THAILAND

I mean what more do I really have to say. This is the place where western have been perfecting the elicit sex trade for the past 40 years. This place is like Disney World, Zimbabewey and Stockholm combined with a generous helping of Constitutional Monarchy and pingpong balls.

For those of you who haven't been there you have to go in order to understand the last paragraphs hidden jokes or at least have an open mind and realize that Sweden had the highest casualty rate after the 2004 Tsunami outside of Asia with almost 20,000 vacationers there every season. For a country of only nine million that is a fucking lot.

But anyways I must digress this is getting off topic. The point on this entry is to tell you all how much fun and how interesting and disturbingly fucked Thailand is. This place is one of the most geographically breath taking places on earth. Thailand won the jackpot when it came to beautiful places, it however also won when it came to millions of tourists coming and fucking you over.

So I bought my ticket last minute not knowing what I would do or where I would go. On a map Thailand may not look that big, especially when compared to a place like Canada but you try and walk across that peninsula and see how long it takes you. Actually there is quite a lot of territory covered by this 514,000 sq km country. But I managed to figure out that I wanted to see a beach and enjoy some sunshine.

So I landed in Bangkok after having spent a great flight in the company of a fellow canuck who grew up in Kiwi land and now lives in Bangkok. She was able to hook me up with a taxi that wouldn't steal all my money and take me where I wanted to go. I am hoping that she will email me seeing as she lived in Seoul for five years and had some great music connections in Seoul.

So I went to meet my friend Joe's girlfriend at this hostel called the shanty lodge. Don't let the name fool you it was quite nice and the people were friendly. I spent the night with Monica and the next day we walked around Bangkok and took in some of the sights and sounds. Now don't get me wrong it is a cool city but I really didn't get a good feeling from it. Granted I was only there a day but it just seemed dirty, noisy and full of to many fat white people with tiny Thai wives/mistress's. I mean I would recommend anyone to go there but I really didn't like the tourist trap that is Konsan rd. And honestly I expected more. Pingpong and darts aside I have been to more exciting areas in Seoul.

But my attitude soon changed when we met up with Joe and went down to a place called Krabi. This is a city of aprox 80-100 thousand down on the Indian ocean. It is just inland a little bit up a small river so it was not completely destroyed by the Tsunami but it was still pretty hard hit. We stayed at a little guesthouse and ate some amazing Thai food for a dollar. Food is really cheap and so fresh.

That night Joe and Monica headed in early (which was a common theme throughout the trip but I loved it cause I got to go out on my own and experience some crazy shit). That night I got drunk with a Frenchman, Irishman, POMY, and 6 Thai people. We spent the better part of three hours discussing colonialism and it's effects on South East Asia while consuming Gin and tonics at a speed that would make even her majesty a little tipsy.

The next morning, dawning the previous night cloths (I will let you know that I wore the same pair of boardshorts for the entire trip and only changed them for the flights. I only brought my backpack with limited cloths and it was the best decision I made on the trip), I awoke and we got on a ferry for Phi Phi Island. This ferry was 4 hours late departing and was full of tourists and some Thai families with chickens. All in all a nice ride on which I met my friend Colin Innes and his wife Elky who are from Greenwich U.K. We drank a few Singha's and had a few laughs on deck.

For those of you who are interested Phi Phi is the island where the film the beach was shot. Not in the hotel area on the island but one of the surrounding islands and needless to say the place was breath taking. Mangroves, beaches lush rainforest and clear, clear water(let also not forget the hundreds of topless Sweedish sunbaithers, all of whom had the most perfect bronze skin. For a country with 9 months of winter they were all very nicely tanned).

Upon arrival we set out finding accommodations that would not break our budget, which proved to be rather difficult seeing as it was high season. So we consulted our guide book and found out about this little spot called long beach which is a 35-40 minute walk along the beach/jungle to an area with cheaper accommodations. (now there is no road going to this beach because they want you to take water taxi's or long boats. These are not expensive but they weren't cheap either so we elected to walk which I decided to do later and I will tell you about it in more detail later). Once we made it to long beach we found a place to stay for 20 bucks a night. Joe had a nap and I had some beers on the beach and watched the sun set, which was magnificent and I strongly recommend it to anyone.

Around 9ish Joe Monica and I took a longtail boat back to the main beach and had some spectacular dinner for a dollar and then started drinking beers on the beach under the stars. We thought this was a great idea and was dirt cheap. As it turns out it was a great idea, no one else was on the beach and we must have sat there for two hours just having a jawl (good time in south African).

