The boat to Phi Phi left from Phuket town, so I had to take a minibus from Patong over to Phuket. Minibus/minivan is a cost-effective and easy method of private transfer from place to place in Thailand (and was included in this case with the boat transfer), though often it is not very comfortable as they try to squeeze in as many people as possible. I'd be wary about any minibus trips that were more than an hour or so. When we got to the boat, I was a little concerned because it appeared to be kind of falling apart and I had heard that one of the ferries sunk not too long ago while full of passengers, though no one died. A photo of the boat I snapped the next day:
People often refer to Ko Phi Phi as if it's a single Island but actually there are multiple Phi Phi islands, only one of which is inhabited - Ko Phi Phi Don. When I got there, I just kind of wandered around. Ao Lo Dalam is the main town/beach, where all the ferries go in and out of. It's quite small so it was prettty easy to see the whole town and check out the beach in just a short amount of time that afternoon. It's mainly just narrow alleys/streets lined with restaurants, hotels, bars and touristy shops, kind of like this:
The beach is quite nice except that at low tide there is almost no water in the bay, so it's just kind of mud. But when the tide is in it's quite nice:
I had booked a boat tour of the islands for the next day that started pretty early, so I called it an early night, forgoing the party scene at the bars on the beach that I had heard could be pretty crazy (though not so crazy in the low season). I was pretty happy with that decision when I started pouring down rain; it was still coming down really hard hours after it started, when I went to sleep.
Day 92 - Monday, April 23
I would gladly pay $25,000 to never be bitten by another mosquito as long as I live, and I wouldn't even think twice about it. I really, really, REALLY hate mosquitoes, yet they seem to love me. I went to bed virtually covered in insect repellant, but I guess those f*ers managed to find all the patches of exposed skin where there wasn't insect repellant. I might even pay 50.
After doing some research the previous day, it seemed the options for a tour of the islands were either full day or half day (half day for those planning to party hard the night before) and either a big boat, speed boat or long-tail boat . And then there are a couple of party/drinking boats among the half-day choices. The reviews for one of the party boats in particular were quite good (Captain Bobs), but it was like $75 for all you can drink and only a half day, whereas the standard full day tours on the long-tail boats and big/speed boats were like $13 or $20 respectively. But the tour lady said I could bring beer on the standard boats. It was hard to justify an extra $55 for all the cheap beer you can drink, when I could purchase beers and ice to supply myself with enough for the whole day for about $12. So that's exactly what I decided to do and opted for the big boat for the extra room, thinking a long tail boat might be kind of cramped.
I can't say I've ever had a bad day where I spent all day drinking on a boat, and Monday was no exception. I filled up my cool bag (a necessity on the Kiwi bus in NZ where sometimes we shopped for groceries several hours before arriving at a hostel, and I've kept it with me since) with ice and Chang and headed for the pier. The first stop was snorkeling at shark point. It was pretty close to the bay and as a result, the water wasn't the clearest, so I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw a pretty big octopus and 2 full-size leopard sharks that were perfectly willing to swim right up next to me. Here's someone else's photo from the same dive spot:
We passed some cool rock formations (photos below) on the way to Monkey Beach, our next stop,where there was a monkey at my feet right as I got my kayak onto the beach, and so I figured they were probably everywhere. But after a few seconds he jumped away and we saw no more monkeys on Monkey Beach. But the snorkeling nearby was pretty good, and at least we saw one monkey - better than no monkeys.
After Monkey Beach we headed over to Ko Phi Phi Le, which is the
next biggest of the Phi Phi islands and home to a couple oft-photographed bays that virtually every boat tour in the islands includes. At this point I was on about beer 7, and the couple of people I had chatted with on the boat were very jealous of my cooler of beer - I regretted not getting more beer so that I would have spare ones to share. At Phi Phi Le, we checked out Viking Cave:
I think I might've gotten my camera a little wet because it wasn't exactly working very well after the kayaking trip. Next stop Maya Bay, perhaps the biggest attraction on the tour, and where they filmed some of the movie The Beach:
And then I got peer pressured into doing a backflip off the top level plank that we had been diving/jumping off at various points during the day. I don't really think the water was probably deep enough for such things, but after enough beer, peer pressure wins out over sense sometimes...
After a quick nap, I ended up meeting up with some of the folks from my trip at a place called Rolling Stoned. You haven't really lived until you've watched an all-thai rock cover band butcher 15 of the greatest rock 'n' roll hits from the last 40 years. To be fair, the guitarist was great and the lead singer's english was quite good, but still it was...quite a bit off. Afterwards, we headed out to the beach to check out some of the craziness at the beach bars. I was quite surprised at how many people were out because the island and beaches seemed pretty dead during the day. But the beach was filled with people partying/dancing all the way from the bar to the water line where the waves were crashing.
