Becca, Michael, and I flew into BKK on a pleasant Friday afternoon and the two of them were immediately introduced to the urban jungle of Bangkok as we suffered through the first of many hour-long taxi rides through the massive city with its dense, standstill traffic.

After finally reaching our hotel, checking in, and getting some food, we decided to go to the Chatuchak weekend market. Friday night at the market was very different from Saturday or Sunday; only a subset of the clothes shops were open and all the non-clothes shops were closed, there was very little food or drink, there were much less people than usual, and the clientele was almost exclusively Thais shopping for clothes. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere as we casually browsed the racks and got foot massages.

Saturday was the big tourist day. I took Becca and Michael to the usual spots – Chao Phraya, the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun – and set them loose. The cliche continued into the evening as we went to Khao San Road to observe and partake in the spectacle. However, that plan came to a nauseating halt when both Michael and I started to feel ill about an hour and a half after dinner. Given that Becca was completely fine and that the content of her meal overlapped with ours, any potential theory (Was it the rice? Was it the chicken? Was it the Chang?) has a gaping hole in it. To our credit, we managed to make it to 1:00 or 1:30, which is when the junta started shutting down all the parties anyway, so we felt less bad about turning in “early”. We grabbed a taxi home and two-thirds of our group suffered through a restless night’s sleep filled with trips to the bathroom and the violent expulsion of partially digested food.

On Sunday morning we dragged ourselves to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap. On top of being tired and still partially sick, we had to deal with the worst immigration line I’ve ever seen. The “line”, a barely-organized throng of irritated travelers, took almost an hour to navigate. There were multiple rude Chinese tourists cutting the line, which resulted in another rude Chinese tourist scolding them loudly, which led to one of the Thai immigration officers losing face, standing up, pointing his finger, and yelling “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” at the top of his lungs. It was not a fun morning.

Once through immigration, the rest of the traveling was uneventful and a couple hours later we were in Cambodia.

Siem Reap

I’m going to be intentionally cursory for this part of the trip since I’ve written extensively about Cambodia before. We spent three nights and two days in Siem Reap, which is probably the minimum amount of time I’d suggest to anyone thinking of going there. Before arriving in Cambodia, I had messaged Dola, my tuk-tuk driver during my previous visit, and he agreed to be our driver for two days. The discounted rate for being a returning customer was nice too.

The first day we visited only Beng Mealea since it takes about two hours to get there from Siem Reap via tuk-tuk.

The next day, we woke up very early to catch sunrise at Angkor Wat, then went to Angkor Thom and Bayon, then called it a day in the mid-afternoon.

In the evenings, we enjoyed Khmer food and Pub Street, stopped by Asana for a drink and to see my friend Lala, and watched the always entertaining Phare circus.

The next day was a long and exhausting travel day: woke up early to get picked up by a minibus (with a temporarily flat tire), transferred to a coach, drove for several hours to the Thai border, disembarked and went through a slow-moving immigration line, waited in the sun for a while, got picked up by another minibus, drove several hours to the ferry landing at Laem Ngop, boarded a massive vehicle ferry, and took that for an hour to Koh Chang. The ferry ride was legitimately pleasant once we found a spot overlooking the bow, felt the ocean breeze against us, sipped beers, and watched the sun sink behind the horizon.

Koh Chang

Once on Koh Chang, we had to hire our minibus driver to take us directly to our resort, which meant another outlay on transportation and another 45 minutes of driving. Koh Chang is the second-largest island in Thailand (behind Phuket) and very, very developed, especially on the western coast. As we drove in the dark, I was amazed at the amount of businesses and lights that whizzed by before we finally reached our bungalows. After checking in, getting situated, and thinking the day was just about over, the staircase to Michael’s bungalow buckled and collapsed as he and Becca were standing on it. Luckily no one was hurt (too badly).

Just as with Siem Reap, we had two full days on Koh Chang. Though it’s highly developed on the coasts, the island is lush and gorgeous and very beautiful, especially when viewed from the water. We spent most of the time relaxing and going to the nice beach up the coast from us.

Our only real excursion was going to an elephant park (appropriate for Koh Chang, which translates as “Elephant Island”) on the second day, where we rode and swam with the elephants. I’ll fully admit that I’m not sold on the morality of such places – especially since the mahouts tried to secretly sell us pieces of ivory jewelry during our tour – but swimming with elephants and riding on the back of one in the water is pretty freaking awesome.

