For those of you that have never been to Thailand, the party drink of choice where ever foreigners congregate in-country is THE BUCKET. Here's an overview of how they make THE BUCKET from another entry from the first time I visited Thailand:
How They Make THE BUCKET:
Take a plastic beach pail with a little ice in it, then dump in two bottles of Red Bull (and keep in mind, this is the original Thai version of Red Bull that feels like it actually has amphetamines in it), a can of Coke, and an entire pint of Thai whiskey. They they throw in 7 or 8 straws in the hopes that you'll share it with strangers and not die drinking the entire thing by yourself. Any where you go on the beach, someone has a bucket and they're only too happy to share it with you. Cost per bucket? $3. Ooof.
We went up to the bar to get a bucket, and to my horror we discovered that the bar was offering a TWO BUCKETS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE special! Doh! I told the bartender that we only wanted one and she was like "Well, you're gonna get TWO! Give it away if you don't want it!"
That sounded like sensible advice to me, but Meredith wasn't having any of it. She was like "Let's EACH drink a bucket! WOOOOOO!" Here's her getting started while I show my reservations about solo-bucket-consumption. Ooof.
The ferry to Phi Phi Island wasn't leaving until 1:30pm so we had a little over three hours to kill in traveler's purgatory (which you spend a lot of time doing in Thailand if you're traveling around a lot).
Every time Meredith would start to put her tube down and get in the water, Crookjaw would start furiously barking at her! He didn't want to be left alone!
After lunch, we arrived back at our fantastic hostel a little before 3pm. Kraisak, the man who runs the place, had a bunch of people over and when we asked what the occasion was, he told us that it was Thai Mother's Day
Then he told us that a bunch of his friends and relatives were going to go tubing down the riving in the rain and asked us if we'd like to join them! Of COURSE we did! So we ran and got tubes...
After we got back to the camp, our trainer asked us if we wanted to feed our elephant and thank her for the ride! When we said yes, he walker her around a little fence thingy - so that she would get over excited about the food and accidentally trample us to death..
Here's a quick guide to elephant eating: First you reach out and grab the bananas...
If you guessed "a monkey" (which is what Meredith was hoping the gift was) are not correct. However, if you happened to have guessed LEAF HAT, congratulations! You are correct, sir!
After we'd finished cooling off, we went back over to the riding platform and we got to play with the elephant a little bit. She was so friendly and curious. She kept sending her trunk up to grab at our hands and sniff around. Getting touched and groped by a sniffy elephant's trunk is genuinely one of the weirdest and wonderfulest things I've ever experienced!
After about thirty minutes through the forest, we arrived at a waterfall! Our guide told us that the waterfall was good for swimming if we fancied a dip!
And then we headed back into the national park to visit an elephant conservation center! It sorta seems counter-intuitive, but the way they raise money for their cause is by selling elephant treks, where you get to go for like an hour ride on an elephant through the jungle. Here's us way up high in this tower watching the elephant that we're going to ride cross the river...
Around 1pm we ate a delicious lunch. Here's Mer with two of the other tourists (If I remember correctly, they were from Germany) enjoying some post-lunch fruit.
Check out the totally jungley mountains in the background. Can you believe that this place actually exists in the world? Even though I was there, every time I see these pictures I'm like "What? That place can't be real!"
Our bus literally dropped us off on the side of some road on the outskirts of Khao Sok National Park, and from there someone from the hostel we'd booked online came and picked us up! Here's Mer excited about the fact that we were on the final 10 minute leg of our almost twelve-hour journey!
Anyway, due to this misunderstanding, we had to try to sleep sitting up on a really bouncy train. Here's Meredith (who was already feeling totally sick) decked out with a sleep mask, ear plugs and our one inflatable neck pillow.
Later that evening, we went back into Bangkok and grabbed some dinner (Meredith is sad because she was starting to feel really ill). And then after we finished eating, we said farewell to Jeremy and headed to...
...and we ended up buying and eating some sliced durian!
If you don't know, the durian is Thailand's most famous fruit. It's really, really weird and smelly. The best description of it that I've ever read was written by British explorer Alfred Russel Wallace all the way back in the late 1800s:
This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes.
