The second night there we went to a nice dinner and then to two bars we had heard about that were in town. First we went to Arc bar, which was an open air bar on the beach. We walked down onto the sand, where the beach lounges had been put together in table formations, laid flat with their pads on top, and everyone was standing on them and dancing. We joined in. People around us were drinking from children's sand buckets, which seemed to be pretty typical in Thailand. They would put a small bottle of alcohol, and some mixers into the bucket, then stick a few straws in and sell it to you for... $10 after the exchange? Anyway, we didn't have buckets there, just normal drinks. We danced for a bit. A man came up to us with a monkey and put it on Shannon's shoulders. I took a few pictures, and we didn't notice that he did the same. Then he tried to sell her the picture he took, and got angry when she wouldn't pay him or take it. There were lots of drunk people, including a group of guys wearing only their girlfriends' underwear and some random Aussie running around, incoherently dancing in just his boxer briefs. Nice.
We left there pretty quickly and went up the street to a place Kristen had read about called the Green Mango. We danced for a few hours, and went home pretty early in the night. That we wasn't everyone though, just me, Shannon, and Melissa. Kristen, Tonya, and Angela stayed out and went to another after hours club.
The next day was New Years Eve, and we knew we were going to head to Koh Phangan, a tiny island to the north of Koh Samui, where there was a huge party happening for the full moon, which happened to be on New Years Eve. The taxi to take us to the speedboat was late, so we missed our boat, but since it was the boat company's fault they let us on the next one leaving. We got to the island and sat down to an AWESOME dinner. I got a cheeseburger because it looked like it might be a real burger, and it was. Hand formed patty, real cheese (not the crap you get in Korea), the works. It was delicious. Immediately after that we all bought our first buckets of the night. I stayed at only one bucket (because, hello, I'm in a foreign country where I know none of the language, no one but my friends who are likewise foreign, I have to go back to work in two days, and there are 14,000 people at this party-- obviously getting drunk was the most terrible idea possible) but Kristen and (I think) Tonya had two each. We went to a little station where they had phosphorescent paint, and we all got our bodies painted, like pretty much everyone else at the party. Then we danced. For about 5 hours. The crowd was impossible to negotiate, and we lost Kristen and Tonya, though they stayed together. We had set up a meeting point at the beginning of the night, and both Shannon and I got lost at one point or another and had to go there. I was found within about ten minutes of getting lost. Shannon found us again about 30 minutes after she lost us. Angela had met up with a few French guys she met earlier in the vacation, before we got there. And we literally just danced all night until we got tired. At one point we walked the whole length of the beach, and sat down where there were less crowds. People kept trying to do the lanterns, drunk, and I almost got set on fire a few times from people letting them go too soon right behind me, so that the flaming lantern landed on me, but I was fine. Then some people were setting off fireworks, and some exploded on the ground about 50 feet in front of us, which freaked Shannon and Melissa out a lot.
Shannon, Melissa, Angela, and I left pretty early (at around 3:30). We later found out that Tonya and Kristen stayed there until about 6 am or 7, though Kristen was asleep that entire time, having gotten way too drunk and passed out in a bungalow. Anyway, the party was amazing, until the ride home. At the pier, there were all the speedboat companies. Everyone had their ticket around their neck, and each company had a different color of yarn to hang the ticket on. But there was no way of knowing which pier your company was coming to, and people were pushing forward. There were no rails in between the edge of the pier and the ocean, so the people in front were in constant danger of being shoved onto the rocks at the edge of the water. I don't really want to describe what happened in too much detail, but suffice it to say that I almost got cut off from my group and left alone on the island, and then I almost fell off the plank walk down to the boat and onto the rocks below. I literally was caught by three guys, and one of them lifted me up and carried me to the boat. The speedboat took about a half hour, and then the taxi took us home and we went to bed. Well, everyone else went to bed. I had to wait at reception for the woman who worked there because Kristen had our room key. But then I went to bed.
The next morning Kristen woke up and started freaking out. She was hungover, remembered little to nothing of the party, and had in fact spent more than half of it asleep. She said her arm was sore like she'd gotten a shot, and there was a small bruise, and she started to freak out, saying she'd gotten injected with HIV. Where she got that idea I don't know. But there was no puncture, and no sign that she'd been injected at all, and Tonya said she'd probably gotten it when she fell in the ocean (where all the guys were peeing-yummy). Kristen still doesn't believe it. She still thinks she got injected. With HIV of all things. She won't listen to reason. Still, a week later. She's crazy. Everyone was fine though, and the others had to leave that afternoon. The other four had to work on saturday, so they flew home that afternoon/evening.
Kristen and I stayed another day. We went back to Arc bar that night, which was significantly more subdued than it had been before (most of the people there having been at the New Years party the night before and partied hard enough then to not need more partying. We sat, smoked hookah, and talked to some people around us. We didn't even drink or anything. However, we did notice something that was more than slightly disconcerting.
On all the beaches in Thailand, people would walk by trying to sell us stuff, whether it was necklaces, dresses, or souveniers (I still can't spell that word). Some of them were children. That night at Arc bar, the majority of the venders were little girls between the ages of 4 and 12. They were the most brazen flirts I've ever seen in my life. One girl, in particular, was about 5, maybe 6 years old, and would sneak up behind tourist men sitting of the lounge chairs and try to throw her necklaces around their necks. She wouldn't leave them alone, she would wrestle them as they tried to keep her from doing it, and put her arms around their necks and try to cuddle against them. She would give them kisses on the cheek and whisper in their ears. She would dance seductively for them. One guy bought a necklace and she tried to kiss him on the lips. He dodged her, but she threw her arms around his neck and plastered his face with kisses.
The awful thing is that her parents obviously didn't just condone this, but put her up to it. People are more likely to buy things from children, especially girls, so parents send their daughters out to do this with strange men late at night. What's worse is that there is pretty much no other way these girls' lives will turn out other than prostitution. That was a poorly constructed sentence. What it says is that these girls will all turn out to be prostitutes. Which is horrible. It was depressing me to watch these girls in action, so we went back to the hotel and to bed.
Our last day we camped out on the beach, and then went to the hotel and got our suitcases in the afternoon, just before our taxi was to arrive. I hadn't been feeling well all day, and hadn't really been eating much. I was sun sick, in essence. By the time we got to the airport I felt terrible. I haven't felt that sick in long time. I took some Dramamine type stuff hoping it would settle my stomach and knock me out, which it sort of did. The knocking me out part. Anyway, I got super sick on the airplane, which I'm not going to describe for obvious reasons. So that was the horrible end to an otherwise completely fantastic trip. Oh, and I didn't get sunburned the whole time because I kept sunscreen on always, and then the last day I ran out of sunscreen and burned the crap out of myself. Which was also nice.
Sorry these were so long and didn't really say much of anything.
0 comments:
Post a Comment