Hotter Than Hell

The irony of the dubbed “Real Sin City” being as hot as Hell (near the top, if you’ve read Dante’s Inferno) is almost poetic. When we arrived, Google warned us of the number of school closings due to extremely high pollution levels. They are trying many things to counteract it, but there are just so many cars, scooters and people in a small area, it begins to feel futile. We have spent days in the direct sunlight, but you can feel how the pollution traps the heat in the city. It’s like walking through jello, the humidity is overwhelming. Day two of Bangkok and we decide to do some sight seeing. We begin to walk around the city, checking out a highly rated bookstore that is closed when we arrive. We walk to the Grand Palace to check out the hype. A beautiful and massive complex with ornate buildings, but like most valued places in Thailand, knees and shoulders must be covered. We assumed this would be the case, but it’s so hot and we’ve seen so many similar places, we decide the outside views will suffice.

A further walk to Chinatown finds us in a big shopping mall filled with Chinese/Japanese culture items. Floor after floor of video game and character statue shop. Bad news for Ryan. He gets to spend about an hour listening to me exclaim all of my favorite characters cast in intricate details at shockingly low prices. A quick shoot around and we find many places that will likely contain meat or fish sauces and not know that it matters and kill Ryan, so he grabs some noodles from a place describing themselves as vegetarian and we begin to head back towards our hostel. I find a little touristy looking restaurant by the river and grab some Massaman and rice as Ryan yells at me for letting him buy the street side noodles. A quick lunch and we head next door to a kitty cafe so Ryan can get his cat fix and we can hide in the air conditioning.

We head back to the hostel and grab our stuff. We grab a night at a party hostel away from Khao San Road and closer to Nana Plaza. Party hostels in Europe/South America tend to be more of “Get to know all of these people over drinks and then go out together in the city and let anyone not going out enjoy the peace”, whereas our experience in Asia has been more of “Everyone here will awkwardly push drinks at you and yell all night and maybe you can overpay us to take you to some bars”. We arrive at the highly rated hostel and the beds are super comfy and the dorms are separate from the bar area. It’s been a long hot day so I start reading and Ryan takes a nap. The lights flip on and two girls are in our room offering to pour shots in our mouth and telling us that if you go to the bar without pants on, they will give you free vodka. Upon entering the hostel to check in, it was all guys at the hostel check in. Nothing sounds less inviting to me as an adult male than a group of men getting free alcohol for not wearing pants, so I can’t even imagine how offputting it would be if I was a female, especially solo traveling. We pass and they offer us some insane prices on going on a bar crawl later, double pass.

We decide to check out the other go to places for debauchery in Bangkok, Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza. Luckily, Ryan and I have similar stances about these types of thing. I don’t want to take part, you can’t have my money but I do want to at least see what it’s all about, so we go people watching. Soi Cowboy is a brightly lit street lined with bars. Outside of the bars are scantily clad Thai women dancing and grabbing at your arms to bring you into their bar. Most tourist places in any city in Thailand are filled with white males in bars with young, pretty Thai girls, nothing new. We shoot over to Nana Plaza, a three story structure filled with what amounts to strip clubs. We walk through and evade the grabs into each bar. We pick one and hop inside for a drink. Girls dancing, interludes for solo/duo acts and more Thai girls sitting with white males, convincing them to by the exorbitantly priced drinks. That’s enough for us, there has to be something worthwhile around here.

We see a sign for a rooftop bar and do some quick research. There’s a super high rated rooftop bar called Octave that is just a short train ride away. We’ve been wanting to take the rail line, so this is perfect. We shoot over and arrive to a Marriot hotel. One of my favorite travel tips is that acting like you belong somewhere will usually get you into most places. “Excuse me, I forgot my keycard in *insert place you want to be*, can you swipe me in?” will get you a lot of places. We head up to the forty fifth floor of the building, where we are greeted with “Dinner or bar?” to which we reply “Bar”. The women motions us to another elevator. Up to the forty eighth floor. The drink prices are insane, but so is the view. In all of Bangkok, we can see a small handful of buildings that are at the same height as us. A quick trot up some stairs and we are at the forty ninth floor, the top, filled with modern lighting and tables filled with nicely dressed patrons. We grab a table and snap some pics of the view. A waiter brings us a menu, no need. We hop to the other side for some more pics and to enjoy the breeze and then head back. One more day until the beach.