Upon completing several large beers we ventured in the bar district were upon we stumbled head long into a Thai kickboxing /reggae bar (for future reference every bar in Thailand is a reaggae bar and you can imagine what that entails). So there were these two guys going at in the ring that looked like to really tanned Dave Pottickers. They were jumping and flailing limbs wildly and it was all quite entertaining but after they finished the ref started walking around asking people if they wanted to volunteer. The prize for volunteering was a plastic bucked full of booze so I figured what's the worst that can happen that booze can't heal, so I put up my hand and got ready to fight some other drunk foreigner. Ha Ha, welcome to Thailand my son, I get in the ring to find that I will be fighting a young man from Spain I believe. He weighed in at 110 kg's and stood around 6,4 and lets not forget to mention that he had been kickboxing for almost 10 years. Hmmmmm I guess I should have asked but he didn't speak English, I found all this information out after the fight from his buddies.

So I get in the ring. Drago (I will call him Drago because he was massive and didn't speak English) was doing the splits in the corner Van Dam style and I walked around the right working the crowd and thinking I am going to fucking die. At this point I asked the ref what the rules were and how long did he expect me to do this. His reply was and I quote "no elbows" thats it. The only rule he could come up with was no elbows and the fight was supposed to last three rounds of 2 minutes each. My response was "I'll give you 30 seconds". The most embarrassing part was that Drago didn't even put his head gear on. I mean I couldn't have reached his head anyway but he could have at least humoured me. I guess he figured I couldn't reach his head anyways so why mess up his hair.

Ding! Ding! We started circling and I thought, "maybe I can get a few shots in and just wrap him up a couple times and I might make it out of this thing with a couple hits taken. So I threw a punch and a kick, which landed on his side and really hurt my foot, I don't think he felt it. He threw a punch and I actually blocked it and the just went for the waist and wrapped him up. The ref broke us up and we circled again. This time I tried another kick and he moved and I think I got him on the inner thie. The ref said I couldn't do that and would call the fight if I did it again (I should have just kicked the fucker in the balls but I didn't). The next melee was the most destructive and this is were my memory is fuzzy. All I know is that he came at me like Elninio, which in spanish means "The Ninio". He had surgical accurracy with his punches and hit me three times right in the face and then I was on the ground. It wasn't until after the fight that Joe asked me, "did the kick hurt?" My response, "what kick?" So he preceded to inform me that after the three punches to the face, which resulted in a nice little shinener, that Drago had kicked me in the side of the head which had momentarily knocked me unconscious.

To my surprise the ref asked if I would like to stop the fight and I asked him what he thought? He called the fight. This whole exchange lasted almost 35-40 seconds after which Drago helped me up and I bowed to the crowd and everyone cheered. Everyone was pretty pissed that he had just beat the shit out of me. They wanted to see some action not a little boy get beaten like a rented mule for 30 seconds. (I should point out that I do not fight, have never been in a ring before and I was drunk) . It was fun though because I met up with a group of girls from Nova Scotia, they actually live in Wolfsville and knew of a little place called Three Pools. (Tim and Erica I hope you get this). A couple of them are working in Seoul teaching and we are going to meet up soon I hope. But anyways they were very impressed with my falling down skills and bought me a drink. One of the girls who teaches in Seoul got in the ring and beat the shit out of a little Thai woman. It was really funny because every time she knocked this Thai woman down she would apologize and then knock her down again, Priceless.

After this embarrassing but fun incident I met up with my friend Colin from the boat ride to the Island and told him of my bout with death to which his response in a perfect south London accent, "Birds love a fighter" and bought me several bucks of booze. (These are literally small plastic beach buckets that they fill with alcohol and some mix and you drink them until you forget you are in Thailand.) After consuming and lethal amount of bucket alcohol I proceeded to loose track of everyone I was with (Joe and Monica had left several hours earlier) and having spent all my money (again not really sure how since Colin was buying me drinks) decided it would be a good idea to get back to 'Long Beach', which in the day time is a simple task, it was however the middle of the night. So I started walking and this is where the story gets hazy. I only have vague memories of this period in time but from all accounts the bars close around 3 or 4 and I didn't make it back to the shack until 6:00 - 6:30. What I do remember is that I wandered down some really dark jungle paths with my arms outstretched in front of me hoping to hit trees with my hands first. I also remember trying to break into someone else's shack with a broom I found to try and light it on fire to use as a torch. When I finally crashed through the cabin door, Joe jumped out of bed in a ninja stance ready to juddo chop me. I laughed quite hard at this gesture and informed the two of them that "do I have a story for you" and proceeded to pass out until 11:30 that morning.

