And Finally...My Thai Blog

***Note: the pictures are too friggin big to add! I will have to shrink them first. Otherwise, email me and I will send you an invite to my webshots page, and you can check my online album out.

Cast of Characters

Oliv – trip mastermind and planner, queen of obssessive compulsiveness
Donna – the independent woman with a slight thing for farangs
John – perpetually silent but secretly capable of bouts of drama
Jason – looks like a twelve year old, drinks like a fish with an ulcer and sleeps like the dead
Me – brattita extraordinaire with perpetual wanderlust, the need to explore and a slight obsession with elephants

Disclaimer: for those who are reading this who are actual characters, no offense is intended. I have tried as much as possible to put a lighthearted humorous (but somewhat sarcastic – this is after all, me) touch to all that happened, in line with our agreement that “what happens in thailand, stays in thailand”. As such, no censored or classified discussions have been included in any of these entries. My apologies for any entry that may give offense to your persons.

Pratsa!

My trip officially began with a text message at 430pm on Sunday afternoon. It was Oliv, saying that she had just left the house for the airport. It came a minute before my mother knocked on the door asking why I hadnt started getting ready yet, given that I had to be in the airport at least two hours before the 720 flight to Bangkok. I took a quick shower, threw some last minute things together, strapped on my travel bag and headed off to the airport. I got there in fifteen minutes. By then, Jason was leaving his house, Oliv was rounding the corner, John was going through immigration and Donna, being the most excited apparently, was already waiting at the boarding gate.

For the first time in my life my mother did not wait for me to go through the ticket check before leaving. She just kissed me goodbye and went off. End of story. It was a pleasant surprise. Thanks, Mom.

I waited for Oliv before checking in so we got seats together. We waited for Jason at the smokers lounge where I had funny tasting tea and he bought us cigs for the trip (4 packs) since I was ending my 3 and a half month drought by smoking on vacation. (Note: I smoked an average of 4-6 sticks, 6 out of 8 days during the trip, and have not smoked since. Not bad.) After discussing the contents of our various suitcases and John’s apparent need to bring dress pants, dress shoes and a dress shirt – he ended up not packing any of them – we made our way to the boarding gate to join him and Donna.

Having had ample time to bond, both John & Donna decided that we should all have pseudo travel personalities and names to go with them. As such, John became Malcom, venture capitalist – even if he didn’t know what the heck he was a capitalist of – Donna became Tatiana, the starlet with a budding acting career (read: potetntial bold star) , Jason became Mike, freshman college student on sem break while I was Ana, his Ate in 3rd year college also on sem break. Oliv was our classmate, who was secretly a princess trying to experience a more down to earth life. (She thought of that one all on her own) Since she couldn’t think of a name I started calling her Princess Cariboo after the early nineties Phoebe Cates movie.

The flight was mostly uneventful. Since there were a lot of free seats, Jason and I took a row each and ended up curled with two seats each since the middle arm rest could not be lifted. I had my feet stuck out on the aisle and it kept getting bumped. By the time it occurred to me to switch around, it was time to land. Oliv had the best deal as she had 3 seats to herself since Jason & I moved. She got the window seat, too.

The first thing we heard when we landed was “Pratsa” which is probably Thai for announcement but it ran through all our heads the entire trip. Donna, in particular, does a very good impersonation of a Thai woman doing the flight landing and boarding announcements. Since we werent sure of the rates, we changed very little money. I changed about five dollars only while Oliv changed pesos and Jason withdrew from the atm via credit card. Since Jason had the most money, he ended up paying for most of everything for the first day and a half. Fortunately, Oliv is obsessive about details and the boys are very good accountants so everything we ever shared was well covered and reimbursed.

We took a 1000 baht van rental to the Oakwood Premiere Apartments where we would be crashing for the night with my friend Jake. Jake has lived in Thailand on and off for the past few years, both for his previous and current jobs. He works for IBM now and does some sort of sales combo checking on equipment or something like that for banks and stuff. Heck, Im not really sure what he does but the company pays for everything and he gets to hang out in cool places, so its all good. Jake took along his friend Rio to join us for dinner. Rio works on an oil rig alternatively for a full month then has a whole month off. His job (and Jake’s) really fascinated all of us because none of us had ever met anyone who worked in the middle of the ocean before – plus he’d been to Trinidad and Tobago.

