Drinking and Diving/KO TAO

Somehow, incredibly, I wake up on time to catch my boat. Well, not on time-on time, but only a little late, as opposed to major missed-the-boat-fuck-everything late. I'm finally getting off this rock. Ko Tao here I come, to dive and relax and be merry. I throw my stuff together in a rush and check out. The guy at the desk only charges me 300 baht for losing the key, instead of the full 500 penalty they have written. I'm all feeling good vi-bra-tions.

As per the instructions on my travel ticket, I wait on the side of a road about 10 minutes walk from Venus. A songthaew (a modified pick-up truck with bench seats and a roof in the back) pulls up, a few minutes early.

"Are you the pick-up?" I ask.

"Yes yes!" A middle-age Thai woman in the passenger seat nods, and waves me in. I heave my backpack onto the vehicle, and we take off. There are three other foreign passengers, none of whom seem to have the same ticket I do. Before we reach the dock, the driver lets out two of the passengers, who, instead of handing the Thai woman a ticket like mine, pay in cash. A few minutes later, the driver stops again at an ATM, so another passenger can withdraw some cash to pay the woman.

"Do you have a boat ticket yet?" the woman asks me. Considering I have a joint ticket with the car pick-up and the boat arranged together, alarm bells are ringing. Man, am I tired of metaphorical alarm bells.

We pull into Thongsala Pier, where I get out and start walking away. Immediately, the driver and the woman start yelling at me for money. Pulling out my ticket, I insist I've already paid, because hey look at this ticket I have that I paid for. "That is for van! Not us!" she yells.

Dammit. Yes, it was probably my fault that I got into the wrong vehicle. Yes, considering my recent transformative drug experience, I could probably be a little more patient and understanding. But I've just had way too little sleep for this enlightenment bullshit. Breakthrough drug trip or no, I'm ready to get ugly. I mean, unless they call over the cops. If that happens, I'll totally pussy out and pay them whatever they want and apologize shamefully and profusely. But otherwise, I'm your motherfucker.

"You told me to get in! You can call the ticket people and get your money, but I'm not paying!" In response, the woman calls for the driver, a short and stout older gentleman, who steps out of the songthaew. In the back are still two German girls, watching the whole scene. The driver walks up to me and brandishes a handful of coins.

"You call! You call people! Here, I even pay for phone!" I check the ticket, and as I thought, there's no phone number, because why the hell would there be. My resolve starts to let up, and I offer him half the cost of the ride. No dice. Growing angrier, he demands the full amount, shouting that it was my mistake, that I need to call the travel people and get my money back, and pay him his due.

"I can't! I'm leaving! Take half, or nothing."

He stops shouting now. "See what happens if you leave," he says, leaning into me.

I figure if this dude really wanted to pursue a legitimate restitution, he would've called the cops over at any point. And as it is, despite the number of brutal Muay Thai matches I've seen, pudgy 5-foot songthaew drivers just don't intimidate me. That's just the form my racism has taken, I guess.

"I will leave!" I wave my ticket in his face. "I've got my ticket! My boat's over there!"

"See what happens," he goads.

"Okay," I say, and turn to walk towards the ferry. He grabs my arm. Every muscle in my body tenses at once. I lean right up into his tiny, fat face.

The woman calls out something in Thai from the songthaew, and the man relents. He gets in the vehicle, while she waves me off angrily. I walk away carefully, an enormous knot of adrenaline vibrations tying up my joints. I buy a tuna sandwich for the boat ride. 100 baht. That's how much he wanted me to pay. I almost fought a cab driver for 3 bucks, and it was probably really my fault to begin with. I really need to get off Ko Pha Ngan.

At the end of the pier I find our cast thus far: Sander, Tyler, Hefina, Cyndi, Bethany, and another Brit girl, Anna. Janice has left, off to pursue her own interests. As we wait for the ferry, Hefina mentions how she and a few of the others had to wait while their van made a stop for some "boy" who never showed up, and asks where the hell I was. My answer is vague, as I don't feeling like telling them about the songthaew. The less I think about it, the less my actions have consequences.

