ferry over from Sura Thani who promised to score us a "very nice room right next to the beach," we somehow scored a very nice room right next to the beach. It's actually an incredible, tiny little bungalow in a community of no more than 30, looking over the view that you see here. We spent the first hour after we got here just staring into the horizon, then grabbed dinner and drinks on the beach with a British/Austrian couple who were on holiday from volunteering with tsunami relief.

At some point, we're supposed to leave this place and head down to the "party" side of the island, but the thought of trading peace and tranquility for beer and tequila has been an epic struggle which we haven't yet resolved. For now, though, things seem to make sense, and the slow pace of life in Thailand has taken its course on our minds and bodies (I swear my beard is growing slower here - four days without shaving in the States and I'd already be tripping over the thing).

Full Moon Party on Wednesday, Vietnam on October 2. Until then, I'll be here:

Video Update by Don

Here is our first Tuk Tuk ride:



Dan shows us how a Tuk Tuk driver sells his "goods":

Snapshots from Temple Tour

Hopped on a Tuk-Tuk this morning and took a 3-hour tour of temples around the city for 20 baht (about 68 cents). Here's some pictures (aka it's too freakin hot in here to write).

Our driver/guide for the day.

Shrine on the way to the top of the Marble Wat.

Marble Wat waterfall, alongside the staircase to the top.

Collection of Buddha statues, Marble Wat.

"What is this?! A temple for ANTS?!?!"

Highlight moment of the trip so far. We bought a small cage with four birds inside and in order to score some "good luck and happiness," pulled the door of the cage open and set the birds free, while standing in front of...

The Reclining Buddha. 53 feet tall.

An attempt at blogging about something other than food (by Dan)

Asian rain is no joke.

Since the only television I've watched over the past week has either been a) a brilliant Korean game show in which various entertainers try to launch themselves through odd shapes in a wall (somebody please find this on YouTube and share it with your friends. I'm currently in negotiations with a producer to bring this show to America and am expecting to make American Idol look like "Joey"); and b) an American television channel that runs a (possibly) illegal feed from Thai-captioned HBO and features a constant stream of Julia Roberts and Hillary Duff movies ("the moment I wake up....before I put on my make-up..."); I haven't had any official Weather Channel caliber education as to why it's raining so hard here. All I know is that every day, at least once a day, it freakin RAINS. And I'm not talking about a little American sun-shower, this rain has no mercy. It floods the streets within the first 30 seconds, it eats umbrellas, and I'm pretty sure I saw it take a guy's wallet.

Other than that, Thailand is pretty incredible.


We moved into a hotel across the city off Khosam Road, which is pretty much the Bourbon Street of Bangkok. Our hotel is located about 30 seconds from a 200-yard strip of bars, restaurants, and banana pancake stands. Our typical day is spent waking up, asking each other why it's so freaking hot in the room, catching a half hour of Chris Noth teaching the secrets of romance to swooning teenage girls in The Perfect Man (or a near equivalent), and then hitting the city in search of culture. So far we've found:


- A group of Thai kids playing a game which involves one kid curling up in a ball and counting to ten while seven other kids hide in a single file line behind a motorbike seven feet away. When the counting kid opens his eyes, he launches himself at the other kids, who scream in enjoyment, and then they all climb to the top of a chain link fence. This action was repeated about three times. I have no idea what this game is but I'm hoping to option it as part of my show. We'll probably run it during Sweeps Week.


- A block-long strip of artist-themed bars called Dali, Monet, Degas, etc., which looked really promising, until our approach at each door was met with a wall of scantily-clad women giving us looks that were at the same time incredibly seductive and insanely threatening. Fight-or-flight kicked in and we chose the latter.

- A back-alley reggae pub with really big beers and a really small pool table, where we chilled with a Brit, an Indian, an Israeli and a New Zealand(er?) and I tried to sell them on the merits of tourism to New Jersey. Gotta support the team.
















The rest of yesterday was wasted away at the hotel bar and on the phone with various airlines tring to book us a flight south to Koh Phagnan in time for the Full Moon Party, which is a scene of epic beach-side debauchery I just hope to get through alive. Apparently we're on a flight tomorrow morning. More to come...

Travel Thoughts by Don

...

Don: "I love you."
Dan: "I love you."
Don: "Why don't we say that more often?"
Dan: "I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, 'I love my best friend, Don!'"

Dan: [boop]

The Greatest Moment of My Life...almost (by Dan)

Look at this:

Seriously, look at it. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?

For those who know me well, you already understand. And for those who don't, well, I'll put it this way. Some people make journeys across the globe to give their lives perspective. Some aim to see wrong and to make it right. Some are seeking deeper truths, answers to the big questions: How can man be truly good? Why are we here?

Me?

I came for the noodles.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm out for all of the other reasons, too. But there's something about that mix of sweet and spicy that gives me all the answers I need. When I eat Thai food, I know "why I'm here."