The next day we suffered through another exhausting travel day: a 45-minute minibus ride to the pier, a one-hour ferry ride to the mainland, an all-day minibus ride to Bangkok (with a borderline maniacal driver who made several mysterious package pickups and deliveries along the way), and then the obligatory one-hour taxi ride in Bangkok, mostly spent staring silently out the window in anger and frustration.

Bangkok

The reasons for going back to Bangkok were three-fold: Michael was flying back home for Thanksgiving, Erik was arriving from San Francisco, and Bangkok is where I wanted to be for my birthday since I had rooftop bar demands that had to be met.

We booked bunk beds at Oneday Hostel, a fantastic, upscale place in Sukhumvit that is a slice of San Francisco in Bangkok, complete with a fancy cafe and coworking space (of course). Normally, I don’t stay in hostels since I’m a light sleeper, don’t want to deal with strangers’ sleeping habits, and prefer my own private space, if only to have more security for my things. However, since there would be four of us, we could book an entire room just for ourselves and live it up slumber-party style.

The overlapping time of the four of us was less than 24 hours, but we managed to fit in a fun night out at a girlie bar on Sukhumvit Soi 4, a solid afternoon at the weekend market the next day, and a surprisingly delicious farewell dinner for Michael that night at an unassuming restaurant in our neighborhood. As per Erik’s request and custom, we got one last cheek to cheek (to cheek to cheek) photo.

After lots of window shopping at a couple malls the next day, we hit the town for my birthday. After a delicious Thai-Lao dinner, the first stop of the evening was Moon Bar for amazing views and an equally amazing rooftop experience. And just as astounding as the views are the prices, so after a drink we bounced to Maggie Choo’s, an underground spot that I’d describe as “opium den meets San Francisco cocktail lounge”. We had a couple delicious rounds while listening to a French jazz quartet, as you do in Thailand.

After Maggie Choo’s, I believe we went back to Sukhumvit Soi 4 for more shitshow-watching, but my memory is fuzzy so I’m not going to say much about that. I do believe we turned in shortly after the bars closed since we were traveling the next day.

Phuket

After a slow morning, tolerable taxi ride to the airport, and uneventful flight to Phuket, we checked into our guesthouse in Patong and began gearing up for Birthday Night Out Part II. As you do on a night out in Patong, we went straight for Soi Bangla, a bright, loud, chaotic, alcohol-fueled maelstrom of bars, clubs, touts, ping pong shows, thumping Vegas-style music, working girls, ladyboys, and drunk tourists of all types.

My demand for the evening was shisha, so we found a very fun shisha bar and spent many happy hours there indulging in the obvious, with a healthy side of beers, buckets, cocktails, and free tequila shots from some random guy at the bar. Our entertainment consisted of scantily-clad women dancing and showering on the bar and a room full of single white men and their Thai companions who had been purchased for the evening.

The culinary delights of the evening deserve a mention as well. The bar continually supplied us with snacks to keep us around, which was appreciated, but the foods themselves got weirder over the course of the evening. The initial goodies of popcorn and peanuts turned into cotton candy, which melted all over me within seconds due to the heat, then became hard-boiled eggs later in the evening. I’ve never considered eating hard-boiled eggs while drinking… but I will from now on!

The final, beautiful culmination of the evening – and also the perfect union of drinking, food, and entertainment value – was Erik devouring a bag of roasted bugs while totally hamming it up for the camera. Out of respect for him, I won’t post that video here, but you should bug him (hey-ooohhh!) to show it to you.

The next day (our last in Phuket) was much more mellow and our big accomplishment was wandering the night market by our guesthouse. The day after that, we hopped on a ferry to Koh Lanta, my recommendation for some very relaxed island time.

Koh Lanta

Upon arriving on the island and checking in to our bungalows, our thoughts turned to food, it being Thanksgiving. We walked the beach a bit from our resort and stumbled upon Moonwalk, a spacious, uncrowded seaside restaurant hanging over dark, rough rocks with beautiful views of the beach, the ocean, and the distant lightning that was flashing occasionally on the horizon. As we went around the table and said what we were thankful for, we enjoyed a terrific dinner of bruschetta, barbecued snapper, massaman curry, Thai beer, and mango sticky rice. The massaman curry was particularly full of spices (no, I don’t mean spicy), giving it a very autumn-like taste, which was appropriate and appreciated.

We spent the rest of the evening, as we did all our evenings on Koh Lanta, lounging in chairs next to a bonfire by the ocean, sipping on drinks, talking, and looking at the stars. We also had to dodge the daily thunderstorms when they rolled through, but they always passed fairly quickly.