The ferry to Ko Tao takes about 2 hours, during which we're solicited by a handful of shills for the island's various diving resorts. The decision is made to stay at Big Blue Diving, on account of someone having seen the name in Lonely Planet. Apparently my new traveling buddies make a vast number of decisions this way. The brochure-pusher for Big Blue makes a call, and by the time we dock there's a ride already waiting for us. Great schools of fish coil beneath our feet as we walk down the pier to meet the Big Blue rep, and get taken to the resort.

Once checked in, we're all split into two rooms with bunk beds but, more importantly, AC. After dropping off luggage, we all reconvene to peruse the diving packages. I opt to get my Advanced Diving license, because Ko Tao is one of the cheapest and best places in the world to do certifications, so even if I can't actually "afford" it, at least it feels like I'm saving money. Everyone else opts to do various fun dives, except for Anna, whose leg is still healing from a scooter accident, and Hefina, who is terrified of diving, but we peer pressure into getting her Open Water license regardless.

Sander, having sat still for over an hour, does flips for awhile.

Not only does Big Blue have some decent deals on diving, but it also has a floating bar, where you can wade knee-deep into the ocean to drink beers from a boat moored twenty feet offshore:

It's...beautiful.

A few of us grab some kebabs, and explore around our neck of the island. By coincidence, Fred, who I previously gabbed about Dragon Tattoos and such with, has also ended up on Ko Tao. Bethany and I tag along with him back to his diving resort, Lotus, and watch the best fireshow I've seen yet:

Of particular interest is one of the fire dancers will walk into the audience, still spinning his fire cups, and twirl them so near to one's face that he can (and does) light a cigarette.

If we were sober this would probably seem really dangerous.

Staying in the same room is an eighteen-year old Israeli dude by the name of Amzi, whom I meet the following day after an afternoon dive. We hit up the floating bar for some light conversation, and as a perfect island sunset falls into our drinks, Amzi tells me all about terrorism and how this skinny Israeli kid with the goofy hair knows how to drive tanks.

With the appropriate amount of libation, Amzi, Bethany, and I find our way to Ko Tao's only ladyboy bar, known as The Queen, where I may or may not have been dragged on stage to pole dance with the ladies.

To be fair, that could be any handsome, devilishly charming, horribly sunburned foreigner.

Aw geez.

Afterward, our bartender host Mickey challenges me to a game of Connect Four, which is what one comes to expect from bored bartenders in Thailand. And I'm proud to say, for the first time in Thailand, I won a goddamn game of Connect Four. Upping the ante, Mickey brings out a Jenga set, and ropes Bethany in. Ladyboys fucking love Hasbro, I guess. The loser has to drink out of a warm, haphazardly mixed bucket drink that seems to be mostly backwash and sand, so the stakes are high.

Jenga-high.

Cyndi shows up, and makes about a hundred requests for Lady Gaga. I'm done after hearing the second remix of "Just Dance", and leave for a party at The Castle, a club in the middle of the island that takes far too long to get to, and maybe it's pertinent somehow that I have a particularly deep dive early in the morning that I should probably be awake and ready for, but you know what The Castle has a neon glow-in-the-dark triceratops:

Eat it, every other club in the universe.

Now, if only you weren't filled with assholes...

My dive instructor in the morning sees my Castle stamp and expresses grave reservations about me being prepared for the dive, even though he's Scottish, and I feel like there's some type of stereotype there that he's not playing by. Regardless, I dive, and I'm fucking awesome at it. Afterwards, I take a quick nap before our night dive on the same day.

As our last dive for the licenses, Iain doesn't even wait till we've showered off the salt water before taking our diving license photos.

Motherfucking Jacques Cousteau.