And there it was, after a 12-hour day of travelling that included epic moments like this:

and this...

I finally found myself face to face with the Holy Grail. An authentic Thai noodle stand. A bowl-for-a-third-of-a-buck oasis specializing in something that resembled Pad Thai, something that resembled Lad Na, and something that resembled a fairy tale princess riding a unicorn toward a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. (The princess part may have been a hallucination on account of the noodles/heat/malaria pills). But it was there, Marcellus Wallace's briefcase to my Vincent Vega, the Maltese Falcon to my Sam Spade, the 50-year-storm, the ultimate rush.

There was only one problem.

I already ate.

And like the well-mannered, high-moraled boy that I am, I wanted my first time to be special. So I passed. Reviews to come upon the next blog. But for now, on to matters that - brace yourselves - have absolutely nothing to do with food!

As you may have gleaned already, I am in Thailand. To be exact, I am just off Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok in a computer station about 60 yards from our hotel. I am surrounded by young Thai boys ripping each other in CounterStrike and a small cocker-spaniel who may or may not have just walked in from the street (most of the dogs here are strays who are kind of owned and fed by everyone). I should note that if the tone of this blog seems a bit jilted, it's because I do feel a level of awkwardness being surrounded by Thai kids while I write funny commentary about their homeland, but am taking some solace in the fact that a) they are way more involved with blowing each other's digital heads off than reading what I'm writing, and b) I'm not that funny.

We got into Bangkok at about 1:30am this morning, after a race-the-clock day leaving Seoul that eventually landed us at the Taipei airport (where we encountered the world's largest Hello Kitty store and weird robot things - see above - plus this awesome ad featuring Yankees pitcher Chein Ming Wang). The three-hour layover involved a thrilling "taking pictures of our passports" session that almost ended in us missing our second plane of the day, but soon enough we were riding in the back of an air-conditioned Volvo with a driver who was trying to convince Don that the Thai word for "beer" is "beer." We shortly stopped asking him questions.

After a interesting night of sleep in the same bed (which I am sure will be covered in Don's blog, if not in an upcoming therapy session for which I may waive the client-patient privelege in order to let others share the experience), we woke up and hopped on the Bangkok AirTrain, which is immaculate, as was the Seoul subway station -raise your game up NYC! - to catch a really good 35 baht (just over $1.00) meal of in a street market, and check out what I have interpreted as a mix between the city's central park and a large, open-air temple. (I wasn't sure whether or not cameras were allowed so these images were taken from the outskirts - the files actually took several attempts to upload, so for the record I'd like to claim foreign ignorance and ask any higher powers whom I may offend to waive any karmic liability).

After that, checked out "Victory Tower" which was not particularly victorious, and rushed back to the hotel in time to beg them to give us a room with a double bed. Don lamented the moment and called it "the end of an era." I laughed and then grabbed for the English to Korean dictionary, hoping "the end of the era" was easily confused with a phrase like "a rational, intelligent and completely non-emotional course of action." But, as the saying goes, "one night in Thailand..."

On that note, I'm off to the room where I'll hopefully find a still-breathing Don, who - after dousing himself with a triple layer of DEET before taking a nap in our new room - asked me as I stepped out the door, "Hey, how come the warning on the bottle says 'For outdoor use only?'" A couple Singha at the hotel's Smile Restaurant and we're off to find a fun-filled night that doesn't claim its wildest moment to be two guys wrapped inside a mosquito net re-enacting the sleeping bag scene from Superbad.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Offbeat news by Don

Hello everyone!

I have decided to take it upon myself to lay down the skinny on all the non-informative stuff. Nothing educational or eye-opening here. Just junk. Feel free to skip if necessary.

Here comes: Offbeat News.










1.) The first good sign of our journey began in Daegu, South Korea. Here, we stayed at the most luxurious place there: Mellow Motel. It's sister motel, Yellow, was rumored to be a bit more spacious but as you've read before, no one passes up the chance to have glass walls in your bathroom.

Those who live in glass bathrooms, should never cast the first poop.

2.) This picture (right) reminded me about the amount of Demolition Man references we have made in the past 3 days. Especially about the "3 sea shells" and how everything is so new and foreign to a defrosted Sly Stallone (If you don't know what I'm talking about read this). Brill is Sly in our adventure and Ruby Tuesdays is the Taco Bell of Korea. Explaining how to say simple things such as "hello" - (an-nyeong-hah-seh-yo) must have taken a good two days. By the time he learns goodbye, he'll be saying it on the way to the airport.

3.) Yup...I know. Giant Keyboard on the ground = "Chopsticks" (ironically in Korea, that tune is called "Fork"). In Korea, you don't need some magic fortune-telling-age-enhancing machine to have a good time.

So we're off to enjoy our adventure in Thailand and beyond. Wish Sly and I luck and look forward to more Off Beat News.