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wSunday, April 25, 2004 |
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this is gonna be fast & furious, so take precaution to poor wording etc...
(sunday 13:39)
left phi phi island saturday and came to phuket for the last two days. jitka has to wrap up some work here in her office. them i'm off to bangkok on monday night and fly out of bangkok tuesday morning back home. :-(
anyway, phuket is hot dirty city. i nearly passed out yesterday carrying all my bags (all the crap i bought) but slowly survived. we had a day. i'll tell you more later (*much* later) but for now, i'll just say, we had a day. after that, we ate papaya salad (which is something i'm supposed to find the recipe for and make back home). we went and had manicures and pedicures (i didn't have a pedicure because i got my first injury of the trip, a huge nasty blister on the 4th toe of my left foot from walking around the entire day thursday). no big deal, but you can ask brad what a wus i am about blisters. well yesterday it finally split on me after carrying my bags on the boat from phi phi to phuket, nearly passing out from heat exhaustion while overloading myself. after manicures (i had the cutest little flamboyant gay thai guy doing my nails. go figure, jill doesn't know how to relax. and tami & shauna can attest to that per our martinis & manicures outing. although he & i don't speak a single word of the same language, slapping my hand with the emery board is universal language for "quit pulling your hand away and just relax already! ha!) well then we go get my mandatory thai massage. and yes, yanking of my leg several time with that glare in your eyes means "relax already!" but she too was finally laughing with me by the end of the massage, given up on the fact that we're gonna be truly 100% effective today. but seriously, what an experience. at the end, she basically twisted the bottom half of my body all the way right then spun the upper half of my body all the way left, making my spine crack all the way down like a sharp strike of lightning. (as i burst out laughing afterwards, as in what the fuck?! ha) and then of course vice versa to even out the twisting of the spine. needless to say i'm a bit sore today, but it worked some angles and i never knew i was so flexible, hubba hubba. (oh the gay manicurist got our number as we left to call us to go to discotheque last night. the older thai lady masseuse, well i don't think she smiled at me on the way out.)
after massage, walk down the road and it starts pouring, so we stop into this hole in the wall (haha literally named 'the hole in the wall' so we had to) and drink a couple of singha, smoking cigarettes, and watching the rain in the streets (jitka & i met up with Gabi again on saturday here). okay, all, it got cold. i'm serious. i was so upset that i was cold in thailand, it's supposed to be hot and hot&wet. but never cold. jitka & i went back to the room to put on jeans & tennis shoes & grab a jacket. at this point, it's already 23:00. we walk to the corner, and there are just chairs & tables & and a lady selling beer out of her cooler cart. i meet Momma & Poppa from Holland (all/most elderly couples are called Momma/Poppa, and your friends are mostly all called brothers, at least for guys. well i love Momma Poppa from Holland. gray hair, faded tattoos, and still hanging out on the corner of Thailand for the past three months, missing their grandkids and ready to go back home to see them. also meet Kwan, taxi driver here in Patong where we are and is friends with jitka. meet a few other locals and a few Americans who move here to i guess 'get away' and i can envision myself much older, much grayer, much too-much-tanned-later, sitting on a street corner in thailand with strangers and locals and not really having anywhere to be except for exactly where i am at that moment. no one is really in a hurry in thailand. the answer to most every request asked is 'no problem.' it's nice to expericence a different lifestlye as such. i don't want to be that tourist-type, the type that took over the hippies bar in phi phi island at 2am (because the bar is open all night, yes literally all night, yes i was in love) and acted like it was spring break and they had never been in public before. but that was a different island and a different frame of mind. europeans, they travel so much. i am so jealous. that too is a different frame of mind. thailand people, however, have barely left home and traveled to an island that is not their own. many in samui had never been to phi phi and vice versa.
okay, after corner beer drinking, we go down bang la road, which is the main road essence d'eau sixth street. (oh, yesterday we road in a car from the pier to patong. it was the first time i'd been in a car or on a motorbike anything but a boat in six days. what a life, walking everywhere along the beach and taking taxi boats (longboats) to the other islands. sheesh, i need a job, eh?) okay so now let's say how does one say without being rude & posting it to the internet. let's call them go-go bars and such, well basically women women thai women (for sale?) i don't know (for rent?) for the two weeks the man is here? i don't know, it put a bad taste in my mouth, a sad taste. i can't explain it, well i can, but that would involve longer conversations involving prostitution and strip clubs that i can't convey in a 40-min computer session. anyway, the food vendors on the streets are everwhere in thailand, and the food is actually sanitary. (i haven't had much of it though because it's basically meat on a stick - pineapple on a stick was fun though). well we walk past all this clubs & such as jitka is taking me to the Rasta Bar, and there of course i find salvation at the end of the chaos. pictures of marley everywhere, playing on the stereo. jitka knows the bartenders there (one of the girls working there dates one of her czech guy friends who just left) and friendly & chilled and almost oblivious to the opposing lifestyle that is a block away from them. more singha. then the bars actually close at 2am, which surprises me. but it's actually an attempt to clean up phuket a bit, as this action would go all night (which it probably does anyway) if it didn't shut down at 2am. well...party's not over yet. jitka hops on bartenders motorbike and i hop on behind (yes, we did the 3-person ride. i have seen four and more, but what surprises me most is like the family of five with three kids hanging off the sides i don't know how. and no, it's not very safe for anyone on the streets. well we motorbike to the bartenders' house in the mountain. it's paradise there with hammocks and ponds and tables/chairs, bullfrogs chiming in the background, drinking singha and muching on watermelon seeds till like 4 in the morning. i don't know, there is life outside of austin texas, and i need to find it. many of these bartenders have dreads and are semblance of marley himself. motorbike home and fall quickly asleep. many thai people too however, are not true to wives and girlfriends, well that's another story. and no, kids, it's not mine. being a good girl on the trip, unfortunately. ;-) it's not out-of-town-jill...it's too-out-of-town-jill, as i just smile and nod and drink singha in the background and try to take it all in.
oh krabi is spelled with a 'k' [earlier post]
and...Happy Birthday, Eeyore! i hope everyone drank as much beer in pease park as possible for me!
[friday entry, that was in my head, but i never made it to a computer:]
today i swam with the fishes!!
(is fishes incorrect? is fish plural, too? i'm losing my vocabulary, speaking choppy thai-english with everyone, and sitting with two girls from czech who speak in their language half the time when they want to have quick conversations and gossip about all the people they know here, living here six months each the past two years. okay, back to me)
O MY GOD. it was amazing. and i'm not just saying that. first of all, i've never snorkeled before. one, well because basically i'm just lazy. and two, well that's it, i'm lazy. so...first time snorkeling out in phi phi island on friday afternoon. treading water there as putting the mask and snorkel on, trying to figure it out, stuck my head in the water, and i basically jumped out of the water screaming and laughing, scaring jitka half to death. i had no idea. they were everywhere. all around me. if i had just been swimming there, i wouldn't have even known. seriously though it was absolutely incredible. i just kept saying NO SHIT?! to jitka, as she's laughing at me cuz she's used to this by now. well this is one of the best snorkeling spots in the world, and the fish are used to people so they expected us to have food and approached us. i saw the blue&yellow fish, the black&yellow fish, rainbow-colored fish, tiger-colored fish, yeah i'll get more technical names when i get home & research what i saw & did (after the fact instead of before, a la jill-style) but i swear (to make a horrible comparison which i'm even embarassed to utter aloud, but it was like finding nemo! haha! i know, i know, i need to watch more discovery channel, but still. i think we just stayed there as i gawked for over an hour. (p.s. the body has an amazing ability to float) jitka paid me a compliment that i was good as a first-time snorkeler. most people freak out because we were in a real deep area and most prefer shallow, but oh my goodness, i was in shock. seriously. i sound like i'm 12 but i had never seen that before. i wanted immediately to take my little nephews snorkeling because i don't want them to miss out on things and not get a passport until they're 32 like me. and i have the right to be the crazy aunt in thailand taking them snorkeling (yeah, after i win the lottery. and ohmygoodness, i got them these two little silk kimonos so they can walk around all hugh-hefner-style in da house). okay, so snorkeling basically blew my mind there (i think i was spoiled for other spots this being my first time here in phi phi) and then we were off to maya bay (we were on a longtail boat 3-hr ride to the islands off phi phi, as jitka's stradling the front looking like a statue leading the boat to our destination. and no kids, i'm not taking any pictures, so do your best to visualize it all and i'll try my best to remember.) well...maya bay is where the movie The Beach was filmed, and as cheesy as i am for wanting to go there because of it, it is even more beautiful in person than i could have imagined. we stay there for about an hour on the sand & in the clear water, then as we head back, we drift by monkey beach and stop for a bit, seeing about a dozen tiny monkeys just living on this little bay next to all this civilization).
okay, that was my friday. ate, went shopping for a bit after all, then just slept friday night instead of doing anything night-timey.
it is now sunday 14:00 and i gotta get. we were gonna go to the james bond island (yeah, 007 movie was filmed around here, i don't know which one, but i want to say Octupussy. I don't want to say Octopussy because i think that's which movie was filmed, i just want to say Octopussy...but then, don't we all?) okay, um yeah, oh, but were ran out of time. we're gonna go to some beaches & viewpoints a motorbike drive away and i will probably ride an elephant (which was the main reason i wanted to go to james bond island) so i think we'll accomplish as much as meant to today, then back to Rasta Bar tonight. then my journey is almost to an end. miss you all, seriously i do. well some of you i don't miss. haha! just kidding! i haven't lost my sense of humor at least, right? oh yeah, i don't think my sarcasm translates well in bad thai english, so i'm sure i'm not leaving much of an impression. there are so many things i want to write & remember (mister haus on loo moh dee beach. the sunset on railay beach. the thai food i never got. oh!!! i almost forgot, jitka had to move her flight up to the 27th anyway, so it all worked out great. so she's got a 2-week tour guide job in new york, philadelphia, and D.C. so i probably am definitely gonna go up there that may 7th weekend. brent, watch out, we'll be burning through your town! elizabeth/richard henry are there too and so i promised i'd visit if i ever made it up there. i have family in philadelphia so maybe i can go say hello to my dad's brother, which would be nice. and i have some crazy three old maid great-aunts there too that remind me of myself, who live together and just travel and soak in as much life as possible when they were younger. okay, then, i really have to find a job. no then it's off to flipside for memorial day weekend. then i go babysit my nephews while my sister has to work for a week. and then it's off on a roadtrip with dorian in june thru the southwest and california, so i can check out santa cruz and so she can visit a boy in san fran. (san fran is too cold for me, or i'd really consider it too) THEN really i MUST find a job in june...unless somebody has some better offer to do? hey, will somebody call the unemployment office of me on monday? haha. just kidding, but it would be funny for me to get also paid while being on this trip. i have a fresh passport that needs some new stamps. amsterdam anyone?
posted by
zenbetty at 1:44 AM
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