Jake took us to what was supposed to be a German Beer Garden, except that everything was in Thai, and they served, of all things, crispy pata. It was here that we learnt our first lesson on Thai music. Apparently, Thais are fond of music that goes back to a bygone era: i.e. the 80s or even earlier. The words classic rock werent even enough to describe how far back the music went, even if the band did dress up like they came from the 80s. As Jake, who has hit the big 3-0 said, “Hindi ko panahon yan. Panahon ng tatay mo yan!!!” Any music that was recognizable was really old., and there were people dancing – if you could call it that – to whatever it was. And it was there that we learnt lesson number two: Thai people can’t dance. Of course, our theory is that it isnt entirely their fault. How can you dance to classic rock? All I remember from the Bon Jovi era was that we used to head bang. All the people in that bar looked as though they were attempting to channel trance combo Beyonce combo any aging rock star from the big hair period with their arms flailing about. It was as if they were going to take out their lighters and start swaying them around any second.


The food was really good – first of our food trip in Thailand – and everyone except me had a jug of beer or so from the three liter tube thingy that was positioned next to our table. We ate a whole darn lot and Jake & Rio spent the time educating us on the mysteries of Thai people and their weird dancing. The staff was very friendly though, and they took the time to explain the Thai songs to us. That, in essence is the best thing about Thailand. The people are very, very firendly and very, very helpful. Their english sucks sometimes but they make up for it in effort. They are wonderful people, 80s music notwithstanding.

We ended the evening at Jake’s apartment, watching The Girl Next Door on DVD. Jason and Donna crashed on the couch, Jake, Oliv & I crashed on the bed, and John martyred himself by crashing on the floor. Personally I discovered two things: 1) Donna only snores when she’s tired and the tiredness is work related because we didn’t hear a peep from her the entire trip and 2) Jake snores. Pretty loudly.

The next morning we all went to have the Oakwood buffet breakfast. I conned Jake into paying the excess for my breakfast (I had only 200 baht after all) by promising him a Lord of the Rings DVD for Christmas, which I probably would have gotten him anyway. Jake and I have this thing where we get each other real DVDs for Christmas. Last year I got him To Have and Have Not off Amazon and he got me Pirates of the Caribbean with all the lovely special features. This year I think I’ll probably ask him to get me a Jamaica shirt and a shitload of indie films from the stall I never found in Chattuchak (Jakie are you reading this? :P). We all thoroughly enjoyed the breakfast, Donna alone had 6 servings (that’s plates not pieces) of bacon. John skipped breakfast to take a nap and the rest of us lounged about while Jake got ready to leave for Manila. His flight was at least two hours ahead of ours so he left way before we even got our shit together.

After one final picture (warning: we took pictures everywhere, like the camera whores that we were) we split up to take cabs to the airport for our flight to Phuket. Oliv & Donna’s cab driver spoke better English and was a bit smarter than ours. We had been informed that Air Asia was an international flight, and that we should get ourselves to Bangkok International Airport. Oliv and Donna’s cab driver conferred with the guards and they found out that flights to Phuket were domestic, so they ended up in the right airport while Jason, John & I were stuck in the international airport. We were advised repeatedly to take a cab but somehow we discovered there was a connecting walkway so we attempted to make our way to domestic, traversing through all 700 meters with John and his giant-has no wheels-suitcase.

It was like a sitcom gone wrong, to say the least. Prior to leaving we had all weighed in our suitcases and John’s by far was the heaviest, due to size alone. It was built for long term trips to america and since he may have packed two of everything it was extra heavy. He got himself a cart and it was fine… until we got to the part where the carts werent allowed anymore. Fortunately we bumped into this dude who was driving one of those cart things that could have passengers sitting on them, so he loaded up our luggage and the rest of us and we made it through the second half of the journey – including a really, really long tunnel – without too much effort.

I don’t think we wouldve made it otherwise. As it was, John was starving by the end and ran off to grab a hamburger while the rest of us waited for the japanese food at a sitdown restaurant. Donna & I had yummy chocolate drinks while Oliv & Jason pondered the strangeness of their dry teriyaki. We finished the meal, took pictures as usual and headed off to check in. We spent the waiting period discussing the merits of hanging out in Phi Phi or Pha Nga (Phi Phi won) and since it was first come first serve seating, rushed to get to the head of the line. We got pretty good seats and then off we were to Phuket, for the real start of our adventure.