Day 93 - Tuesday, April 24
I felt like I had seen what there was to see on Phi Phi, and the hotel I was in was the most expensive yet worst of the places I'd stayed in Thailand to that point, so I decided to head back to Phuket. It was mid-late afternoon by the time I got back to Phuket, and I decided to just go back to the place in Patong I had stayed before because I really liked it, and figured that was just easiest until I figured out where I was heading next.
The options to get from Bangkok to Phuket are essentially a ~$20 overnight bus ride or a ~$60 flight. Though I was often willing to take the bus over a taxi in Bangkok to save a whopping $3, I'd done enough of the long bus rides in Australia to decide that the flight was worth the extra $40. I flew AirAsia again, but because I booked at the last minute I couldn't preorder any of the hot food, so again no picture comparison. Eventually though, it'll happen, and all the lawyers can start drafting their complaints for a false advertising suit. I almost missed my flight because my flight left from gate "B1C" and I went to gate B1 (which had multiple gate doors, so I figured one of them was "C" even if it wasn't labeled as such. Having heard no announcements about my flight, I waited until about 10 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave and well after it was scheduled to board (no idea why I waited that long), and then finally asked someone. They informed me that B1C which could not be seen from B1 was a separate gate, which was down some stairs and not very close to where I was. So I sprinted over there and luckily the flight was delayed a few minutes and had just started boarding - whew, close one.
Phuket is actually the name of a large island in southern Thailand as well as a town on that island. The town is on the east coast of the island where there isn't much of a beach to speak of, and it isn't really a tourist destination. The tourist destinations are mostly the west coast beaches of the island, Patong Beach, being the largest in terms of development, which was where I was heading, because I had read that the other beaches tend to be quieter destinations mainly for families and couples.
After 7 days of sunshine in Bangkok, I was a little disappointed to see clouds and rain when I arrived in Phuket. I was even more disappointed when I pulled up the weather forecast and saw that it was supposed to be cloudy and rainy for the next several days. April is the transition from the dry season to the wet season, so I guess the rain shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.
When I arrived in Patong, I unfortunately found it to be quite similar to Kuta in a lot of ways- kind of a dirty over-commercialized beach town. But like Kuta, I was very pleased with my accomodation (A1 Island Guesthouse), where I had a large clean private room with king bed, hot shower, refrigerator, cold A/C, balcony and fast free wifi for less than $20. After settling in and getting some food, I ventured out and explored and found that while there's definitely a robust nightlife in Patong, the number of go-go bars and other such prostitute-filled establishments seemed to significantly exceed the number of "normal" bars (for lack of a better term). And from what I could tell based on my time in Patong, it has to be a world leader in terms of ladyboys per capita - ladyboy being the most oft-used term from my observations, which is based in part on an all-you-can-eat buffet that advertised prices of something like $9 for men, $8 for ladyboys and $7 for women.
Day 89 - Friday April 20
It was cloudy and raining when I woke up friday, so I spent most of the day just relaxing in the hotel room - reading and trying to figure out plans for the rest of the south of Thailand. After the rain stopped, I headed down to the beach to check out that area and catch the sunset. The beach in Patong is nice, though it did have a fair amount of trash. I ended up meeting some British girls while I was down there, who, like me, were a little shocked at the lack of "normal" drinking establishments in Patong.
Later I ended up meeting up with the same girls for drinks and a couple of Russian guys they had met as well. Not long after we met up, it started raining, and then raining harder, and then raining a little harder, and then the streets outside the bar looked like this:
We waited for a bit to see if it would stop raining, but eventually gave up. Because the main street with a lot of the bars gets blocked off to car traffic at night time, getting a taxi didn't make any sense, so we set off in the rain and got soaking wet, as you can see in this picture from the next bar:
Feeling like I had seen what there was to see in Patong, I figured I would head over to the Phi Phi Islands for a few days to check those out, but after being out until very late Friday night, I had little interest in waking up early on Saturday to try to check out and get on a boat in the morning, and I hadn't booked anything anyway, so Saturday was another low-key day where I slept in, researched things to do and places to stay in Ko Phi Phi, and generally just relaxed, spending a lot of the day reading(I've been engrossed in the Game of Thrones series since finding the first one in a book exchange in Sydney, though they are a bit too fantastical for my taste). Didn't venture out into the nightlife because I was planning to head to Phi Phi early the next morning.
