Re-Canadianated

It's been about 3 months to the day that I've first reset foot on Canadian Soil, so I think it's safe to say I've been reacclimatized, though still in a wierd sort of bubble.

I'll admit it does kind of feel like a bit of a time warp to be back in the same house with the same people as before I left for Korea. And to add to it, those 'same people' also happen to be the very same people I have lived with my entire life (my parents, and my sister will be moving back in very shortly). Oh, the fun of living in Vancouver, where everyone moves back in with their parents. Either that or spend every penny and then some on renting somewhere, no thanks. Speaking of pennies and that which one can do to get them, substitute teaching is going pretty well for me. Getting a decent amount of work lately. I've got a full week of work starting tomorrow at my old elementary school, teaching grade 11 history. Right up my alley, I'm looking forward to it. On top of subbing, I spend a couple nights here and there working at my brother's gym, so work is going solid.

Dave and I went snowboarding today, it was the best day of local snowboarding I think I've ever had. The conditions were awesome. I found an awesome little cliff jump to take advantage of...

Meanwhile, Dave found an interesting jump of his own.

We ended up going until our bodies just plain wouldn't work anymore, should be a nice sore day tomorrow. It was worth it. I guess there's a reason why Vancouver is such an expensive city. It doesn't even seem right to be able to snowboard and see the ocean at the same time.

What's on the horizon? I'm applied at UBC Okanagan for the coming fall, at least, maybe even in the summer. And If I'm not a student, I'll just teach instead and head back to Korea for a summer camp. 'til then I'll just 'sub and save as much as humanly possible until I dive back into the poverty stricken life of a university student.

Can't wait...

Epi-Blog

From one family to another

Due to the fact that both my camera and my laptop were busted, I haven't been able to blog properly for a while. Think I'm gonna keep this thing semi-updated for the time being. Just got home last night and have been overwhelmed so far with seeing a bunch of people I haven't seen for a while, and record-breaking snowfall in Vancouver.
My last few weeks in Korea were pretty cool, said some goodbyes to friends and the school, and the country in general. The flight got delayed because Vancouver has no idea what to do in Vancouver, and tons of crap got piled onto tons more crap, and it eventually ended up taking me about 20 hours to get from doorstep to doorstep (about 5 hours after I landed).
I put a final smorgasbord of Korean pictures on my picture site, you can check them out here

http://jonbandringa.spaces.live.com/

And that about does it for now, maybe I'll be back in Korea soon, maybe not. Already got a job (at least for one day, so far) substituting, and am gonna throw my name out there and maybe do that for a couple months, who knows? We will see...

10 days and counting

So things have definitely been put on cruise control lately. In the last few weeks I have felt like a ghost. I blink and all of a sudden it's the next day, yet still time somehow seems to be dragging on... That sounded a lot more depressed than I am. I am actually feeling great, don't get me wrong. Maybe it's starting to hit home that I am going to be leaving soon and my world is going to be turned upside down again (or rightside-up, depending on how you look at it).

