Tour Dairy: Thailand-Bangkok + Koh Samui

Here’s what I thought about Thailand before I came: that it was really really cheap, i.e cheaper than south America, that it was stunningly beautiful, and that it was a lot like the three trips i’ve taken to Japan but with more beaches.

Here’s what I’ve found so far: Thailand is EXACTLY like Mexico. It’s very very touristy, but there are lovely parts if you work really fucking hard to get off the beaten path, it’s cheaper than home, but not as inexpensive as people pretend it is, at least not for the quality (get what I’m saying here), and it’s very pretty if you can somehow tune out the poverty, the prostitution and the garbage.

Bangkok

My hate-on for Bangkok is my own damn fault. I was way too free with listening to advice before leaving home on where to stay and what to see and frankly, just plain lazy in looking that shit up for myself. I learned: Bangkok is full of tourists a la Manhattan or Acapulco, and everyone suggests more touristy places to go when you ask to leave the tourist spots. It’s not as cheap as people would have you believe and the food is on par with a MSG infused food court at the mall. 2.5 days and $600 Canadian dollars later, we managed to see most of the city, and form a map (much like the map of the States where all the red states represent where you can marry your sister and the blue ones where gay marriage is legal) in our minds of where not to go. We’re gonna give it another shot on the way home and see if we can tame that sucker.

Here’s a pic of the pond in the middle of our hotel near Khao San Road. It’s like being near Yonge St and the Sky Dome on banger and suburban day rolled together. It’s also off the subway line. We’re dumb and stayed where everyone told us to. The pond was the only thing we liked about our hotel. Gaze upon it for yourself.

After about a half day of Koh San, Siam, MBK Mall and other bullshit people said would be good, we went to a fight. Can’t go wrong with a Muay Thai fight right?

This is where the pimp sits. he’s so fly, he needs a sign to keep the ladies off. We were the only two women who weren’t one half of a couple (clearly dragged there by their men) or part of the badass group of Thai Chola’s I met in the bathroom smoking cigarettes and hair-spraying their bangs. I so wish I had the guts to get a photo of them in their matching silk member-only jackets.

The fights were decent. Definitely slow moving and could have used some help on the event side of things, but the fighters were actually good and it was the most entertaining thing we’d seen all day, even if we mistakenly picked the touristy ring-side seats instead of going in the pen with the Thai bookies who went ape shit taking bets during the bouts. Betting on kids, coulda been me. Le sigh.

Bangkok, much like touristy cites in Mexico, is filled with assholes trying to make a buck from you. Here’s a tip: taxi’s are as cheap as the subway, tuk tuk’s, although more fun, are way more expensive. Walking is not an option.

This is Sam in our VIP tuk tuk after we decided to get drunk to deal with Bangkok.

A tuk yuk is a scooter with a metal coffin/cage roof thing built on it. You can see out the sides cause there are none, and you have to haggle with jerks who give better deals to guys. This particular one had a decent sound system that he was pumpin the worst Euro-trash beats you’ve ever heard in your life.

After a mediocre Thai dinner (although the best one we had in Bangkok), we ventured out to see the Ladyboys and Japanese tourists briefly. They were okay. There were definitely more beautiful tannies in Thailand than there are in Toronto, BUT there’s lots of ug-mo’s too, and we didn’t see anyone we couldn’t spot from a mile away. To all my guy friends who raved about the Ladyboys to me: I know you all banged trannies when you were in Thailand, and that’s totally okay, but why don’t you spread some of that money love back home a bit? There are plenty of stunners I can introduce you to at home. Rave about them.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t have to look for the gay strip, I just naturally found it through my well-honed gay Spidey sense. We didn’t stay long because it’s loud and the boys who “lure” you inside are really really aggressive for boys in Daisy-dukes and knee socks. We kept getting grabbed, so we left. Plus, the music is just a mix Euro-trash mid-90s house mixes that compete with each other at ear splitting volumes, till all you can hear is red-lining.

I’m not gonna lie, I kinda like the “Fish Foot Massage”. It was gross and weird and all kinds of “ewww” but best of all, two wasted Japanese guys brought their “dates” with them to try it and I saw one of their vaginas full-on when she sat across from me in the fish tub and I gotta say, she has a really good surgeon. One of the nicest Vag’s i’ve ever seen (yeah, I just capitalized ‘Vag’).

Koh Samui

In case someone told you the flights in Thailand are cheap, they exaggerated. Sure it’s not Toronto-Van prices, but it was just over $100 for us to fly one way to Koh Samui, which, last time I checked, is the same price as one way to Montreal or New York and the flights about the same distance/time. Just don’t want you to think you can zip around like it’s sooooo cheap, cause that shit adds the fuck up quick.

We stayed in Lamai, which is the less touristy part of Koh Samui (read: there is no Starbucks like there is in Cheweng up the beach). It’s a strange mix of great detox spas and aging white (German, Dutch, Russian) men and their 20 year old Thai girlfriends who act inappropriately at almost every turn. Not so much a night life spot, but there’s still Italian food on every single menu. So if you like spaghetti bolognese, then Thailand is the place for you!

This is just some fish I liked in a tank at the airport.

On the first night, we checked into a really lovely villa off the beaten track with two floors and a living room/kitchen (by kitchen I mean there was a fridge and a massive tea pot that we used to boil eggs in). On the first night I battled a thousand mosquitos in my sleep and woke up with pizza face mosquito bites that, lucky for me, were not exclusive to my face, but covered my arms and back. If you squint, you can see it all over my pasty winter ass in the pic above.

It rained the first couple of days so we just walked up the coast to see where  all the swank hotels were. This one was the best. Had a private beach and that “Sleeping With The Enemy” feel from every turn. Dark and stormy and gorgeous. We also stole their umbrella pretending to be guests. But that Karma came back and bit us pretty quick when they tried to charge us 300 baht for driving us less than a city block. After Bangkok, I was super skilled in the ways of “oh hell, fuck no” and haggled them down to a fraction after speaking with the guy’s “boss” on his fake-Nokia cell phone.

Day 2, and we rented a scooter to go to Big Buddha, but we immediately took a wrong turn and ended up at a nice little town called “Hin Ta”. What’s it famous for? A rock shaped like a dick and a whole helluva lot of other rocks that look like bums and Vag’s. We saw a lot of monks there. I tried to get their photos with the penis-rock in the background, but they could smell the joke coming and evaded our flashes like the swift-footed ninjas you’d expect monks to be.

Needless to say, we bought a lot of postcards from there.

We made it to Big Buddha in time to get this snap with a giant predator statue made out of car parts.

And the Big Buddha. We didn’t find a beach or anywhere good to eat, but the scooter ride was fun, although terrifying for Sam who had several panic attacks after almost killing us a couple of times and from what can only be described as “turns” on the scooter. Yes, turns.

We did take the scooter out a second time to check out the Waterfall 2 (that’s the real fucking name) and Sam was a lot more relaxed on the scooter, zero heart attacks, and zero almost-crashes, twice the turns.

I put that guy and his man-kini in the pic on purpose. I think he adds some flavor to an otherwise boring photo of nature’s perfection.

And here’s me being slightly chubby, but hidden by the water so that you are too distracted by my ample rack to notice.

I had a nap or a Facebook session, or something that took me out of the game for a couple of hours, and when I came out of the room Sam was drunk and ready to go out. The time had come for us to find some Friday night fun.

We paid $15 for these drinks. that’s right, we’re dumb. Pina Coladas on the beach in bean bag chairs. There’s like 50 shots of booze in them, but that’s just code for sugar when you’re talking about Malibu.

We also finally tried a “bucket” which is the worst rum/whiskey you’ve ever had mixed with Fanta. I kid, you can get Coke, or “not sweet” like I had which was bar lime and soda.

Looking back now, it must be the brown straws that make it so crisp, refreshing and desirable.

Did I mention that we drank the buckets at a mini-rave on the beach where men threw buckets filled with tar that was lit on fire around in circles till it almost set the spectators a flame?

Just in case you forgot the name of the bar, they spelled it out in fire for you as a finale. Very smart marketing.

These are some Russian girls we met, and smoke shisha with. then we went to a Karaoke bar that smelled like moth balls and didn’t have the song I wanted and they gave us the slip. Apparently Karaoke was not their thing. then some British guys tried to take us to a vile, outdoor strip bar that was really a place where underage Thai girls get super glassy-eyed high so they can act “sexy” for tourists by gyrating around in children sized clothing in the least sexiest manner possible for aging, fat tourists in fast glasses. That was when we called it a night and walked home. Before 2am.