When I was trying to figure out where to stay on Ko Phi Phi I read one review where someone had booked a room online at a discount from the regular rate and then extended his stay without negotiating the rate for the additional nights. When he checked out they charged him the regular rate rather than what he had paid for first night(s). I realized that I had done the same at my guesthouse in Patong and was a little worried they might try to do the same thing. I was very pleasantly surprised, however, when I checked out and they charged me even less than I had paid for the first night. Good to know some people aren't trying to get every last cent out of tourists and take advantage of situations like that. I was very pleased with my stay at A1 Island guesthouse, which served as a nice refuge from the hot, smelly streets of Patong.
Day 81 - Thursday, April 12
I had a midday flight out of Bali that got into Bangkok late afternoon. When I arrived at the airport, I realized I had forgotten to do any research as to the best method to get to the city. Despite hearing that lots of people in Bangkok speak english and that it's not an issue at all that I didn't speak Thai, I found it quite difficult to find someone who spoke enough english to inquire about transportation, and after Bali, I assumed anyone who did offer help was probably just trying to sell me whatever service they were recommending.
I ended up opting for the express sky train to the middle of town, which looked to be a couple of miles from my guesthouse. When I got off the train, I wasn't quite sure if I was going to try to walk there, take a taxi, a tuk tuk, or a bus or whatever. I guess I decided to see how walking went and started walking around. Apparently it was clear I had no idea where I was going because a random thai guy asked me where I was going. Again, scarred by Kuta, and all the warnings in guide books and travel websites, I was certain he was a tout trying to get me to take a taxi or otherwise sell me something. But when I told him where I was going (Sam Sen Sam Place) he politely and helpfully told me I was going the wrong direction and that walking there was a bad idea because it was very far, but if I walked across the street I could get the No. 72 bus that would take me straight across town to the street I needed to get to. I was so shocked about his sincere helpfulness without expecting to gain anything that I must've just stared at him because he seemed to think that I didn't understand him. I walked across the street and grabbed the bus, where it was me and whole bunch of thai people. Apparently tourists don't really ride the bus very often - probably because, as I later discovered, you can get a tuk tuk or taxi to/from just about anywhere in central Bangkok for $2 or $3. But ever the one not to overspend, I opted for a few buses while I was there (which were about 25 cents for non-A/C or 40 cents for A/C). While walking from the bus stop to the side street that was home to my guesthouse, I was a bit surprised to see that there were very few signs in english and very few tourists. I knew that might make things a little difficult when trying to eat meals and find my way around, etc., but after Kuta, it was a welcome difference. As soon as I got to the side street the guesthouse was on, this silly black cat waltzed across the street right in front of me - almost as if he was trying to give me bad luck and mocking me in process. Stray animals were pretty common in Bangkok, and I don't think anyone in thailand has ever used a leash because even the ones that were obviously not strays always seemed to roaming around freely as well.
I went out for some food and noticed the first preparations for Songkran starting, including many a water gun for sale.
Day 82 - Friday, April 13
I had a few Thai baht (Thailand's currency) from buying a drink on the plane to Thailand (I paid in IDR but got change in Thai baht), but I exhausted that $9 or so on train/bus fare and food items the previous night, so the first order of business on friday was getting money (as most places didn't take credit cards, or if they did, charged a fee for doing so). The first ATM I stopped at wanted to charge a $5 surcharge for using it, which seemed a little steep, but after walking around and checking out a few others, that seemed to be the standard fee. So I bit the bullet and paid the fee and got some cash. When I got back to my hotel, I realized I didn't have my ATM card, so I went running back there, but there was no sign of it, and the bank was closed for Songkran. I did my best to ask the lady operating a fruit stand right by the ATM whether anyone had come by and found an ATM card, but I don't think she really understood me. So I hoped the machine had eaten it when I didn't take it, and I figured I'd just come back the next week when they were open and check regularly online to make sure no one was using it. Have I mentioned that I have a tendency to lose/forget things?
When I started walking around Friday, I was surprised to see that virtually all of the shops and things that had been open the previous day when I arrived were closed for Songkran. If you read the Songkran link above, you know that Songkran is the 3-day Thai New Year celebration from April 13 to 15th. Since April is the hottest month of the year in many parts of Thailand, including Bangkok, the choice to celebrate with massive public water fights seems like a pretty good way to cool off to me. Along many of the streets, families sit outside with kids and douse passers-by (pedestrian and cars alike) with water. Some groups pile into the back of pick-up trucks with large coolers or large buckets of water and throw water onto other cars, tuk tuk passengers, as well as those along the side of the street. Those strolling along the street tend to opt for water guns so that they can retaliate against those who might attack. In some of the big night life areas (like Khao San Rd. and Silom Rd) streets are closed off and are packed with people, with temporary stages set up for performers, etc. Many people also walk around with small buckets of chalky white paste/wet powder that they rub all over everyones faces as the pass by.
