this day was a travel day. we said "goodbye" to a bunch of people who were a part of our group. some went to Cambodia for an extended vacation and some went home. then there were about 13 of us that got on a plane headed for Phuket! this took up most of the day. we spent time on the bus going back to Bangkok and then time in the airport waiting for our delayed flight out.
once we got to Phuket it was hard to ignore the pouring rain. it was a tad bit upsetting because i knew we only had two more days there and if there was any chance it was going to shower down on us the way it was that night then we wouldn't get the ultimate experience in Phuket. it took about an hour for us to get from the airport to the hotel but once we did, all we really wanted to do was relax.
Stefan and i arranged for a car to come pick us up and bring us to a nice massage parlor (can you call it that?). the two hour massage cost $20 which is amazing! it was probably one of the best massages i've ever had. then we ran across the street to an open outdoor hole in the wall kinda restaurant set up for tourists to eat at. the food was really cheap and the sauce to the panang beef was crazy delicious, however the texture of it was chewy and so very unappetizing. and that was that.
day 8
in Phuket we were expected to find our own entertainment and just relax and do our own thing. there was no more bus or Ekachai or schedule planned for us. for the two full days we'd be in Phuket we were able to roam about and do everything or nothing. most people in the group anticipated going on a tour to see Phang Nga Island and Phi Phi Islands. after viewing different brochures for the different kinds of boat tours you could take, one of our group members found out that provided there were enough people who wanted to go, we could rent a private boat with a private guide who would take us wherever we wanted. if we'd taken different tours, we'd be stuck on a boat with people we didn't know, going to places we didn't care to, or missing out on things that we actually wanted to see. so we gathered the troops and had everybody on board with getting a private tour.
early in the morning we met up with about 12 of the people who we'd been on the tour with thus far. we drove to the pier and hopped on our awesome private boat and headed out. the sun was awake but hidden by the overcast skies, which quite honestly worked to our advantage. had there been clear skies and a blazing sun, we would have probably been instantly sunburned. the temperature was somewhere between warm and hot and was perfect. the waters were more crystal clear blue than anything i've ever seen.
our first stop was the island where they filmed The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio. though beautiful, it was crowded with a ton of tourists, which we were trying to avoid. we got our pictures and left quickly. next we stopped at a spot where we were able to snorkel with few other tourists there. now i've never been snorkeling before so i didn't know what to expect. after putting on whatever contraption it is you use to snorkel over my eyes and in my mouth, i hopped in to the water only to swallow a bunch of salt water. at first it was hard for me to get used to breathing through only my mouth. i realized that you can't breathe in a normal fashion either. you've got to breathe slowly in and out. initially i had no patience for that. i mean all i wanted to do was stick my head under the water and see fish. i didn't want to have to think about my breathing. but alas, i guess breaths for life are more important than fish sightings. eventually i figured it out. so because this was my first time snorkeling, i imagined we'd see a few fish here, a few fish there and that was it. once i stuck my head in to the water i saw a huge school of fish that looked like the big striped one at the dentist office in Finding Nemo. the guide gave us bananas to feed to the fish. we held them in our hands and the fish came up to us to chomp away. it was awesome! as i continued to roam further from the boat i was able to see different kinds of fish. down near the coral i saw big neon colored fish, up a little higher were those striped fish, and way up top there was a school of long thin silver fish that'd i'd never seen before. it was cool seeing the different layers of fish in their natural habitat.
our boat guide next took us to Monkey Island, where you can drive your boat up to the edge of the island to feed monkeys. they used to allow tourists to actually step foot on the island and sort of hang with the monkeys until one day a toddler was bitten by a mother monkey. we fed them bananas and went on our merry way.
we stopped off at another area to snorkel. this time when i got in to the water there was an amazing amount of fish. it was kind of daunting and almost suffocating. i held on to my banana to have them feed and as a blanket of swarming fish surrounded me, they also began to nip at me! i felt little zings like when you touch something that's static electrified in random parts of my body. i was in the water for maybe 3 minutes and felt the need to get out. okay. snorkeling. been there, done that. i will forfeit the awesomeness of tropical fish in their natural habitat for the trade off of not feeling pain.
throughout the rest of the day we went to Phang Nga Island and "James Bond Island" where they filmed Man With The Golden Gun. we saw caves and lagoons. then the skies began to turn grey. then it started to sprinkle, but the temperature was still warm. soon after it started to sprinkle our guide handed out plastic ponchos to everybody. it was hot enough that the little sprinkles we got dried up pretty quickly so i wondered why he would hand out ponchos. little did i know, the locals always look for weather change because Phuket's weather can be fickle. about three minutes after we got our ponchos it began to pour! pouring rain + speeding boat = soaked people. we rode like this for about 30 minutes and then suddenly our boat stopped. i thought "what else could there possibly be to see? didn't we already stop at all of the spots?" then our guide informed us that we had NO GAS!! now, remember that years ago Phuket had a huge tsunami, killing a lot of people. i wasn't too worried that a tsunami would come but it definitely was in the back of my mind. we were stranded in the middle of the ocean in the pouring rain. at least we were with people we'd grown to know and not a boat full of strangers. we asked constantly asked our guide what his plan was to get us out of there. eventually he got hold of some people on land and said they'd be sending a boat to come pick us up but it'd take about 40 minutes. so we sat wet (part of the boat was covered so it wasn't directly coming down on us but some came through from different openings in the boat) and waiting. to try to lighten the mood, our guide exclaimed "we have fruit!!" and a helper brought out a watermelon and a pineapple to cut up and serve. it was almost comical. at that point we weren't really concerned with delicious fruits or nourishment. we just wanted to get back to land and dry clothes. eventually a boat came to get us and we got back to land safely. whew!
