Back in Bangkok. I'm sitting in an amazing apartment on the 24th floor of the Sukhumvit area. Janhavi's friend's parents live here and their place is amazing. We showed up looking like poor orphaned ragmuffins, but they fed us, let us take hot showers and then we all sat around drinking red wine, listening to The Doors and chit-chatting. The maid brings us tea in the morning. I could get used to this but . . .

leaving tonight for Ko Tao, where I'm going to learn to dive, it supposed to be amazing. I'm not leaving for a couple hours, so I guess this is a good time to actually update this thing.

On our way to leave Ko Chang it started pouring buckets of rain and we coudln't get a cab. We subsequently got completely soaked (but fortunately I had the forsight to put all our important things in a big plastic bag (there is a upside to my over-packing tendencies) so it wasn't tragic my any means. We finally got one cab to take us to the next beach up where we got stranded again and finally paid a hotel money to take us to the ferry. Once on the ferry, we consoled ourselves with some Singha. We also me a guy from Sweden traveling with 2 families who couldn't get a cab either. He offered one guy 1000B to take them (a very good price) and he wouldn't do it.

The long bus ride back to BKK was uneventful except we were in the only seat on the bus that had a pole between the 2 seats. All the better to practice our stripper moves. We also kept going by this Disco Party Bus that was amazing. Tons of disco lights going, music blaring, packed with people dancing. I want to take this bus somewhere, but apparently you have to rent it with a group of people, like the party bus in Seattle.

We shopped our asses off in BKK yesterday. We went to the MBK center which is 6 floors of madness. It was entirely overwhelming with thousands of shops. I just bought new clothes to wear, but got ideas for before I leave. After that we just vegged out and watched Desperate Housewives (season 2 bootleg). It was nice to sit in a comfy chair for once.

It's really weird to wake up in the morning and NOT have an elephant right outside my window, as we did at Elephant Park Camp (EPC). But it is nice to be relatively clean again.

Ko Chang (Elephant Island)

I'm officially the worst blogger in the world. But rest assured it is only because I'm to bsy having fun to sit down at a keyboard, and also it is hard to play catch up with my time.

The elephant park was fantastic. Met some really cool people and did the following things:

Brought in Elephant food and fed Ellies.
Bathe ellies in river.
Almost got knocked over by a baby elephant.
Ate very well at the buffet they served us daily.
Played a lot of Uno.
Drank a lot of Chang beer (bad hangovers) in out treehouse bungalow sundeck.
Went on trips up to the hill tribes to give children deworming meds and toys.
Rode bamboo rafts down the river.
Jungle trekking.
Cave Selunking.
Rode 4 hours in the back of pickup trucks getting to these places and got covered in dirt.
Picked up elephant poo.
Dug a mud pit.
Dug ditches for pipelines.

There were a few of us who were volunteering for 2 weeks and it's quite funny, as our first week we were all gung ho, getting out there everyday getting dirty. Second week . . . not so much. In between weeks we had to take an R&R day in Chiang Mai and get massages and hot showers (bucket showers only go so far).

I had to throw away all my clothes from the park and buy new ones. But I did manage to purchase a pair of (fake) Miss Sixty jeans for about $12. They originally wanted $19 but I bargained them down, which I am getting quite adept at.

I ate crickets. I have the pictures to prove it. They were crunchy.

I'm on Ko Chng right now with my new friend Janhavi, a girl from India. We're having a blast, snorkeling, going to waterfalls and sitting on the beach doing nothing. We met some German guys on our snoarkling trip and ran into them last night and invited them to go to the waterfalls with us today and conveniently enough, they had motorbikes so we didn't have to take a cab, Score! We're gong kayaking out to some little island later.

Then of course getting massages. All the massages places closed early yesterday so we didn't get one yesterday. Quelle Horreur!

We're leaving tomorrow, heading back to the shithole otherwise known as Bangkok. Janhavi has to go home and I am going to head to the Andaman Coast.

Over and out!

Hello, my loyal readership of perhaps 3 people!

I'm in the jungle with no internet access for another week, but am in Chiang Mai for a day of R&R (laundry, hot shower, internet, massage) with my loyal band of BFFs.

I'm having a fantastic time at the elephant park and could write about it for ages, but do not have time at the moment.

But will leave you with this overheard convervation tidbit of the week:

"Is it safe to eat the watermelon? It's 80% water."

Seriously. Ha ha ha.

Chiang Mai

Took the night train to get to Chiang Mai (13 hours) although I had a bed in a/c 2nd class (cause that's how I roll, nothing is too good for me) I didn't sleep at all, it was very jerky and swayey. The Chunnel it was not. So when I arrived in Chiang Mai, all day long I felt like the ground was rolling underneath me, like floating on a raft on the ocean or something. It was quite disconcerting. I thought having a couple beers would even out that effect, but apparently, no. Alcohol is not the cure for vertigo, it just makes it worse.

So I walked around and saw some temples, at one I stopped and talked to this monk, Sol, for a while. His English was good, much better than the 3 whole Thai phrases I know. He originally is from the Karen Hill Tribes, but is studying and teaching English to 13 year old boys now.

