We were just at the Ibiza Pool Party.  It’s like Encore Beach Club in Las Vegas, but better and costs nothing to get in–pretty awesome.  Great music, cool people, beautiful women, and beer pong.   It was just a few minutes walk from the hostel, and we amassed a solid crew there before heading over.

Now I’m sitting on the porch at Alena, drinking a beer and reflecting on the day.  There’s a little Thai baby out front that the manager of our hostel–Nam–is coddling.

To start the day off, we went to Monkey Beach with Rich, Andreas, two German girls, and Aly from Toronto.  Kimbo came with us initially, but was so beat from the night before he abandoned the idea after kayaking out a few hundred meters.

We rented kayaks for 100 baht at Stone’s Bar.  They don’t really care if you bring it back 2 hours later if you only paid for one–it’s a rasta bar.   The whole crew kayaks out of the bay and around the rocks to reach Monkey Beach.  The German girls led the crew and set the pace–naturally–and we had a nice kayak session out there for about 15 minutes.

We get to Monkey Beach and pull our Kayaks up into the sand.  There’s not many kayaks–most people got suckered into some sort of longtail water taxi to get there.  As we walked up the beach, we saw more and more monkeys, flanked mainly by large mobs of Asian tourists.  Forgotten signs warn not to feed the monkeys, juxtaposed beside people feeding monkeys anything and everything.  It’s really quite funny to watch the monkeys steal people’s food.

The monkeys get boring quickly, so Rich and I hopped in the kayaks and went through some cave like passages just further down monkey beach and around some giant stone cliffs.  I didn’t break a sweat, but Rich needed a break–he had this shitty heavy paddle.  At some point I wondered if I would fit through this cave like passage.  It definitely required some careful paddling.  After this excursion, we all kayaked back to shore.

We all showered up, and then got some 70 baht food from the place on the corner of the main drag back to the pier.  Seafood and yellow noodles.  It was pretty decent–we ate there because “Hello My Mom” wasn’t open yet.

Now that the triumphant adventurers had returned to the hostel, we found all of the hungover people drinking on the porch.  They all awaited our return so we could go to the Ibiza Pool Party together.

I needed to buy another bathing suit after misplacing mine.  The guy running the shop nearby wanted 400 baht, but I walked out on him after he wouldn’t go lower.  I couldn’t find an alternative, so I came back in and the boss man is in the shower and has his assistant running the show.  Now the assistant wants 450 baht–more than last time.  So I start haggling with him, and he shouts what I’m offering over to boss man in the shower, and we communicate like this for a bit.  I was able to get the price of this fake SuperDry (more like SuperWet) bathing suit down to 350 Baht.  I had to get moving, people were waiting for me at the pool party.

I get back and everyone is drinking and waiting for me to hurry up and get ready.  I sit down in the plastic armchair, tired from my mission.  Cody tells me sarcastically “Oh buddy, just take a load off!”.  Obviously, everyone wanted to get moving.  I get dressed and we head off to the pool.

We arrive at the pool party, and the scene is electric.  The DJ is in the corner busting out some dank house tracks.  I still wish I could find him on SoundCloud.  It’s 17.00 and the place is in full swing.  I drank 2 Changs there, and sipped from too many people’s buckets.  I kept doing scuba diver entrances into the swimming pool, full of drunk partiers making out with each other and having water fights.  There was a beer pong table setup, and Charlie and I played against some Canadians.  Unfortunately, we lost.

We walked back to the hostel and drank until 11.00 PM, and then we went out for some more drinks.  We got hustled into having a drink at “DoJo” by the street promoters.  The music there was terrible–much more so than everywhere else.  We dominated the beer pong table for a game, and then we went across the street to Stockholm Syndrome and danced a bit.  My stomach was bothering me a bit, so I stuck to beer over buckets.  I met two girls on the dancefloor, and got them to come to the beach bars with us.  One was Danish, so I wooed her with my passable skills in Danish.

We hit up Ibiza and I accidentally lost everyone but Harry and the girls.  We have some fun swing dancing–she’s on my shoulders at some point.  I try to kiss her, but it turns out has a boyfriend.  “If only the circumstances were different.” is the pull-quote here.

I get back to Alena and it’s dark and no one else is there but Cody and this Thai woman. She’s crying a bit and he is consoling her.  I recognize her–she’s usually hanging around the porch and joking around with the owner.  Later I find out that she is a prostitute that works next door and is pretty miserable with the profession, and is sad about how poorly she is treated by her pimp.  

Prostitution exists everywhere, but it’s rare to get a glimpse into the realities of it, and to meet a real, normal, nice person who is wrapped up in this lifestyle.  Society dehumanizes and shames sex workers.  It was my first time staring into the reality of how people have to make a living sometimes.  At the end of the day, a girl’s gotta eat.