After a few days of standard island activities, it was time to part ways with Erik since his time was at an end. As he took his transfer to Krabi for a flight to Bangkok, Becca and I took a ferry to nearby Koh Phi-Phi.

Koh Phi-Phi

First and foremost, Koh Phi-Phi is the most beautiful island I’ve ever been on. Before going, I was worried that it had become too developed and crowded and overpopulated with backpackers. These fears are validated if you stay in Tonsai Village, the loud, dirty party center of the island, but if you stay on a beach away from the village, the island is beautiful and peaceful. Our resort (Phi Phi Hill Resort) was two beaches away from the village and at the top of a hill, meaning it was peaceful, relaxing, and had stupid beautiful views of the island below. We could watch both sunrises and sunsets from the top of our hill.

That said, we did dip into the village occasionally – via either a delightful long-tail boat ride or a hot, sweaty trek through the jungle – for shopping, food, or sunset drinks. One evening, we went to the village and Lo Dalam beach, the nightlife center of the island, for drinks and people watching. Oh man, did we get what we were looking for and more. It felt like a smaller version of Full Moon, except this party happens every night. Becca and I grabbed some beers, buckets, and shisha and sat down to watch the show, which included, but was not limited to: the usual drunk backpackers, Thai boys playing with fire poi, full frontal male nudity (in conjunction with fire poi!), a drunken soccer mom in soccer mom clothes dancing by herself in the ocean, strip Jenga with what appeared to be a rugby team, and a backpacker soap opera that unfolded right in front of us for at least half an hour.

But wait, there’s more.

After we knew we were done for the evening, we found a road leading from the beach that was lined with stalls of delicious drunk food, so of course we stopped by. Interspersed among the restaurants and food vendors were a handful of tattoo shops, which were just as busy, as backpackers of various states of sobriety decided that yes, now was the time to get that tattoo they’ve always wanted. Unlike normal tattoo shops, which promote cleanliness and privacy, these shops were wide open and in plain view of anyone walking down the street. We took full advantage of this and gawked in amazement like children at a zoo watching the caged animals.

At one particular shop, we talked to a few of the guys who were getting inked. The man to our right took swigs from his bottle of Chang as he proudly displayed the large rain cloud and lightning bolt being hammered into his bicep. Yup, a rain cloud. The real gems though were the two kids to our left. The first one had just finished getting a hah taew tattoo (one of these), which are very popular in Thailand. In fact, they’re so popular, especially for backpackers, that this shop had a printout, making the process of getting a basic tattoo in Thailand as simple as pointing.

However, this kid didn’t want all five lines; he wanted only three. Because I guess he believes in only 60% of Thai proverbs? And he didn’t want straight lines; he wanted them arranged in a circle. Because… why not? When we asked him what the lines meant, his verbatim answer was: “Um, something, something, and… something.” Bravo, my friend. Bravo.

His friend wasn’t much better. We asked him about the tattoo he was getting, and he responded with: “It’s the tattoo from The Beach.” I was really confused about this initially – and for the rest of the night – since I had read that book fairly recently and didn’t recall anything about a tattoo. It wasn’t until a day or two later I figured out what he meant: in the movie adaptation, Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio’s character) has a small tattoo on his arm. I know this only because a Google search reveals a single frame where the tattoo is visible. In summary, this kid was copying a forgettable, meaningless tattoo – that was completely irrelevant to the story – from a shitty Hollywood adaptation of the most cliche Thailand backpacker book of all time. You get a slow clap too, buddy.

I’ll also mention that all the shops used the bamboo method instead of the machine method for tattoos, which is common in Thailand. I’ve read that the bamboo method is much less painful and supposedly results in better color and faster healing. I can’t vouch for the color and healing claims, but every customer we talked to that night said that the tattoos didn’t hurt at all. Granted, they were all liquored up, so I take their testimonials with a grain of salt.

At this point, we had seen enough and were ready for a long-tail boat ride back to our beach. As we were leaving, a round of tequila shots suddenly appeared and everyone in the shop – customers and tattoo artists – had one. That’s just perfect. Have a fantastic night, gentlemen.

Having gotten our fill of the party scene, Becca and I resumed our usual beach activities for the rest of our time on the island. On our last day, we split up: Becca went on an around-the-island boat trip and I went on a death march hike through the jungle to Hat Phak Nam, a beach on the eastern coast. I stumbled upon one of the island’s viewpoints on the way and stopped for a while for some photos and to change my sweat-drenched shirt.

