Voyage Of The Odd Essay

Our last few days on Koh Chang were in many ways the most interesting and struck a nice balance of getting out and experiencing new things, hanging out with friends old and new, and going out partying in epic style.

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As I look back at the later part of my trip to Thailand a fair amount of it blurs a little, we didn’t do anything particularly different except sun ourselves by day, mooch around and find some food, then head out to the big party of the night and dance till dawn. The day time activities of beaching and eating having been forgotten, but of them are hard to tie down to a particular date, where as the parties follow a progression that I can remember pretty clearly.

Of course, there are some things I’ll never forget, and around them I’ve pieced together the party nights like this:

18th March

I ached all day, but couldn’t place my finger on why, and just put it down to sleeping funny until suddenly much later in the day it dawned on me that the day before we’d done the Tree Top Adventure, it turns out working your body out really hard is a good way to wake up the next day feeling like you’ve worked your body out really hard.

There was a plan to go to some reggae and ska party but it turned out to be on another beach and a bit of a trek, so we stayed local instead. But I’m not completely sure where we ended up.

19th March

Another night I don’t really remember much about, pretty sure that this was a night of BBQ and dancing at Treehouse, with a funky acoustic set from the same guys we’d seen previously at Ting Tong providing the early music.

20th March

“Lemon bar grand opening with 20 bangkok show girls!” Or so the posters said, which was a little confusing given that we were at the end of the season and we’d already been to Lemon Bar earlier in the week. Still, seemed worth checking out from a “Tick off another box” point of view, so starting at Treehouse for some food and a few warm up drinks we spent so long chilling out, and bantering with people we’d meet previously that we pretty much missed the show, litterally arriving for the very last moments, but we still headed in and had a dance. The whole experience was pretty seedy though, I have no hang ups about dancing with ladyboys, but there was clearly more then dancing going on in another part of the bar, which I stayed well clear of.

The dance floor did have lasers coming out from the DJ booth though which was cool, and I danced like crazy while there, by the time we arrived we’d had a lot of vodka red bull, but I don’t think I got any more drinks while there as Lemon Bar is one of the more expensive places on Lonely Beach.

I headed back to the huts at a fairly early (For us) time, but left my bag in Lemon bar and had to go back and get it, and while heading back down the hill from Oasis I discovered I’d lost my wallet, so after picking up my bag (Which was still with our friends who were still raving on) I headed over to Treehouse to see if anyone found it there, which they hadn’t, so a bit stressed I headed back to the huts, and promptly found my wallet just outside the door of the hut we were hanging out in. But such is life.

21st March – Full Moon

The big parties of the night were dotted along the beach, and for some reason Siam Hut’s appeared to have toned down their set up from the previous weeks Half Moon party, but we were all much more settled into the party lifestyle this time so were as at the Half Moon we all seemed to stick together, we all spread out and mingled a lot more this time, watching the fire shows, dancing in the sea, rolling around in the sand after consuming mushroom shakes and so on, but my big memory of this night was doing a lot of poi, and talking to quiet a number of people about poi as well.

22nd March – Dancing In The Rain

We didn’t really have much of a plan on this night, we just started out at Treehouse fairly early with the usual plan of eating, drinking and partying into the night. As it happens though, this was the most memorable night out.

Not long after we’d all settled for some food and the drinks started flowing the first few drops of rain were felt falling and the wind was noticeably picking up, bringing the waves rising up below Treehouse’s sea front edge, and people quickly hurried to clear the cushions and chairs under the covered areas leaving a lot more open space then normal.

Most of the other rain fall we’d had came in sudden bursts, and left as suddenly as it arrived, but this night there was a real sense of the storm approaching, out across the darkened sea you could clearly see bolts of lightening illuminating the sky and people (Including myself) were hanging of the railings to gaze out at the sea and feel the growing wind lift of the waves that continued to crash below, everyone was getting a little crazy and wild with the anticipation of the storm hitting.

As it happens, caught up in the mood of the night I danced away to the music that fitted perfectly with the way everyone was feeling, and when the rain hit jumping off the dance floor and on to the open decks was the natural thing to do, and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier to dance in the rain.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve ventured out of the UK for the first time, with my first passport obtained just a week or so before departing on the 12th and headed off to the Far East to join a group of friends who were traveling in and around Thailand.

I can’t really it call it traveling or backpacking as we only ended up going two places: Bangkok, and Ko Chang (Koh Chang) we did originally have plans to head further north into Kanchanaburi for the second week of our stay but by that time we had met so many people we were getting along with and a few different trips and parties were coming up that it made sense just to stick to where we were comfortable, particularly since everyone of my group had decided we were going to come back for several months at the end of the year and travel seriously, so there wasn’t any feeling of missing out on anything.

12th March – Manchester To Doha To Bangkok
We flew out with Qatar airways from Manchester which at the time was hit by sever gale force storms, so there was a question as to weather the flight might be delayed, or if we would even make it to the airport as they were closing motorways all over the place as high sided vehicles were blown over in a number of locations. Then with a quick change over in Doha we flew into Bangkok we arrived about 7am on the 13th (local time)

13th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok
Thankfully it was fairly overcast and smoggy when we arrived so the heat wasn’t too intense, but all the same we were thankful to get onto the air conditioned bus that took us to Khaosan Road where after a bit of milling around we met up with our friend Kate who got us sorted out with rooms for the night at My House (On Soi Camasongkrum) so after settling in, having my first encounter with cold showers and a bit of a nap we set out into the day, had some food, mooched about and did a bit of shopping for the day before finally calling it a night late on ready to catch the early morning VIP bus to Ko Chang.

14th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok to Lonely Beach, Ko Chang
This was our first real taste of travel in Thailand, which consists of starting at one location with a slip of paper of some sort, which as you go from vehicle to vehicle gets changed for other slips of paper as you travel along. The bus journey took perhaps six hours to get down to the pier near Trat, and then with a short wait we were transfered to the ferry, and then hopped onto a Taxi on Ko Chang which took us along to Lonely Beach, where a short (But hard) climb up the hill got us to the Oasis resort, one of the highest sets of guest huts in the area lead us to meet up with the rest of our friends, and the group of travelers they had hooked up with. After catching up and sorting out rooms and what was to become the usual pattern of lingering getting ready, eating, and then out to party we hit our first taste of the islands full flavor when we went to the Half Moon party at Siam Huts on Lonely Beach. Which was amazing night and really set the pace for our two weeks on the island.