Day three, when a trip extends past a week or two, it requires you to live your life as normal. Things like laundry and haircuts have to be factored in. Days to relax and just lay around become treasured. Before I left, I learned to how to give myself the exact style of fade haircut I like, only problem being that there is nowhere in a hostel to cut hair without blasting hair all over everything. That being said, Ryan and I head to a Thai barbershop, show the barbers pictures of us with the haircuts we want and they go off. It ends up costing about four dollars and comes out pretty near perfect for there being no exchange of words. We find a big mall for Ryan to grab some clothing items and for me to check out the movie “Glass”.

Travel In Your Dreams

After the mall, we go on a search for some food, we end up taking a route that takes us the long way back to our hostel. Almost an hour of walking and we fail to find a Thai restaurant….in Thailand. Bangkok isn’t my favorite. We get back to the hostel and I check the route to the bus station. It is 5pm at this point and our bus is at 6:30pm. Google informs me that our thirty minute taxi to the bus station is now just under an hour. Oh no, no time for food. We walk down the street and deal with a few taxis offering us flat rates to the bus station. Word to the wise, don’t ever take those deals. We find one offering to use the meter. We are currently at 5:12pm and the ride has jumped to over an hour. We sit in the backseat as I watch Google slowly increase the trip time and watch our ETA slowly slip past 6:30pm. Online, this is shown as the last overnight bus down to Phuket.

We arrive at 6:40pm and throw the money to the taxi driver and begin frantically searching for the ticket booth for Phuket to exchange our confirmation for an actual ticket. As we walk up, a woman looks at us from a distance and yells “Phuket?”. We head to her and she keeps saying 6:50pm. We tell her “6:30pm” and show her the ticket. She laughs, tells us we are good looking and has the girl behind the counter print us two tickets for the 6:50pm bus. It is 6:50pm then, she tells us to run. We run to the bus. As we walk up to the upper deck of the bus and grab our seats in the front, we remember that we didn’t eat before our haircuts to save room for a good Thai meal after, which didn’t end up happening. We sit on the bus for twenty minutes waiting to leave when we could have grabbed snacks. No luck. The bus takes off. The overnight bus lets us recline and we are right against the front. Pretty terrifying to watch the bus swing around corners and too close to other vehicles in the night from that view.

At midnight, we hit a rest stop. We hop off to use the restroom, grab drinks and an unhealthy amount of food. As we get back on, I find out I can fully recline my seat without being in the person behind me’s way. Straight to sleep. I wake up around 4am, watch an episode of the Punisher and fall back asleep. I wake up around 6am and realize we are supposed to arrive at 7am so I stay up. Nothing in Southeast Asia runs on time and we have been picking up and dropping off locals, so we arrive at the bus station around 10am. The bus terminal is nowhere near the downtown area, so we hop in the back of a songthaew (converted truck) and get to the downtown area for 15 baht (about $0.50). We hop out near some scooter rental places.

All of the scooter places in touristy areas charge crazy prices compared to the rest of Thailand, but we aren’t rookies anymore. We are staying a thirty minute ride away from the rental places but plan to come to that part of town before leaving the area. We rent two scooters for six days, so we have leverage as far as bargaining. We grab the scooters at 75% of their usual rate. Here comes the tricky part, we have our entire bags with us and the scooters have no storage. Time for those bike lessons to be worth it. We throw our bags on our back and whip through the traffic, weaving around cars stuck in traffic like some real locals. We arrive at our beachfront hostel and drop our stuff. We have noticed that the hotter an area, the less likely the common areas of the hostel have fans/air conditioning, and this is no exception. We head to the beach.

Remember: No Russian

The water is a blue that looks almost fake. The sun causes the sand to feel like hot coals and it stays about eighty five degrees. We hop in the water and it’s the perfect temperature. Just a little cool. The sand underneath is soft with seemingly no debris. I don’t think I have mentioned it in any of these posts, but after realizing that everyone else traveling is bilingual, we decided to pick up some Russian to have a second language to discuss things in when we need some privacy in public. As we walk down the beach, all we hear is Russian. It seems everyone we encounter is Russian. The restaurants and stores all have signs in Russian. We are on the southern coast of Thailand. We do a little research and find out Phuket has been less than affectionately nicknamed “Little Russia” due to the high number of Russian tourists.

As we got off the bus, my stomach felt like I might possibly die. Drink some water, eat some food, no luck. Food poisoning again? Perfect. We see on Facebook that there is volleyball in the afternoon on the beach we are staying at. I’ve been through worse for things I like less, I self induce some sickness relief and go swim in the ocean, body feels much better. Off to the beach we go. Some doubles but mostly games of threes, which is uncommon anywhere we have ever been. We sit around and wait for our chance to get on a court. With all the Russian we have learned, we haven’t gotten to “Can we play?” or “Does anyone have next?”, homework for later. We wait around like shy children. We finally get our chance to get on the court and realize that no one is going to warm up. We have next to no experience with the FIVB ball, haven’t played in the wind since the summer, haven’t played at all in almost a month and it is humid as hell. The first game does not go well. The court reverts back to the same six people playing. There are a slew of courts down the beach, and no one is letting new people in. A few failed attempts to buy our own ball with no luck. We go swim and head home.