Did you know that you can get "do not duplicate" key copies made in Thailand? Not that I went out of my way to do, just the opportunity presented itself. Take that Broadway Locksmith!

Today I decided that I just wanted to sit on my ass and look at shit (I'm so eloquent). So I took a tour to see an Orchid/Butterfly Farm, a Cave Temple and some Hill Tribes. Of course I ended up sitting next to a Sexpat from Seattle. He had his go-go girlfriend with him. She was very nice and cute. But they were just cracking me up. He's here in Thailand for a month or so, I'm pretty sure she's his girlfriend for this trip. He was buying her all kinds of trinkets all day (good for her, I say!).

The cave temple was pretty cool. And the hill tribes were interesting. We saw the Long Necks (have the gold hoops around their necks, which they do for a few different reasons, one of which being back in the day, when they would go into the jungle, it would serve as protection from the tigers who go straight for the jugular (sp?) vein. We also saw a tribe with black teeth, they chew on this herbal mixture which coats their teeth with black, protecting them. (no cavities, no dentists, no brushing teeth - sounds like a win-win situation to me) They also think it's pretty.

It kind of felt like human zoo, but our tour guide assured us that they enjoy showing off their culture. The tribes are all refugees from Burma and are in part supported by the Thai government, who is trying to teach them to earn a living from tourism, and not growing and selling opium (as they were doing before).

I also got a foot massage for $1.50. Rock on.

I of course have pictures, but am too lazy to upload at the moment.

Off to Elephant Nature Park tomorrow.

BKK cont'd.

So yesterday I went to the flower market in BKK and to get there I took the water taxi. So the water taxi lady asks me which pier I'm going to and I tell her #6 so she tells me to get on the tourist taxi (more expensive) which doesn't even stop there. She did the same thing to a couple other girls, so together we figured our way there. So although people are more than willing to help you, you jsut don't know if you're getting the correct info or not.

I also went to the Forensics Museum, which was cool but gross. Lots of fetuses with abnormalities in jars. The had corpses of mass murderers and crime scene evidence. Like someone that got stabbed to death with a dildo. What a way to go. They also had a mannequin of a guy who had elephantitis of the testicles. It was huge! That's got to hurt.

Also, there is one more way I could die here: getting run over by a car. The traffic is nuts, no one follows any rules to the road whatsoever. Even if you're walking through a crosswalk with a light for you, the cars will just go on through anyway.

I'm up in Chiang Mai now, which is not as hot as Bangkok. I head up to the elephant refuge on Monday.

BKK

As we were flying into Bangkok, my seatmate Todd (American expat living in Phuket now) pointed out the clouds to me. They literally went from nice and white to black, that's the smog from Bangkok.

After waiting in line for 2 hours in immigration, I promptly fell for the cab scam (which I was warned about) and ended up paying 650 BT (instead of 300). I was too tired and cranky to get another cab though and just wanted to go to my room. The cab didn't drop me off in the right place, so I wound up walking around looking for the4 new Joe Guesthouse forever. but finally found it, had a shower, then had a beer at the bar where I was immediately talked politics AT by an American expat. He was complaining about this and that and how he almost felt he needed to tell people he was Canadian. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm dead tired and I don't care about your bitching.

The next day I fell for scam #2 - the TukTuk scam. I feel it's best to get these out of the way in the beginning. I was at this public square where people were celebrating the New Year, and going up to this giant buddha for blessings. So this guy approaches me and tells me what's going on and then tells me about these other temples that I need to go see TODAY because it's the new year and blah blah.

So he writes up this list for me, being kind enough to include these Export shops, and gets me a tuk tuk for 40BT ($1)

OH GREAT NOW MY KEYBOARD WILL ONLY TYPE ENGLISH IN ALL CAPS. IN LOWER\ CASE IT'S TYPING THAI כחגלךעחלךשחלךחל THE LINE AT THE COUNTER IS TOO LONG FOR ME TO BUG THE GUY ABOUT IT.

SO DEAL WITH IT. I WILL JUST TYPE ANGRY-STUPID I GUESS.

ANYWAY, I SPEND THE AFTERNOON GOING AROUND TO DIFFERENT TEMPLES IN A LOT OF SMOGGY TRAFFIC AND THEN HAVING TO GO INTO TAILOR AND GEM SHOPS WHERE I WASN'T GOING TO BUY ANYTHING ANYWAY ׂ[THE TUK-TUK GETS A COMMISSION]. IT WAS ANNOYING BUT NO HARM DONE.

BESIDES THE HEAT SMOG AND NOISE, BANGKOK [AND I GUESS THAILAND IN GENERAL] HAS LOTS OF STARVING STRAY DOGS AND CATS , IT'S VERY SAD. THERE ARE ALSO LOTS OF DEFORMED BEGGARS.

I'VE GOTTEN A COUPLE THAI MASSAGES FOR 5 DOLLARS EACH. THEY ROCK. I'M GETTING ONE LATER TODAY TOO. IT'S WRITTEN INTO THE TRAVEL BUDGET AS A NECESSITY.

OK. ALTHOUGH I HAVE MORE TO WRITE ABOUT I CAN'T STAND THIS ALL CAPS ANYMORE AND THIS KEYBOARD SUCKS. OVER AND OUT.

נרןשממש