Hi all from Chumphon, Thailand. I'm starting this instead of sending out mass emails because I'm never really sure how many people actually want to hear every detail about my life. Plus, I'm tired of tracking and updating everyone's address.
As most of you know, I'm travelling throughout SE Asia with my little sister Susanna (aka Zoot). She flew into Seoul way back on the 10th and we hung out with my friends in Korea for a while. You've all heard my take on Korea so I'll try to keep it short. We crammed a ton of palaces and temples inton our first day in Seoul. After that, we took the train back to Daegu and stayed with Cat for a few days. I just took Zoot around my hangouts and all the not-so exciting things we usually do. Then on Saturday, we took a train back to Seoul with Emma, Andrea, and Daryl. Spent the day shopping and went out that night and had an odd night. I'll refrain from details to protect the weak of heart (i.e. parents) but we had fun in the end. It wasn't at all the weekend I was hoping for and I ended up having a very awkward goodbye with Cat.
So on to Thailand. We got into Bangkok late so we ended up staying at a craphole the first night. The second place was much nicer in a ridiculously cheap and spartan sort of way. It was run by this really friendly man who had a daughter in the US and had actually travelled there himself. We stayed in the backpacker zone called Khao San Rd which I didn't really like. It clearly catered to a different sort of person from Zoot and myself. The restaurants were fine, but there were tons of bars, and souvenier shops that specialize in t-shirts with crude sex jokes. During the day, we left there and toured the huge Grand Palace and adjacent Wat (temple). The first two days were really all about seeing enormous Buddhas in enormous Wats.
Not liking Bangkok very much, we quickly headed south to the small island of Ko Tao. It's a diving mecca, known as the cheapest place in the world to get certified. We caught a night train which was awesome -my first experience with a sleeper. We ended up talking to a French woman near us late into the night. She was a really interesting character -she lives in Japan and does art/video installations for the fashion industry (Emma, do you know the Laptop Orchestra?). After she and Zoo went to bed, I went up to the dining car and just sat there with a Singha and the windows down in total bliss.
Ko Tao turned out to be paradise. We picked a dive resort called Buddha View (big rock on the bay kinda looks like a Buddha) a little ways from the main beaches. It's got a good rep though so I think I got excellent training. I basically spent my days doing the dive course and Zoot relaxed or kayaked.
Diving scared the hell out of me at first -breathing underwater is freakish and wrong- but I eventually learned to calm down and enjoy it. The course pretty much filled my days with two half-days of classes and six dives. The instructors were cool and so were the folks I did it with. I've even got an underwater DVD of all of us doind stupid stuff on our last day. Most importantly, they taught us the primary rule of diving: look cool. To that end, I can do flips and blow bubble rings pretty damn well. No pictures yet though. I don't plan on spending my whole time here writing and uploading.
After I finished diving, we decided to move on to Chiang Mai in the north. The first part of the trip had to be on a high-speed catameran. All other ferries had cancelled due to high swells (like 3-5m) but this one is more stable supposedly. Let's just say it wasn't a fun ride. Half the people were throwing up because it was swaying 45 degrees in either direction. Either that or because Bruce Almighty is a really cheesy movie. So we got there safe and caught the night train to Bangkok (sounds like a movie name). Since it actually left fairly early, we headed into the dining car expecting another relaxing drink like the last train. Instead, it was dimly lit with Christmas lights and they were playing loud Thai music videos. The waiter was a gender-bending Thai man (?) who sang along in a high pretty voice to all the songs. Then he suddenly got an idea, switched to a karaoke DVD, and serenaded me with "I've Never Been To Me" -the transvestite anthem. Not satisfied, he proceeded to play a string of western songs we didn't really know and tried to get us to sing along. We put it off for a while but Zoot and I both got talked into some. Strange night.
Anyway, we made it to Chiang Mai and so far all I've done is eat and use the computer. Better get going so I have more to write about.
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