The Morning after...

Koh Phangon

You wake up... No.Wait. Wake is a strong word since you were never fully asleep. A better word is rouse. You rouse, your mind snaps back fully from a dream that was dreamt with your eyes open. Wait, was it a dream or a memory. You become conscious of your surroundings. Your in, what amounts to, a shack in Koh Phangon. Your lovely girlfriend is sleeping blissfully next to you. A distant bassline still thumps, it seems to be syncronized with the pounding in your head. Ahhhh yes, you remember now... the full moon party. You try to recall exactly what happened last night, but your memory seems to only give you glimpses. You remember the thump of trance, mekong whiskey and coke served in buckets, milkshakes(you wince...oooh the milkshakes), people fire dancing- their faces bathed in the eerie glow of the flame attached to the chains that are being whipped about, a beach three quarters of a mile long with 8,000 dancing, drinking, exstatic people.

You look at your watch, shit its only 8:30, you've only been in bed for an hour and a half. You try to wake the sweet and innocent next to you, but she's not having it, even though she got a couple of more hours of sleep then you, she still went to bed way past her bed time.

So you lie in bed another hour, strands of your recollection slowly coming together. Finally, your girlfriend wakes up, and in a daze, you tramp off to find breakfast and a bathroom(since your room doesn't have one). As you get closer to the beach, the pounding music gets louder, and when you turn the corner and step on to the sand you think to yourself that you might have gone to bed a bit too early, over half of the people from last night are still dancing at 9:30 in the morning. And then you get closer and when you see the hollowed eyes, and green complexion, you realize how they did it. You've seen the same look in the mirror many a morning, and you know, as bad as you feel, it could have been much worse. You and your love sit and eat breakfast, watching the zombies stagger by, some stopping in and buying water or asking for breakfast("I don't care what you bring me, just make it greasy"). Later, you stop and say goodbye to the two swedish girls, and the german couple that you've been hanging out with and make your way to the taxi stand for the bumpy ride back to the wharf. The taxis are small pick up trucks that have benches in the back to sit on, and are covered by a hard canopy with a rack to store your luggage. You both jump in the back and sit next to a bunch of very hung-over brits. As soon as your under way, one climbs out the window of the canopy and sits on top of the truck still clutching a large Chang beer. After twenty minutes of steep hills and pot-holed roads you make it to the ferry dock. You step out of the cab, and look up and there's the brit passed out lying, on top of the luggage rack, his beer still clasped in his grubby fingers.

Finally after waiting an hour on a hot and very crowded pier, you climb on to a hot and very crowded boat for the two hour ferry ride back to quiet, comfortable Koh Tao. Another party, Another hang over, Another really long email. talk to y'all later... moe

Trains, Planes and Boats in the Rain

Ko Tao, Thailand

Good morning everyone, or I guess Good evening to y'all since your nine hours ahead (or more accurately 15 hours behind).
Well, its been an interesting couple of weeks so far. Daysha and I headed out on Halloween morning, on a 25 hour flight from Seattle to Bankok, via San Fransisco, and Seuol, Korea. All things considered, it wasn't to bad of a flight, not too many crying babies, or flight delays. Still we were two very tired travelers when we got in to the Bankok airport at around Midnight or so. We spent two days in Bankok, ricocheting around the city on tuk-tuks, taking in some of the sights. The Grand Palace, and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha among them. But the hustle and the bustle of the city didn't prove too satisfying, so we hopped on a train south to a beach town named Hua Hin. There we rested on the beach, and ate good seafood(you haven't lived until you've tried fresh fish-ska-bobs, or squid on a stick). Hua Hin, however is extremely touristy, and we soon tired of walking through town, pushing our way through merchants hawking wooden elephant statues and hand held hookas. Also most of the tourists who come here seem to be very stressed out, because there are two or three thai massage parlors on every block (the girls who run these places are really friendly though). So, after four or five days, we caught a bus running further along the south east coast to a town called Champwon. From there we were going to go back up about ten miles north to a secluded beach for a couple of days, but a couple that we met on the bus told us about a midnight boat out to the island of Ko Tao. Ko Tao was going to be our next stop anyway, and it was proving difficult to get to the beach where we wanted to go, so we decided go ahead and wait for the boat. We were very proud of ourselves for this decision, because we would save money on a hotel, as the boat ride was to be six hours long, so we would get there the next money. There was an express boat during the day that would only take two hours, but it was a little more expensive, and besides we were going to sleep on the boat anyway, right?