After extending our stay for one more precious day in paradise, we boarded an early morning ferry destined for the Trang islands, a loosely-related clump of islands to the south-east that are a bit far from the normal tourist track. Based on Lonely Planet descriptions, we settled on Koh Kradan, a very small, quiet island that is still conveniently serviced by the Tigerline ferry. After a couple stops at other islands, the ferry stopped again at a seemingly arbitrary spot in the middle of the ocean, where we transferred to a waiting long-tail boat for an hour-long ride to the island itself.

Koh Kradan

Koh Kradan is a very small island with only a handful of resorts, the vast majority of which are on the eastern shore. The island has no permanent inhabitants besides those who work in hospitality. Upon landing, we walked nearly the entire length of the main beach to get to our bungalows, which were simple bamboo huts with no aircon, no hot water, and thin mattresses on the floor. Why would we pay $35 a night in Thailand for such a place? Because we were literally on the beach, heard nothing all day but the gentle sounds of small waves, and the water’s edge was only ten feet from our front porches at high tide.

Our four days there were awesomely lazy and once I stopped shaving, I felt myself really slipping into island bum mode. We spent all of our time eating, drinking, sleeping, reading, sunbathing, swimming, and sitting on our porches during the brief storms, not only because we wanted to, but because there was nothing else to do.

One evening, we walked through the jungle across the island (no more than a 15-minute walk) to catch the sunset over the rocks. Afterwards, we backtracked to Paradise Lost, the only resort not on the coast and home to the best restaurant on the island. As we devoured massive bowls of mouth-watering massaman curry, Wally, the American owner, played the role of “Dad” as he flipped through dozens of satellite TV channels, deciding what he – and therefore the entire restaurant – would watch. The iron fist with which he dominated the remote control was evidently a twitchy one, as he changed channels every minute or two, greatly disrupting the flow of whatever mediocre movie we were getting sucked into. That said, we were quite happy to hang out for a while and be couch potatoes, downing large Singhas until it was time to walk back through the dark jungle to our moonlit beach.

After four beautiful, lazy days, it was time to get Becca on the journey back to her first-world life. Since we were on a more isolated island, the trip back would have to be split into two days. The day before her flight out of Bangkok, we took a long-tail boat through a heavy storm to the mainland, then transferred to a minibus to Trang, one of the provincial towns in the south, where we spent the night. The next day, we flew from Trang to Don Mueang (AirAsia) Airport, took the free shuttle to BKK, and had a bittersweet goodbye in the departures hall.

Traveling with my friends from home – especially through places that I was familiar with and could be a tour guide for – was wonderful and perfect and something I had been looking forward to for a long time. I’ve had a great time making new friends and travel buddies everywhere I’ve gone during my sabbatical, but there’s something really special about traveling with good friends I’ve known for many years.

It was, of course, effortless and joyful to travel with Becca for so long and I’m excited about this new annual tradition of going on an international, multi-week backpacking trip. Where to next, boo?

With that, I’ll leave here a short montage of some footage I took on the islands with my phone.

Before returning to Chiang Mai to finish my work for Bebee, I decided to take a quick holiday in southern Thailand, namely Krabi and Koh Lanta. Krabi is a smaller, fairly authentic Thai city that largely serves as a gateway for tourists to some of the southern islands. Due to the timing of my flights and the ferry schedule, I had to stay a night on the mainland before heading out to the island of Koh Lanta.

Krabi was entirely pleasant, though it’s not much of a tourist destination by itself since it doesn’t have a beach. I walked around a bit in the evening after my flight landed and had a pretty typical dinner-bars-massage night. The food stalls by the water were a pretty good deal; for the same cost as a Subway sandwich and a bottle of water in the airport (my only real lunch option earlier that day in a sea of Thai-less fast food), I treated myself to huge portions of rice and veggies and about five beers.

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Without realizing it (mainly because my book-reading rate had dropped off in recent months), I had fallen into a pattern of reading books that in some way mirrored my travel life. I read Asimov’s Nightfall – a short story (and later, book) whose plot revolves around the absence of sunlight – over the course of many starry nights on my balcony in Bali. I read The Lunatic Express – a travel writer’s account of intentionally taking the world’s most dangerous conveyances – during the time I was taking planes, ferries, motorbikes, and even a powered parachute in a part of the world not known for its safety record. And on my last full day in Cambodia, I was approached by a street person while I was eating lunch outside. He had only stubs for arms – clearly the victim of a landmine – and was selling illegal photocopies of books so he could make some money for himself. After I told him I was backpacking and didn’t have room for paper books, he grabbed one with his stubs, set it on the table next to me, and said “Well this one is pretty small.” After having a good laugh, I bought the book (First They Killed My Father, one of the most well-known pieces about the Cambodian genocide) and finished it within 24 hours, unable to put it down.

