Khoasarn Road: Where you're never quite sure if everyone is drunk, but they probably are.

I'm sorry this update is so long in the making, but I've been in places where the internet is moody and the shopkeepers keep their hours short. Here it is, I'll try to remember everything as best I can:

Koh Tao - I did 5 dives all told. The first four were pretty but we didn't see anything super cool, but the last dive was a night dive and we saw all sorts of cool stuff. We tried to get a Barracuda to eat by shining a light on the fish it was near (apparently it hunts by our light) and that didn't work but still! Barracuda! We also saw some cool rays (one was pregnant) and some puffer fish (one was pregnant) and a cuttlefish and that was supercool. Anyway, the rest of our time in Koh Tao was spent either in the mercifully air conditioned room watching bad movies or at a bar on the beach, where we spent way too much money and ended up buying out own vodka/Sprite/Red Bull ingrediants and buying ice with a tip and making our own buckets. We got about 3 times the value. We're clever. Oh, and at one point I made a couple of poor choices and ended up walking back home over 2/3 of the island. On the plus side, while quite drunk, I made a grand total of 0 wrong turns, and actually beat Rob and Greg home. To their credit, this was likely because they were looking for me and also because they found another bar. Onwards.

Koh Phagnan - Now, you have to understand, we went to Koh Phagnan for one reason alone: It was the full moon, and, as such, the Full Moon Party, which is infamous around Thailand. The rest of our stay there pretty much consisted of buying enough dice to play that crazy game from Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Now the FMP was flat out nuts. We tried not to lose each other, but you have to understand that there were like 10,000 people on this beach, pretty much all our age range, and most of them covered in flourescent war paint (which, by the way, does not come out in the wash). We lost each other, but it was a pretty amazing experience nonetheless. There were endless amounts of clubs pumping out music, and your choices were to a) dance or, b) if you don't like the music, walk 100 feet in either direction down the beach and repeat the choice. People were passed out on the beach everywhere, and people were moving them out of the way so they wouldn't get trampled. I got shoved in the ocean at one point and my ฿80 (CA$<3) flip-flops tore, so I had to go it barefoot for a while. The whole thing was really indescribable. Once you realize that pushing through crowds for kilometers at a time to try and find two guys, only one of which has a solid distinguishing feature (dreads), is a waste of time, you can just kind of get into it. It's surreal.

Krabi - Now, just as the only reason we went to Koh Phagnan was the FMP, the only reason we went to Krabi was to climb on Railay beach. Beautiful area, nice red soil where we did most of our climbing. We got rained on HARD one day, it was our first real rainstorm. It was kind of cool, we just chilled in the ocean until it passed. It's amazing how much Greg and I have picked up in a few days of climbing, and it really came together here. We both successfully led a 6A (French system) and attempted to lead 6A+ and 6B climbs, but we got our asses pretty kicked by those. Rob managed the 6A+ but that 6B took up most of our last day and it chewed us up and spit us out. I think we all feel pretty good about our climbing right now, and I have the scrapes and bruises to prove it. At night, we pretty much just found a restaurant and ate, sat until we were hungry again, and ate more. We then went to sleep watching the French Open. Oh and, Josh, I finally read The Rule of Four (Dustin Thomason & Ian Caldwell, highly recommended). Rob will (and might be already) be posting more pictures, so I will be on a tagging spree soon on facebook. Check them out.

Just got back into Bangkok, nothing really left to do but send Rob off to India and shop. Anyone want anything in particular (fake brand name gear, bootleg DVDs or TV series) let me know post-haste. See everyone soon!

-P