July 31, Day 3

So we woke up the early next morning to Mike hobbling into our room, and it was then that I realized why Sofia, Won, and Ben were so willing to give up the hammock. His back looked like someone had closed a waffle iron on it, and the way he was walking around, it probably didn’t feel too much different. On top of that, in the middle of the night the hammock broke and he smacked his ass on our porch. Kinda funny in retrospect, especially because it didn’t happen to me. Once we had managed to get out of the room, Sofia spotted a huge snake on the beach, so naturally we chased it. We eventually cornered it into a little stand for keeping snorkeling equipment, and chucked little rocks at it to coax it back out. This weird behaviour attracted a local Thai lady who was walking down the beach and she came over and asked “Excuse me, what you doing?” We pointed to it and she went nuts, shaking her hands in front of her face and making all kind of ‘exclamations’ in Thai. We eventually made an agreement that if we killed it, she would eat it. Fun times.

So the snake wasn’t going anywhere and all this talk of food got us a little hungry, so we grabbed a breakfast of banana pancakes and set out to go rent some scooters and explore the island a little. Sofia and Won shared a bike, while Mike and I each got our own and Ben stuck around and relaxed. It was a wicked time, took a little getting used to driving on the left side of the road though. The roads were relatively empty and it was nice hilly terrain, it was an awesome feeling to hit the crest of a hill, look down and get a beautiful view of the inland, and see nothing but one or two other scooters down the road. And what better way to celebrate that feeling than to see how fast you can get down the hill. We must have ripped around for about 3 hours or so, got kind of lost in the middle of it all, but eventually found our way back to the resort. We hung out for a bit, and then decided to be touristy again, and go ride some elephants. It was kind of fun, the novelty of it wore off pretty quick, but the animals are impressive to be around. It’s cool how something can be so big and so strong and so docile. True, they were quite tame elephants, but they definitely seem to be pretty relaxed animals naturally (at least from what I’ve seen on discovery channel). In an attempt to make conversation with our ‘driver’ I asked him what sex our elephant was. His response was to point between my legs and say “Same Same.” Body language is awesome.

After the elephant ‘safari’ someone dropped the word massage and Sofia was adamant on what our next activity was gonna be. We got a cool little hut on the beach with and had begun an awesome Thai massage, where they basically find joints you didn’t think you had and then rip them just below the point of dislocating them, it felt really good. The massage was about halfway done when I finally opened my eyes and saw a real black cloud out on the horizon. Within 5 minutes, there was a couple drops coming in the hut, and within another minute it was raining harder than any rain I have ever seen, and I’m from Vancouver. The masseuses (not sure if that’s the correct plural spelling) picked up their mattresses and tried to cover Sofia and I in a little makeshift tent, getting absolutely soaked in the process, but we quickly decided to cut the massage short. Mike and Ben who were in another hut just down the beach had the same idea and we all sprinted back to the bungalow, which was fun enough being half-massaged, the left side of my body was so much more relaxed than the other. Naturally, the first thing me and Mike did then was go for a swim, having given up being dry anyhow.

In about 20 minutes or so, all traces of the storm was completely gone, and we ventured back out of the bungalow, grabbed some food and chatted for a while until all of a sudden it was dark again. The ladies went off to bed, and I had seen a cool place called the Rasta bar at the end of the paved road during our scooting adventure, so the boys relocated there. The bar was a little three-tiered tree fort, and there were two guys working there and happened to live there as well. They definitely fit the ‘Rasta’ vibe as Mike and Ben saw one of the guys doing a little rave dance with a candle on his own in his ‘room.’ I saw a guitar sitting on the first of the tiers and after we had a beer or two I went down and picked it up. This attracted the dreadlocked raver out of his room and we had a sort of half jam session, despite the fact that his coordination was a little off and both guitars were horribly out of tune, we still pulled off a little ‘all along the watchtower’… kind of. When I returned to the second storey, I found that the other guy was playing the didgeree-doo with Ben so I found a nice cushion to lay on and listened to that for a little while longer. By this point, Mike had started to feel the repercussions of the five-plates of food that he had for dinner, so he went straight back to the bungalow, Ben and I weren’t done so we went back to the blacklight bar for a nice half drunk philosophical/religious conversation, always a good time.