In keeping with this tradition, I read The Beach while traveling to Krabi and the islands. Yeah yeah, I know it’s incredibly cliche, you don’t have to tell me. I had seen the movie many years ago but was really impressed with how good the book was (and how dark it was in places). Traveling internationally for a little while, especially in Thailand, gave me a new appreciation for the story and I can definitely say that it’s the best work of fiction I’ve read in a long time. After I finished, I downloaded the movie and tried to watch it, but I had to shut it off after about 30 minutes because it was such an awful, Hollywood-esque interpretation. Do yourself a favor and read the book the next time you want a really great literary escape.

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With the fantastical story and setting of The Beach in mind, I very much enjoyed my voyage to and short holiday on Koh Lanta. In some ways, it was the best Thai island I’ve been to, though I’ve still yet to find that perfect postcard-worthy beach. That said, the sand was nice (though a bit rocky in places), the water was blue and warm, and the evenings on the sunset side of the island were perfect. A lot of the beach bars light bonfires on the beach every night, attracting tourists (and farang locals) who lazily make their way to hammocks and lounge chairs and enjoy some drinks or some greenery (if you know what I mean), both of which are available for purchase from the bar. As the sun sets, the air stays warm and the most pressing thoughts of the evening are about stargazing or dinner.

Chiang Mai

Before long though, I had to snap out of my island reverie and make my way back north to Chiang Mai to finish my work. As I landed at the airport and got a ride from a friend into town, I was greeted by a smoky haze covering the city and a fireball sun in the sky, consequences of the fires set by farmers as they burn their fields every March. Luckily I missed the worst of it and after a few rainstorms, the air felt clean(er).

Once I settled back into my same guesthouse and reconnected with my friends in town, I was back to finishing up all my work for Bebee. With only a day to spare before my passport stamp expired, I delivered two PDF cookbooks, a simple online store, and various improvements to the website, TripAdvisor page, and Facebook page. Overall I feel really good about all my IT work, mainly because I could help my friend in a significant way, but also because it helped me stay sharp mentally and learn some new skills that I feel proud enough to put on my resume.

Somewhere in the middle of my work schedule, my friend Roseanne, who I met though Friends For Asia, came back to Chiang Mai after some travel so she could spend a week at a Burmese Buddhist temple. During her time there, she invited me to come to the temple to witness a shinbyu, a traditional ceremony celebrating the boys that are about to start their Buddhist education. The boys – always under the age of 20, but often much younger – wear traditional outfits and makeup (making them look more like little girls) and ride on the shoulders of Burmese men who make music and dance and thrash around. One of the men convinced me to try some kwun-ya, a popular chewing habit among Burmese (both men and women) consisting mainly of betel leaf, areca nut, and tobacco. I wasn’t too crazy about it though. I like my teeth white!

A major reason I went back to Chiang Mai was for Songkran (Thai New Years). There are parades and traditional outfits and music and visits to the temples to pray for good luck in the coming year, but the main reason to celebrate Songkran is for the massive water fight that rages over four days all over the country. Throwing water on others symbolizes washing away all the bad away in preparation for the new year. In more practical terms, it’s one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life. For four days, farang and Thais alike roam the streets, either on foot or in the backs of pickup trucks, armed with massive water guns, backpacks of water, or even just buckets (my personal favorite). It’s also very common to load huge ice blocks into 55-gallon drums of water, creating a supply of freezing ammunition. When you see a bucket of water flying at your face, you hope that it’s warm, but deep down inside, you know you’re about to get hit with ice water. On the plus side, you don’t notice the 90+ degree temperature outside!

I met up with different groups of friends on the different days; when I wasn’t with them, I was happy to wander down to the moat, join up with some Thais, and throw water on whoever was driving by. It’s funny that Songkran is a purification ceremony and yet many people in Chiang Mai use water from the moat, which is pretty filthy. I had heard stories of people getting eye infections; sure enough, a day or two after Songkran was over, I developed an ear infection. Apparently the cure (in adults) is to just let it heal itself, which it finally did after several semi-painful days. Still totally worth it.

Clearly I didn’t bring my camera out for any of these festivities, as I’ve noticed that electronics work their best when they’re not sopping wet. But this montage sums up the holiday pretty well:

With Songkran over and my work for Bebee finished, I sadly packed up my things, said goodbye to my friends, and boarded a flight for Hong Kong. I was re-entering the first world; this would be the beginning of the end of my travels, but I had learned a few days before that I wouldn’t be finishing this trip alone…