Bethany decides spur-of-the-moment that she wants one of them bamboo tattoos, so I go with her as moral and physical support. We end up at The Office, an outdoor bar that has a very strict music request policy:

Good for them. I have some more drinks on the beach with Bethany and Mathilde, our Danish roommate, and go back to the room, to smoke more cigarettes with Bethany and enjoy my first night in Ko Tao without diving the next morning. The only place I want to see now is Chumphon Pinnacle, on the off-chance of seeing a whale shark, but the boat tomorrow is full.

Bethany leaves early in the morning, whispering goodbyes to all in the dorm room. Hefina heads out for Chumphon Pinnacle as the last dive of her Open Water, as I go with Cyndi, Anna, and Sander to inquire about cliff diving. The local shop, Good Time Adventures, disappoints with the news that we'd have to get full-day packages, as a recent storm has destroyed all the bridges between cliffs, making it impossible to go by land. Instead, we ask about wakeboarding. Their boat is broken. The four of us end up climbing rocks on the shore, get ice cream, and venture out to Kimg Rama Rock.

When we stop at a local shop for water, I find this sign, which is far more educational than any number of years in higher education:

Mathilde gets a tattoo, and once again I provide a hand to hold as her foot is punctured again and again by a thin bamboo spear.

When we finally get back to Big Blue, it turns out Hefina's group out at Chumphon Pinnacle spotted a whale shark. As they happened to have a cameraman diving with them, they show the video to the benefit and dripping jealousy of the entire resort. The boat was full, they told me. I sign up for the Pinnacle tomorrow. I will not be denied my whale shark. It's something special to think that these are my life problems now.

That night, I return to The Queen, with Amzi this time. It's finally Cabaret Show night, and we get seats around the stage in the back for an hour of intricately choreographed and costumed lipsync routines.

For the climax of the show, select audience members are brought backstage, dressed up, and then trotted out to dance with the stars. Amzi is picked as I snicker and jeer, mostly to cover up my shamed jealousy. Man alive, do I need attention. It isn't long before Amzi's brought back out in a gold sequined bra, matching pantaloons, and a massive green frightwig:

Drinks are expensive at 200 baht a cocktail, but through some miracle of space-time gymnastic happy hour comes around right afterwards. I have one last drink with Mathilde at The Office, and head home.

I finally dive Chumphon Pinnacle in the morning, but the whale shark has already left the area. Typical. Our divemaster is a tiny girl whom we watch taunt a huge triggerfish on the seafloor for about 10 minutes, because every other divemaster at the resort has been attacked by one, and she'll be goddamned if she's odd man out. Unfortunately for her, the triggerfish merely swims away, confused but unfazed, leaving her totally and disappointingly unharmed. Today's just shit luck for everyone. On the boat I try to show off my language skills by chatting with a Japanese couple, who call my bluff by inviting me to dinner with them. Since using the little Japanese I remember has already given me half an aneurysm, I don't feel up to it, but I do hang out with them and watch the sunset.

Outside Big Blue, the fastest banana pancake vendor alive has a stall. I get a banana pancake that I don't even really want, just to watch the guy make it. Are these the Halcyon days?

I wake up around noon, having slept about 12 hours. I check Facebook, and there's a surprising amount of talk about Osama bin Laden. More specifically, his being super duper dead. Outside, the TV in the bar is playing a BBC report intercut with Obama's press announcement. I watch for awhile, on uncertain emotional ground, before Iain finds me and hands me my Advance Diver License. Of all the things I'm feeling, at the forefront is how me getting my Advance License just got overshadowed somewhat.

I drink a tall boy in the sand and run around with a pack of beach dogs. It could be the bin Laden thing, or my lack of food and water combined with the burning afternoon sun, but I feel reeling drunk.

I eat dinner with the whole gang, and find out that all these Europeans have both seen and love Napoleon Dynamite. As the only one with an American accent, they're in awe of my impression, which gets those panties a-soakin', or at least until I order a Grasshopper and all my work is undone.

