Asia by Hammock

This morning I woke up and was reminded, yet again, of the wisdom in Tyler's truism that "naked and confused is no way to go through life." As best as I can put it together my night consisted of chugging Sangsom and Coke interspersed with brief bouts of conversation and an attempt at the drinking game shoulders/nipples in Thai. I distinctly remember Jeremy telling me that I speak "really good Thaibonics" and me telling him that "I survived four years of college and he is without a doubt the worst influence on me ever". I must have somehow crawled home and taken off all my clothes (hopefully in that order) because that is how I found myself at 8am. Jeremy, for his part, is convinced that he walked home and lost first one sandal, then the other sandal, then himself into "some kind of crevasse." Khao Lak is a special place and has a lot of cool features but glaciers are not one of them. He did not accept my logic.

To give this post a little bit of substance, lets talk about John (he says his real name is about a kilometer long). John has brought a bunch of his Sri Lakan workers over from Dubai where he claims to own a construction company. I'm fairly confident he is infact a warlord or mob boss. He is about 6'2", sports shirts buttoned to the middle of his stomach (showing off quite a collection of chest hair) and enough bling to be in any rap video. Seriously, this guy has rings the size of my head and a necklace that could sink a longtail boat. But he shows up, gives us workers (this time ten divemasters which is kinda cool) and then zips off in his private jet (I imagine).

To wrap this one up, heres a list of things I missed today while I was palatially (is that a word?) hungover: matzoh ball soup, thick sliced ham, string cheese and triscuits. Cheers!

Steve

ps! I'm now certifiably rabies free! Though I couldn't quite get "can I please have an IV because I'm fucking hungover" to translate.

Imagine combining the beaches of Hawaii, the diving of the Great Barrier Reef, the animals of the Boston Acquarium and then taking away all the people and you would have something approaching my Similan Liveaboard Dive Trip. The weather was brilliant and the seas were calm. The whole experience was absolutely fantastic and probably the highlight of my trip (so far). We did nine dives over three days and spent the rest of the time either enjoying incredible food or chilling out on hammocks or deserted beaches. And they were literally deserted, there was not another dive boat out there and there was a grand total of 7 divers, 4 dive staff and 5 boat crew. There are 9 Similan Islands, so that means each diver could have had an entire island to himself. The beaches were pristine white sand, the water was turquoise fading to dark blue (with like 15-25 meters of visibility - thats a lot) and the hardest decision was choosing whether to sleep on deck under the stars or in the air conditioned bunks.

The crew on the boat (from Sea Dragon) was phenomenal, especially the owner Gunter who would wake us every morning with his "Good Morning, wakey wakey, lets go diving" (he also finished every dive briefing with "all right, lets get wet" and encouraged us to, literally and philosophically, "stare out into the blue"). We saw almost everything you could see there (no Mantas or Giraffes), on one dive we saw a White Tip Reef Shark, a sleeping Nurse Shark, Kuhl's (pronounced, at least with a German accent, "cool's") Stingrays, a Turtle, Barracudas and a bunch of Tuna. That was one dive. We also saw cuttlefish, crabs, shrimps, anglefish (a juvey that was really cute), lots of eels, a clown trigger (the scuba sign for that is hilarious), napolean wrasses (another funny sign), trumpet fish, big fish, small fish, red fish and blue fish! On the ride back to the mainland we even saw Dolphins! It honestly was about as perfect a three days as you can get.

And now I'm back to Khao Lak with my busted cell phone (concrete + cellphones = kaput), a town that is out of stamps (till Tuesday hopefully) and a bar that doesn't get the Food Network on satellite (Tonight, 8pm Eastern I believe). Oh well, I'm excited about working tomorrow and hopefully getting on that air ticekts.

