Day 17 and 18 Khao Lak - Khao Sok - Khao Lak

Sorry that yesterday's post was short and boring. I was getting into my blog when the girls that I was traveling with were getting ready to leave, so I had to cut it short.

The dinner and pub crawl with the folks from the liveaboard trip didn't go as planned. We got together at 7pm for dinner at Sala Thai, a restaurant recommended to me for great seafood. We picked our dinner from a cart with fish on ice out front and sat down for some drinks. There were 7 of us -- Lai from England, Phil from England, Patrick from NZ, Lars and Jens from Norway and my friend Jen whom I met the day I left for the liveaboard. Dinner was delicious, costing each of us only $5.00 (the boys had lots of beer too). Phil and Patrick are teachers at the international school in Bangkok, and they left us to meet up with other friends for more diving somewhere else.

After dinner, I got the true backpacker experience. We had left our packs at the dive shop, which was closing at 9pm. The remaining 4 of us and Jen (who was already in a room) got our packs and tried to find a room, only to be told place after place that they were fully booked for the evening. I had previously arranged to room with Jen, but I decided that I was going to try and leave Khao Lak early to catch an earlier flight back to Bangkok, so we decided that it would be better if I roomed with Lai. After visiting about 8 guest houses and talking to every tourism information agency that was still open, we were being told that everything was sold out. Jen was starting to realize that she was going to have 4 more people in her room than she had originally planned. At 11:00pm, we finally found a guest house with 2 rooms available for 800B ($20) per room. It was way more than the backpackers' budget but we had no choice. After dumping our bags, Lai decided that she was going to stay in due to her ear infection (which she got after the last dive, thank goodness) and the 4 of us decided to hit every bar on the main drag.

Khao Lak is a great diving town, but not a great party town. It seemed no one was out that night due to diving first thing the next morning, which is usually leaving around 6am. We still hit a few bars and had some drinks, but we were pretty exhausted from our dives. The bars closed at 1am anyway, so we headed home.

The next morning, I woke up at 6:30 again, even with no diving. I guess I'm on a weird schedule now. After getting ready, Lai and I had breakfast at a nearby restaurant, where 2 of our dive masters walked by and we got to chat a bit. Lai was waiting for 2 of her friends to come on the 3:30pm bus to meet up with her, and I was going to go back to the dive shop to see if I can get on an earlier flight. Unfortunately, all flights were sold out until Sunday, which was my original plan. Mikel (not Miguel) from Spain had emailed me saying that he was back in Bangkok until he was leaving for home on the 25th, so I emailed back saying I wanted to go back to Bangkok early but it wasn't going to work out. It would have been neat to meet up and hang out together, but it just wasn't meant to be. Because my "go back to Bangkok" option didn't work out, Lai invited me to visit the Khao Sok national park with her friends. It was going to work out great because they were a group of 3 anyway, and adding me would make it 4.

Hannah, Lai's college buddy from England and Nora, a Swiss-German girl they met somewhere along the way, arrived around 3:30pm while we were getting foot massages. I fell asleep during mine, it was THAT good. I got a 30 min massage and pedicure for $6. I am so spoiled here! The Norwegian boys were still around, trying to figure out the cheapest way to get to Bangkok. Their 12 hour bus wasn't leaving until 6pm, so they went out to film a "documentary" on their camcorder about the tsunami (fake one, obviously). Lars was spoofing a reporter with very exaggerated speech (I am imagining a serious reporter who talks like the Crocodile Hunter) and it was funny to watch even though we didn't understand a word he was saying. They even found some chickens on the road and made another report on the avian flu. These crazy 20 year old boys will be amused (and amusing) no matter where they go.

Shortly after their bus left, we found out that the last public bus to go toward Khao Sok left an hour ago (I hear this every time I try to take a public bus). We didn't believe the taxi drivers and waited another hour, but it was started to get dark and there was no bus in sight. We reluctantly paid a taxi 1000B to drive us an hour and a half to Khao Sok to a lodge in the jungle.

The jungle huts we stayed in was just that -- simple rooms with AC but without hot water. We got lucky though, and found a room where all 4 of us could stay for only 100B ($2.50 each). We had dinner at the lodge and got invited to a jungle party by some English lads, but we were too tired to go out (plus Lai is still under the weather). We planned an excursion to the jungle with an elephant trek for the morning and went to bed.

This morning, we all got ready and had breakfast at the lodge overlooking amazing foliage and mountains surrounding us. Our lodge guys drove us out to the elephant trek and we went walking around for an hour and a half with the gentle giants. At the end, we got to feed our elephants some bananas. Elephants are really interesting creatures. They have super thick skin, so their trainers' prodding tools look really scary but they don't hurt the elephants. But these were so well trained, they responded just to verbal responses. When they walk, the put their left hand and left foot forward simultaneously, so their gait is quite uncomfortable. The first elephant I was on with Lai was a 40 year old male. He didn't have gas, but had a very uncomfortable gait. We switched elephants on our way back from the little waterfall, and the second one was a 30 year old female which had a much smooth gait. I liked that one much better.

We then had lunch back at the lodge and showered, then went out to catch a public bus back to Khao Lak, where Nora was catching the bus to Bangkok and the rest of us were going to head to Phuket. Lai and Hannah are flying out of Phuket to Singapore, and I am flying back to Bangkok later on the same day.

Prior to meeting Lai on the liveaboard, the three girls had been partying it up in Koh Lanta and Koh Phi Phi and every island on both sides of the Thailand isthmus. They showed me tons of photos of them drinking drinking drinking with people they met along the way. Both Hannah and Nora found boyfriends during their travels which led to more drinking and hanging out in the same place for a long time, which was partly why Lai decided to do the liveaboard trip on her own. I imagine it's hard to travel with someone for so long, whether it is a good friend or with a significant other. Traveling is stressful enough, not to mention carrying a year's worth of stuff on your back from country to country, city to city, catching a bus, train or plane one after another. It never ceases to amaze me how many couples remain intact for the duration of their journey. I have been on the road for 3 weeks and I am getting sick of carrying my stuff around! As much as I have enjoyed the experiences on this trip, I am ready to go home and feel clean again, and to wash all my clothes and have the whites actually look white again.

This may be my last blog entry from overseas. Lai, Hannah and I will catch a public bus from Khao Lak to Phuket tonight and stay in a guest house for the night, but they have an 8am flight to catch tomorrow morning. I figure I will share a ride with them tomorrow morning to save money and try to catch the first flight out instead of the scheduled 1:25pm flight to Bankok. When I figure out my flight time, I will call Sam in Bangkok, who is picking me up so I can spend the day with his family until I head back to the airport to catch my flight to Tokyo. I have a 5 hour layover in Tokyo (ugh) then it's home to Chicago.

Thanks for following me through my trip, and for those who posted comments, I really enjoyed reading them. It's great to be experiencing new things, but it's always really nice to hear from family and friends when you're on the road.

Talk to you soon!!!

love,
asami :-)