Quik Thinking

Rather than flying back to Kuala Lumpur again before heading to Canada, I decided to simply fly into Toronto directly from Thailand. This meant that, unlike my forays into Cambodia and Sri Lanka, I had to take all my stuff with me when I left KL. That proved to be problematic because I was flying from KL to Bangkok on Air Asia, which has a much lower baggage allowance than my flight from SF to KL did. I ended up discarding a bunch of stuff in KL and still having to pay $40 in excess baggage fees. 

I also needed to exchange hundreds of ringgits for dollars after getting my rental deposit back. I'd hoped to do this at the airport but ended up getting there later than I'd meant to and standing in the wrong line for a while. To make things worse, I almost left my passport at the check-in counter. Fortunately, the flight had been delayed so I had enough time to visit a currency exchange booth. They were able to give me some Thai baht but when I asked for Canadian dollars they did not have any so I ended up settling for greenbacks instead.

When I landed in Bangkok, after leaving my suitcases at the Left Baggage station, I caught a bus into the city. According to Google Transit, I needed to transfer to another bus so I could meet my friends Tony and Katherine, who were visiting from Tokyo, at the Ekkemai transit station. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing when to get off the bus and the conductor gave me the wrong information so I ended up going too far and found myself at the Victory Monument, which is quite far from Ekkemai. I was supposed to meet them at 2pm and it was already 1:40 so I took a cab to Ekkemai and got there with barely a few minutes to spare.

From Ekkemai we caught another bus and then a ferry to the island of Ko Samet. It was already dark when we arrived and we weren't sure exactly where our cabin was but Tony managed to lead us to it. The cabin had a miniscule bathroom and the veranda had a low-hanging beam on which I kept bumping my head but it did offer a nice view of the water. And there were a couple of pigs outside!

In the morning Tony and I set off to explore the island while Katherine slept. I noticed a tamarind tree growing near the cabin. Although most of the fruit had been eaten by ants, I managed to find a couple of god ones. I kept one for myself and fed the other to one of the pigs. As in Sri Lanka, there were no bicycles to be had. Apparently motorcycles are all the rage these days. What we did find was a place that served amazing pancakes and had hammocks to lie in after eating them.

We also found a better place at which to stay. It was run by a guy whose name was also Tony! Although we had to share the bathrooms, they were very pretty. Initially I thought there was no wifi but when I asked about it, they told me they'd just forgotten to turn on the router that morning and then did so. These people take power-conservation seriously! 

After moving our stuff to the new hostel, we headed to the conservation park where, for a few dollars, we gained access to a beach with gorgeous white sand, an incredibly gentle slope, crystal clear water, no current and barely any waves! We played in the water for hours, amazed by how the water seemed more like a giant swimming pool than a seashore. For lunch I ate congee and cheap fruit at a beach-side restaurant. The only problem with the beach was that there didn't appear to be any toilets anywhere on it, which eventually forced us to return to our hostel. 

Katherine and Tony decided to take a nap but I wasn't sleepy so I headed out on my own. Finding a little store that sold fruit, I bought and ate a mango and a coconut. I also picked up a pair of imitation Crocs before deciding to get a massage. Traditional Thai massage turned out to be similar to Khmer massage at the macro level, although the details are different. By the time I got back to the hostel, the mosquitoes were starting to make their appearance for the evening. Tony didn't seem to be bothered by them much but I got several nasty bites and Katherine was practically covered in them.

Once we'd picked up some more insect-repellent, we went out for dinner. I'm pretty sure our waitress was a tranny. I ordered fried noodles and they were really good. During my time in North America, I hadn't been a huge fan of Thai food but those noodles made me realize that I simply hadn't eaten good Thai food before. I washed them down with a pina shake that was gone almost as soon as my lips touched the straw.

Having sated our appetites, we strolled over to see what the beach looked like at night. There were glowing coloured balls hanging everywhere and music playing from various restaurants, all of which were packed with tourists. On the sand there were some fire dancers, a few of whom looked like their daytime activities were confined to a classroom. Also on the sand were some food carts hawking roti pancakes. If it hadn't been for my Invisalign, I would have eaten a pancake.

The next morning a thunderstorm broke over the island and we were stuck inside the hostel waiting for it to end before we could catch the ferry back to the mainland. The staff took advantage of the excess water to clean the floors! We watched the storm for a couple of hours before it finally died down enough that we could make a break for it.

When we got to the mainland, we had plenty of time before the bus was supposed to leave for Bangkok so we killed time at the market across the street for half an hour before returning to board the bus. Unfortunately, when we tried to get on, we were told that what we thought were return tickets were actually vouchers for tickets and we needed to exchange them for tickets to board. Kinda annoying but the ticket booth was right there so it seemed simple enough.

Ten minutes later we finally got to the head of the short but slow-moving queue and were told that all the seats on this bus were already sold and we'd have to take the next one in an hour. We could see quite clearly that there were several empty seats on the bus but pointing that out didn't seem to get us anywhere. So we had to watch in frustration as a bus they claimed was full pulled away with entire rows of empty seats staring tantalizingly at us.

We amused ourselves for an hour with the free wifi and a gigantic cockroach before boarding the next bus. It made good time until we hit traffic in Bangkok, at which point we crawled along beside the Skyrain track as trains whizzed by us. I would have loved to just get off and take the Skytrain but we had luggage that had been stowed so that wasn't an option and we had to wait nearly a hour before we could disembark.