Day two, we check out a hotel we booked for later in the week that we heard doesn’t match its online pictures. Definitely not, very low quality, time to get a refund. We find a new one that is advertised for gamers, but has high quality amenities at an insanely cheap price. It matches its online persona, life is cool. We zip around on scooters and check out another beach and an awesome viewpoint of the beach we are staying. Back to the beach to track down a ball. We ask around and are told someone there sells balls. Just our luck, he has none with him. A little better luck, he offers to let us come play fours. Usually my selling point is endurance, I don’t get tired easily. Add in a lack of eating, subtle dehydration and an insane amount of humidity, and that all goes out the window. We play for five or six hours and Ryan and I are both unable to stand when they finally offer to let us play doubles. Back to the hostel for some food and rest.

The player we met to sell us a ball finds me on Facebook. He sees we have a mutual friend in the tournament director for another island and we chat about the tournament. He is playing the same one as us in a few weeks and offers to let us join in on training. We meet up with him and buy a ball. Finally, we can get some unobstructed practice time with this new ball. We practice a bit and head home to take care of some stuff.

Most of the other cities we have been in have been super cheap. Like full portion meals for one dollar cheap. Phuket is insanely touristy, we are paying close to American prices for meals. I decide to track down a supermarket. A quick zip around the city and I find a miniature Sam’s Club. Similar prices to the local marts, but a much larger selection. As a reference, the “English breakfast set” at our hostel is about one hundred baht, or just over three dollars. This set is two pieces of toast, what looks like one egg, two pieces of bacon and tea or coffee. At the hostel, we have a kettle, a toaster and a microwave. I pick up a pack of noodle cups, a bag of Chinese carrots (as thick as my wrist), a loaf of wheat bread, two sticks of salted butter and eight hundred milliliters of chocolate milk for one hundred and seventy baht, or just under six dollars. I remember that I have to carry all of this back on my scooter, time for another learning experience.

Ryan and I make some dumb decisions but our favorite one is to wait until around noon to go outside and walk around. The sun is out in full force and we always regret. Today, we decide not to do this for likely the first time in over a month and hide at a cafe with a beach view to relax. I worked on this post (super meta) and Ryan worked on some stuff. Ryan decided to continue on his computer and I headed to volleyball.

Like Riding A Bike

It’s been a over a month since we have played with any consistency, the air here is super thick and the ball is completely different, so playing started as a bit disheartening. Plays I would normally make with relative ease had become impossible. My normal Spartan level of endurance had dwindled to a sickening frailty when you add the weeks of sitting on buses, humidity and direct sun. So training has been in order. After a few days, things start feeling like normal. Movements because muscle reactions instead of thought about choices. At this point, we’re playing four or five hours a day. We make some locals friends and feel a little more confident about the tournament coming up.,

Some of the friends we made from volleyball invite us out for barbeque. I am never one to turn down an invitation to get food. Mostly because I love food, but also because it’s always such a joyous occasion to be socializing in. We arrive at the location they sent us and they are sitting in front of table top girls with basins of buttery looking liquid around them. We immediately notice that it is all meat and seafood. Sorry, Ryan’s stomach, but they promise there are vegetables and eggs. The Asian people as a whole seem to have a very fast and loose approach to how they view vegetarianism, rarely seeming to understand that vegetarian dishes shouldn’t be cooked in animal fat or eating the broth of a soup containing meat is basically still eating meat. Ryan has done his best to be diligent about avoiding any meat or seafood, including regularly asking for no fish sauce or oyster sauce to be made with any of his meals (a very common base for Thai sauces). As the grill is loaded up with shrimp for me (even though I have already grabbed myself a plate of meat as I do not really take to seafood), Ryan adds vegetables, noodles and eggs to the surrounding basin. Our friends assure us this is vegetarian but Ryan and I whisper back and forth about his impending demise. He eats the delicious concoction as a eat plates of meat and we continue to socialize.

Ryan throws some more food into the water as I begin to cook red meat. The others inform me that I need to add something to the grill to keep the meat from sticking. They begin swabbing it with a chunk of animal fat, double sorry, Ryan’s stomach. The fat begins to dribble off of the red meat I am cooking, cascading down into the liquid, triple sorry. Ryan and I discuss how it is worth it and how it is likely that he has slowly been microdosing meat and seafood this entire trip. A theory to be tested in the morning.