Anyhow, onto the fun part. Last weekend I went to the tallest mountain in Korea, Seoraksan, with Adventure Korea Tour groups, where we (as usual) had an absolute blast. I always seem to meet awesome people with that group. I kind of signed on with Ryan and Kristin at first, but we weren't on the same bus, nor did we hike the same trail, nor did we sleep in the same building, or ever eat or basically hang out together the whole trip. That was alright with me, like I said before, I always seem to meet cool people out here.
We got on the bus for about 4 or 5 hours heading out East and got to know our busmates for the first chunk of the trip on Saturday morning, after which we grabbed some buffet bibimbap (a very healthy veggie/rice mix with a fried egg and some red pepper paste) and started up the mountain. It was nothing short of beautiful from top to bottom, and though we barely missed the leaves at their brightest colors, they were still in fine form. Just a great hike and an awesome last trip (at least for the time being) in Korea. Not much in the way of stories here, just hiked up it and hiked down it. I was kind of antisocial and passed people too fast to have a conversation for a good chunk of it. I hadn't had a good hike for a while, so sue me. There was a massive set of stairs winding their way straight up for the last 873 meters (we read the sign) that was pretty fun and tough, though. And you could see the ocean from the top, which was also cool. Oh and there was a 'rolling boulder' that apparently if you push the right way, just one person can push it and it will move. But there was a massive lineup of Koreans taking pictures in front of it, none of which were even attempting to roll it, which was, well... Korean.
After the hike, we all came back to the hotel, cleaned ourselves up a touch, and grabbed some dinner/drinks in the very secluded little mountain community. We swapped stories, drank a little more, and one thing led to another, and eventually we had a massive group of semi to full-on-inebriated people combined in the hotel lobby playing drinking games. In the spirit of one-thing-leading-to-another, we played 3 games that night, starting with a card game called 'Red or Black' (kind of self explanatory). To kick things up a notch, we then proceeded to play 'I've never...' (which is not self explanatory, but very quick to pick up), which was very informative. By the end of this second stage, I wasn't sure what most peoples' names were, but I did know if they had or had not done countless unspeakable acts. If that wasn't enough, we then upped the ante again and played 'Spin the Bottle' (if not self-explanatory, was probably explained to you when you were 12) for a little while. After no one could think of anything to top that, we each went our separate ways (I think) and everyone went to bed.
The next day we woke up at around 9 am to some nervous morning greetings of 'Hey, you're the guy/girl who ____, right?' and had a nice little breakfast of toast and oranges, and some people definitely needed there coffee dose as well that. After that, we went on a cool little morning hike to a waterfall. It reminded me of hiking up to Lower Falls, for you BC folk, except the rocks were redder. The waterfall itself was kind of cool, but I'm kind of spoiled when it comes to them. What surprised me more was the old bridge that had obviously snapped and was hanging out over the pool the waterfall fed into. I guess they figured it's easier to just leave it there, but it's a little ominous, and you have to wonder if anyone was on that thing when it snapped.
After this, we headed back to the hotel, had a very light lunch and hopped on the bus home. This turned out to be the second worst bus ride I had ever been on (the #1 spot has to go to the China bus and always will be). What had taken 4-5 hours to get to, took us 8 hours to get home. It was dark out and we had no idea where the heck we were, so we spent the last 3 hours thinking, 'Alright, 10 more minutes and we'll be there.' It was the sucks.
On a side note, my computer isn't working so I can't put my own pictures up, yet. As a cop out, you can go to a guy I met from Edmonton named Clayton's website. He took some amazing pictures.

www.flickr.com/photos/clayrdean

This will probably be the last blog, at least from Korea, so any unwritten stories will have to be told in person.
It's been real...

a token blog

So it's hit the 6-week-to-go mark, and I didn't think I was the type to get homesick but for 'some reason' the thought of getting back to the old CW of C (Commonwealth of Canada) is sounding real nice right now.

Just got back from playing poker with the newly formed Gwangmyeong crew. It includes Wayne, Stu, and I (the Original Three), and the new recruits of the cool Canadian couple of Ryan and Kristin, with special guest Oxford Tom. I made up all those nicknames just now, but they all seem to fit. I can't believe that it's been almost a year since I've been here, and the way my little town has changed since day 1 almost brings a tear to my eye. I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna be back here, and despite it's little quirks, it has come to be as close to home as I've known for some time.

Just recently before the whole North Korea nuclear testing, Wayne and myself took a little trip to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) and peered into North Korea for a while. To be anticlimactic, for some reason I expected there to be some cool military stuff in a 'demilitarized' zone. Now I know that the DMZ is called just that for a reason, and there wasn't really much to look at. Still kind of cool though. To counter this disappointment, we headed off to the War Memorial in Seoul, where we knew there would be some cool stuff to look at. There most certainly was, and there are tons of pictures of that here.

I also attended my old co-teacher's wedding (Megan) last weekend. It was somewhat of an experience to see a Korean wedding. It's kind of like a Korean breakfast though, it's one of those things that just doesn't compare to the way we do things at home. It was kind of cool to see, it lasted about 15 minutes in total. In a nutshell, the guy comes up first, then the girl, then the pastor talks for a while and they both say about two words (probably meaning 'I do' in Korean) then the new couple makes very respectful bows to both sets of parents, then they bring the cake out, cut it with a sword (which I'll admit, is one-up on the Western style) and then they leave. Only in about 2 minutes they come back for more pictures.

So the wedding ceremony isn't that much different then Canada, but the aftermath left much to be desired. We went upstairs to a buffet (where the amount of people at the meal suspiciously doubled the amount of people at the ceremony), ate some food, the couple made a quick entrance to say hi, and that was it. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the funness of Bandringa wedding receptions, but I felt a little jilted.

Anyway, that is what has been up, this website is being funky and won't let me add pictures, so you're gonna have to link up to the picture website to be visually entertained. I've got one final big trip planned on November 11th, of all days, a hiking trip to the most famous mountain in Korea: Seoraksan. So unless something else noticably interesting happens, I'll probably be making one more blogpost to the tell the story of that trip, and then will be doing most of my storytelling in face to face form.

See you soon

A little B & E in the R.O.K.

This month's little story...

