Ton Sai, D39-40: Hiking the Beaches, Penis Shrine & Kayaking

So it's obvious that everyone on Ton Sai is an uber-athlete. Everywhere we look we see hot bods, climbing gear and yoga mats. It's more backpacker-esque than nearby Railey (or Rai Leh), though there are a few random families that booked here for a deal. Railey seems to have the better beaches and is highlighted on a lot of island-hopping tours. 

To get from Ton Sai to Railey we had to, of course, rock climb around the beach when the tide was out. It was slippery and sharp and it made me think that people who own watershoes aren’t total buffoons. It takes us about 20 minutes to get to Railey West. Once there, we jump in the water. Since Railey is on the island hopping trips, you can observe boat after boat letting their passengers off, and then recollecting them in about an hour. The beach is pretty full.

There are a few paths cutting through the peninsula that leads us to Railey East. I stayed on Railey East in 2009 on a Thailand excursion with my best friend Heather. We booked East because we were either (A) trying to save a buck or (B) swindled into thinking it was Railay West. Either way, Railay East doesn’t really have a beach at all. It’s still relatively expensive to stay at (we heard around $65 a night), but you’re not too far from Phra Nang beach.

After Ian indulged my "Heather and I" stories on Railey East, we headed to Phra Nang. The walk to Phra Nang is an easy path with a bunch of monkeys on it. The monkeys are conditioned to beg for food and sometimes steal your things. They climb on the tourists' backs and then take their hats or sunglasses and will only relinquish them if they're offered food or cash. They're everywhere and they aren't shy. We even saw one monkey making shrieking, horrifying love to another. Special.

Phra Nang Beach is said to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Heather and I happened upon it randomly one September afternoon, and it was so uninhabited in 2009 that we even sunbathed topless. Today, even I’m not that big of an exhibitionist:

Phra Nang 2009 Vs. 2015

While the water was warm and the scenery was beautiful, it was much more crowded than I had anticipated. I think I know the main draw:

  
There are now two caves (in 2009 there was only one) full of penis carvings and paintings of all sizes. I've read that fishermen donate to this shrine to win the drowned princess's (Phra Nang's) favor, and women pay their respects to increase fertility. Tourists line up to take dick pics, and I only took 100 because my phone ran out of space.

The next day we do a similar route but by kayak. It was $9 for a 4-hour rental. It was really lovely kayaking the lengths of the beaches. The limestone cliffs had many caves hidden away from the public which made for a total private snorkeling experience. We went from cove to cove and enjoyed the warm blue water and all the little fish that didn't seem afraid of us.

There were some hair-raising parts of our trip- mainly when longtails full of island hoppers sped by us. The boats seemed to have water highways, so we had to really hurry and play aqua-Frogger to cross their paths.

We saw a ton of other couples kayaking as well, and it seemed every time we passed them they were in some sort of argument. It was a hot day and after clicking oars a few times I saw how it could go. Ian and I were champs, though, and we thoroughly enjoyed the view (and workout).

Ton Sai from the Kayak

Something that has been omitted from all the guidebooks and articles online, is that the tide is a bitch. The difference between high tide and low tide is so drastic that you have to plan your day around it. Especially on shallow beaches that have more coral/rocks (like Ton Sai), you have very few hours of enjoying the water. When the level is highest, the water laps at the roots of the jungle trees, leaving no beach at all. When the level is lowest, you have to walk out 150+ feet over slimy, sharp coral to touch the water. We began out kayak adventure just pushing off into the water. We ended by dragging it across coral for 50 feet. 

Ton Sai "Beach" at Low Tide

The best part of staying in the climber-mecca was the massages! We went to Dream Massage three nights of our six-night stay, where the ladies massaged from morning until 10PM. They were some of the best and strongest masseuses I have ever had. One-hour oil massage for $6. It's nice to feel kneaded.

Bangkok to Krabi, D38: Valentine's Day on Ton Sai

The few days we had in Bangkok were spent eating yogurt and swallowing Imodium pills-- I won't get into details but apparently I wasn't fully recovered from food poisoning (or could I have got it again?). The important thing was to get to the beach for Valentine's Day. Next stop, Krabi!