Sander, Tyler, and I go to AC Bar, where we get hammered immediately, Sander does some breaking in the sand, and shortly thereafter he and Tyler pull a pair of girls together. I dance on a stage area by myself for awhile, a lone uncoordinated wolf, until I'm approached by some ladyboys, who dance to Shakira with me. I must have sent out some sort of pheromone, because soon an old Thai man starts hugging me and kissing me on the cheek, saying he loves me, over and over. I get away from him, only to have another younger Thai guy approach and motion to kiss me on the lips. I shake my head no, he kisses me on the cheek instead.

Tearing myself away from all the Thai man-love, I finally find a girl to talk to, who I only realize is Thai after trying for about five minutes straight to speak Japanese with her. Karma, I guess, for missing dinner the other night. Tyler shows up, says Sander is leaving with the girls. We catch up, and I find out that one of the girls is pissed because Tyler called her a lesbian after she rebuffed him. I can identify, I think. They say they're going to sleep. I buy a beer and do the same.

I wake up to Sander coming into the room at 9:50. "Checkout's in 10 minutes," he says. Fuck it. I sleep in till noon and take a shit. I'll be glad to be rid of this toilet, with the cracks in the seat that suck in your ass flesh and pincer it viciously when you try to stand up. Sander and Tyler have already made arrangements at a travel agency for passage to Railay, so I get a ticket for myself and drop off my big backpack at the agency. The sun is starting to set, so I drop my small backpack off in front of the Big Blue reception with a pile of other bags, and hit the Sea Bar for a view with brews.

A Frenchman buys me a beer because of bin Laden's death, and tells me about a "temple valley" in Myanmar that is spectacular "if you have an ipod". A Lebanese girl toasts me "Kessak".

I go to put my sunglasses away, and the reception area that was previously full of bags is totally empty. My backpack is gone. It's 7 pm, and I have to leave at 8. I walk around Big Blue asking people if they've seen my bag, more and more hopelessly. The Thai don't want to help, and the Westerners don't know how to help. After an hour, Sander and Tyler take off ("Sorry man, don't know what to say...Later?"), and I'm forced to check back in to Big Blue. With my wallet (containing 500 bucks in Chinese yuan), debit card, netbook, and a gallimaufry of other electronics and travel accessories in the lost backpack, all I have left is my big backpack full of clothes, and whatever's in my pockets. My camera, and a little less than 200 USD. More time passes, and by now all of the staff know my situation, but no one can offer any help. I decide to drink.

They're playing beer pong in the Big Blue bar, which I hang around while waiting for news and sucking down Long Islands. I have a conversation with the bartender that goes something like this:

"So I heard you lost your backpack?"

"Yup, with my wallet in it, with all my cash and my debit card. Can I get a Long Island?"

"Sure, I imagine you could use one right now. That's so horrible. Anyways, that'll be 6 dollars."

I eat nothing, because I need to save money, and drink more Long Islands. A lot of drunken gazes at my wrist tattoo. "Don't Panic." Probably not the Halcyon days.

I wake up in bed, with no memory of leaving the bar. A staff girl comes in, and asks if James Wilson is here. Miracle of miracles, she has my backpack! Which, when she hands it to me, feels suspiciously light. Sure enough, no netbook (despite the Korean sticker on the cover that says 'Don't Take Shit Anybody"), no mouse, no expensive headphones, no Nintendo DS, all my cables and cords are gone, and I can't find my wallet. They even took my cheapo USB drive and the soap I had just bought. After turning the backpack inside out, I find my wallet in a pocket I didn't know existed. My debit card is floating around outside the wallet, and all the Chinese cash is gone. Curiously enough, the Xanax is still here. I check out, and even if the bartender wouldn't comp me a pity drink the night before, they don't charge me for the room. I get a new ticket for Railay and get some espresso at Tao Cafe.

