Day 11: We wake up early, check out of the bungalows and drive to the marina to meet Tom. He seems like a good guy but the boat needs a lot of work before it will be ready to make the trip. He gives us an estimation of about two weeks until she's seaworthy, and hands me a can of tropical strength bug spray. I am now thoroughly repellent. We agree to meet Tom in two weeks and drive south back into Phuket Town for the night before leaving for Ko Phi Phi in the morning. We check into the Thalang Guesthouse and get a great room with a private garden -- complete with an outside shower -- for 200b. I go out for a walk, unaware that it is Chinese New Year's Eve -- year of the rabbit -- and there is a free concert in the park given by five of the cutest Thai girls in all of the land. I rush back to the hotel to grab my camera and head back out. After an hour at the concert I'm done and I head back to the Roxy to see if there's anyone I know there. There isn't, but there is an impromptu show given next door by three Thais chasing a rat running around their restaurant. They eventually whack him with a broom and pose for a picture with their prize. I'll end up eating one of his rat brethren on Phi Phi, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Day 12: Up early to catch the ferry to Phi Phi. Everyone on the bus to the ferry is wearing white sunglasses -- refer to the website "Things I Hate About Backpacking" to learn more about the psychological type of people who wear white sunglasses (hint: they tend to be douchebags) -- and this proves to be portentous. As we all load onto the boat there come more and more twenty-somethings with less and less clothes on and I think to myself that this is a microcosm of Phi Phi, minus everyone's weight in booze. As we near the island I can see that it is packed to the gills with people all lowing like cattle and milling around aimlessly. Risto and I make a dash for our bags and step off of the frying pan and into the fire. It is 20b to get onto the island for a "cleaning" fee because Phi Phi is a "protected" marine reserve. I might as well have crumpled the 20b note up and thrown it into the water because Phi Phi is filthy, and I'm not talking about "Clean your room!" filthy, I'm talking "strike a match and the whole place goes up in flames" filthy. There is raw sewage running down the street and garbage literally everywhere. An unholy stench makes you wish for a respirator and rises in visible waves from the sea and the beaches. Going for a swim on Phi Phi is simply not an option unless you're into hepatitis and/or E. coli, yet there are plenty of mindless youth from around the world frolicking in the garbage like the happiest shit-flies on the planet. The booze probably helps, and there is a lot of booze. Phi Phi's specialty is "the Bucket", a sandpail full of Sang Som rum, RedBull, and Coke. At night the world's dimmest and drunkest down about ten of these buckets per person and suddenly become impervious to third-degree burns. The fireshows, Thais who juggle flaming hoops, wands and bolos, are entrancing to watch at the beginning of the evening, but by the end of the night all of the drunken farangs are giving it a try as well and it can get pretty ugly. In the morning there'll be bandages and burn ointment, but for tonight it's open bar at the amateur circus. I check into the Rock Backpacker Hostel dorm and immediately spray the place with my bedbug fogger; it looks like that type of place. Sure enough, after I've stowed my gear, and bought two locks for the safety box at the head of my bed which was previously sealed with zip-ties, I start talking to a few of the other inmates and one girl shows me the tell-tale line of bites on her ankle and asks if it could be bedbugs. I point to bite #1 and label it "breakfast", bite #2 "lunch" and bite #3 "dinner". An English lad -- more probably a "chav", the English equivalent of our American "wiggers" -- in white sunglasses recovering from the night before tells me that Phi Phi is "good fun" but that Koh Lanta is a bore. I decide then and there to get to Koh Lanta as soon as possible. There are, however, some people worth talking to on Phi Phi and as fate would have it they're staying in the same room as me. Ruben is from the Netherlands -- "All anyone ever asks me about is the coffee shops" -- and Vinny is from Italy. They are both homeward bound and have decided to make Phi Phi their last stop. We go out for an unbearably spicy meal, the waiter laughing at us as he watches us suffer through it, too proud to push it away and watch it spontaneously combust. Risto joins us midway through and after a few beers we're ready to brave the shit-show that is Phi Phi. We stop first at a reggae bar which has staged, i.e. "fixed", Muy Thai fights every night. It's my first Muy Thai fight and even though the winner is decided beforehand, some of the blows connect with devastating results. I wouldn't want to piss these guys off, however unimposing they look at 5'5" and 130 lbs. So, after a few bouts and faced with the prospect of watching two amateur Thai women fight -- a fun idea for the first five boring minutes -- we head off to the beach and the fireshows. Ruben, Risto, Vinny and I watch for a while and then hit the dance floor hard. After a while I decide to take a break and shoot some pool with some fun-loving Chileans. Then, suddenly, it's two o' clock in the morning. On Phi Phi two o' clock means that everything shuts down, everything. For an island where booze is the only thing to do this is one helluva disappointment. We all head home but Ruben and I meet a Dutch girl along the way and decide to see if there's anything, anything, open. As it turns out there is. One food vendor is catering to a late-night crowd of Thais and we order up one of her specialties. I briefly wonder what the meat is, but after seeing one unmistakeable cross-section and a tiny rump roast with a tail still attached I put two and two together. We're eating rat. Still, the spices are just right and we finish the meal with gusto. Plus, it was free-range rat.
Day 13: Risto and I go for a boat tour of Phi Phi Don (the island we're staying on) and Phi Phi Ley (the sister island where Maya Bay, from "The Beach", is). Tourists, tourists everywhere, fouling the water and polluting the air. I'm thoroughly disgusted with all the gawking, preening, picture-happy farangs destroying, directly or indirectly, such a once-beautiful place and I decide to leave on the morn. Too depressed for revelry, I leave the boys to it and go to bed early.
No comments:
Post a Comment