We take a cab from our Bangkok hotel to DMK airport. (BKK is the big international airport, and DMK is great for snagging cheap domestic flights). Ian is full of facts and tells me on the way that DMK is the oldest airport in Thailand, built in 1914. Somehow knowing I'm flying out of the oldest airport makes me nervous. I hate flying. I read the news too much. I text Aleye details for my funeral (there will be strippers). 

We fly Thai Lion Air, who's motto is "We MAKE People Fly"... seems a bit aggressive to me. They confiscate my weapon (electric fly swatter) and I nearly cry.

The flight is smooth and the airline magazine is riddled with hilarious bad translations:

We make it to the Krabi airport and take a bus to Ao Nang. Nothing transportation-wise is dedicated to a schedule. Busses, boats, and the like, wait until they've reached max capacity before leaving. Of course, the max capacity number that is posted is treated like a loose suggestion. We wait until the bus is full and then some, and once there are people filling the aisle we head out.

On the bus I ask Ian what he wants for Valentine's Day, giving a flirty leg rub and a wink. He says an electric fly swatter.

In Ao Nang we scour the beach markets for his gift. On the lucky 100th try, we find one! We're not trying to mess around here-- we got Dengue Fever in 2011 and I dare say it's worse than food poisoning. It was worth the hunt and $5.

Time to celebrate Valentine's Day! Though we're not on the beach yet, we're starving and we sit for a late VDay lunch. I order Pad Thai and Ian gets fried rice with chicken and pineapple. Meal comes: Ian has no chicken and my pad thai noodles aren't cooked. In fact, the server sees me trying to rip a noodle apart and feels so bad she takes the pad thai off the check. Can I stress that this NEVER happens in Thailand? They don't have the customer is always right type of attitude and they rarely modify a meal to your taste. We shared Ian's rice until the last bite, where we found a black hair. Minor strike-out.

Ok, to the pier! We buy our longtail boat tickets to the beach of Ton Sai where we're staying. (We wait an hour until at least ten other people buy tickets, because again, they don't transport people, they herd them.) Actually, it's called a pier but it's just where boats pick you up. There is no actual pier, and to get on the boats you have to walk into the water and climb up the side ladder. We walk out to the boat and the water is so warm and magical that you forget you're dragging your bags through it. The ride is 100 baht a person ($3) and is probably the most romantic part of our day. 

Land, ho! Ton Sai is a beautiful little beach around the corner from the super-popular Rai Leh beach. We're staying at the "Chillout Bar and Bungalows", a spot a little more expensive than accommodations surrounding ($22usd/night) but has a great courtyard known for circus tricks and daily fire shows. On this tiny beach, it's the place to be.

We're greeted by cool-guy Aun who shows us to our room. He drips Thai swagger and I get the feeling he creeps on single travelers. He jokingly takes us to a demolished outdoor shower and tells us that's our room. HA-HA! Then he brings us to our real place and says "Make your home, come down and smoke bamboo weed." I knew he was cool.

Our room is a hut on a raised platform. It's super cute but really dark inside, and most of the space is taken up by the bed with a mosquito net around it. The baseboards are unsteady and there are some with one-inch gaps in between. You're never fully inside in the jungle. The electricity is only on from 6pm to 2am, which means no fan just yet. But it's 95 degreessssss.

 

Rustic, Yeah?

There's one shelf and I claim it for my clothes. The rest of the stuff goes on the ground. Our home is made. What was step 2 again?

Layers of bug repellant and spf 50 are applied, and we head down to the chill out area. There's a slackline set up so Ian jumps on. He unluckily cuts his big toe on a rock, and goes back to our hut to rinse it with Listerene. He comes back and we walk the small beach town. Almost every bar is a Marley bar where we're offered joints and "happy cookies" and "magic mushroom milkshakes". We have a drink here and there and head back to our place for dinner. 

We start to notice something: EVERYONE here is ripped. Like, actually ripped. Hunks, hot bods, and sexy all around. Is this Temptation Island or a gay beach? We see a Hercules-like 65 year old with a long shaggy white beard and the most pronounced six pack I've ever seen; we call him "Hot God". 

It doesn't take long to realize this is the beach for the uber-athletes. First and foremost, it's a rock climber's paradise-- the limestone caves and cliffs are ideal for climbing, and people come from all over the world come to climb the courses here. You can take beginner lessons or buy week-long trekking/climbing packages. "Deep Water Soloing (DWS)", where you pretty much defy gravity and climb upside-down not using any ropes, is also a huge draw. Every night at at sunset we see acro-yoga that rivals Cirque du Soleil. Above us, you can hear hoots and hollers from base jumpers, deploying their parachutes right over our dinner. 