So me and Wayne had yet to find a sport that we are in the same ballpark in. We had attempted basketball and soccer, both with disastrous results. It usually ended with one individual feeling like the king of the world and the other like the guy who wants to kill the king of the world.

We were walking back from an attempt at soccer which quickly turned to ping-pong at the Gwayngmyeong rec center, when we came across a massive field with a footbal pitch, volleyball, basketball, and... tucked away in the back corner, a tennis court. This got to brainstorming, and I quickly shelled out a couple bucks at the local sports shop for a tennis racket and we were at the races. There was one problem though, the court was (and still is) quite securely locked up, to keep us crazy waygooks (korean word for foreigners) from having any fun, no doubt.

It's kind of obvious what the next course of action was. If they didn't lock it up, maybe we never would have been inspired to see what all the fuss was about. But inspired we were, and now we had a mission. After we hopped the fence and under the net, we gave the court a full inspection. To be fair, the 'fuss' was probably that anyone who is actually good at tennis would mark the place 'condemned' as soon as they realized it more resembles a beach volleyball court. But we're not good at tennis, so it's ok.

After the tennis game, we were walking back and heard music coming from the little city center of Cheolsan. We followed the tune and there was a dance performance in the middle, starting with some belly dancing and moving on to some hip-hop and some other kinds. Just another random korean moment. That also reminds me, there was a massive music festival in Gwangmyeong about 2 weeks ago that I went to as well that was really cool. Some good bands, both western and korean, and totally out of the blue. Twas fun. Good fireworks display at the end too. Oh, and I did the Terry Fox Run out here as well... Also good fun.

This week is Chusok, which I'm kind of ignorant of why it's a holiday, but we get tuesday to friday off. I really let this holiday sneak up on me, and while most other people are off making the most of their precious time off, I have no plans. At the same time, I haven't had actual 'plans' for a weekend since I got here, and there has never been a dull moment, so I should be able to postpone the craziness for a couple extra days. I might go on a trip to some mountain with a friend or something, but who knows...

Anyhow, that's the month of September in a nutshell. 2 months till I go home for Christmas!

All's quiet on the Eastern front

So I've finally recovered after that massive Thailand blog, and have come back to Korea and gotten into the regular routine again. Not too much new, been thinking about what to do in the near future, and when my contract runs out I think I'm going to take the month of December to go home, see friends and family, and then come back out here for 6 months, and THEN go to school again. I know that's quite a bit of forward thinking, but that's kind of the gist of where my 'big picture' life is headed... i think...

As for some stories of recent experiences, I've started to play basketball semi-regularly with a bunch of korean friends near my house, which has been really fun. A little bit frustrating at times, korean basketball is to say the least a little bit of a different 'style' than what I'm used to, but fun nonetheless. Also went to a Korea vs. Iran Asian championship qualifying match at world cup stadium last week. The game was kind of lame, Korea was up 1-0 the whole game and then in extra time the Iranians got a horrible token goal of a stupid turnover from a Korean defender and the goalie. Still it was the first big soccer game I've ever been to.

The weather is getting absolutely amazing here right now, after the thailand trip it was unbearably hot most of the time but now it's sunny almost all the time but still cool, and we are just getting in to the infamous colorful korean autumn that I have heard so much about. I can't wait to go somewhere into the mountains and take some pictures of that, but no plans to do it yet.

Anyways that about catches you up, didn't take quite as long as the last time, which made this blog so much easier to write, maybe I should just stop doing stuff.

SEE YOU IN DECEMBER!!!!

WARNING!

This blog is not intended to be read in one sitting. I recently went to Thailand for a week with some friends for a very short very highly anticipated summer vacation, and this series is a bunch of cool stories from the trip, mostly for you guys, but partly so that I can remember what the heck I did there so that when someone asks me the classic “How was Thailand?” question, maybe I will think of something better to say than “Great.” For the few readers of this little site, you may want to go grab a drink, maybe light some candles, and get a comfy chair for this one… I also recommend opening my msnspace with all of the pictures so you can watch a little slideshow as you read:

http://jonbandringa.spaces.live.com/

Prologue... that's right, prologue

Hey, I told you this was gonna be long! Anyhow, this is kind of a sick little story about the time leading up to the Thailand trip. About a couple weeks before the trip, I noticed a little itch on my left foot. I basically ignored it until a week before I left, when I finally went to a pharmacy to get the thing looked at because it wasn’t going away. The guy gave me a little bottle of athletes foot cream and told me to put it on every day ‘no matter what happens’. Only later did I found out that he only really said that so that I would keep using it even after it got better to totally remove the infection. Anyhow, the opposite actually happened, I had some weird reaction to it or something, because the itch became an open sore, which became many open sores, which became basically one big ugly picture, and I kept using the cream despite this, figuring it’ll get worse for a bit and then get better. So the day before I go, I finally say, alright I gotta get this thing looked at asap, I had started to walk with a limp, so I go to the hospital and the first thing the guy says is ‘stop using the cream.’ What the heck. I was given a whole wackload of pills (4 pills 3 times a day, them Koreans are thorough) and they didn’t seem to be too happy about the whole Thailand deal, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
I really have no shame, I can’t believe I made a blog-post of a foot fungus… meh, don’t look at it if you don’t want to.