The next day we went back to Krabi and had a relaxing night with a couple drinks and a movie on HBO (all the guest houses have big screen tv's with HBO).

From Krabi we made our way out again to Rally Beach which is a 40 mins boat taxi ride. The ride was quite interesting as we shared it with two Canadians and one American. The one Canadian grew up in Kingston and is cousins with a certain Mr. David (Slippy) Jarrel. We had quite the time recounting stories about good old Slippy and ended up partying with them a little bit during the next couple of days.

Rally Beach, just like Phi Phi has an expensive part and a cheap part. The cheap part was a place only accessible by boat taxi and it is called Ah Nang beach (I know I probably spelled it wrong so if you are really keen then edit this and change it smart guy). This beach was much more what I was looking for. It was full of reggae bars and really cheap restaurants. This is one of the more beautiful places I have ever seen. It is full of rock climbers and burn outs. Everyone sits around all day or rock climbs or both.

Of course the first night we were there I befriended some of the local barmen and met the whitest girl I have ever seen from Winnipeg. She had been on this beach for the past nine months and was dating one of the blackest Thai people I had ever met, quite a couple. Either way I ended up drinking with these characters for the next two nights and jamming with their band. They wanted me on lead vocals because I could speak English. They weren't bad but I was really holding them back I feel. I also got to play a bit of harp which was really cool. I actually spent hours just sitting on the beach or on the porch of our shack playing.

After Ah Nang (which, I was informed was being demolished to make way for a luxury hotel. This is a god damn shame as this beach was so incredibly relaxed and laid back) we man our way up to Saritany. Well we were actually two hours away from Saritany in a National park checking out some rainforests and shit. We stayed in a sleepy little town for two nights were nothing was going on. Absolutely nothing happened after ten o'clock, so I was just find a comfy place to sit and play the harp and chat with anyone who was interested. (I usually had a couple beers with me as well but that is only because it was so hot and I needed to stay hydrated.) The rainforest was really cool and we got to see some beautiful waterfalls and get a nice massage (no happy ending though).

After the part I departed Joe and Monica's company and made my way back to Bangkok. I had an early morning flight on new years day so I figured I would spend New Years Eve in Bangkok. I mean you would think it would be a cool place to spent the holiday.

When I landed in Bangkok I had to decide if I wanted to go into the city and party or just stay close to the airport. I decided to go into the city, I fuck, you only live once. I went back to the hostel that I stayed in the first night and got a 2.50 room sleeping in the bunk room at the back. They had a free New Years dinner for all guests and I met this tall leggy American bird who was traveling on her own as well. We started talking and decided to go downtown and have a party.

In retrospect this was a good idea and a very very bad idea. Just like in Phi Phi they serve buckets of alcohol in Bangkok as well. And as you can imagine these buckets were once again my undoing. We started off light and met up with tons of other foreigners and chatted and drank etc... I did notice that there was an awful lot of security around but I figured it was New Years in Bangkok.

Well as it turns out I ran into the same Canadian girls that watched me get pumulled in the ring were also in Bangkok for new years. The only reason I know this and remember meeting up with them is because they were on the same flight as me the next morning. This next part is the really scary part so mom, nanna, aunt donna etc... skip this.


I didn't even know that bombs had gone off. I am pretty sure I recall New Years but I can't be entirely certain. There were a lot of balloons which was nice and then the army came in and everyone left. I woke up in my bed with all my possessions, my liver and both kidneys. I was lacking a little self respect and my dignity as you can guess got left in Phi Phi on the ring floor so at least I didn't lose them both at the same time.

But I made the plane and got back to Korea around 9:00 pm fell asleep and went to work the next day to find my new teacher Jim had arrived.

That was Thailand. Needless to say there are certain things that I have left out of this blog as it is rated pg 13 however, I am safe and sound and have no permanent damage resulting from the trip. It was incredible and I recommed it to anyone but be prepared for tourist central. Thailand is not remote nor does it have much of its own culture thanks to tourism. The best part is that you can show up with no plans and have the time of your life.

Well this was a long one hope you enjoyed it and I will be writhing more soon. I plan on going to Japan and hopefully back to china.