So I spent friday afternoon and evening just walking around the streets around Khao San Rd. taking it all in. It was essentially a giant party (not too different from Mardi Gras), with lots of music and everyone dancing in the street and covering each other in water. Between the water fights and the chalking of faces, and all the kids getting really excited about all of it, it was a really cool way to interact with a bunch of local thai people without being able to speak each other's language. I think I pretty much had a smile on my face the entire day, and I think it was probably the most fun I had since I started traveling. Just so much fun and an amazing experience.
I opted for my new $3 shorts for the day of water fight fun, and sure enough, the first time I wore them the stitching ripped... I opted for a small water gun, thinking that it might be a pain to carry around one of the big ones, especially in large crowds. I also didn't want to have to worry about hurting any small kids, and some of the big guns can pack a punch. So my little water gun fit pretty nicely in the back pocket of these top-quality Balinese board shorts. Well, at one point later in the night when I was out celebrating on Khao San Rd., a short thai girl asked if she could get up on my shoulders (chicken-fight style), an understandable request because I kind of towered above all the thai people and could see everything, but the crowd was packed in really tight, so short people like her could probably only see the asses and backs of the couple of people in front and beside them. So anyway, when I bent down so she climb on my shoulders, the pocket that was serving as my water gun holster totally ripped open. You're all shocked, I'm sure.
For obvious reasons I left the camera in the room Friday (and Saturday and Sunday as well). Here are a few photos I stole from around the web and some videos as well. The last video is kind of long, but gives a pretty good idea of what it's like in some of the areas around Bangkok.
The only reason I knew about Songkran and got to Thailand when I did was because my former roommate from Newport (for all of a month) Adrienne had mentioned that she was planning to go to Bangkok for the celebration. For those that don't know, Adrienne lived in Bangkok for a while and now lives in Singapore, so I figured if she used to live there and was going back for the festivities, it'd probably be a good idea to join in on the fun, and I definitely wanted to see her while I was in Asia. So many thanks to Adrienne, otherwise I would've totally missed out. Adrienne and two of her friends, Adam and Matt, flew in Saturday, so I met up with them Saturday afternoon, and then Adrienne led us to this really good authentic Thai place a little off the beaten path for lunch. Afterward, we made our way through the water fight festivities to the craziness of Khao San Rd for a while. Unlike the day before, in which I was often outmanned and outgunned during water fights, Adrienne and Adam opted for the serious guns, with water canisters that were so large they were worn backpack style. So on Saturday, our foursome was delivering as much of the water as we were receiving, which was a nice change. Once again had a ton of fun, and then Adrienne insisted that Matt's and my trips to Bangkok (the first for both of us) would not be complete without a trip to the Patpong area of Bangkok and an infamous ping pong show. So we hopped in a tuk tuk and headed over to a very classy establishment named Super Pussy. [Note to self: edit this blog entry later if you're applying for jobs or running for political office] I think it was somewhere around this point, that Matt took his and Adrienne's iPhones out of his pocket and realized that the ziplock bag they were in wasn't as waterproof as expected and the phones were not exactly functioning properly. Not good; though I think at least in Adrienne's case it was only a temporary setback. Again, for obvious reasons, I left the camera at home, but it was more of the same from the day before, so please refer to pictures and videos above.
Day 84 - Sunday, April 15
I was a tad hungover on Sunday morning, so after I awoke at 10 for the free breakfast, I promptly went back to sleep until early afternoon. With me not having a phone and reliant on email and Adrienne's phone suffering the effects of the previous day's festivities, we weren't able to connect and figure out a plan for meeting up. I contemplated just taking it easy after the previous two days, but I didn't want to miss the last night of Songkran. So I headed back over to the Khao San area for more soaking wet fun. When I decided to head home later that evening, I was walking along a street that was normally really crowded, but there was an area that had cleared as if there was a fight or something, with lots of people staring down this one alley like someone had headed that way. I kind of lingered for a bit trying to figure out what was up but figured whatever the commotion was, it was over, and continued walking. About 2 minutes later as I was walking back to my hotel, I heard two loud bangs followed shortly by a third, it took me a second to process it, but when I saw people running franticly away from the area I had just passed and a sea of people piling out of the street and into alleys and behind whatever shelter they could, I realized it was gunshots. And then I realized that I was kind of by myself in the middle of the street and running kind of at the back of the pack. I guess I wasn't conditioned on how to react to gunshots quite like the Bangkok natives were. So I was freaking out for a bit when I realized what was going on, but I quickly made it to an alleyway and past the back line of people, as others were slowing down their sprints and starting to turn their heads to see what was going on. No big deal, just your standard shooting in a street full of thousands of people. [For my parents, I'm just kidding about the shooting thing, no need to worry.]
