Shirt and Thai Event

I made it back from Thailand alive, and I'm back in the SK groove. I kept a sporradic journal during the trip that I uploaded from little Internet Cafes along the way, so if you want a little more insight and some sloppy sketches, you can check those out below. The short version of the trip is that I had a really fucking great time. The long version is too long an incoherent to share. One of the medium versions follows, as I try to tell the tale; the tale of a fateful trip.

Me and Mike took off from Seoul on Sunday and touched down in Bangkok late that night, hopping a taxi to the infamous backpacker district known as Khao San Road (if you've seen the movie or read the book The Beach, Khao San is where it begins). It was a seedy place, but not completely unpleasant. Dirty, crawling with prostitutes, street merchants, and all manner of people looking to capitalize on the travellers there.

The short time we spent seeing stores and filth and Buddhas and temples and pictures of the beloved king in Bangkok was great, but my personal highlight was probably being sped around by a Tuk-Tuk. They're these little motorcycles that have been converted to have 3 wheels and take 2 passengers, kind of like motorized rickshaws. They're unsafe open boxes that are loud as fuck and stink of exhaust, and I can't imagine a better way to see the city blur by.

Thailand is so cheap to stay in. A meal in a reastaurant can easily cost under 2 dollars. Beer in a restaurant or bar is about a dollar. I bought about 5 or 6 t-shirts and they totaled less than 20 dollars. It's sad to know that this is kind of indicative of quality of life there, but dry your guilty tears - tourism is an important and helpful source of income for the country.

On Tuesday we flew to Koh Samui and took a ferry to Koh Phangan, where we remained until Sunday. That place is like a large Gilligan's Island filled with people wanting to party with college-movie gusto. At nighttime the beach turned into a museum of loud music and sin and fire shows.

Not to be outdone, our group (consisting of me, Mike, Seohee, Sophie, and Song Il) did our own share of sioree-ing. We had a great time there as we baked and swam on the beach, and I crashed two rented motorcycles (our group as a whole crashed four, as Mike and Seohee each had mishaps, too). The whole thing came to a head at the Full Moon party Saturday night, which is hard to explain, other than that it was basically like New Years Eve on a beach with thousands of other people. Very fucked up people. They had a part of the beach roped off so you could basically drag people who'd passed out so they wouldn't get trampled. I may or may not have seen a dead body float ashore. Mike argued that he was possibly just passed out.

The next morning, me and Mike pulled ourselves together and caught the boat and plane back to Bangkok. There, me and Mike said our somber goodbyes as I headed back to Seoul and he flew to Cambodia, bound for the world and eventually back to Canada. I had to catch the bus from the airport right to work, where a day of screaming children was not the best way to wash down two days of sleep deprivation. I was kinda glad to see them regardless.

All in all, the vacation was more amazing than I can really explain here. It wasn't a touristy, sight-seeing type thing. It was a vacation in greatest sense of the word - just a simple week of enjoying myself in an exciting new place. Now I miss the place I've seen but I'm recharged and excited to see the next place and surprised with the feeling of home that Korea has now.

When I was in Thailand, I was a little bewildered by the lack of Koreans. The few times I noticed some (by looks or speech) I looked to them with this expectation that they'd glance back and recognize me as one of their own. Sometimes it's hard to remember that I'm white without scads of strangers' stares reminding me that I'm a sore thumb.

I'll leave with an image of the sunset rising over the Full Moon beach on Koh Phanagn. It's easily my favourite panorama I've ever shot.

(as usual, click for a big pretty version)