July 29, Day 1

Anyhow, on to the main event. I promise that will be the only gross picture. Saturday morning came around and I had slept for about 3 hours, woke up and walked to where the airport bus station was supposed to be, turns out it wasn’t there. I then grabbed a taxi to where I knew there was a bus coming, but like an idiot, I sat for a solid 15 minutes on the wrong side of the road at that bus stop. Luckily the bus was supposed to come every 30 minutes, so I was still 5 minutes early when I finally woke up and walked across the street and found the stop I was looking for. Turns out the bus wasn’t too regular after all, and I waited another 40 minutes there until I finally got picked up. From that point on it was just boring old airport routine that everyone has been through 100 times, and after I met up with Ben and Mike, we eventually got on our 5 hour flight from Seoul to Bangkok. The flight was pretty uneventful, and we arrived in Bangkok, stood in some more lines for a while, got in another plane, this time a little smaller, and took off again. All of us were seated right in the back, literally right next to the engines, so although the view looked really good for everyone else, we basically just caught up on a little more sleep. About an hour and a half later, we arrived in Koh Samui, an island on the southeastern end of Thailand.

Mike has a friend Sofia that lives in Cambodia that he was trying to convince to meet up with us, and she had said that she wanted to, but he hadn’t heard from her in a while, so he had basically given up on the whole idea. But as we arrived at the terminal, her and her girlfriend Won were sitting there waiting for us, it was a really cool surprise. We relaxed at the airport and had a beer and got to know each other for a bit while we waited for a shuttle to our next destination, Koh Penang. After testing out which beers in Thailand not to drink, we got on the shuttle. This was particularly fun as we got our first taste of Thai public transit, which was a little Toyota with the tailgate open so they could fit two more little seats on the box. Of course, those were the seats we decided to sit in. Then we took a really nice ferry ride, as the sun set, and got a really beautiful view, it was so nice to see the horizon unhindered by buildings and smog. As we got off the boat, we realized it was getting really dark and we still had all our stuff to lug around, so we quickly found a resort and just threw money at the kind old lady who ran the place (which we affectionately referred to as ‘Momma’) and threw our bags in the rooms. So throughout the day, I walked, took a taxi, took a bus, took a plane, took another bus, took another plane, took another taxi, and took a ferry to get from point A to point B.

Needless to say, we were all pretty beat, but that didn’t stop Mike and I from trying a little swimming in the pitch black. It was here that I realized just how painful open sores can be in salt water. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, it stung like a banshee. So the swim didn’t last too long and I half limped half speed-walked to the hotel for the most refreshing fresh-water foot washings that anyone has ever had in the history of the world… ever. But now that the ‘saline solution’ had effectively disinfected my foot, I was ready to go again. The girls went to bed, and we found a cool bar close to our place called the ‘warm-up bar’ owned by this guy named Leo. Leo was a real charismatic, happy-go-lucky, and pretty dirty Thai guy who we hung out with for a good chunk of that night. From there we walked around and found ourselves at the beach where they host the full-moon party where there was a lot of cool fire dancing to watch and we sipped on a little more beer and eventually wandered to the hotel and went to bed.

July 30, Day 2

Today was a nice relaxing day for the most part. We walked around the next morning and checked out the sunlit version of all the places we went to the night before at the full moon beach, stepping over all the stray dogs, and took a bunch of pictures… From there we took a cab to the northwestern side of the island, a cool beach with only a few foreigners called Hat Yao. The ride was great. We finally saw a little sampling of semi-non-touristy Thailand on it, and got some beautiful views of the beach from the hilly road. Once there, we walked down the beach found a cool little beach resort and set up shop, with a little bungalow right on the beach for 5 people for about four bucks each. It felt nice to actually have a place to chuck our bags in and actually leave them for a while. So we all tried swimming again and I was a little freaked out, but I guess the 12 pills a day finally started working (or my nerves had all been fried off from the night before), because my foot barely hurt at all. The water was really shallow but also really clear and there was a cool rock a little ways out, perfect for trying to reach Zen.