I overhear some Canadian girls talking about how they heard someone say you don't get hangovers here. And it's true. By all rights, I should be hungover. I should've been hungover from Day One. I check my card's transaction history, which is clear. And so much the better, because I'll be damned if I'm going to stick around for a replacement card. After some prodding from the Big Blue staff, I file a police report, which amounts to exactly what you might figure. Some rumblings of a Burmese culprit ("Couldn't be a Thai..."). Of course the security guards didn't see anything. Of course the cameras are broken. Of course, nothing ever gets stolen here.

I get a massage, only to find massages aren't that relaxing when you're thinking "When I am relaxed, all my problems will be over" the whole time. For dinner, I eat something called the Hungry Hippo burger:

Because I'll always love you, Jamie.

A truck pulls up to the travel agency around 8, where I've been using the internet and feeling sorry for myself. A quick drive, and I'm put on a boat to Surat Thani, where everyone has a 3x5' bit of padded floor demarcated for sleeping. Some try to read, undistracted by how they haven't been robbed.

Like that one there. Look at that smug personal property-having dick.

At least I've got my camera and my debit card, and whatever health left before I soon destroy it with titanic amounts of drink. And to play devil's advocate, the 500 dollars cash wasn't really mine, as I hadn't yet paid Sarah back for it. So really, I'm just fucked out of my new netbook. And my cables. And my DS. And my goddamn soap. Optimism is an uphill fucking battle.

He knows.

Still, I can't bring myself to read, or sleep. Did I mention this is my first theft, ever, in my life? I can see why someone might get worked up! It definitely isn't all smiles and banana splits. Before I left for this trip, I considered doing it Luddite-style: no electronics, no diversions, no Western bullshit. A real gritty classic adventure. Of course, I laughed the thought away a second later and took all my toys, but it seems forces are pushing me the other way. Maybe the thief did me a favor?

Fuck. I had the new episode of Game of Thrones on the netbook. I hope that goddamn thief gets AIDS.

Getting Wet/KO PHA NGAN

Sarah left early in the morning.  She gave me these parting words: "Don't take Xanax and drink, or you'll die."  Psh.  Whatever, mom.  For the first time in four weeks and four countries, I spent the day alone.

Well, not totally alone. Here's a watch ad by Nicolas Cage, where he is pictured not wearing a watch.

I ate some sadness flan.

And I found one of Shanghai's favorite piss-corners.

In the morning I rode the 20 subway stops back to the airport, mostly standing, because I had made the mistake of wondering how the subway ride could possibly get any worse.  I was worried about airport security.  I hadn't had any problems with the security checkpoints in the subway, or with my previous airport entry, but carrying around a full bottle of prescription medication did make me a little uneasy.  And then, after putting my backpack on the conveyor belt, I got flagged.  Time slowed down as the conveyor belt was ran backwards, and my bag went back under the x-ray, and then pulled back out to be examined by hand.  A security officer addressed me sternly, brandishing an item from my bag.  It was my alarm clock.

One of these things is illegal, and one looks like a bomb if you don't really know anything about bombs.

"What...is...this?" she asked, holding the clock gingerly with her fingertips.  "Clock!  Alarm clock!  Time!" I replied, relieved, then realizing I shouldn't look too relieved.  She gave it one last glance, and stuffed it back in my bag without another word.  I felt like Jason Bourne.  I felt like James Motherfucking Bond.  If those Xanax pills were state secrets, I thought, I just totally espionaged you assholes.  The victory was short-lived, however, when I spent twenty dollars on fried rice and ice coffee in one of the airport restaurants.  I felt like James Bond's cousin Doug who works at the mall and knows his wife cheats on him with the high school kid at the Orange Julius.

On the plus side (?), this store exists.

My flight is with Sri Lankan Airlines, a welcome change from the usual Air Asia budget flight.  Not only do we get headrest TVs, but an actual menu for the food as well.  I watch The Tourist and drink complimentary Scotch, which comes in handy when watching a movie like The Tourist.

