Last night one of my friends got assaulted and bled all over his clothing. Cops on this island ride scooters and don’t seem to mind having foreigners ride bitch with their sidearm fully accessible to foreigners like me and my battered friend. I’m in Ko Tao right now, an island known for scuba diving and parties in Thailand. I got here yesterday afternoon from Bangkok after catching the night bus and then a ferry with some travel friends. I’m at the Taco Shack Hostel drinking a Chang and using their computer. The tacos are surprisingly decent for Thailand. A westerner definitely owns this place. This is the same place my buddy got his nose broken over an argument on Argentinian currency no longer being pegged.
I’m exhausted after being up until 4 AM and then going to do scuba diving at 8 AM. I’m getting my PADI Open Water Diver certification by day and bar-hopping by night while all of my friends drink beer on the beach all day and have no other responsibilities. I regret diving right into (heh heh) SCUBA lessons on day one instead of hanging out for a few days on the island. Realistically speaking, if I didn’t take advantage of getting it immediately, I probably would have never gotten it. $350 for a SCUBA certification you get while diving amazing coral reefs is kind of a good deal.
Everything in this country is pretty cheap. Even in Bangkok–one of the most expensive places in SE Asia–things are pretty cheap. For perspective–I just got pint of beer for like $2 which was kind of a rip-off.
Bangkok was pretty real. I got into Thailand after traveling out of SFO for about 22 hours. I thought I would be crushed after traveling for that long so I got an Airbnb for the first night in Bangkok. Some Thai guy named ‘Yo’ with bleached blonde hair and Beretta Firearms long-sleeve picked me up to drop me off at the condo. The whole plane from Taipei to Bangkok was pretty much backpackers, and I’m talking about a Boeing 777 with 7 seats to a row. Hard not to make friends before you even get there. I shared the ride with a traveler I just met named Lora–some photographer from Washington. She’s also on Ko Tao right now so she might meet up with the squad.
Out of pure coincidence a friend of mine who moved to Shanghai happened to have booked a flight to Bangkok arriving only 7 hours after me. We used to hang out in Winnipeg so we figured it was fate and have been traveling together since the first night in Bangkok.
I got into Bangkok around 10 AM. I felt totally fine. I slept like a baby in my economy class seat and was ready to rock. Before Chris even got into Bangkok I knew the condo was going to be boring–wanted to meet people. I wandered around a bit and found a pretty great hostel called Bodega and booked a few nights there for the both of us. We stayed there for the rest of our Bangkok stay.
Bangkok consisted of us making about 20 new friends and going out pretty much every night. Had some pretty great times there. Everyone I met at the hostel is going to re-unite for the infamous full moon party in Ko Pha-Ngan, which officially start on the 23rd of February. Most people get in a few days early and leave a day or two after that. I’ll post some of those Bangkok stories another time.
Last night I went to a bar that legitimately was like going to Bar None in The Marina. Except on the beach on a tropical island in Thailand. Everyone looked like they would hang out in The Marina or on Polk Street and there were beer pong tables everywhere. They didn’t have solo cups, which was pretty wack. Weird juxtaposition. Western 20 somethings getting drunk in third world countries is just kind of a funny juxtaposition. I’ll save my thoughts on the metaness of this for another article. In Bangkok we ran the beer pong table pretty much every night. Except that last night. An overweight sorority girl absolutely destroyed us–but at least they won on the overtime.
I have a ton of mosquito bites already. I hope I don’t get malaria or Dengue Fever, but I realize that there isn’t much to do about it except put on some bug spray. Literally no one here seems to worry about it. Infact, no one in SE Asia seems to give a shit about anything. I kind of stopped caring about hygiene in food service on day 2. I didn’t even blink an eye yesterday when the guy making the sandwiches on the ferry ride to Ko Tao handled my money and then went straight into making the sandwich with his bare hands. I didn’t go to SE Asia expecting anything else, it’s just part of the culture here.
I’ve got about 40 pages of detailed journal notes on what I’ve been up to, but I’ll save those stories for another day.
I’ll end on saying that Thailand is pretty amazing, and there are a ton of cool people you meet also traveling around. Some really drunk or high Australian guy was telling me outside a 7/11 around 3:00 AM how Thailand is like a magical bastion of freedom. I don’t think he really understand freedom as in having white privilege and being rich in a third world country, versus the realities of Thai people selling their sisters into prostitution to support the family. But hey, think whatever makes you happy.
I’ll be in Thailand at least until March, and then I’ll probably go overland to Laos, Myanmar, or Cambodia and check that out.
Gotta roll out to ‘High Bar’ which is a outdoor bar on the top of a giant hill on Ko Tao. They pay the cops off so they can sell weed there, but if you leave with any expect to get arrested and need to pay a few $1000 in bribe money to not go to Thai jail.
Cheers,
Rutsky
PS: Bonus picture of Rankin with one of my Dutch friends on the ferry.
