Getting there is half the fun

Sin City, Thailand style

This past weekend me, Lisa, Samson, Misha, Raina and my roommate Guillaume flew up to Thailand for 3 days of sand, shopping and beer (at least for me). Phuket is definitely not a quiet Asian city, you feel like you are in Florida or some other place. It is busy, loud and expensive. In 3 days I spent the almost as much as I did for 10 days in Indonesia! The first day we went swimming and walked around the city shopping for fake clothes. The beach is huge but completely packed with people and stuff to spend money on. Don't come here looking for a quiet beach vacation. We went in the low season, which is the monsoon season, so the place was "relatively" empty. And since is was the monsoon season it is not completely safe for swimming. You can only swim in a small area and cannot go too far out because of the dangerous rip currents. But it was still fun and we spent a few hours playing in the water.

This is the beautiful but packed Patong beach:


On Sunday we signed up for a snorkeling tour of the famous Phi Phi islands. The movies "the beach" and "the man with the golden gun" were shot at Phi Phi Leh a few years ago and now every tour agency offers a trip there. And they like to rip tourists off too. The asking price was 2400 Baht and we managed to talk them down to 1200 after quite a while. If you go there bargain hard! The tour lasted all day and took us to some of the most beautiful islands I have ever seen. After an hour long boat ride that was super bumpy due to the rough monsoon season seas we stopped at a huge reef alongside a dozen other tour boats, each filled with 30 people. Despite the crowds the snorkeling was just amazing. Crystal clear water, coral reefs just feet below the surface, and millions of colourful fish swimming all around. I brought an underwater camera but forgot to take pictures at this stop, and much to my chagrin missed our only opportunity as the other snorkeling stop was, unbeknownst to me, crappy cloudy water. After this stop we passed by the 'James bond' rock bay where "the man with the golden gun" was filmed. But due to low tide we couldn't get the boat in to actually see the rock. Then we passed a place called the Viking cave, which has ancient pictures of Viking vessels on the walls, and then "monkey bay", a small strip of sand full of frolicking monkeys.

The entrance to the bay containing the "James bond" rock. Too bad we couldn't actually see it.


The "Viking cave". All of the wooden ladders are used to collect the birds eggs which are sold to wealthy Japanese.


Monkey Bay: our boat driver was scared about running aground so wouldn't go close enough to the beach for my 4-times zoom. You'll have to take my word that all of the little dots on the sand are monkeys.


Finally it was time for lunch so our boat headed over to Phi Phi Don. This area was hit really hard by the tsunami. You can still see buildings missing huge sections and there is a bunch of construction going on. But it looks like the tourism is back to normal as the place was packed with "Farangs". Here's a pic of all of us at lunch: from L to R: Samson, Lisa, Misha, Raina, Guillaume and me.


Sunday night Misha, Raina, Guillaume and I went out to experience the night life of Phuket. This is this one street in Patong (Bangla Rd) that seems normal enough during the day, but turns into something else come night. The whole street is blocked off, fills with people, pounds with bass and glows red until the wee hours of the morning. Words cannot describe the place. Off the main road there are a bunch of mini-streets full of bars and more lights. Amsterdam has nothing on the place!

Here's a pic of Bangla Rd when the night's still young (11pm) and the crowds haven't come out yet.


As the night got later more and more lady boys came out of hiding and started dancing on tables all over the place. And unlike Amsterdam you can take pictures! Do these looks like men to you?


Guillaume was the first to turn in and head home. Misha, Raina and I went to this place for a beer and this fun nail game where you have to hit a nail into a stump with a super skinny hammer. It's harder than it sounds. I ended up meeting an Australian guy, a British guy and some British girls at a bar-type place and had a real good night observing the happenings of this place. It's really strange to see an old, fat man with this tiny, (sometimes) pretty Thai girl walking hand in hand. Sometime later we went to one of the craziest discos I've been to, Crocodile Disco, and had a fun night hanging out with some random unknown people. Before I knew it the sun was up so I had a nice walk back down the beach to my hotel an hour before meeting the others for breakfast at 9am!

Despite feeling a little hindered, Monday was definitely the best day in Phuket. Why? This is why!!


Yup, that's me! 60 meter free fall into a small lake!! I was super freaked to jump but somehow managed to jump on my second try! As the cage was raising up the crane I felt more and more nervous. Around halfway I thought to myself "ok, this is a good height to jump from, now lets stop this thing" but no, the cage was still raising me up and up. Finally it creaked to a halt 60 meters above ground. I felt like I was a mile high. People on the ground looked like ants. Part of me definitely didn't want to jump at all. But the other part, the part that was saying this was something I wanted to do, thankfully won the battle and allowed me to jump. This is the part that took over and forced my feet to spring me forward. The other part of me didn't know what was happening. It took the first half of the jump for my mind to register that I was indeed speeding towards the earth. So much so that I forgot to scream until halfway through the jump! The first half of the jump was like it didn't happen at all, but the second half seemed to take forever! Finally I hit the water, plunging into my waist, it was over, or so I though. Then something unexpected happened, the cord yanked me up with such a force. I was almost as high as the cage again and my head was pounding with blood. Unfortunately I think my brain was too busy trying to figure out what was happening that I forgot to scream like you're supposed to. Oh well. After an eternity of hanging there bouncing up and down I was lowered onto a platform grinning like a fool! Bungy jumping kick ass!

The rest of the day was tame in comparison. We all went for a Thai massage, which was pretty fun, and then just shopped and ate until we had no more money and it was time to fly home.

Posted by Evan at 10:17 PM