Thanks, Scotch!

From the Bangkok airport, I ask how to get to the train station, and am put on a bus.  I was trying to get to the island of Ko Pha Ngan, and had read that I could get a cheap train ticket to the dock.  And that was exactly the extent of my planning.  Once we near the train station, a Thai woman in charge of the bus asks me where I'm going.  I tell her Ko Pha Ngan, and she becomes very adamant that I follow her to "her" travel agency.  It'll be as cheap as the train, she tells me.

What the hell, right?  I follow her to the travel agency office, where she presides as I'm sold a joint bus-boat ticket that is actually far more expensive than the train, but the addition of the boat ticket makes me okay with it.  Sure, I've just played into this stranger's cunning hands and padded the pockets of an exploitative travel agency, but there's something nice about not having to lift a finger as other people organize my plans for me while I lie back in apathy.  Like being sedated before oral surgery; I may feel extorted and slightly frightened, but I'm free to shut my brain down and get in some good drool time.  Once I've handed over the money, the lady disappears, and I'm directed to a bus waiting just down the street that'll take me to the port at Surat Thani, and from there I'll get a boat to Ko Pha Ngan.

The really worrying thing is, I was never actually given a ticket.  They put me on the bus, and then tell me to stay while they bring one back for me.  Outside the bus on the street is an impromptu dance party, which only made me more suspicious.  What do they have to be so happy about, I thought.

The travel agency people still hadn't come back with my ticket, and the bus began to leave.  This could be a murder bus, I think.  I'm on a murder bus, and I don't even have a ticket.  That would be so typical.

The overnight bus ride is a feared and hated staple of backpacker life.  Fortunately, this was one of the better buses, just below a Greyhound in terms of comfort (as one should hope, at 30 bucks a ticket), and I had the foresight to grab some food and beer from a 7-11 before we took off.  Unfortunately, all the window seats were taken, which can make for an uncomfortable night.

I'm no stranger to long bus rides, and over the years I've developed a strategy for what experts call the "Aisle Seat Conundrum".  I find an empty seat next to a nice-looking non-skinny girl.  We make pleasant small talk, after which I offer some food, maybe some beer, maybe some invaluable witticisms about whatever movie is playing (this is 100% always a hit).  I let a decent amount of time pass, and then pretend to nod off in my seat.  Ever so slowly, I let myself slide over, until my head falls on my shoulder, and then I "wake up"!  I stammer an apology, smile sheepishly, to which she'll say something like "Aw, that's alright..."  Now it's time to grin, but only in my brain, because she's just fallen into my trap.  Now I can happily rest against a total stranger's shoulder, while all the suckers around me in aisle seats are forced into more and more intricate yoga positions in their fruitless bid for sleep.  You can even try it with a skinny girl, provided she's got a soft coat or hipster scarf or something.  I guess guys work too, if you're less prejudiced about your meat-pillow.  The muscly ones feel real nice, I bet.

Don't try to hang out with your human cushion afterwards.  Don't make it weird.

The ride to Surat Thani takes about 8 hours, after which we waited in the bus depot for another hour before being driven to the pier.  Our bus tickets are swapped for boat tickets, which I'm given despite not having the boat ticket.  Things are working out after all, it looked like.

It's on this last leg of the drive that my bladder finally reached critical mass.  I had peed at the last stop, but the beers broke a seal that every bump in the road painfully worsened.  And there are a lot of frigging bumps  on a Thai road.  With my back hunched over and knees locked together, I made my way to the bathroom on the board, only to discover that it was locked.  I knocked on the door, waited a few moments, knocked again, and nothing.  It was unoccupied, and locked for reasons unknown but almost certainly diabolical.  I had a few options now.  The most obvious was I could wait until the bus stopped again, while my bladder exploded and I died.  That was unacceptable.  The other options required more creativity.  But I didn't get a B.A. in Fine Art for nothing.