Other than the whole shooting episode, Songkran was really a blast. I definitely think the U.S. needs to adopt this method of celebration in some form. But I guess it might be a little cold for water fights on Jan. 1st. Maybe labor day?
Day 85 - Monday, April 16
I had hoped that the banks would be open on Monday so that I could check and see if they had my ATM card at the bank where I left it, but because of Songkran, banks were closed again on Monday. One of the things on my to do list for Bangkok was to get my iPhone unlocked and the screen fixed so that I could buy SIM cards in various countries as I travel as well as use Skype and other apps to communicate with folks back in the states. So I headed to MBK, which is a giant 7-story mall near the center of Bangkok, where there is an entire floor almost exclusively dedicated to electronics. I finally found a place where someone spoke enough English that I could communicate what I needed. $30 and 1 hour later, I had a new screen and unlocked iPhone. There was a movie theater, and unlike Australia where movie tickets were like $20, here they were only like $4 or $5 and I had been wanting to see the Hunger Games movie after reading the books, so I took a page out of the Reeds book and opted to take in a movie and leave checking out some of the main tourist attractions in the city for the next day. A minor oddity when watching a movie in Thailand: prior to the start, they flash up a picture of the king and everyone stands up for a while to honor the king.
Day 86 - Tuesday, April 17
Even though Tuesday was also a public holiday (from what I can tell), banks were open. So I made my way over to the bank where I last saw my card and did my best to communicate what happened, but it took about 4 bank employees working in concert to figure out what I was saying. They did, however, have my card, which was good to hear and gave it back without too much hassle.
I then decided to head over to the zoo. On the way, I passed the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, a pretty impressive building:
The zoo was definitely a far cry from a zoo like you would find in the US. I felt like many of the animal cages/habitats/confines were probably not big enough and the whole place seemed a bit dilapidated and made me question the level of care that the animals received, but I did get to see lots of cool animals. And security/safety measures are minimal, so I probably got a lot closer to the animals than I would've ever been able to get in the states. I took some photos. They are in the picasa album, but I'm going to assume you guys already know what elephants and giraffes and hippos and tigers and such look like and don't really want to see any mediocre pictures of such animals in captivity.
After the zoo, I made my way through the city stopping at various temples along the way. I didn't realize how many temples there were in Bangkok, some of which seem to be very well maintained by the resident monks, while others, not so much. This one is known as the marble temple because it's primarily constructed out of marble:
On Wednesday morning, I booked a ticket to fly to Phuket the next day, so that meant it was my last day in Bangkok. I grabbed a water taxi in the morning and headed down the Chao Phraya River from where I was staying down to Silom/Sathon Rd which I guess is considered "New Bangkok," and is home to most of the tall office buildings, nice/big hotels, etc. On the boat, we passed by Wat Arun, another of the famous temples:
Some the housing along the riverside was hard to believe as it seemed like all it would take was a stiff breeze or good wave to send it into the river:
After the journey south on the river, I walked up Silom Rd. and checked it out then headed north on the skytrain to the AmEx office to pick up my credit card that I lost who knows where. On the way back to the hotel, I stopped back by MBK to get a Thai SIM card - hooray for rejoining the 20th century.
By the time Monday rolled around, I was pretty excited to be leaving Australia and head to Asia, in no small part because Australia was quite expensive and I had heard that southeast Asia (with a few exceptions like Singapore) is much cheaper. Plus I was just ready to check out somewhere new and different.
My stop in Bali was only for a few days (flew in on 4/9 and out on 4/12), so that I could make it to Bangkok in time for Songkran and meet up with my long lost roommate Adrienne. So I didn't really have time to see more than the Kuta area that's right by the airport (and neighboring areas of Legian and Seminyak). At the airport in Bali, I had my first issues with a language barrier that was a little frustrating, but at the same time it kind of felt nice to get out of my comfort zone and feel more like a world-traveler.
As promised, Bali was cheap. I stayed in a hostel (Kayun hostel) that was as nice as anywhere I stayed in NZ or Oz for about $17/night with free internet and breakfast. One awesome thing about it was that the bunk beds were built into a concrete wall, so there was no squeaking of bed frames when people got in an out of bed and if a person below or above you moved, you'd never feel it.
Whereas the standard steel-frame bunk beds found in all the hostels I stayed in while in NZ and Oz tended to make a lot of noise if you moved around, and you would feel and be awakened by virtually any movement by the person above/below you.
By the time I got there on Monday and got to the hostel, the sun was setting, so I just walked around to check out Kuta and get some dinner. I was a little disappointed to discover that virtually everyone in Kuta was either a tourist or trying to sell something to tourists, often quite aggressively, and it just seemed like a dirty overdeveloped rundown area without much in the way of culture, presumably a tourist draw because of its waves, proximity to the airport, and its nightlife, as there were a lot of bars and such. But then when I paid about $4 for a good dinner at a nicer restaurant, including a bottle of water that by itself would've been $4 in Oz, and then returned to my cheap nice hostel with free wifi, I was pretty happy to be in Bali.