Cheers! (think of it less as me saying cheers and more of me doing a scuba motion for cheers underwater)

Steve

There are a lot of funny signs in Thailand, like the one offering Fruit Shanks or Fried Chopsticks. There are also a lot of signs that are just not entirely accurate. Like the one asking for extras for the Blackbeard movie directed by Kevin Costner starring Patrick Stewart. To begin with, it is a miniseries on the Hallmark channel, it is directed by Kevin Connor and there was absolutely no mention of the 4:30AM wakeup call. That being said, I'm proud to say that I am Red Coat #11 and for my ten hours of work should have at least four, if not seven, seconds of quality small screen time. Something to think about: being a "red coat" (emphasis on coat) in Thailand all day. Anyways, I made $34 and got to hold a really cool musket.

Otherwise, life in Khao Lak is good. We're pouring a second story of a duplex tomorrow (our biggest one yet) and I got to drive a back-hoe the other day - Johnson: no need to comment on the obvious sexual innuendo, cheers. And I electrocuted myself welding today, yikes but no worries. I'll be diving in the Similans shortly, arguably the best dive site in the world and then spending a whole day discussing ticket options with Thai Airways (suggestions?).

Cheers (christians continue to be crazy, well just the ones that travel in groups on trips and probably people that do that are crazy regardless of their religion but I really think if they ever ask me to bless the food again I'm gonna do a Jewish blessing - if I only knew one). Cheers again cause that was a really rambling cheers.

Steve

PS> Kate, I hate you too and I hope that teaches you to try to mess with your friends over IM when they are half a world away. Cheers (last one)

Congrats to a Kate Nellis for being the first of my friends to get engaged! All the best and I'd better be at the fun/probably gonna make an ass of themselves table!

Just got back from a lovely day trip to the exciting and ever name changing country of Burma/Myanmar. Supposedly it is one of the most oppressive regimes in the area and so I am assuming the reason I couldn't find any postcards is that they do not have a postal system (they don't have free press so this is not that ridiculous). But I have fresh new (dry!) 30 day Thai stamp!

Accompanying me on the visa run were Jeremy (the guy from GW) and Neil. Neil is a gentleman (word used loosely) from Wales who has been here for about seven months. Wales, like most of the UK, is more known for its pasty skin than sunny weather (I'm not sure Wales is known for anything else really...) so it is quite impressive that Neil's skin looks more like a leather briefcase, a heavily tatooed leather briefcase. He also has the distinct Welsh ability to spew out a stream of expletives that would make a fisherman cringe and follow that up with a rendition of Dido or "nine-stone cowboy" that would, well, make a fisherman cringe. Regardless, Neil is a fantastic guy (as long as you avoid the bobcat when he is driving it) and a great person to work and drink with.

Earlier this evening, while looking for more people to drink with, I stumbled onto a beach bonfire. Perfect, I said to myself taking a seat in the sand. But oh how our eyes deceive us. The girl next to me told me, quite cheerily, that I was welcome to "join the night of singing and worship of our lord". And I swear to god, with no exaggeration, the only song that popped into my mind was a particularly offensive verse of "Jesus Can't Play Rugby" (google this if you don't get the reference).

Cheers to being careful around church groups and having hot water for the first time in 33 days

Steve

Here are a few things that in retrospect I perhaps should have refrained from in the last few days (this list is certainly not exhaustive):

While it is fun putting Burts Bees on your eyelids, asking the family you've known for about six hours if you can use their chapstick for this purpose makes you look like a psychopath

While it was not a good idea to get blacked out the night before you are pouring concrete standing on little wooden platforms ten feet in the air, it was a worse idea for me to tell a church pastor that "I'm fine, I just got fucking pissed last night and I'm a little dehydrated"

In really exciting news, I have a Thai phone now! The number is +66 4843 5742 (i think you have to dial 011 from the states then the number) so if you want to blow some of your signing bonus or grad school loans gimme a call! [As an aside, when I had a phone in Germany only one person from home called me the entire time - thanks Katie - not even my folks] I'm off to enjoy the weekend with its promise of rabies shots and a visit to Burma!

Cheers (and a special cheers since I just learned that there will be a hockey season!)