After that we kind of relaxed a little and sat on our porch or beach and watched as another beautiful sunset came and went, and when it was suddenly total darkness we realized just how hungry we were. Luckily the girls had already scoped out the beach and found a cool bbq seafood restaurant. Had some pretty nice sea bass steak, not like I’ve had too many seabass steaks in my day to compare it to, but I can’t imagining it getting too much better. Once we all had a little bass and beer in us, we walked down the beach to a cool black light bar and sat on a big blanket drinking Heineken and chatting until the wee hours about who knows what. As we walked home, me and Mike, like the idiot gringos we are, argued about who got to sleep in the hammock on the porch. Being the gentleman that I am, I graciously conceded and forced myself onto the comfy bed in the air conditioned room and we all conked out.

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.

August 1, Day 4

We all had a relatively decent sleep that night, all of us sporting an ache or bruise of some sort but getting through it anyhow, and a pretty cool morning. Mike and Sofia and I went for a nice bike to a secluded beach, with probably about 5 or 6 other people there. We took advantage or the privacy to take some stupid pictures (towels tied around our backs, superman style) and did a little more swimming. I got my feet resliced open, this time by coral, in an attempt to get out to where there were decent waves, while Mike frolicked in them and Sofia walked the beach picking up shells. By the time we scooted on back to our resort, it was time to check out from the resort, as the girls had a flight later that day.

So we took a ferry back to Koh Samui, said our goodbyes to Sofia and Won at the pier, and hopped in a cab for Hat Lamai. We had a hectic journey getting to our resort, which we had picked from the lonely planet guide, but turned out not to exist anymore. So the cab driver was driving around aimlessly until we finally just said alright let us off here, next to the beach. We had a long walk down the beach with our bags until we found a resort that looked cool. No more than 5 minutes after we had chucked our stuff in, another freak thundershower had begun, close call.

It was now time to really take advantage of the cheapness of buying stuff here, and went out t-shirt/cheap gifts/crappy sunglasses shopping. I got one of each and got a little taste of bartering for the first time since China, which I find is more fun than the actual getting of the stuff. I also bought a pair of board shorts that turned out to be way way too small for me, so it just got added to the cheap gifts pile. It shouldn’t be hard to find a Korean friend with a smaller waist than me. The shopping didn’t last too long, and it was time to finally do a little swimming in more-than-waist-deep water. It was pretty wicked, we tossed the football around, worked on the floating technique (which was even easier in the extra salty water), Mike and Ben played on my fear of sharks, and we tried our hand at the underwater breathing training thing of running along the bottom holding rocks to keep us down.

As we were swimming, I saw a big tube-ish rock out on the south side of the beach, and was reminded of the Grandfather rock I had heard of while I was looking up stuff on Koh Samui, which is basically just a big rock that looks like a penis. I pointed it out to the guys and me and Mike decided to go check it out. There was awesome rock climbing in the area and we spent a good chunk of time shimmying our way around. And then as we rounded the bend, there it was: The Penis Rock itself! I had no idea where it was, so it was really cool to just stumble on it like that. So our rock climbing lasted a little longer as we maneuvered our way to the top of it. Not quite as wholesome as the meditation rock, but we still got some cool pictures on top of it. During this whole experience, three Thai girls had seen us and sat down to watch us and shout their encouragement. It made for a really wicked experience, I didn’t know rock climbing was such a spectator sport, but it certainly made it more fun for me.