this day we spent roaming around Phuket's touristy areas. we walked down to the beach. along the beach there are lots of spots where people offer massages along the water. the beach sands are covered with chairs and umbrellas lined up for people to lay in. but you can't just walk up to one and take it. the second you even look like you're headed towards a chair, someone runs up to you and asks for money. i'm not sure who owns the chairs or why you should have to pay, but it seems paying is inescapable. we roamed all of the street shops and the big mall in search of clothes and souvenirs. then as we walked around we decided to stop to get foot massages because they were really cheap. this time it ended up being in a hair salon/massage parlor. it was.....interesting. my idea of a good massage doesn't include the scent of drying hair and coloring products, but whaddaya gonna do for a $7/hr long massage?? we roamed around for the rest of the day walking about. around dinner time we walked the streets in search of street food. i found a guy who was selling soup noodles from a little cart and knew i had to get it. it was really tasty and super excruciatingly spicy. after i ate it my lips plumped and burned a bright red color.
one of our goals by the end of the trip was to see a "ping pong show." if you don't know what a ping pong show is then listen up cause this is pretty entertaining. ***if you can't handle graphic and vulgar, do NOT continue on!!!***a ping pong show is a show where women put things into their vags and do various things with their vag. for some people it might be sexual but for me it was entertaining and pretty comical. the first time i went to a ping pong show was about two years ago. i was on vacation with my parents, my grandma and a bunch of aunts and uncles. our tour guide asked if we wanted to see the famous "ping pong shows" of Thailand. she said that the real ping pong shows were only in Pattaya (which i now know is true). so we pulled up to a shady big shack looking thing with a huge XXX sign above it. we are told that the show that goes on inside goes on for hours, nonstop. so when we walk in and take a seat, we were to take note at what point in the show we were at and when it starts to repeat, that's when we should leave. so we walk in and there is a small stage and with three women standing there pretty naked. my mom and i took seats close to the stage intrigued at what we were about to see. in random order, we saw a woman put a ping pong in to her vag and spit it out towards to audience, woman pour beer in to her vag and dance around holding the liquid in and then excreting it back in to the bottle, a goldfish fall out of a woman's vag in to a fishbowl, a woman smoking a cigarette through her privates, a woman pull out one of those little Chinatown turtles and then seeing the turtle walk around the stage and a woman pulling a string of needles out of her vajay! but what was my most favorite part, you ask?? one woman stood on stage and then began pulling a string out of her V. we didn't know what she was doing with a boring string considering someone else just pulled razors out from between her lips. well she finally got to the end of the string, held something hidden in her hand and then threw it in to the audience. we all quickly slung our heads back in fear of any kind of STD soaked thing flying towards our exposed faces. what did she throw? a BIRD!!! i kid you not! she threw a bird in to the audience and the bird flew at us and then back to her. can i just give the biggest WTF there ever was right now?? it was pretty amazing and suuuuuuuuuper entertaining. so once the show began to repeat, we left stunned and amazed.
after hearing my mom, myself and my dad talk about that specific experience, he felt the need to experience it himself. so on our last day in Phuket, we ventured out in to the red light district in search of the infamous "ping pong show." now, there are many places in Phuket that say they have the ping pong show but NONE of them are quite like the one i saw. the second you get to the red light district you are bombarded with people trying to hand you flyers and lead you to a ping pong show. but many times this is just a ploy to get you to their bar and they either charge you crazy amounts of money for alcohol or they have no show at all. luckily Stefan and i went with a couple of other people who were also in search of the show and who had done their research. we found the bar where there was supposedly a proper ping pong show. as the door to the bar opened up pink light splashed upon us all. the place looked more like a strip club with an elevated stage-like area with stripper poles and a bath tub in the middle. a bunch of women who looked like they hated life were "dancing" naked. it was pretty depressing and after a few minutes we questioned whether they were going to have a ping pong show at all. eventually the music changed and the ugliest and oldest of all the women came out with disgust on her face. she did the vag cigarette smoking thing, the goldfish thing, and pulled a bird out too (but this time the bird wasn't attached to a string or thrown towards the surrounding people.) though still entertaining, it wasn't the same as the one i saw in Pattaya with my mom and dad. haha!! anyway, obviously they didn't allow picture taking, which is probably a good thing. you'll just have to go to Thailand and see for yourself!
we saw what we went to see and walked through the rest of the red light district not really stopping at any other place except to take a picture with a pretty good looking tranny. Stefan and i ended our trip by having our last massage late night.
day 10
this day was an intense travel day. we flew from Phuket to Bangkok, Bangkok to Taipei, and Taipei to LA. we stayed at a Motel 8 (or something...i don't even remember which motel it was) and early the next morning took a flight back to SF. what a trip!! we had an amazing time!
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