Steve

Khao Lak is a town about 1 hour north of Phuket on the west coast of Thailand. They got the brunt of the tsunami in Thailand. All that is left of beachside hotels are their foundations and swimming pools and there are couple of boats washed about 2 kilometers inland. Its pretty spooky. I'm working through the Volunteer Center (www.tsunamivolunteer.net) with the Mercy Foundation (www.mercyf.org) building houses on an island called Koh Koh Kaoh (which I believe means "island island river" but my Thai isn't coming along so well - though I did work out that big is "yai" which is good for ordering Changs). The houses are conrete so we work building the rebar (nothing like bending metal for nine hours a day), framing the rebar, welding the rebar, attaching the rebar then pouring concrete. Pouring concrete one bucket at a time. But today we poured the second story of first house on the island (they are on stilts) so that was a pretty good milestone. Since I'm here for a while I've been put in charge of the rebar factory/dirt parking lot with a roof so I've already been promoted (but no increase in pay sadly). It is really neat volunteering, we're building the house for the guy who ferries us to the island and even though I can't understand a thing he says, he waves hello and goodbye at every opportunity and smiles incessantly (and lets us drive the boat which is fun).
For those of you that miss seeing my face (and I imagine thats not Ed), a tv producer from saint louis has been taping us for the last week and his footage might air on Gannet stations (thats KUSA for the Denver-ites), more info to follow. Oooh and there is a casting call for extras for the new Blackbeard movie!

Cheers!

What the booking comapnies fail to tell you about Khao Sak National Park is that it is actually a rainforest. This fact becomes somewhat important when you arrive in the middle of the monsoon season. The rain was so intense you could actually hear it approaching (think semi truck) and wihle this would be great if it gave you 15 seconds to get out your rain gear, it hits you at about 8 when you have your pack wide open soaking all of your stuff. Also, rain tends to combine with dirt hiking trails to form a cross between a mud wrestling pit and a raging river. This ceased to be a problem when the trail took a left turn and actually became the river.

Despite (maybe because of) the emphasis on rain, the trek turned out to be marvellous. We "hiked" into a cave that had chest deep water, pulling ourselves forward with a rope, and frolicked (not a term I throw around lightly) in a pretty impressive waterfall. There also was a great little place to swim and cliff jump. Well it would have been great if the Thai guide didn't charge at me with his butane lighter spewing out fire yelling "bilich! bilich!" which roughly translates as "there is a huge fucking leech crawling up your leg that I'm gonna burn whether you like it or not!" Also, as an interesting aside, Khao Sak has the only Thai restaurant in all of Thailand (as far as I can tell) not to have chopsticks. I mean McDonalds has chopsticks, and delivers in Bangkok.

After Khao Sak I moved on to Khao Lak which was pretty well ravaged by the tsunami. I started volunteering on a little island today which was great fun (except for the combination of sawdust and tropical heat). For one to file under the small world category: the guy in charge of this project not only went to GW (my highschool) but also coached swimming when I was there. One final fun tidbit, especially for you doctors/aspiring doctors, of the $9 I spent on a visit to the emergency room here $8.50 was for the rabies shot and $.50 was for the doctors fee. Only slightly different than the six grand Duke charged me to (unsucessfully) stitch up my arm.

Cheerio!

Steve

PS> There were also lychee trees in Khao Sak, hence the title of this post.

After a celebratory and alcoholic end to our travels ("Steve, I'd hug you if I didn't have beer bottles taped to each hand"), Ed and I have gone our seperate ways. Ed heads back to Bangkok then off to a respectable job while I'm headed for a national park in search of tree houses.

I left Koh Tao this morning, though I was dangerously close to becoming one of those divemasters that says "yeah, I came here for a week vacation back in 2002" but I managed to escape unscathed. Well not actually unscathed, while Ed sucessfully defended himself from a trigger fish I was slightly less fortunate with one of the million roving canines around the island. Though I don't understand what the big deal is with rabies shots, they aren't painful and the woman informed (as I was removing my pants and bending over) that they don't actually go in your ass. It also gives me a good excuse to wander into Thai pharmacies so to finance my trip a bit, feel free to send me any requests for pharmacueticals.

Off to the park now, but I'll promise a special souvenir (fake name brand tshirt, fake name brand watch, etc) to anyone who can guess what I haven't had since 12 July or what I haven't not heard for a 24 hour period over here. Email me!

Steve