We were pretty beat by the time we got back to the resort and it was getting a little dark, so we grabbed some dinner at a restaurant on the beach, where I had some really good duck. Then we figured that after all the talking we had been doing the last couple of nights, it was time for a little entertainment. Tonight was the night for a little bar hopping.
Bar 1: the supposed foam party bar. While we were shopping, we noticed a bar with a huge banner hanging from it saying Foam Party Tonight! Despite the bad rumours we had heard of foam parties actually being real dirty, we decided at least to go check it out. Turns out they just leave the sign up all the time, and we had missed the party by a couple of days. There was still a pretty cool jungle ambience to it, so we kicked back, had a beer and moved on.
Bar 2: the outback bar. As we were scoping out where to go next, the sound of dire straits ‘sultans of swing’ came to our ears. Turns out it was a really good cover band, but they played it really well, so we had a seat at the bar and listened to a couple classics. It was like turning to 101.1 back in Van-City for a little while. So we kicked back, had a beer and moved on.
Bar 3: The Longhorn bar #2. This was one of the plethoras of ‘working girls’ bars/huts that scattered the streets of Hat Lamai (and pretty much everywhere else where there are tourists). Why it is that we chose this one, I’m not really sure, as every single one of them had girls running out to grab us. Go figure that three young guys walking around without a girl would be their target customers. Anyhow, it was actually a pretty good time, we played connect 4 and jenga with our respective ‘hosts’ at the bar while we sipped on some more drinks. In the middle of this particular group of bars was a Muay Thai boxing ring, so me and Mike hopped in and did a little sparring. At the end of it all, some guy tossed a big python onto our backs (presumably for a photo op and to make us pay for it) while we were playing, and Ben’s reaction was just to turn to Mike and I and say “There’s a snake on us.” We both kind of nodded and continued with our jenga game. We had hardly kicked back here but we had had our beer so we moved on.
Bar 4: the Irish pub. We heard some more live music as we left the longhorn bar except this time it was nirvana, so we ‘instinctively flocked to it like the salmon of Capistrano.’ The band that was playing here had a lot of character. There were a couple good musicians and a cool crazy energetic little Thai guy, headed up by two long-haired crazy punk chicks, one with a tambourine and the other playing lead guitar. They really put their long hair to use and were waving it around all crazy rocker-style and jumping off chairs and generally going nuts. They played a little bit of everything, from smells like teen spirit to stairway to heaven, and of course, another version (though this time a little rockier) of hotel California. We had had our fill of that song, so we had a beer and moved on… to bed.

August 3, Day 6

Aug 3, Day 6
It wasn’t until the next morning over breakfast that I realized why I was so confused. It turns out I’m an idiot and assumed the half moon party would be on the same beach that they throw the full moon party, but it’s on a totally different ‘half-moon party’ beach. Whoops. Oh well, next time I’ll actually read the posters I guess. I took a ferry back to Koh Samui and took a cab to the only touristy spot in the area that I hadn’t yet been to: Hat Chaweng. On the way over I met a couple Canadian girls who were also teaching English in Korea, one who grew up on Vancouver Island, another who grew up in New Brunswick. The Vancouver Island girl had actually read the posters and gone to the right beach for the half-moon party. She made me realize just what I had missed from her stories. The fact that she still had some bright neon body paint splattered all over her arms face and legs from the night before only added to it. Must have been fun. Crap.

I pulled out Ben’s lonely planet guide that he lent me and just picked the first resort that they recommended for the beach, which was actually really awesome. It was a clean bungalow this time and it wasn’t on the beach but pretty close. It also had a cool rotating fan that went in a full circle on the ceiling pointing downwards, made for a comfy sleep for the next two nights for sure. From here I aimlessly walked up and down pretty much the whole beach, which was quite a walk, and eventually found a volleyball net that was just getting set up that interested me. We started out playing 2 on 2 with me and these 3 teenagers from Switzerland named Severin, Klaus, and Mark (one those names is not like the others hey?) and the game quickly built up. Two French kids joined in, both of which were quite good and some jolly older Italian guy hopped in as well, and by then I had lost count, we were subbing in and had the strangest mix of people doing any one thing that I have ever been a part of. It wasn’t really the best volleyball ever (not like I was ever that good at it anyways, I always had a wicked view from the bench though) but it was really quite fun, and surprisingly good considering the smorgasbord of people that were joining.


From here I did a little more walking, this time on the road following the beach to check out the night scene. I found all the places I had read about on the internet, and made a mental note as I went back home and grabbed some dinner a shower and a quick nap. Once I had finally left the bungalow it was nice and dark out and ‘whilst’ I was walking I met a guy from Holland who spoke perfect English. Turns out he’s a radio journalist for the Dutch parliament named Arthur and has been spending his vacation backpacking around Laos and spending his last week relaxing in Thailand. We wandered around looking for a live jazz bar that he had read up on in lonely planet, but again, it turned out to not exist anymore. Instead we found a restaurant / bar with some guy playing really bad covers and I heard ‘Hotel California’ for the third and hopefully last time for a very long time. Arthur and I argued about the effects of second hand smoke and basically shot the shit for a little while over a couple of beers, after which we walked down the street where we were approached to take pictures with such animals as monkeys, iguanas, and even an eagle (later on in the night I saw a guy with all three on him, must have made for quite the picture). We opted for the monkey like the stupid tourists we were, and then wandered around for a little while until we eventually walked by a bar with loud music coming from it and some ‘interesting’ dancers outside. It turns out it was the nightly transvestite musical show. We both kind of looked at each other like, “I’ll watch if you will,” and found a little niche at the corner of the bar and waited for the show to start. We watched some lip-synched renditions of Celine Dion, Gloria Gaynor, Whitney Houston, and even Elvis (a man dressed as a lady dressed as a man, go figure). It was the type of thing that you were disgusted by, but you really couldn’t look away. I don’t know how any man could make his body look like that, and it’s probably better if I stay ignorant about it, but at face value it was just friggin’ hilarious.

