Sorry guys, been kind of lazy updating this thing. But will post more pictures soon. Spent the better part of the last week on Koh Chang, an island off the coast of Thailand. Doing absolutely nothing. I originally planned to stop by for a day or two but ended up just sort of staying. For 12 dollars a night, you get a nice beach bungalow with an ocean view. The island has like a dozen different beaches and various fresh water swimming holes. Between hanging out at swimming holes and drinking with other backpackers (mostly Europeans), I don’t have too much time for much else. So yea… it’s kind of easy to get stuck here.
But like most good things, it’s gotta come to an end. Tomorrow morning, I move on to Cambodia. Very sad to leave this place, but I’m sure I’ll be back again. Oh yeah….about that whole bike thing, I’m totally over it. The local bartender promises to keep it here for me till I return and I’ve come to terms with it. I don’t so much mind the miles or the humidity but when you add up the high likelihood of getting lost, the difficulty of finding a hotel near the border of cambodia, and the possibility of encountering unexploded land mines, it’s just better to cut my losses now. It’s like 13 bucks to take a bus anyhow.
On to better news, I’ve rediscovered that reading can be fun. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a book that was not a mandatory reading. But seeing as how I’ve been averaging about 6 hours a day in a hammock for the past week, it’s actually been a nice surprise. So if you guys have any recommendations, I’d be happy to hear them. So far I’ve gone through A Million Little Pieces (the fake memoir), The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I’m finishing the Da Vinci Code on the bus tomorrow. Good times.
Day 1 of biking = epic fail. Let’s break down this amazing day.
5:30 AM:
Grant wakes me up. Very excited to get going. 3 hours of sleep but still very excited. Here’s a quick recap of our conversation.
Grant: So the plan is to go South, make a left, and go straight until you get there?
Me: Yep, its fool proof, I’ll find the coast line and just follow it until I get there. Can you point me South?
And off we go.
2 hours later:
I’m starting to think my plan isn’t fool proof. I have to go South East and I started out South, so I figured as long as I was going South or East, I was fine. Well it turns out streets curve and after a couple of turns East and a couple of turns South, you tend to forget whether your going South or East. That’s okay I tell myself. Let’s just ask the locals. Well it turns out that once you get a good 5 or 10 miles from the tourist areas, the locals stop speaking English. Totally should have bought a compass.
And another thing. Riding a bike is hard. The last time I rode a bike routinely was bout 15 years ago, when I was like 10 years old. And I now have about 40 pounds of shit on my back and things are starting to hurt. My lower back is starting to spas out on me. The straps from my backpack are beginning to make some very nice lacerations along my shoulders. Oh, and there’s also a god-awful pain arising from the bicycle seat.
3 hours later:
I’m officially lost. So I’m asking the locals how to go South East and gesturing with my hands. I start to draw them pictures and they start drawing me pictures. What a great meeting of two cultures. This goes on for quite a while and I finally come across one guy and I think he gets it! I’m so excited by this, I temporarily forget the nice collection of aches and pains that I’ve accumulated and catch a second wind.
4-5 hours later:
God this sucks. My body’s still pushing on but my will is starting to falter. I think I’m going East but it’s hard to say for sure. All the road signs are in hieroglyphics and its been miles and miles of nothing. At least the scenery is nice.
7-8 hours later:
Oh great another big city finally. Wait a minute…. Wait a minute. F**k. It’s Bangkok — where I started. The Thai are a very nice bunch. They’re just not very good at drawing maps. See example above. One guy actually pulled me inside his house and offered refreshments while he scribbled away. I managed somehow to ride in a giant circle or rectangle or whatever the hell shape that gets you back to where you started. I’m pretty livid at this point. I don’t know how many miles I went, but I was pretty exhausted. I was very tempted to just ditch the bike right then and there and grab a cab back to my hostel. But I’ve talked about this for too long. Too many people have told me I was an idiot for trying. It’s just too hard to give in now. So I made a compromise. I hopped on a bus and came to where I was supposed to bike to today. Tomorrow, I will grab a compass and we’re going to try this again.
