Saturday, February 03, 2007

ok, 'ere we go! nevermind the typos..my R key is dying so if your not sure what a word means try adding Rs in various places and it might make more sense. anyways, here's to thailand! the pictures are under this post. click on me airkissing the alligatorfish.

we left wr's place in gifu at 11am on the 23rd of december and arrived in a cute bungalow on the beach about 36 hrs later. we travelled non-stop but with 4-6 hr waits inbetween.

china airlines first let us freeze our supersexy butts off at their cold airport and didn't decide to tell us that they moved the gate during our 6-hr- wait. my impeccable traveller's nose luckily caught a good whiff of wtf? as boarding time approached 15 minutes to take-off. after a while i managed to find one of the few screens that display flight infos only to find that our flight just did their last call at a completely different gate. yay!

so we run, make it, do our best at looking cheated and sink into our narrow, tiny seats, which weren't built for human giraffes such as meself. a note here: china airlines suck. i'll do my best to avoid them in the future.

we arrive in the brand-spankin-new bangkok airport 6 hours later, tired, excited and i'm looking for coconuts to drink. alas, all that could be found at 2.30am was a starbucks..eventually we took a taxi and landed at the bus station, which took us to surat thani, in the far east of the thai mainland, only a few elephant leaps away from the cambodian border.

we got dropped and headed staight for the ferry, which also didnt leave for another couple of hours..till we finally manage to arrive in koh chang, 2nd biggest island in thailand and quite a gem. there we

-hike to a waterfall
-do some supertouristy elephant-trekking
-eat ridiculous amounts of fresh fruit and thai seafood, curries, papaya salads, pad thai, etc etc
-shop a lot
-celebrate christmas on a beautiful beach (see swingy pics)
-catch taxis that display elephant porn in the back (again, see pics)
-drink every night
-join a thai cooking school; HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!! simpley awesome (pics)
and i get 2 cashmere suits tailormade. woohoo!

from there we take another slow ferry to quiet koh mak, where we get picked up by a wooden car and get to stay 2 days at a resort basically by ourselves in strange african-inspired bungalows, where we can grab free coconuts, kayaks and snorkeling gear, as well as the wooden car, which drives us to where-ever we want to go on the island. do check it out if you're in the country.

from there its back to bangkok where sadly the only temples we visit are those of the holy gods of consumerism at chatuchak weekend market ( for 2 days straight!!), probably one of the biggest markets in the world, which attracts 200'000 evey weekend. it's nuts and oodles of fun! i came home with:

- a deuter backpack
- a pair of fake diesel jeans
- 3 pairs of shoes
- a fake leather bag, which almost lasted 2 weeks before i had to throw it out
- 5 silk ties
- 3 t-shirts
- 2 shirts

and finally got to try the mighty durian, infamous king of fruits, banned from most public places in s-e asia and now i know why so many have struggled to describe its taste. the only thing i can say is that it doesn't taste anything like you'd expect a fruit to taste. it's creamy, not unlike cream cheese, a little sweet, smells god-awful and makes you have the worst-tasting burps you could imagine. nevertheless, worth a try! i also gorged myself on my darling mangosteens and other fruit. 'twas heaven!


NYE was spent at the airport and somewhat darkened by the bombs that went off, which we didn't know about until we wee safe back in japan, where we saw a couple that we hung out with being interviewed on cnn. crazy! all up, a fantastic trip and i can't wait to see more of the area. peace,
gg

gg; 2:09 am