Me Deep-Water Soloing

Wowza. Turned on by the beauty surrounding us and the "happy cookie" starting to kick in, we head back to our room to consummate the holiday. First we jump in the shower to get off all the sunscreen. The shower has a bunch of mosquitos floating around and the ground is filled with ginormous jungle ants surrounding the spot Ian rinsed his cut with Listerene. I frantic-splash water on me and go into the main room, leaving Ian to battle the intruders. 

I remember I have an open bag of dried bananas in my backpack on the floor, so I move the bag so not to attract bugs. I pick it up and put it on the shelf with my clothes just in time to see a three-inch long cockroach crawl out. IANNNNNNNNN! Forget the ants, we have a bigger problem here.

We're both naked and Ian's new task is to get rid of the roach milling about my clothes. He has the fly zapper, but, come on. He grabs the bag from atop my clothes and throws it on the ground and smashes it with the racket a few times. Deemed safe, he hands the bag to me and starts to look in my clothes.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, there was only one working light in the room, that only kind of worked. It worked the way that lights in scary movies flicker right before a murder. It really set the scene for what happened next.)

While I was looking at my beautiful clothes, scared that any second a big roach would come crawling out, I felt something on my neck. I gasp, but then I realized I was just standing underneath a clothesline that had our towel on it. OMG, phew, just the towel. I relax enough to see the three-inch roach crawl out of the bag, down my hand, and run the length of my leg. I screamed a scream that Ian says is only appropriate if I'm being murdered by a doll. The roach ran through the floorboards. Problem solved?

The ants were still in the bathroom and it was looking like a battle we couldn't win. We used the Listerene in lieu of brushing and called it a night. We try to close the curtains and they fall down. We are epically failing. 

The night is filled with the sweet battle cries of cats and monkeys. A Valentine's Day to remember.

Happy ValenTIE Day!

Bangkok, D33-34: Sleeper Train & Double Date

Monday morning rolls around and we think we’ll go to Chiang Rai. Everyone we mention it to says it’s quite dull and we should only stay a day or two. I am NOT taking another horrific bus ride for a dull day or two.

The next logical thing to do is travel to Luang Prabang, venturing into Laos by way of 15 hour van ride or four hour bus ride plus two days on a boat. Hmmm.

We brainstorm. What sounds nice? We’ve been in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Pai. We have time- we’re not expected back in the US until July for my sister’s wedding. We’re closest to Laos, and after Laos we’d go to Cambodia, and then we’d venture to Vietnam; That’s the best route to the beaches in the south.

Ohhhh the beachessssss. We close our eyes, envision where we want to be in a week, and it’s not in a land-locked country. The beach it is. In two minutes we’ve completely changed our travel plans for the next few months. Krabi, we’re coming for you. 

Chiang Mai--> Bangkok --> Krabi

The new plan is to head to southern Thailand, flying into Krabi. In two weeks we'll fly very south to Indonesia, get to Bali and stay for a few weeks. After that we'll make our way back up through Malaysia. (Of course, this is all tentative.) And just like that we book an overnight train back to Bangkok. Heck yes, we got a train ticket ($25 each)! It leaves at 4PM and arrives at 6AM.

We kill time by getting $6, one-hour leg rubs. We don’t deserve them, I know, but it feels good to be bad.

We get to the train station easy-peasy. We find our bunk and share a “room” with two chinese girls. The train is pretty clean and the beds are surprisingly padded. 

We grab some nasty train food and watch the sunset through the window. There’s not a lot to do on the train. We retire to our beds and read until about 9PM when the French next door stop yapping. Then all is quiet and everyone starts to sleep.

12AM- Boop, boop. Boop, boop. Bing bong. The Chinese girl laying across from Ian is... texting? With sound effects and keyboard clicks turned way up? Huh?! 2AM- The railway worker on the other side of our compartment starts playing a phone game, replete with 8-bit explosion noises. What?! Asian cultures be loving their phone sounds. It’s totes the norm, and I’m totes annoyed...