PS: The meals served on AirAsia flights look NOTHING like the pictures on the website. Nothing! I should've taken a picture so I could've put them side-by-side. Maybe next time I'm on an AirAsia flight I'll remember.
Day 79 - Tuesday, April 10
It was a nice day - hot and sunny, so I decided to just do a self-guided walking tour of the area. I walked up the main street through Legian to Seminyak and then over to the beach and walked down the beach back to Kuta and then walked around Kuta area for a while, checking out some of the shops and whatnot. After Fiji, NZ and Oz, the Kuta beach is definitely nothing to write home about it. What little bit of sand there is was quite littered with trash. Chairs and umbrellas were all crowded next to each other and the beach was generally filled with people trying to rent you a chair or a surfboard or sell you something else. But the waves did look quite nice, so I decided I would rent a board the next day and give surfing another try. A few pictures of the beach:
I was also disappointed to find that although you can find a lot of cheap clothing, any genuine clothing from American companies was more expensive than in the states. I was hoping to buy a pair of board shorts because the one pair I had brought with me really needed to be retired after all the permanent stains they had picked up over the first 3 months of the trip, but even though there's 50+ surf-clothing stores in Kuta selling board shorts of the standard American/Australian surf companies, they're all more expensive than in the States.
Here are a few pictures of the what the alleyways that dominate the Kuta area look like:
For whatever reason, regular Absolut bottles are used almost exclusively throughout Kuta as the gas containers of choice - not sure what that's about.
Later that evening I headed back to the beach for the sunset, which is apparently a popular spot for a bunch of the local kids to play soccer when the end of the day coincides with low tide. A few pics from sunset:
After another good dinner that cost about $3, I did some shopping for desert and a few basics at the corner convenience store and came across a few interestingly named food items.
Who do they think they're trying to fool with this? It didn't even taste like bourbon. Surely there's a lawsuit here somewhere. This also made me realize that I hadn't had any bourbon since St. Patty's day - a travesty, really.
Basic things in Bali were about 1/5 the price of Oz, including bottled water, which was about 20 cents for small (0.5L) bottles and 30-40 for large (1.5L) bottles, making it a pretty easy decision to avoid tap water entirely. Unfortunately alcohol is heavily taxed in Bali, so alcoholic drinks were relatively quite expensive ($2-$5 per drink).
Still needing some board shorts and giving up on finding a nice pair at a reasonable price, I managed to bargain one of the little alley shop sellers from $25 down to $3 for a pair of board shorts that will no doubt fall apart the first time I wear them, but hey, they were $3.
Day 80 - Wednesday, April 11
As I mentioned above, I decided to do some surfing on Wednesday. There are a lot of places around Kuta that will rent a board for $5 for the day, but after my board short bargaining experience I had decided I could get a better deal than that and didn't really want one for the whole day anyway. I think it was in this endeavor that I really realized that at some point looking/bargaining for the lowest possible price is often not worth the savings. After speaking to a couple of shops and couple of people on the beach, I ended up renting a board for $3 for 3 hours. As with the last surfing effort, waves successfully ridden were few and far between, but I managed to avoid any injuries and enjoyed spending a few hours out on the water, paddling around and playing/falling in the waves. However, I almost didn't go surfing at all because when I came across this lovely section of sidewalk, I was really tempted to pull up a chair across the street and just spend the day watching and waiting:
I took a bit of a nap in the afternoon in anticipation of staying out late that night, having heard that the hours of 12am to about 4am are when most of the bars are busiest. For dinner, I decided I was going to try to find somewhere a little more authentic. Every restaurant I had eaten at, and virtually all of them I'd seen, were empty save for a few tourists, without a single local. So I opted to wander off the beaten path a bit, and eventually came across this place, where there wasn't anything in English and there were actually Indonesian people eating there and no tourists. In addition to seeming authentic, it also only cost me a dollar, and with no menu or published prices, for all I know the normal price was less than that and $1 was the tourist price. A picture of this fine establishment:
When I eventually went out at 1130, things were still pretty dead (I guess it was a Wednesday). I checked out a few places, but with the prospect of waking up for a flight in the morning, I didn't really party it up. So I never really experienced proper Bali nightlife, but now that I'm 30 [sigh], I'm probably too old to be partying until 4am anyway.
After spending a few days in Kuta, I think I'd like to come back to check out the parts of Bali outside of Kuta that I've heard good things about (like Ubud) as well as the Gili Islands and Lombok that are a short boat ride from Bali and are supposed to be really nice. So hopefully I'll make it back. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do with the 600,000 rupiah (about $65) that I had leftover when I left and didn't exchange.
