Bangkok and the Island of Koh Samui

After 20+ hours in a plane, my family; mom (Leslie), dad (David), and brother (Chris) arrived in Bangkok. We had checked into the hotel and immediately went to the pool (which had a bar you swam up to). They were all a little out of it from the time change but were excited to be in an exotic city. As mom went to bed early Steff, Chris, Dad and I took a walk down the street to check out Bangkok. Along the sidewalk was an endless row of tourist s vendors selling clothes, paintings, sculptures, and the usual stuff, but also more exotic items like stun guns, rifle scopes and every bootleg DVD you can think of. Aside from the wares being sold on the sidewalks, it is not unusual to find an elephant walking down the busy city streets. For 10 thai baht you can feed the elephants sugar cane stalks and get some pretty cool photos, this is something truly unique to Bangkok. Some other things we saw while walking around Bangkok included African transvestites they call “Chocolate boys” and a Muslim woman wearing a full burka and what appeared to be a metal muzzle over her mouth. We got about a block from the hotel when we decided to duck into a random bar for a beer. As we walked in we noticed that the bar consisted of mostly girls all standing shoulder to shoulder in a line around the bar. It took us a minute before we realized we were in a brothel! We all started giggling at the spectacle and said what the heck, let’s order a beer. As we drank our beer we observed the weird scene of prostitutes standing silently around the bar, waiting for their next customer. Then we decided to head up the block and only a short distance later we were approached by a man saying he could take us to a “special show”. I was curious so I asked what kind of show? His reply was the “ping pong show”! The next few hours are a little hazy. The next day we hit the typical tourist trail and saw all the amazing temples and shrines in Bangkok. The grand Palace was huge and used an endless amount of broken teacups from China to decorate the outside of one of the temples with porcelain flowers. Also, there was a temple surrounded with statues of demons and monkeys. The guide said you could tell the monkeys from the demons by their smiles and that they were not wearing shoes. The monkeys pretended to hold up the temple with the demons, but were really tricking them to hold all the weight. Anyone who knows my father knows he poses for every picture flexing his arm. This is not a joke, he actually poses for every picture flexing his arm. While walking through the palace, we saw a statue of an ancient Chinese warrior making the same pose. Dad had found his true ancestor. On our way back we got into a couple of Bangkok’s famous “tuk tuks”. These are three wheeled motorcycle taxis that drive like a bat out of hell through Bangkok’s insane traffic. Weaving through cars and observing little to no rules of the road we arrived back at our hotel in record time, but with white knuckles and a dramatic increase in blood pressure.


The following day we took a ride out of the city to visit a floating market, where the entire market is in boats along a canal. It was pretty interesting, especially the part where we all had giant live pythons draped around our necks. Dad was screaming like a little girl, but managed to have the python on him long enough for a couple of pictures.

Later that night we saw some Thia boxing at Lumpini Stadium. The first fighters we saw were around 13-years-old. The had a lived band who played the same painfully monotonous line of music throughout the whole night. The trainers and their fans really got into the fight. Their 'locker room" was right next to the public bathrooms and soda stand, so we got to observe them before their fights.

Our next stop was the island of Koh Samui. Steff, Chris, and I went out on a boat trip for some island hopping. We soon found out that the water stings. This sounds weird, but apparently there are what we think are sea lice, which bite you when in the water. Quite surprising. We did a little snorkeling and saw some colorful fish and found a little cave to hang out in. For dinner we saw some Thai dancing next to the beach and Mom organized a surprise birthday song and cake for Stephanie. A nice birthday surprise! Then the three of us (Steff,Chris, Ben) went to the island next door for the full moon party. This party has been built up as the biggest beach party in the world and we were all looking forward to going thinking it would be bonfires and hippies with a laid back atmosphere, it would be special because it was also steff’s birthday. When we arrived it was more like a giant techno club on the sand, with thousands of drunk Europeans dancing and drinking liquor out of buckets and peeing in the ocean. There was a pretty cool fire show on the beach with fire dancers and someone had brought out a huge jump rope that was lit on fire and people were taking turns jumping in. Of course I went in for a try and jumped it fine three or four times until a group of people decided to join me and they tripped on the fire rope. As we were leaving Steff and I got separated from Chris, so I turn around to go back into the thickest part of the crowd to find where we saw him last. I looked around for about 10 to 15 min. before giving up and as I came out of the crowd I notice that someone had picked my video camera right out of my pocket. We had been warned about this type of thing from many sources, but I never thought will happen. Apparently there is an army of pickpockets at the full moon party.

One day Dad decides we should rent a car and explore the island ourselves. This seems like a good idea until you think about how the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and they drive on the left side of the road. Not to mention Thai drivers are not like those found in America, they drive like mad men, passing cars in front of them on blind corners, disobeying all common sense rules, etc. As dad had little experience with this style of driving we came close to hitting every bystander and car along the side of the road as we passed. One pedestrian actually had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit by us. Dad, of course, was oblivious to all of this and accused us of being scared little girls. To give him credit, we did make it through the entire day without hitting anyone or anything, although we came very, very, very close on a number of occasions. We stopped off for an elephant ride and also we passed a sign saying “Deadly Cobra Show”, and decided to have a look. It was one of the coolest shows ever. A lady called the scorpion queen came out and put over a dozen scorpions on her face, and let a giant centipede biter her arm, apparently over the years she has developed and immunity to the stings. Then they brought out the Cobras. A man came out and was playing with three of them at a time and even gave one a kiss on the head. “There was an older Thai man narrating the show with a funny voice. He’d say, “welcome my friend, deadly cobra show, most deadly snake in Thailand,. C-O-B-R-A and make a heart beat sound through the microphone as the trainer kissed the snake on the head.” It was pretty amazing.

Back on the mainland we decided to take our last trip to a town called Lop Buri, also known as “monkey town”. The people of this town believe that the monkeys who share the town with them are princes of former Kings. They believe the monkeys should be treated with respect, even going so far as to pile feasts of fruits onto tables and letting the monkeys dig in. The tourism the monkeys bring in helps them to feel a little less annoying also. The monkeys would climb all over you and even dig into your pockets taking anything that was in there. They were known to take cameras, bags, sunglasses, and anything not tied onto your body. We spent a few hours in the sun just playing with the monkeys, but could have spent a week it was so much fun. At one point a small monkey was sitting behind Steff picking at her skirt and moved up to her hair, even pulling it at one point. The monkey was grooming her like she was one of their own (few can argue that she is not). A local boy who “helps” the tourist quickly latched onto our family and was happy to help us take pictures or get the monkeys to do tricks, with the unstated understanding that we would give him a tip. At one point the local Thai boy pointed to a very fat monkey and said “big!”, he then pointed to Chris and said “big too!” we all started laughing very hard, because Chris has gained a lot of weight over the past few months and we had all been letting him know this (it was all in good fun). But now even the locals were having a laugh at Christopher’s chubby disposition. Mom had caught every one of us sleeping at some point during the trip and documented this with a photograph; mom finds this game extremely amusing especially because she has never been caught herself. Until that day….(haha gotcha mom).