To the middle .....

Well, I've finally mustered up the energy to write a decent entry, inspired in part by the Whale and Mr. Rankin. I miss them both. I'll see them soon enough,I guess.

Last I wrote...... We were leaving a wonderful place called Railey Beach and heading back to Krabi Town. When we arrived, we thought (hoped) we could catch a bus straight out of town, unfortunately we were forced to spend the night. We grabbed a room for dirt cheap and meandered around town looking for tickets of the same character. Well actually, we were leaving our place when a random guy started talking to us and wanted us to go with him to check out his Bamboo Bong. Curiosity got the best of us as we hopped on a long boat and head down the river. Quite away down the river, we ended up at a small village, where our "friend" took us to through a number of random places including, a school, a convienence store/house and multiple alleyways.It was also during this time that we realized he was pretty drunk too. After a 15-20 minute walk through all of these places we arrived at his house. Where he proceeded to live up to his word and get us highly intoxicated, with a bamboo bong.

Interesting technique Thai's have for chopping up the green though. It involves a big knife and a wood block. As we were smokin' a number of random people would come in and out giving us very, very weird looks. After about an hour or so of strange people, messed up stories of death (his reason for being drunk) and cockfights we finally got him to take us back. Ohhh, how could I forget the 7 or so chickens he kept feeding around his house that he appenerntly made decent money off of. But then if he made decent money he proabbly wouldn't have asked us for money or made us pay for the boat ride there and back. Everyones got their stories......

Relieved to be done with that surreal experience we ate and waited to get out of town the next day. The next morning we hopped on truck, then to a mini bus and then again to another minibus at a random interchange. The drive from there was amazing through some beautiful valleys and under misty mountaintops. It was raining all the way until we reached Koh Sok National Park. The "town", if one could call it that, was basically a road with about 15 guesthouses/restaurants. We stay at a killer place called "Smileys Guesthouse". We booked two bungalows for the price of one, and then went to feed monkeys down by the river with the owners nephew and daughter. The place was paradise, the food was excellent, the scenery sublime.

The next day we took a hike through the park, which was expensive to get in. The hike was nice even though it began dumping profusely, and Matt made the bright choice of hiking in sandals.... Whoops... Even though it was only a couple mile hike we were a tad beat. I went take a shower, cold of course, and was a little surprised to find tadpoles shooting out the spout. Which wasn't really a spout but a bamboo tube dripping out river water... . We meet back up with the nephew had some beers, some food and then went back to our bungalow to get irie while watch the lighting mingle with the fireflies. Pretty nice way to end the day.

We decide to leave the next day, basically to get the hell out of the rain and back in the sun. Tallied up our tab and hit the road to Surat Thani where we could catch a bus and ferry to Ko Phangan. As we waited at the corner of an intersection in the rain with tickets in hand, I just hoped the bus stopped. It did of course and we were off on our first Kareokoe bus! Basically most of the local buses in Thailand seem to have TV's that play Kareoke videos nonstop. Fun at first, highly annoying later. Anyways, the bus once again dropped us off in a random place: A temple in Surat Thani across from another travel agency. Of course this one was charging an arm and a leg, or so we thought, so we ran around trying to find a cheaper place. To no avail. Although while checking prices Matt ran into the guy we meet in Georgetown, Malaysia. He said, "come over to Ko Samui and I'll show you a good time". We were already heading to Ko Phangan, so we told him we'd meet up later. Ate some shitty pad Thai and hopped on another bus to the ferry that would lead us to what Charley would describe as a "Hellride". Hell yeah.

Up next: Back in the Island Life Again