Some of you may recall that my initial plan for Australia did not include a trip to Darwin, which I had decided would be good to leave for another time, when I could do a loop including the west coast, the outback, the northern territory (Darwin) and southern coast, which I thought would be best to do with one or two others, camping gear and a rental car. But when I started looking at flights from Cairns to various locations in Asia, it became clear that it would be cheaper to fly to Asia from elsewhere in Australia (Perth, Sydney, Darwin or Melbourne), and so even though I was more or less ready to leave Australia after Cairns, I hopped on a flight to Darwin to check it out for a few days and was excited to check out the neighboring national parks that I had heard good things about.
In a word, Darwin was hot. It wasn't that hot by some standards, and really not any hotter than South Carolina or Florida in the summer, and actually a bit cooler than Vegas in the summer, but after spending the previous 2 months in much milder climates (and winter in the States before that), it felt really hot. Part of it was probably that I spent a couple of days camping, where I was either outside in the heat (it stayed pretty hot at night as well) or traveling around in a poorly ventilated SUV without the benefit of A/C. And then the hostel I stayed in (another YHA) only had window/wall A/C units which weren't terribly effective, so it stayed pretty warm in the room. So, I was pretty much sweating non-stop for like 5 days. The Darwin YHA was the first YHA in NZ or Australia that I wasn't highly impressed with. But it was undergoing renovations while I was there, so perhaps in a few months they'll have it up to YHA standards. In case you want to know more than "It was hot and I sweat a lot," more details about each day in Darwin below...
Day 73 - Wednesday, April 4
I had an 1130am flight (from Cairns to Darwin), so I was able to sleep in until a normal time and had no issues with alarms or buses or anything. But about midway through the flight I realized I didn't have my fleece and immediately realized I had left it at the security checkpoint. I guess it must've gotten caught inside the the x-ray machine, but somehow I left without it. Unfortunately, unlike the US airports I've been in, they didn't bother making an announcement that someone had left their fleece at security. So now I don't have any jacket at all, and the fleece was also serving double duty as my travel and camping pillow, so now I'm pillow-less as well. Not good.
The fleece was definitely the most expensive item I've lost so far, but certainly not the first. Perhaps it's worth recounting what I've lost to this point:
- at least 4 other articles of clothing: 1 t-shirt, 1 pair of underwear, and 2 different socks
- two things of sunscreen (not counting the one the dingos ripped up)
- a container of bug spray (perhaps the most sorely missed, though it's since been replaced, but not soon enough)
- shampoo and face soap (stolen from showers after I forget and left them behind.
- my only flashlight
- my AmEx card
I think that's it so far, though I've tried to give my iPad away a couple of times. The first was when I left it on the counter at a Bread Top bakery store in the middle of a mall in Surfers Paradise for about an hour, and then realized I didn't have it about an hour later and went sprinting back for it to find it exactly where I left it. The second was in Cairns when I left it just sitting beside a computer in the Peterpan's travel shop and again realized I had left it about an hour later (and 10 minutes after they had closed) and had to sprint 2 blocks from my hostel and bang on the doors and luckily they let me in and it was still there. Any bets on how long it is until I lose the iPad? or perhaps my passport?
Anyway, it was like 95 or 100 degrees in Darwin when I got there, so I certainly wasn't missing the fleece there. I had heard the best thing to do in and around Darwin was a multi-day camping trip to nearby Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks, so I asked around about that and found out that my only option with a tour company was basically doing a 2-day trip leaving the next day to Kakadu and then a 1-day trip to Litchfield on Saturday, because the other trips around the weekend were full on account of it being Easter and most people having Friday and Monday off. I spotted a posting on the hostel's message board that was looking for people to split the costs of renting a car to go camping in Kakadu for the weekend, but when I called the guy he said he wasn't sure what time they'd be back on Monday, and my flight to Bali was at 3 on Monday, so I needed to be back pretty early. I think that sort of a trip would've been preferable, but unfortunately I only had about an hour before I had to book the trip with the tour company that left the next morning if I wanted to do that, and the guy organizing the unguided trip said he'd need to get back to me about when they were leaving on Monday, so I just went with tour company (Kakadu Dreams).
The tour company was picking me up 7am - another early morning. So I walked around what there was of a downtown Darwin (it's a pretty small area) and called it an early night. I took no pictures. No part of Darwin's nightlife seemed photo-worthy.