After the show, I wanted to check out this massive club called the green mango that I had read about on the internet, and Arthur wasn’t too keen on it. I made him at least walk to it and check it out, but within 5 minutes of being there he had completely disappeared and I think he headed off to bed. It kinda miffed me that he left me hanging, but it was hardly a bad spot to be left, so I danced the night away and eventually found my way home. It was pretty fun anyhow, and on a side note, I saw all of the performers from the transvestite show offering their own ‘personal concerts’ and dressed in much more low-key, easier-to-fool-a-drunk-guy-into-the-biggest-surprise-of-his-life outfits. Maybe Arthur had the right idea to get the heck out of there after all.

August 2, Day 5

We woke up a little early today because we had booked a trip to Anthong National Marine Park, a series of over 40 protected islands off the west coast of Koh Samui. On the ferry there we met up with a French guy named Chad who had been spending the last month traveling all around Thailand and he told some cool stories about what the mainland was like. It made me want to come back and check out the northern side someday. Anyhow, we took a 90 minute ferry to the park, and no sooner had we got off for the first island we were going to check out, that we saw a big family of monkeys running around. We dropped our stuff, ran over to watch them ‘jumping all nimbly-bimbly from tree to tree,’ and took a couple more pictures. The island we were on was the biggest one in the park, so it naturally had the tallest peak, so we took a cool trail up to the top. It was 500m straight up and it only took us about 45 minutes to get to the top, even with waiting for the people in front of us for a good chunk of that time. Pretty wicked steep, which just added to the coolness of the new flora and fauna I was seeing for the first time. Once we reached the peak, we all just sat and took in the fantastic view. It looked like even more than 40 islands scattered on the perfectly blue water, with no tourist resorts or lights or telephone poles to spoil the view. I could have stayed there all day, it was so beautiful, but there was only one thing that was going to tear me away from this: more monkeys. I ripped back down the trail and found the whole family of monkeys hanging out in some low trees right at the trail head. I just kind of stood there for a little while until they got comfortable and came down to start checking me out. There was one little guy that became captivated with either my face or my hair or something head-related, because after we had gone through the greeting formalities of smelling and trying to chew my hands, he started to get real curious. He got down to the lowest of the branches a bunch of times and let me pet him and that, but then he started jumping at me. Now I’m no expert on monkey behaviour so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted to land on me, it wasn’t an attack. The problem was his target was my head, and like most people do when a monkey jumps at their head, I ducked. Unperturbed, the little guy just climbed up the nearest tree and we went through the whole hand-grabbing, monkey-petting, head-jumping scenario again. Maybe he saw a flea in there, I don’t know, it made for a pretty cool experience though.

From here the group went to a smaller island, where we met up with some British people and did a little kayaking/snorkeling. To be honest, I expected more from the snorkeling, but I think it’s just not the right time of year for it, we still saw some pretty cool fish and coral though. The kayaking, on the other hand, was really cool: the tide was out so we were able to basically go underneath the island, where the water had eroded it, into little caves and such. They were never too far away from the water, but there was a bunch of little cave openings that I’m sure at least on one of the islands you could do a little kayak-spelunking.

This trip took up most of the day, and by the time we got back to Koh Samui, it was 5:00 and Mike and Ben had their flight in an hour and a half, so we said our goodbyes and they took a taxi to the airport while I just hopped on another ferry heading to Koh Penhang, as tonight was the night of the infamous half-moon party. I figured I would just play it safe and stay at the same place we stayed at the first night, ‘Momma’s house.’ Turns out we actually spent quite a bit the first night and that was why we got some really nice rooms, and when I showed up solo and this time a little bit more aware of what to spend, I found out the variety of rooms that Momma had. She was cool about it, she acknowledged from the get-go that it wasn’t a very good room, and gave it to me for 200 baht which is dirt cheap for a solo traveler, and I just wanted a place to throw my bags, so I agreed. In retrospect, it actually wasn’t too bad, the lock was strong and the bed was clean, but having to share my bathroom with the line of ants was a little annoying.

So now that I had already had a second meeting with Momma, I figured I would go meet up with my other Koh Penhang friend, Leo at the Warm-Up Bar. He remembered the names Ben, Mike, and Jon, which was impressive, and he put on a good front, but I’m pretty sure he had no idea who the heck I was. That was fine by me though, I just sat by the bar and we ‘rebuilt’ our friendship, the guy was still just as happy a guy as I’ve ever met. It was also fun to watch his fellow bartenders throw down their best broken English one-liners on the girls as they came by the bar to order drinks, what a fun place.