Overall the train was a great way to travel. It arrives on time without a hiccup. It’s 6AM and we get a taxi to hotel iCheckInn, near the no-vacancy Atlanta. At a stop light the cab driver CLEANS HIS EARS WITH A TOOTHPICK. I watch in horror and he gets chunks of wax off of the toothpick, rolls it into little balls and wipes it on his change in his middle console. This happens at every traffic light. The fare was 91Baht and Ian gave him 100. Nine waxy coins later, we’re at the hotel. 

It’s about 7AM and we can’t check in until 2PM. We’ve gotten pretty good at killing time at this point. At 10AM I’ve done all I can to stay put. I leave Ian with the bags and go to a mall to get a haircut.

The haircut is 280 baht ($9) and they keep pushing 2,000 baht products on me. I keep saying no, lying that I’m allergic, but they keep pushing. “You hair so dry I show you” and then she maliciously tugs at my curls, breaking the hair to show me. I say “OK, thank you but I only want the haircut." The lady brings me more products and I decline, restating that I could die because of an allergic reaction. She’s not buying it. She holds an open vial of serum above my head and says “I’m just gonna put this treatment on, only 1,000 baht more” and I have to sternly say “Don’t you dare” with an evil-eye. That’s when she begrudgingly gives me a cut, spitefully cutting it shorter than I had asked. She gave me a nice four-inch “trim”, all the while loudly talking smack about my thriftiness.

Whatever! I look fly with my $9 cut. I text Ian to meet me for lunch. He puts the bags in the room and we decide to go to our Michelin-rated pork dumpling spot. 

I walk there and run into Laura and Beno! WHAT ARE THE ODDS? They flew into Bangkok from the islands that morning. We trained in from Chiang Mai that morning. Crazy luck that we ran into each other! They are staying in one of the top-rated hotels in Bangkok, a total splurge. They invite us to dinner at their hotel. Since they have a kitchen, they’re going to cook for us. Dinner party!

Night rolls around and we meet at Laura and Beno's hotel, the Oriental Residence. It's about a 15 minute walk from our place. We tell the receptionist we're here to see them and she calls up. So fancy. 

They are amazing hosts! Their rooms is spectacular and offers amazing views. The bathroom has a vanity. It's beautiful. We have beer and chips and dip. We go for a swim in their pool. Then we have garlic bread and carbonara. Laura is an amazing cook. They have us try Swiss chocolate (I pocket some) and Beno makes dessert: ice-cream with sweet raspberries on top. We stay for like five hours just hanging out and talking about America, Switzerland, our families and good youtube videos. It was a legit double-date and a relief to feel out of Asia for a moment. They are my favorite.

(LifeProTip: Don't put Swiss chocolate in your pocket.)

Chiang Mai, D30-32: International Flower Festival

 

Chiang Mai centers around tourism all year, but it's main two draws are it's Lantern Festival in November and Flower Festival in February. From what we could tell we weren't being charged any surge pricing for high-season, but we did notice and unusual amount of traffic and fighting through crowds this weekend.

Opening ceremonies began on Friday evening, followed by the Miss Chiang Mai Flower Festival Beauty Pageant and the Miss International Chiang Mai Flower Festival Beaty Pageant competitions. YESSSsss.

We head towards Nong Buak Haad Park where we're told the main action is. The streets are lined with vendors (more than usual) that sell things you’d find at a county fair: questionable electronics, bracelets with your name on it, cowboy hats, etc. 

Fake Poo "Hand Made"

There are a bunch of staged flower power photo opportunities, yeeee! I make Ian wait in line with me to take this pic:

He jumps on and we're about to take a fake flower riding selfie when we tip over the fake moto and eat it slo-mo. The line goes "ooohhhh!” and we just ran away in different directions. What?

We find some vague information about the pageant being at 7PM at the park stage but we get there and see a college (high school) having their big orchestra performance. No one mentions the beauty pageant and they don’t look like dance moms in the crowd. Damn it, this was one of things I was looking forward to! We search for another place the pageant could be held.

There are pop up booths and exhibitions to educate the public about the flowers of Thailand. There are competitions for best orchids, crown of thorns, potted flowers and so on. We return to those things later, for now we're on a mission to see the pageant. I'm ever-trying to catch up to Ian’s bobbing white head over the crowd. We ask anyone we can where the pageant is being held and no one knows. I decide we head to Tha Pae Gate on another corner of the city, acting off of a hunch that there would be another stage there.