Overall, I’m really not in too terrible of a mood. I got some great pictures, had an excuse to wear spandex for the first time, had some great street food, and got like 8 hours of cardio. What’s to complain about?
Watched some kickboxing to end the day. Really cool to watch but I was so exhausted from two previous nights of drinking that I was fading in and out of sleep as the night progressed. I did wake up just in time to watch one guy get KTFO by a sick elbow. Most of the matches featured kids that are about 15-18. Love the pre-fight rituals and the respect these guys have for the sport and each other. We did leave before the final match though. The kids were so young it was bordering on child abuse.
The Beverly Center has nothing on Paragon Center. Every high end store you can imagine, a Lamborghini dealership on the third floor, awesome restaurants, and a Koi pond to boot.
Places like Paragon really goes to show how Bangkok has been grossly misrepresented by movies and the like. Maybe it’s just me, but I imagined the city to be a giant street fair with stray monkeys on every corner. And elephants too. Lies damn it, all lies. I’ve been in Bangkok for 5 days now and have yet to see a single monkey.
What is true of the place though is the the enormous disparity between the rich and those who are not so rich. I can buy a meal for less than one US dollar just a few steps outside of Paragon but once inside, there are many places that I can’t walk into on a first year associate’s salary :(
Well, so much for slumming it. Met up with Grant Lin (last picture) - an old friend, entrepreneur, and all around good guy who’s been taking me around the city for the past few days. Goodbye shitty accommodations, hello 25th floor condominium, fine dining, and bottle service. Just look at that view. You can see from here that the city is not so modern that it has gotten boring to look at. The skyscrapers in the back wear the familiar monotone shades that canvas most modern cities, but the older buildings in the front really stand out. Which is good news for me because I get to snap some cool pictures.
So I got sidetracked for a few days. It’s no big deal and I don’t regret it because it’s been awesome. I got to see a side of Bangkok that I never would have known had I not met up with Grant. But the bike thing is still happening. I’ll be spending the better part of tomorrow gathering supplies (I ate two more Cliff Bars while I was drunk) and prepping for my departure on Tuesday morning. A mutual friend owns a resort on an island not too far from Cambodia. So the current plan is to ride along the coast line and stop by before making my way to Angkor Wat. Hope everyone is doing well at home. And thank you Vivian for figuring out how to get comments on this thing. Now I won’t feel like I’m just talking to myself.
Alright! Finally got this Tumblr thing up and running. Kind of new to this blogging thing and it’s kind of awkward so bear with me. Awkward in the sense that I’m still learning the features but also awkward in the sense that I am blogging. This is a concern for me because just having a blog puts you in danger of becoming that guy that no one likes. You know, the obnoxious do-gooder who begins every conversation with “so I was listening to NPR” and closes with some variant of “and thats why all the dolphins are going to die in 30 years, you can read all about it on my blog.” So if you guys catch me starting to turn, either slap me across the face or remind me that you don’t give two F’in shits about dolphins or whales (South Park reference anyone?)
Okay back to my trip. I’m sure I’ve already bored many of you to death with all the talk of my Asia trip but the plan is still for me to bike a good part of it. So to do that we’re traveling light (refer to the first picture). In the bag we have:
- 3 t-shirts,
- 3 pairs of shorts,
- 3 pairs of magic underwear (the guy who sold them to me swore that each pair is good for weeks at a time?)
- 12 cliff bars just in case I get lost and need sustenance (but I already ate 4 on the plane)
- A Klean Kanteen bottle
- My awesome camera
- Some socks (they’re already in the bag)
- An open mind (the most important thing)
Moving on from what I brought with me, here’s a quick recap of my flights. They sucked. I spent like 20 + hours traveling. I did get a good chuckle at Incheon Airport though. I appreciate the effort, but I’m not sure this was the most authentic Korean cultural experience. A trip back to the olden days complete with rubber arrows and a BK two doors away. Oh and the third pic is like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Nothing very eventful about my first day in Thailand. Checked into a hostel, figured out this blog thing and am now making plans to acquire my bike tomorrow. Hope to stay in touch and if you guys don’t hear from me in a while its either because I have no wireless access or because I’ve gotten lost on my bike and have run out of cliff bars.