We finish up and they bring us a handful food of these tiny colorful cones. Cold to the touch, popsicles, we assume. Rip them open and the consistency feels like that of tapioca bobas. Each flavor is better than the last. One of our friends walks over with a bowl full of ice cream. Sorry abs, we have found all you can eat ice cream. Two bowls of ice cream and about fifteen jelly popsicles later and we all pay and get ready to leave. After a short conversation, we realize we will likely not get a chance to play with our new friends. We exchange social medias and bid them farewell.

This Is Sam Luck

One of the first days in Phuket, a couple was leaving our hostel to go to the nearby party area. They were quoted five hundred baht for a taxi which would take them fiften minutes. This is equivalent to about seventeen American dollars. Their other option was to take a local bus for less than one hundred baht, but would take two hours. Them being two travelers with big bags, I couldn’t really help, but wasn’t pleased with the extortion of travelers.

A roommate of ours was heading to the area and I could hear him being quoted a similar price. An exorbitant amount for a long term traveler. He was just one guy with two smaller bags. Time to rack up some good karma points. We offered him to hop on the back of Ryan’s scooter with his smaller bag on his back while we strapped his bigger bag to the back of mine. My first experience with riding with a strapped down bag just to be ready for future travel. A quick fifteen minute ride to save him a handful of money and we checked out an area of the island that we didn’t see. He paid for our lunch and we parted ways to go play volleyball.

On the last day of the week, we moved to a nicer hotel. One geared towards gamers, which is funny given Ryan’s and my own penchant for wasting hours gaming, but with their amenities and competitive price, it was a no brainer. Three pools, big rooms, a rooftop terrace and a gaming room, luxuries we haven’t seen in a while. The top floor contained murals of Overwatch characters, a PS4 with new games, a Nintendo switch and rows of gaming rigs with peripherals, some even including streaming equipment. I guess gaming will be required at some point.

We went to pick up a friend from the harbour and Ryan met to bring the bag back and she got on the back of my scooter. As we started the thirty minute journey, a local stopped me, pointed at the exhaust on my scooter and made a concerned face. The exhaust and handle bars of my scooter shine with a case hardened paint job, so I thought he was referring to that. He began to point more furiously at the back and as the look of confusion on my face increased, he grabbed the back tire. I asked Ryan to take a look and he assured me everything was fine.

As we rode, I knew things like sharp turning would be difficult, as that requires a precise shifting of the body weight, and now there is another body at a different location on the bike. As we took the first sharp turn, I feel the back tire attempt to go straight. When turning, if you apply throttle, the back tire wants to go forward and the front tire is what makes it turn, so I assume the added weight to the back tire causes this scenario. From then on a begin to take the turns a little more carefully. Then I begin to feel the back tire sliding on small faults in the road. It’s okay, only fifteen more minutes to ride. Then the bike starts kicking like a wooden rollercoaster that is far past its maintenance point. I pull into a nearby parking lot and see that the tire is entirely flat. Ryan’s diagnosis has failed me.

Ryan comes to get our friend while I attempt to find a motorbike shop as several locals give me entirely separate directions. Without the added wait, the bike is basically hopping with each rotation of the wheel. I go a few minutes down the road to where Google says there is a local shop, closed down, damn. I stop in a nearby hotel and they inform me it is a ten minute ride to the closest place. Ten minutes on a functioning bike, I bet. I start riding and realize my little, hoppy, no tire scooter has to take me down this main road. Cars are stopping in front of me, scooters are whizzing around, and the normal dexterity allotted by riding a scooter is completely removed without the back tire. About ten minutes of white knuckling my handlebars and I get stuck behind a stopped car as everyone refuses to let me go around. I look at the woman next to me and point to my tire and ask where to get it fixed, she yells twenty baht at me. Damn you, language barrier. A nearby man comes over and points in the direction I was headed and says five minutes. Five more minutes? So I am half way. I go around the car and another block down I see the shop. I have never been happier for someone to give me false information.

I roll into the shop and point at my tire. The young Thai worker immediately throws the bike on the back stand and pops the tire off. I sit there sweating as he works, waiting to hear what my grand total will be for this little adventure. A quick fifteen minutes and my tire is fixed with nail removed. I pull out my wallet and he says one fifty, which is about five dollars. Awesome. I hand him his money and head back on my now functioning scooter.

A day or so of relaxation and I will be heading to Koh Samui on a bus a day or so before Ryan. I am a bit more neurotic about training stuff so want to get there early. Then the real training starts and we will be gearing up for our back to back tournaments.