At 2am, the bars closed and we wandered around Nana Plaza talking to people and watching the madness of drunk tourists scrambling to secure "company" for the night. Here's Meredith and Jeremy posing with a kid who was selling flowers that wouldn't leave Jeremy alone because he thought it was so funny that Jeremy spoke some Thai. Hahaha. (Bonus points to the little kid for flipping the bird).
Meredith was totally blown away by all the Thai ladyboys walking around and all sorts of questions about them that Jeremy couldn't answer - so Jeremy being Jeremy, he proceeded to ask every single ladyboy that passed Meredith's questions. Some of which included "Do you still have a penis?" and "When men hire you, do they want you to act like a man or a woman?"
Most ladyboys are not shy AT ALL so when Jeremy started asking questions like this, it led to AWESOMENESS. My favorite part of the night was when Jeremy was asking a ladyboy a bunch of questions and working up to the "Do you still have a penis" part, the ladyboy was like "All your questions are making me excited. Here, I want you to feel my excitement" and proceeded to put Jeremy's hand right on the erection that was starting to form inside her miniskirt! Hahahaha.
The best part was, Jeremy wasn't even phased by it. He just laughed and then was like "So, if I wanted to party with you, how much would it cost and what would we do?" The lady put Jeremy's hand back on her penis and was like "1,500 Baht. You fuck me..." (then she leaned in and lowered her voice to a man's timbre and finished) "...then I FUCK YOU!" Hahahah. Oh, man. It was epic.
The night was really funny. The girls also LOVED Meredith's big blue eyes and kept telling her that they didn't usually "go with" other ladies but that if she was interested in one of them "that was ok." Hahaha. We ended up getting really drunk and hanging out with the girls and answering a lot of questions about life in New York City.
After dinner, I had to go to an international calling center and call the founder of Yodle to talk about a potential job opportunity. (I ended up turning down the job a couple of days later, but six months later after the company had grown a bit, I ended up taking it and started there in April of 2008 as their Director of Product Management. Woot!).
Anyway, while I was away on this call, Jeremy took Meredith out for a couple of buckets (he doesn't drink) and when I met back up with them they'd decided that they were taking me to...
Jeremy's a vegetarian too and when he told us that he'd never been to May Kaidee's restaurant, we decided to go back there for dinner (even though we'd just eaten lunch there like 5 hours ago!). Hahaha.
We ended up going to a place near Khao San called Mai Kaidee's and it was some of the best vegetarian food I've ever eaten in my life. Holy, cramoly. I've since found out that she's pretty famous and runs a vegetarian cooking school and even has a recipe book! Right after we'd sat down to eat, it started pouring rain! We took our time eating and tried to wait out the rain.
When you're traveling, it's really easy to lose track of hte date. We got out of the movie a little after 1am and Meredith informed me that since it was after midnight...
After dinner, we headed back over to the theater (where Meredith posed with the creepy life-sized Voldemort promotional display advertising the upcoming Harry Potter movie) and bought tickets to see...
After dinner we went back the hotel to read and nap. We woke up a little after 8pm to discover that it had started raining. We donned the (sandwich-bag) ponchos we brought along (stylish!) and decided to head downtown and see what movies were playing.
When we'd first checked in, they didn't have any rooms available that had windows! So the first thing we did when we woke up on Tuesday was head down to the front desk and get our room switched. Here's Meredith relaxing in the sunshine of our new room!
...and immediately went to bed! We'd hardly gotten any sleep the night before and figured a nice long nap might help get our bodies adjusted to local time.
Here's us with Faisal's friend Vadim saying goodbye just before getting into our taxi to the airport! Thanks a million for having us, Faisal! We had THE BEST time!
Later that night, I woke Meredith (and Rocco!) up from their team nap and we packed up all of our stuff so that we'd be ready to head to the airport and catch our flight to Thailand! After we were finished packing, we headed out for dinner!
And then I set my camera all the way across the tent and used the timer to take this awesome Hustler Magazine inspired photo that I call "The West's Corruption of the East."
...and we saw the Simpsons Movie! Here's Faisal and Mer with the rest of the fam, minus Bart who must've been stolen! Hahaha. (By the way, they had the same exact display in NYC and someone broke Homer's arm off. Nice to see that Simpsons-vandalism is so universal).
"Reading and relaxing" very quickly turned into "lapsing into a food coma" and we both woke up five hours later! Hahaha. Here's Meredith and Rocco waking up from their nap together!
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