The bathroom was at the bottom of the stairwell, connecting the first class seating in the front of the bus on the lower deck with the economy seating on the upper deck, where I was seated.  All was quiet at the moment, and everyone seemed to be asleep.  The toilet may have been locked, but I noticed that the sink was outside, in the open.  Opposite the sink was the door to the first class cabin, which looked sturdy and easy to block.  The trouble would be the upper deck, as there would be no stopping anyone from coming down the stairs.  One look over the railing and I was busted, but I had no choice.  I was desperate.  So, with legs splayed apart to both straddle the sink and block the first class door, my eyes desperately scanning the upper railing like a cornered mongrel, I peed in the sink.  A bright, never-ending stream of liquid yellow shame.

It wasn't easy.  I have a shy bladder in the best of times, and rabid paranoia makes for a poor diuretic, not to mention the sheer logistics of trying to piss with your legs angled wildly four feet apart on a moving bus.  And then the faucet wouldn't work.  I had no choice but to hope the urine would finish trickling down the drain by the time we stopped again.

We reached the pier and while it hadn't finished draining, at least there was no tell-tale foam.  Unfortunately, the smell had not fully dissipated.  I got to watch an entire bus of sleep-deprived backpackers wince as they passed one-by-one through the ammonia-drenched failure box.

I am so sorry.

I shouldn't have peed on that.  Another thing I wish I could stop saying.

At the pier we have another hour wait before we can board the boat, which provides enough time to visit a real bathroom and wash my hands figuratively and very, very literally.  While washing up, I notice my soap dispenser has a little guest.

If you could harness uncontrollable shivering as an energy, this soap would be a perpetual motion machine.

The boat first stopped at Ko Samui, then continued on to Ko Pha Ngan.  After the shuffle of passengers disembarking and the crew unloading luggage, I overheard a British girl sobbing to her friends.  At some point during the voyage, all of her cash was stolen from her bag in the luggage compartment.  Earlier, I had read quite a bit about this sort of thing happening on buses, and thus tried to never leave anything valuable in my larger backpack.  I empathized with her, but felt sufficiently superior in my own savvy travel sense.  Who leaves a great deal of money in an unattended bag?  The girl was practically begging for it to be stolen.

We finally reached the dock in Ko Pha Ngan around noon.  Once disembarked, I was struck by a great mix of relief, joy, and homecoming.

Yup, drink it in.  Drink it all in.

I had been to Thailand once before, but until this moment I had had no chance to appreciate the nostalgia of return, having been caught up in relentless cross-country movement since boarding my flight.  More excitingly, this was where my plans ended.  I had booked a bungalow for a week here, and had nothing planned beyond that.  I could go anywhere, with anyone, and my actions were limited only by my ever-loosening sense of morality and civil behavior.  This was what made people quit their jobs and empty their savings. This was what sold millions of Lonely Planets.   This was pharmaceutical-grade freedom.

I still had to get to my bungalow, which very quickly presented some hurdles.  For one, I hadn't printed out an address.  This was an easy fix, though: I ducked inside the first internet cafe I saw and wrote the pertinent info down.  The bigger hurdle was I had come during the Songkran festival, a New Year's celebration that consists of everyone in Thailand drenching everyone else in as much water as humanly possible

Here's a little girl kindly spraying passersby with a hose, like the cutest riot police.

Sure, there are some traditional religious underpinnings to the whole thing, but that sort of shit isn't going to fly in Ko Pha Ngan.  Unless that shit is colored talc, which was very popular for throwing on people who had been recently doused.  I hopped on a tuk tuk bound for the vague direction of my lodging, and we would be ambushed every minute on all sides by buckets, hoses, bottles, and water guns of every caliber.  Having learned my lesson about mixing water and electronics already through my MP3 player, I decided I should probably do something about the backpack that was starting to soak through on account of being in the general vicinity of me.  There was a luggage rack on the roof (that the smarter passengers had taken advantage of before they got in), and so I hung off the back off the tuk tuk, one arm clutching the railing and the other arm attempting to lift my entire backpack and fling it on top.

My sunglasses were clipped to the neck of my shirt, and in the midst of my flailing they came unhooked and went flying into the street.  I watched dumbly as our tuk-tuk drove on, leaving them behind.  It was about 5 minutes later that it occurred to me I might've asked the driver to, well, stop.  Too late now.  Of all the things I had bought for this trip, only my swim trunks and my netbook were left, and that was only providing the latter had escaped the festivities un-soaked.

The tuk tuk dropped me off in Haad Rin, at the southern tip of the island.  My bungalow was supposed to be near Haad Rin Nok, or Sunrise Beach, also the location of the monthly Full Moon Party.  After hiking around the hills for an embarrassingly long time and getting multiple conflicting directions from people, at last I found the Venus Resort.  The resort sits along a hill overlooking the far end of the beach, not quite in view but within easy walking distance.  Once let into my room, I looked over the damage.

The contents of my bags had made it through okay, but everything in my pockets was utterly soaked.  This included my passport, which now had many stamps leaking ink through the pages, and my wallet with all my Thai and Chinese cash.  I laid the passport out on the desk to dry, along with 30-odd cash bills, and prayed that I hadn't just set off the spidey sense of every burglar in Thailand.

The room itself was bare to a fault, as can be expected for a 10 dollar-a-night bungalow.  There was no towel, no toilet paper, no promised wi-fi, and the shower was so busted that it seemed to want to conserve as much water as was being wasted outside.

You could get the same pressure and amount of water if you just had a guy stand above you and squirt a mouthful of water between his teeth.

The most worrying thing about the room was the door that wouldn't shut.  So, I'll just keep it locked all the time, I figured.  I locked the door, and discovered that it would still open if pulled hard enough.  Not the greatest situation when you have 500 bucks lying on a desk in the open.  Maybe stealing from tourists is really exaggerated, I thought.  That sort of stuff probably almost never happens.  Like, say, someone's bag getting robbed on a boat.  Never happens.

I tried to nap but to no avail, so instead I took a quick hobo shower (just wet the important bits) and headed out to rediscover Sunrise Beach.

This is what no responsibility looks like.

This was my second time visiting this particular beach, after a trip to Thailand nearly a year earlier.  I had forgotten about the massive heat, for which the ocean breeze was a welcome tonic.  April is the beginning of the hottest time of the year for Thailand, which made me real thankful for the shorts I had bought back in Shanghai.  Travel Tip: when traveling to Southeast Asia during the hottest time of the year, pack shorts.  Don't forget them because you packed your shit in 20 minutes before your flight, while drunk.  I really can't stress this enough.

It was past noon, but there were still crowds milling about, some people playing volleyball, some sunbathing, some swimming.  For the off season it seemed to be an awful lot of people, but then it was also only 5 days till the Full Moon Party, one of the biggest and most famous beach parties in the world.  It was going to get a little crowded.  I walked along the beach, remembering the sights...

The tide carrying in last night's bucket drink straws...

Creepy inbred island dogs scavenging for food...

Mellow Mountain's siren call of hallucinogenic treats...

The line of bucket drink stands were intact, but the signs had changed.  I looked with concern for my personal favorite JAMIE ROCK STAR bucket stand, and found it in good health, although slightly modified from when I had last seen it.

Now with 900% more Paul Rudd references.

Although I think I have a new favorite, in BETHLEHEM'S FUCK BUCKET.

Seeing the beach again reminded me of Jessie, who had been with me on my last visit.  I realized again how alone I was.  If I got too fucked up, there was no cavalry, no shoulder for support.  This was it.

Fuck it.  I bought some counterfeit Ray Bans and signed up for scuba lessons.  Freedom's still a hell of a thing.