So I wandered over to the full-moon beach party expecting there to be thousands upon thousands of people, when I realized there was barely any more than there were the first night. I spent the night watching a little more fire dancing and went to the cactus club for a little while in one big state of confusion, thinking ‘this is it?’ the whole time. I eventually wandered over to a quieter bar and met an Israeli guy (can’t recall his name) and we talked about basketball and what-not for a good chunk of the night, after which I went back to the cactus club for a while and went back to my room, I had a pretty fun night overall, but as I drifted off to sleep I couldn’t help wondering what the half-moon party fuss was all about.

August 4, Day 7

Today as I was eating breakfast I still couldn’t decide exactly what it was that I wanted to do, until it dawned on me that before I came I had asked tons of people how long it would take to take a scooter all the way around the island, and now was the perfect opportunity to do it. I rented a Honda ‘dream’ (a fun little 125cc bike, the same one we had in Koh Penang actually) for the day, and hit the road. It was cool to see the contrast of the uber-touristy and populated Chaweng central area and within 15 minutes get to a relatively empty area, with nothing on the sides of the road but fruit stands and palm trees. I headed south with no real intention of where I wanted to go, basically just adopting the turn left at every major fork in the road attitude. It was a wicked ride, I only made one major pit stop throughout the whole trip, which was to go to a very touristy aquarium / tiger zoo. It was kind of cool, there were tons of tanks that were open and had a small sign on them that said don’t put your finger in it, but it didn’t seem to be strictly enforced, and besides I was literally the only one in the whole aquarium. I played with some sea turtles for a little while and a bunch of other different kinds of fish and walked out about 20 minutes after I had walked out. Then there was a ‘take your picture with a tiger’ booth set up that I opted for, where the employees were definitely in need of a vacation of their own. After I had paid it was come-in-sit-down-put-your-arm-there-SNAP-get-out. Still cool though, I mean it was still a tiger.

After the aquarium/zoo, I hopped back on my scooter and continued the trip. About 10 minutes in it started to rain, which was fine by me, it kind of made it a little bit cooler even. I just kept riding, checking out the scenery and the people. It was either raining really hard or drizzling rain the whole time, and I got pretty wet. At the end of it all, I still have no idea how long it took, because like the rest of the trip, I had no time-telling device on me and I probably looked at the clock 3 or 4 times the whole week. It felt like somewhere around 4 hours, maybe a little less. It was the perfect solo thing to do, Koh Samui is really a beautiful island.

Shortly after the trip, I went to a cool restaurant on the beach that had some good music and sat down to a lonely steak dinner. The loneliness didn’t last too long, as in the table over from me there were two girls who not only spoke English, but I could have sworn I recognized one of them but I wasn’t sure where from. I didn’t really act on it because I have that same feeling in Korea almost every time I see a foreigner. But after a couple of minutes, one of them sparked up a conversation, and it turns out that this time I actually did know them. Turns out there names are Kim and Leah, and they are friends of all of my high school friends. None of us had never really talked before, just seen each other at get-togethers and bbqs, but we seemed to get along just fine and we hung out for the rest of my time in Thailand. After dinner, we went out to a cool place called the reggae bar with more live cover music. They probably played hotel California again, but I had effectively tuned them out, as me Kim and Leah chatted about what the old high school clan is up to and basically just had a cool time. After that we went for a nice little midnight / early morning swim and headed to our respective bungalows.

August 5, Day 8

I spent the day doing girly things with Kim and Leah. Weatherwise, it was the nicest day by far since I had been in Thailand, so we did a little sunbathing in the foot and a half deep water and did a little more chatting. After this the ladies took me shopping, where we had some more fun bartering, and I bought some more crappy sunglasses as the ones I had bought before had already broken. After that I am ashamed to say that we actually went to Starbucks. Apparently, Kim was in the mood for real drip coffee which was hard to come by, so I figured ok I can manage that. But then she bought some sort of mango iced smoothee of some sort, which I think kind of defeated the purpose. Oh well, I guess if you’re gonna be a tourist, you might as well go all out.

By the time the feminine activities were all over, it was around 5 o’clock and my flight was at 7:30, so we mozied on back to our resort (we happened to also be staying at the same one), where I grabbed a quick burger, we said our goodbyes and I grabbed a taxi to the airport. I took off at 7:30pm and arrived at my doorstep at 10:30am the next morning. And that brings you up to date, and no there’s no epilogue, not even a concluding paragraph. I hated those things anyways, might as well just copy and paste the introduction paragraph… friggin’ English class.

As always, comments are appreciated!