Well, it started off all right, when we boarded the boat, the downstairs was full, but the upstairs was almost empty. The floor was covered in mats, and we were protected from above by some tarps. So we set up our bags and layed back against them and got ready for a restful night, when a couple of english guys climbed up as well. Oh cool, I thought to myself we'll have someone to talk to if we get bored. But then a couple germans came up as well, then some aussies, then more germans, soon we were so packed together that we couldn't even stretch out our legs. Finally the boat started to move, and just as I closed my eyes to go to sleep, the heavens started to spit. I opened one eye, and thought hmmm good thing we have those tarps. Of course this was not the end, oh no. Ten minutes into the trip, it started downpouring. It was then that I realized that we didn't have a tarps, but a funnel for the water to drain on to me and my backpack. So to make a long story, uh... not quite as long, it was a wet, sleepless night on the boat. We finally rached Ko Tao at about six in the morning, just as it stopped raining, and found a beuatiful island, with amazing beaches, and cheap little bungalows. We like it so much that we're going to hang out at least a month. For a 150 bucks we got a nice little bungalow about 50 feet from the beach. So that about brings y'all up to date, I hope I haven't bored anybody, remember that you don't have to read these and if I get filtered into your junk mail, I won't be offended. Alrighty then, Peace, Pizza, and Peaches, moe

Costa Rica to Columbia Ramble

Cartagena, Colombia

I believe the last time I wrote one of these long cursed emails it was all the way back in Leon Nicaragua. So from there we went out to a town called Polynoya a beautful beach on the Pacific side of Nicaragua, and for the first time all trip we actually had some sun at the beach. So we spent a couple of quiet relaxing days on the beach, and headed on down to Grenada Nicaragua, a bustling colonial town on the coast of Lake Nicaragua(the tenth largest fresh water lake in the world, bet you didn't know that). We found a little hostel called the bearded monkey that was so steeped in comforts from home(couch, TV, pool table) at cheap prices that we stayed a few days more than we probably should have, but we had a good time none the less. From there we went to another beach town, named San Juan del Sur, which was also nice. It had a good mixture of a relaxed atmosphere during the day, but also lots to do at night. There we met a couple people, a girl named Peggy from Holland, and I guy named Pier from Sweden, and they travel with us a few days into Costa Rica, first to another beach town called Playa de Coco, where on the last night Kevin met his long lost, star-crossed latina lover. Unfortunately, we were staying in a tent at the time, and I had long since gone to bed, and was snoring contentedly. Poor, poor Kevin after working all night to break the language barrier with the girl he loses her on the account of cheap accommodations and my nasal symphony. So the next day we moved on to the Monteverde Cloud forest. Beautiful, Beautiful, way up in the mountains where it doesn't really rain much, the clouds just move through the forest, the moisture leaving the flora and fauna every different shade of green, with scores of interesting animals that we never actually saw, but looked cool on the little laminated guides they hand us before our hike.
In Monteverde, we met a couple of girls named Michelle and H’rina who want to travel with us through Venezuela and Brazil, but first Kevin and I had somethings to do in San Jose (the capital of Costa Rica). I had to get my yellow fever shot, and we both had a couple of other errands to run. So the girls went to Venezuela instead, and we'll probably meet them there later. Anyway, so now we're in Cartagena, which is an incredible town filled with beautiful cathedrals, old forts (and guys who want me to smuggle Cocaine to America, but we won't talk about that, Columbian jails don't sound to appealing to me). Supposedly its pretty safe here, although you still need to use common sense. We're only going to be here for a couple of days. We haven't had a chance yet to explore the City, but I do know it’s hot as hell.
Cartagena is one of my favorite towns that we've been in. It reminds me of cities in Spain. We walked around today through the old part of town looking at cathedrals and whatnot, then later we went to the huge fort Castilla San Felipe, which was very impressive, although it didn´t look like the fort in romancing the stone. Maybe we went to the wrong one.