Sure enough there's a huge stage and the pageant has not started yet. It's only 7:45PM and the marquee says it starts at 7PM, and so Thai Time tells us we won’t miss anything if we get a bite to eat. We come back at 8:30 and they are announcing contestant #3 out of maybe 30. Right off the bat I notice something is wrong: we're at the International Flower Festival Competition. It's a group of 30 dumpy girls in their early twenties who have absolutely zero pageant experience, or pizzazz. I first think it's a bummer because I wanted to see a real pageant competition, but it turned out to be a complete comedy show. 

It must have been an open competition and I BLEW IT for not signing up. First of all, I'm 5'3 and a size 8, and would have been one of the skinnier and taller girls of the group. Secondly, I've learned a thing or two from Honey Boo Boo about stage presence, and these chodes had none.

The talent portion was a train wreck. I could have farted in my hand and put up a better show. Some highlights: girl singing Pocahontas's "Colors of the Wind" and getting her mic cut off, a contestant trying to kick a soccer ball in the air to herself but in the long Thai pageant skirt, and this:

Ohh I have a high tolerance for awkward but this took the cake. The couple hosting the pageant had to interpret everything and it was obvious they were just mocking the contestants. About 80 percent of the participants were American, adding to the cringe.

It came down to the top four- two from America, one from South Korea(“Careeerrrr”, as the female host styled it), and one from Japan. This mix represented all the contestants’ countries except for one Canadian, who had a painful talent portion playing an acoustic guitar in the traditional long skirt with no stool to sit on. She literally couldn’t get a grip.

(Interestingly enough, the top four contestants were also the prettiest.)

The question portion was useless, as many of the contestants didn’t speak Thai and some didn’t speak Thai or English (the Japanese girl) so the host had to mime the question. The one who was crowned and the runner-up contestants had these toughies: “How do you like the International Beauty Pageant Competition, and are we doing a good job?” And “If you win tonight, who will you call first?” (Answers: "Good, this is so beautiful!" and “My mom.”)

It came down to the one girl who had any sort of talent at all- some chick from USA who was a circus performer and did her hula-hoop dance that was surely choreographed for Burning Man. 

~~~

Other than the beauty pageant I was really looking forward to seeing the parade. From what we had heard, it was supposed to be like the Rose Bowl Parade with marching bands and flower floats.

We wake up at 7:30AM on Saturday for the Flower Festival Parade. We walk to the starting point at 8AM, you know, the time it's supposed to start. (You may start seeing themes in these blog posts, like traveling to other towns SUCK, lack of information and misinformation is EVERYWHERE, and parades are never on time.) We wait about 45 minutes and see that it's getting a little more crowded around us, so we move closer to the middle of the route where no one is.

We find a nice bench and park it there. At 9:30AM the road still isn't closed off and we're just sitting by a highway. Ugh. 9:45, an hour and forty-five minutes after it should have started, we see the beginning of the parade!

There was literally no one lining the street where we were when the parade started. A group of 15 Chinese people are on the opposite side of the road from us. When they see the parade start, they cross the road and stand right in front of our bench. There isn't a soul 30 feet to the left or right of us. I couldn't believe it, and I didn't think you would either, so I ran across the road and took a pic:

More tourists started trickling to the road. So many Chinese tourists.

Similar to the parade in Bangkok, assholes would just run into the road and take pictures with the performers. People just climbed on the nice cars or floats to take the perfect selfie. We watched again and again as this group of ladies held up every single float to take pics. There were five minute gaps between each float or band or performance. It really annoyed me knowing that this is why the parade was taking forever.

The floats that were covered in flowers looked very nice and very similar. They spelled Brunei wrong in flowers:

 

There were knife-wielding tots and teenagers marching along in different traditional Thai outfits. A bunch of them were also bored with the length of the parade... I could tell by the way their heads were buried in their cellphones. The bands were OK, just a bunch of high schoolers playing La Bamba and stuff. A school had Chiang Mai Flower Festival 2014 shirts on. How 2000-late.

We watched the parade for almost two hours before leaving. I am a parade lover but an hour is enough. 

On Sunday I went back to the Flower Festival while Ian got a haircut. Here I am hanging out with the King and Queen (man did Ian miss out!):

Misc pics from the weekend: