So...after meeting up with Tara last Monday, we made it to Bangkok and finally arrived on the island of Kho Tao after a 15 minute tuk-tuk ride, a 13 hour train ride, lots of drinks with friend Joe and girlfriend Ae in Bangkok, followed by a mile walk with all of our bags, an 8 hour bus ride, a 2 hour ferry boat, wrapped up by a 6 minute ride in the back of a pick-up truck to our skanky-ass room. We were too tired to look at any other places, so took the shitty place for 2 nights. Yesterday we started our scuba certification class, and as long as it all goes well tomorrow, we both should be certified. I'll post pictures once i get a new camera. sadly, my G-10 is dead due to a very unfortunate push into the gulf of thailand by a very drunk british guy. more on that later...
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So I've met up with my friend Tara, we're in Bangkok and in a few hours we'll be taking an overnight bus followed by a 2 hour speedboat ride to the island of Ko Tao where we'll indulge in beach time and scuba certification classes. I wasn't going to post this next little story, but Tara is forcing me to do so...

This happened about a week ago.

I was sitting at an outdoor bar with some friends in Chang Rai. To our backs was the street. Two of the girls that worked at the bar had gone out to get some food on their scooter. After 20 or so minutes they pulled up behind us and promptly fell over with the scooter practically on top of them. Being the man of action that I am, I jump off of my stool, stand in front of the scooter (so it is facing me head on), with the intention of grabbing the handlebars and pulling the bike to an upright position. While I begin this action, I'm lifting the bike upright, but unknowingly when i grab the handlebars i also inadvertantly twist the throttle. As the bike is almost upright, it is also starting to come straight at me. At this point I understand what is happening, but my mind cannot react quickly enough to let go of the throttle. So yes, I run over myself with the scooter. The bike bashes me out of the way and I go a tumbling down the street and the scooter again falls over about 5 ft down the alley. Luckily the bike is unscathed, and Derek ends up with a few cuts and bruises on his left leg, and a giant bruise on his ego. Not sure if anyone here is familiar with monty python, but i definitely could have won the "twit race."

The next 20 or so photos are from my journey between Chang Mai and Chang Rai. I know there's a lot from the boat trip, but it was just so beautiful...The rivers are very low this time of year and the boats go down them like a pin ball, or a drunk Florencia if you will, to ride atop the deepest parts. You knew it was going to be an interesting ride when the final thing you saw the boat pilot do was throw an extra propeller into the boat. bon voyage

This was the interior of the bus i rode from Chang Mai to Thaton. Can you say 1950's? My final destination was another town called Chang Rai, and i could have either taken a direct 4 hour busride from Chang Mai to Chang Rai, or, plan b was to take the bus to Thaton, stay the night at a riverside bungalow speaking german with a bunch of germans, then take a 4 hour boat ride to reach Chang Rai. I went with option b.

View from my bus window.

This may have been the cutest thing i've ever eaten. and it was full of chocolate. i had a whole box.

If you can zoom in on this photo, many of the dark, goatee looking appendages on the dragons heads are not part of the statue, but giant bees' nests. The swarms around the heads were unbeliveable.

The backside of this statue was absolutely glowing in the setting sunlight.

The sun sets over one of the wats in Thaton. This place was called the 9 levels, and there were obviously 9 different temples on the side of this mountain, each one higher than the next. I made it to level 8, but level 9 was too far and it was going to be dark, and i still had a 5km walk back to the guesthouse.

Who's ready for a boat ride!

This is the man! He zig-zagged our boat the whole way to stay in the deepest parts of the river. We still scraped bottom a couple of times, only once was he phased by it. Probably because instead of just scraping the middle bottom of the boat on the bottom of the river bed, we scraped the right side on a large hidden boulder, making the whole boat cant pretty sharply to the left. When i looked back at him, he just nodded and laughed.

This was my view for the 4 hour ride. It's funny because i expected, you know, benches or seats. Instead there were little pillows on the floor and tons of life jackets so we all just padded ourselves, stretched out and enjoyed.

Please feel free to ad a caption to whatever this expression is.

Every 2km or so, there'd be group of kids playing in or near the river. I like this shot for the tenacious hole-digging.

About midway through our journey, our boats pulled over onto some rocks and i'm thinking, a bathroom break, what great timing as pee was about to come out of my eyes. Alas, it was not an official bathroom break, but instead everyone had to get off and walk about a half mile so the pilots could navigate a stretch with two gnarly rapids. The photos don't do the skills of our piloti justice. These boats are very long with a propeller jutting off the rear of the boat at the end of a 6ft long drive shaft which is attached to an 8 cylinder car enging which is mounted in such a way that the pilot can swivel and swing in all directions. And it ain't light. To watch these boats turn almost sideways to negotiate a bend, then snap through 180 deg to avoid the rocks and round the next corner was something to see. I think that myself and fellow passengers had one eye on the boat and one on all of our luggage which was still packed at the front of the boat, doing a mental checklist of what wouldn't survive if wet.

Getting back onboard after rapids avoidance...the guy in the blue shirt is an aussie that i had seen biking up and insane hillclimb as our bus passed him the day before between Chang Mai and Thaton. He was a few days into a 2000 km bike ride through Thailand and Laos. As we passed him I yelled hello and he waved without looking up. When i met him before the boat trip I mentioned that i had seem him biking up a wicked hill the day before, and he says, "You're the lad that yelled hello, thanks for stopping!"

So our boat rounds a bend, and this is the scene that unfolds in front of us. This is an elephant camp at one of the hill tribe which exisits to take people, mostly westerners, on elephant rides through the village and river. I saw about 30 elephants in all. It's amazing how gentle a happy elephant is. You literally can go right up to one and "pet" him, and they just tap you with their trunk. You also don't realize how big some of these guys are until one walks right up to you and stops a foot away. That is called trust.

So we're just sitting in the boat as our pilot is taking his time "docking," which means driving the bow of the boat up onto some rocks, as this herd is splashing toward us. Quite a feeling to be 3 feet away and just 2 feet above water level as 40 some elephant legs thunder past.

Self portait with elephant. You could buy a bag of bananas and sugar cane for .80c and feed these beautiful animals. If you fed too slowly, they would put the end of their trunk in your face and give a hard breath. It stinks. When the bag was empty of food they would tap you with their trunk then point over to the food stand. After 3 taps and me not moving they would give up. This guy i took the photo with kept rubbing his head on a wooden pole. Finally i understood and scratched him really hard where he was rubbing. Not sure if he liked it, or couldn't feel a thing from my feeble human hands.

After a 30 minute pitstop to pee, grab a snack, and feed some elephants, it was about time to hop back onboard for the 45 minutes until reaching our destination of Chang Rai.

This is my trusty pack, or my "house" as eric told me i would refer to it as, also enjoying the ride perched at the bow of our scorpion-tail long boat. I definitely have brough too much stuff along. Could lose 20% and be very happy.

Ok, here's a few photos from my 2 day motorcycle trip outside of Chang Mai to the mountain village of Samoeng. As i look back through these posts, i realize that i've been spelling "Samoeng" differently almost every time i type it. so be it, i'm not fixing them. This was a thrilling 2 days, full of beauty and adrenaline. Sometimes the adrenaline was from the awe of what i was seeing, or the thrill of riding corners on such a great little bike. Sometimes, it was from other...

this sign was in the national park in the northern interior of thailand. the second rule is quite easy to abide by.

My canon G10 was hanging nicely from a tree branch for this pic. She's a great travel partner and i rarely go anywhere without her. Oh and that's some silly waterfall behind me.

So i really fell for this little bike. She was only a 250 cc, but the redline was at 12,000, and once the rpms went above 8000, shit really went bananas. My route to Samoeng, as suggested by jim who rented me the bike, was one i shall never forget by a combination of pure beauty and sheer terror. The "road" he pointed out on my map was to be very scenic, but also very treacherous. I didn't know this until i was on it. It consisted of very steep, very ruddy, dirt inclines and declines. There were two moments coming down the mountain where i think i was praying, and i'm an athiest. the hill was incredibly steep, the ruts were so deep and soft that the rear tire kept sliding down into them, as this is a sportsbike with slick tires, not knobby-tired like a dirtbike. i would let the front wheel go where it wanted and basically slide the locked back wheel all over to keep her up. i didn't see the license plate until after we finished this "taxing" part of our ride, about 2 hours worth. Once i saw it, her name came to me. i call her...

...El Diablo Negra!

This was one of the best rides of my life. It was like RT 125, but 85 miles of it. It had everything...switchbacks, sweepy fast curves, tight little twisties, crazy altitude changes, hardly any traffic, and a beautiful road surface. Bliss.

This is what Somoeng morning traffic looks like.

On the left is my little bungalow in the mountain village of Samoeng.

This is a particularly important work-out, as it exercises the often overlooked 3rd and 4th arms.

The combination of the long ride the day before coupled with the absolute peace and quiet of Samoeng (never have i seen that many stars before) i fell asleep at 8:30pm and slept solidly until 6am. This is taken during my sunrise walk around the grounds near my bungalow.

This is Maria and Enzo, from Italy. The 3 of us were the only ones staying at the 15 bungalow resort in Samoeng. They had also arrived via motorcycle, but smartly a dirt bike, from Chang Mai. We had a lovely dinner together and I actually ended up running into them again a few days later back in Chang Mai.

The alternate "dork" universe of easy rider.

Mi diablo negra! Besos, besos!!

Just one more reason to hate this corporation.

So yeah, i really like dragon flies. While watching these two buzz around eachother for a few minutes, it seemed that they were "courting." I love this pic because if you look closely, you can see that their heads are actually bent and are looking at eachother.

Drop it like it's baht! What you see is your boy holding 10,000 baht, or about $300. Don't hate the playa...

The following pics are from my day with Napat and a 200cc Honda cruiser (Phantom). I had met her and her friends the night before at a live music venue with the Thai bands doing some pretty impressive covers. Everything from "the eagles" to "no doubt." Anyway, she told me she would take me to some places I wouldn't know about...and she was right. Some beautiful mountain roads, to a temple hanging off the side of said mountain, to partying with her famous friends later that night. It was a great day, and the funniest part is she took all the pictures, telling me that as a solo traveller I wouldn't have enough pics of myself. True and true.

This is me getting blessed by a monk. Prior to the string being tied onto my wrist, the monk dipped a loose broom looking tool into water and shook us down with it. He was laughing as he tied this because Napat kept asking him to go slower so she could get the shot. We were all cracking up at his slow-mo gesturing.

Derek in perfect "wai" form.

This was taken at the wat at the very top od Doi Suthep. Behind me the city of Chang Mai stretches out in all directions. I hope you like my "fo v-neck."

This little girl is dressed in traditional hill tribe garb. When I "asked" her (via strange gesturing and wild camera pointing with some furious nodding thrown in for good measure) if she would take a picture with me, I sat down and she literally jumped into my lap, it was sweet. I have a bunch of other pics but i liked this the best.

Everyone, meet the opium poppy. Napat lead us down and dangerous narrow dirt road, which wound down a mountainside until it magically opened up to the hill tribe village of Dou Pui. This part of the world was, and still is to some extent, a large grower of the world's opium plants.

So before heading out to meet up with some of Napat's other friends, we stopped by a disco called "Discovery" to see her friend's bands bust out some thai pop.

As you can tell, I am having a terrible time.

So this is Ananda Everingham. My friend Napat is friends with him. He is a huge superstar here in Thailand. I got the idea how popular he was by the amount and frequency of girls coming over to our table to get their photo taken with him. Then I googled him...he's like the Thai Johnny Depp.

Myself, Ananda, and friend after a few tequila shots. The next day was what I call one of Derek's "pool days." I basically hang out at the pool because I was somewhat dehydrated and the osmosis helps with my homeostasis.

These next series of photos are from my time in Kanchanaburi post-floating house excursion. The pace in town was a nice change from Bangkok. I ended up meeting some pretty cool people (even a cool French guy), one of whom, Jiji, took me on a beautiful day trip on her scooter to some of the areas outside of town.

I also spent an hour or two one night playing a drinking game with some thais and some french called, and pardon my language, "1, 2, 3, Fuck!" Bascially, everyone was in a circle, and you had to take turns counting upwards in order starting from 1. On every multiple 5, ie. 5, 10, 15, 20...instead of saying the number, you had to yell "Fuck!" If you messed up, you had to drink from the "whisky bucket," which was a giant bucket filled with coke and whisky with 15 giant straws poking out of it. This is a very simple game as a native english speaker to play against a bunch of drunk thais and frenchys. I only had to sip from the bucket once.

This was my bungalow for one of the 4 nights I spent in Kanchanaburi. It is on stilts over an intlet from the River Kwai, and it cost me 200 baht ($6) per night.

This is the beginning of the "Bridge Over the River Kwai." I think it speaks for itself. From what a local told me, this is one of the actual bombs dropped on the bridge by the Allies, but did not detonate.

Sitting in the middle of the "Bridge Over the River Kwai." Some nice Americans took this photo for me during rare instant of no other tourists in sight.

"Yeah Bill, I'm going to have to call you back."

This shot was taken in the WWII museum. It kind of sums it up.

Not really sure why, but in the WWII museum, there exists a wing devoting itself to the evolution of mankind. Present is a large mural depicting life of early man. Forget the guy in the other section where he's being trampled by a bison he is trying to kill, this guy has gotten it right.

The boat you see in the background ferries people and their scooters back and forth across the river for 5 baht (.20c). I had the chance to ride it the next day with my friend Jiji and her scooter. Oh, and then I ate this spicy pork dish, drank that beer (yes there is ice in it) you see, then smoked a cigarette.

Basking in a post lunch glow. After a long day on my rented bicycle, it was almost time to get back to my bungalow for a beer and a nappy-poo.