Day 74 - Thursday, April 5
Unlike the east coast of Australia where the sun was up by 530/6, when I woke up a little after 6, Darwin was dark, which is always a little weird, especially for people like me that aren't keen on waking up early. It was another hot and sunny day - with temps in the 90's. The first stop was at the Adelaide River, just outside of the park to check out some saltwater crocs. While we were waiting for the croc cruise to start, we played with a few different pythons native to the Northern Territory:
Apparently Darwin has a very distinct wet season and dry season, with April generally marking the end of the wet and start of the dry. Based on the wether, it seemed dry season had set in, but unfortunately, most of Kakadu, including many of its top attractions aren't open until a few months into dry season, usually around July because after the flooding of wet season they have to rebuild roads and check for misplaced crocodiles, etc. So, unfortunately, most of the park was still closed. For this reason, most tour companies that do overnight trips to Kakadu don't do anything longer than 2 days there this time of year because there really isn't too much to see until they open up more of the park as things dry out.
I also didn't realize quite how far Darwin was from the sites in Kakadu. Kakadu is the largest National Park in Australia, and though the edge of Kakadu is only a little over an hour from Darwin, you have to go a couple of hours into the park before there's really much to do/see, so it's a good bit of driving/riding, especially if you're not planning to camp for at least a few nights. Though we did stop along the way to check out this termite mound that was significantly taller than I am:
I spent the 3-hour drive from Darwin crammed in the back of a tightly packed SUV, with minimal air flow, a worthless A/C unit, and eight other people that didn't seem to want to be very social. It was not exactly fun. That afternoon we checked out some aboriginal art at Nourlangie rock, and then we did a pretty cool hike up to a lookout that provided a nice view of Nourlangie rock and panoramic views of the park.
Despite it being quite hot, camping wasn't too bad because we stayed at a campground with a swimming pool, and had a nice big fan to blow on the tents to keep us from sweating to death at night. Luckily one of my travelmates let me borrow some insect repellant, otherwise it might've been Fraser Island all over again - mosquitoes everywhere. Have I mentioned yet that I hate mosquitoes?
Day 75 - Friday, April 6
We were awoken (before sunrise once again) by loud sounds of the guide playing a didgeridoo We wanted to get an early start so that we could do most of our hiking during the cooler morning hours. We headed over to the trailhead for a walking track to the Gubara natural pools. Along the way, we headed off the track and up some pretty steep rocks, through a little passageway that seemed way too reminiscent of scenes from 127 hours
After we came down, we went for a refreshing and heat-relieving swim in a naturally formed swimming pool fed by a few rivers and waterfalls and then eventually headed back to Darwin (another sweat filled ride in the heat of the day), arriving back in time to catch the sunset:
That night in Darwin, virtually everything was closed because it was Good Friday, and I had to be up at dawn once again for the 1-day tour of Litchfield National Park, not to mention being utterly exhausted after the long day, so it was another early night.
Day 76 - Saturday, April 7
I was up and waiting outside the hostel to be picked up by about 6:50. It was yet another hot and sunny day. I sat outside and waited patiently, reading my book; finally, after what seemed like quite a bit of time with no sign of the bus, I went in to reception to have them call and see what the deal was. The story I got from the tour company was that they had me booked for the Litchfield tour for the previous day (which makes zero sense because I was on a different bloody tour with that same company the previous day.) In any case, I wasn't really that upset because I realized during the Kakadu tour that the Litchfield tour also does the same stop on the Adelaide to check out the crocs in the morning, and my guide for the Kakadu tour said Litchfield was more like a place to go for a picnic and not as cool as Kakadu. Also, some guys at my hostel had mentioned they were leaving for Litchfield on Saturday and we had talked about how it was unfortunate that I was booked on the tour because otherwise I could've just tagged along with them. So really, I was somewhat happy to get a refund for the Litchfield tour. But when the hostelmates got up around 10, I found out that they had changed their plans, and instead of going to Litchfield for the day, they were planning to camp there until Monday. So again I was foiled by my Monday flight.
With my plans for the day derailed, I explored the city a bit more, and then lounged by the pool most of the afternoon, trying to avoid the oppressive heat. No bad days when you're a jobless backpacker. ... Unless of course, dingos tear open your tent, rip up your belongings, get sunscreen on everything and then you get insect bites all over your face and body because your tent won't close. Or you spend 15 hours on a 90+ degree bus with stinky people and no A/C. So, maybe very few bad days is more accurate.
Day 77 - Sunday, April 8 - Easter
Another very hot day. I spent most of the morning in an air-conditioned building on the internet - skyping, emailing, researching Asian destinations, trying to keep up with what's going on in the world, etc. Then I spent the afternoon relaxing by the pool again. That evening, I went for a jog over to the west side of the city, and found the Cullen Bay area to be quite nice, and it's a great place to watch a sunset as well. I didn't take my camera, but luckily someone else has been there with a camera at sunset before:
