I Heart Thailand

Part One

Without further ado, I bring to you some text with accompanying pictures that, as a whole, will hopefully narrate a few of the trials and tribulations, adventures and misadventures, and love and heartbreak that Joleen and I experienced during our sojourn in the tantalizingly beautiful and mysterious country formerly known as Siam: Thailand. I won't go into excuciating detail here, as it would then take me 20,000 hours and 20,000 pages to type. After writing the main stuff I'll try to add funny/random stuff that happened at a later time. Anyway, onward...

We took an amazingly large number of different modes of transportation throughout our trip. To get to our bungalow on Phi Phi, for example, we had to endure: 1) A taxi from my apartment to the bus station. 2) A 2.5 hour bus ride from Pyeongtaek to the Incheon (Seoul) airport. 3) A 6 hour airplane flight from Seoul to Bangkok. 4) Another 1.5 hour flight from Bangkok to Phuket. 5) A mini-bus from the Phuket airport to our first hotel (in which we stayed 1 night). 6) a mini-bus from our hotel to the Phuket Pier. 7) A ferry from Phuket to Ton Sai Bay on Phi Phi Don. 8) A longtail boat from Ton Sai to Ao Toh Ko (the beach where our bungalow was located on Phi Phi). Wow; impressive, eh? Other modes of transportation utilized throughout the trip: tuk tuk, regular city bus, subway, train, sky train, songthaw, sidecar of a motorcycle, and an SUV.

The first leg of our journey began by spending an evening and night with Sunny's grandma, cousin (high school girl), and uncle. It was quite possibly one of the most awkward days of both my and Joleen's lives. We had gone into the whole ordeal with the understanding that the cousin spoke some English. This was really not the case. She knew very minimal English and rarely spoke. The grandma was among the group of people who believe that the louder you speak the more likely someone is to understand a foreign language. The uncle was not home 3/4 of the time. The whole afternoon--honestly, about 8 hours--was spent watching tv in silence. Anyway, much more occurred that was funny/confusing, but I'll cut it short for now to get to our actual vacation. But I have included a picture here of Joleen with Grandma Sunny and The Cousin, Mi Ae. Fyi, old Korean ladies are kinda scary.

Anyway, let's cut to the chase...or get to the meat of the story, if you will. So on January 29th (Sunday) we flew out of Seoul and into Bangkok. It took approximately 9 hours to get through customs. Seriously. There was this big group of Russians in front of us that annoyed the ever-lovin' shit out of us and all took a bazillion years to get through the line. God. But right from there we got on another flight to Phuket (an island in southern Thailand). It took quite a bit of time to get to our hotel for various reasons. Our hotel was not bad. It was called The Pearl. I would stay there again. Not only did we have a Bible placed by the Gideons in our room, but we also had a book on Buddhism. Nice. So we wandered around Phuket Town a while (no beaches in Phuket Town) and ate some Pad Thai noodles. Scrumptious.

The next morning we went via ferry to Koh Phi Phi Don, the island that we'd be staying at for the next 4 nights. The ferry dropped us off at Ao Ton Sai, a beach on Phi Phi that was not the beach we were staying at. This beach was hit really hard by The Tsunami. It didn't look too bad, though...aside from some construction going on. Then again, we didn't have anything to compare it to. Joleen got her picture taken with an interesting Thai guy. See included picture. The water was unbelievably gorgeous and blue. After much confusion on Ao Ton Sai regarding who the hell was supposed to pick us up and take us to our beach (Ao Toh Ko) we finally boarded a longtail boat and then arrived in about 1/2 hour's time to our beach bungalow paradise. I will include various pictures. Look and be envious.


The food there was awesome. And super cheap. And our bungalow had 2 hammocks on the porch. That was awesome. The bathroom was kinda nasty, but not like we were spending a lot of time in there. There was no hot water and you had to flush the toilet by pouring a bucket of water into the main bowl area, thus forcing the "goods" down the pipes. Joleen has just dubbed it a high-tech outhouse. We also only had electricity during the nighttime hours. Our bed had sweet-ass mosquito netting around it. It's primary purpose, however, was not to ward off mosquitos (as there weren't many inside) but to protect us from gecko feces from the multitude of geckos hanging out on our ceiling. Slightly creepy at first, but soon became our cherished bungalow companions.



Our time at the Ao Toh Ko beach bungalow consisted of lazing around the beach and burning ourselves to a crisp within the first hour of arrival and snorkeling. We took a couple snorkeling outings to nearby islands--Bamboo Island and Phi Phi Lei (the shooting location for The Beach). The best snorkeling was actually at the beach we were staying at. I was a little disappointed that I didn't see a shark, although if I had seen one while snorkeling I may have shat my swimsuit. I did see a jellyfish at one point...we were actually close to jumping off the boat right onto it. That would not have been good. I hate jellyfish. They freak me out. I think it's a borderline phobia (along with squid and especially octopus). But we saw some cool coral, fish, anenomies, a crap load of sea urchins, and a bunch of what appeared to be eels hanging out on the sea floor (we were in the Andaman Sea). I don't have any pictures from snorkeling as we haven't developed the underwater camera yet, but when I do I'll put em' up. We took a hike up to a viewpoint one morning where we had a good view of Ao Ton Sai and the opposing beach (all of which got wiped out by The Tsunami). It was really pretty. We also had a couple dolphin sightings which were pretty exciting. Not up close and personal or anything, but we could see them jumping out of the water. After our stay on Ao Toh Ko we headed back to Phuket where we boarded a flight to Bangkok then immediately caught a bus to Kanchanaburi (to the west of Bangkok, not too far form the Myanmar border). I'll continue with this travelogue at a later date as Joleen is making dinner and I should help. And it's getting long. So adieu for now, mis amigos.