Voyage Of The Odd Essay

It’s the day after Valentines Day, Sunday the 15th of February, about 8am in the morning and I am woken with a start by the voice of the girl who was sleeping next to me who’s name I never did find out asking, “Are we there?”

I had no idea, but after 15 hours on the over night bus from Luang Prabang in Laos down to Huay Xai the border town where I first entered the country I really hoped so, and I looked still shaking sleep from my eyes to the seats in front of me where my travel companions sat, unlike most of the westerners on the bus we had an advantage, Pong speaks Thai, and joining him on his trip between Spicylaos and Spicythai in Chiang Mai made this the easiest trip I’ve made. (more…)

I mention in my last post that at the Koh Phangan Full Moon Party I took too many mushrooms, and in the interest of not freaking out parents and enlightening party goes who might follow in my foot steps I shall shed a little more light on the story.

The exact legal status of Mushrooms in Thailand is a bit of a mystery,  the information I have to had is:

• Mushroom Shakes are sold openly in at least one bar on Haad Rin Beach during the Full Moon Party
• Mushrooms are actually Illegal to Posses or Sell in Thailand, according to Erowid, a normally reliable source of information on such things.
• But a Google Search for “Mushroom Arrest In Thailand” returns only one, unrelated result.
• So, Most sources cite the legal status as “Questionable”.
• More then one person has mentioned the bar selling the Mushrooms has a special license. Though this is purely word of mouth.

So there clearly isn’t any problem with consuming them, and it would make sense that any legal grey area could be cleared up with a “license fee” to the police either officially or otherwise. Additionally, not all magic mushrooms contain the same active ingredients, so the legal status could be worked around by selecting the right mushrooms just as it can be back home in the UK.

With that cleared up (Or not) back to the story, the plan was simple: Get to the beach, dance, drink, dance, meet people, dance with people,  drink a small amount of mushroom shake, dance, watch the sun rise, dance, go home. Roughly in that order.

Now I have to admit I’m not sure at what point small amount of mushroom shake turned a heroic dose, but I have it on good authority that the friend I was travelling with had many of these magic drinks, so it’s fair to say I had plenty as well, this was news to us both the next day!

The hazy memory is a novelty, and down to the drink, rather then the mushrooms I’m sure, I suspect since the bar selling the shakes is at the far end of the beach, and up a staircase cut into the rocks – Which makes it one of the most dangerous places on the beach, clearly an ideal spot to sell party goes hallucinogenic drugs! – the hike up there, plus red bull kicked the booze into my bloodstream quicker then I expected.

Next thing I know I’m dancing away on the beach all well and good, but I’ve lost the gang I was with, and so I just danced around on my own though with my visuals boosted with a hazy glow of colours and sound merging in my brain a little beyond what you would call normal, and the confusion that accompanies hallucinogens was clear if I tried to think about anything too tricky so most conversations were too much effort to consider for a while, though the ones I did have were particularly funny!

So when I say too many mushrooms I mean to say, sufficient magic mushrooms that I had to change my plan of action for the night, not that I had a bad experience maintaining my 100% success rate to that effect.

To put this in perspective, not everyone was so lucky that night, “Mushroom Girl” as she will now forever be known to me called the friend I was travelling with early in the night, and from over hearing his side of the conversation the problem was obvious: She’d take Mushrooms for the first time, and been abandoned by her friend.

When people (Including myself) say you shouldn’t take magic mushrooms for the first time in loud, busy, over crowded places you should listen to them, Full Moon Parties are not friendly places for a messed up mind, and confusion and abandonment is always a recipe for disaster when it comes to the shrooms.

We found her and set her right mind you, so that story ended well enough, but Koh Phangan is not a good place to experiment particularly for the first time, there are a lot of people on the lookout for messed up tourists who they can take advantage of one way or another.In my case I simply ended up at a hill top bar which cost me a hefty bike ride back to the hotel, but I blame our travel agent for claiming the 30 minute ride was a 10 minute walk from the peir.

So there you have it, magic mushrooms are Awesome things, but not to be played with lightly, and I wouldn’t take so many at a huge event like the Haad Rin Beach Full Moon Party again so that I can enjoy the night in a different, more social way – Detachment from reality also detaches you from people a bit, but it’s all an experience and it all adds flavor to my travels!

Here I am six weeks into my travels, and just in case you haven’t picked up the subtle hints from my Twitter updates, life out here is Pure Awesome.

I’ve been in Bangkok for a few days now, after leaving the comfort of my Phuket haunts behind to venture towards the as yet uncharted North, where I check into Spicythai Backpackers tomorrow morning after a 12 hour train journey over night. – Seated sadly as all the beds were booked up. My fault for leaving it too long before booking the seat.

So since my escape from the Wat Suan Mohhk Meditation Retreat, I’ve been to the Full Moon party on Koh Phangan, where too many Mushrooms was the common theme among the group I was with, of course in my case I enjoyed it! It was a fun weekend which was an cloud of music, lights, dancing barefoot in the sand, buckets of drink and random conversations with strangers. To be honest, it was too busy to be my normal scene, and many of the people were exactly the people who go to all the clubs I avoid back home, but I was with Awesome people (Well, before I got lost in my Mushroom trance, and after I found them the next day!) and it’s another Thailand activity ticked off the list.

Here in Bangkok I’m staying at the Hostel International Sukhumvit (HI Sukhumvit) which is a wonderful place, less then 5 minutes walk from the Sky Train station which has allowed easy access to tons of sights, considering in the past I’ve not really ventured far beyond Khaosan Road I now feel like I have visited Bangkok properly.  I’ve been to several of the big shopping centers such as the MBK Center, Siam Center, Siam Discovery Center, MBK been the most interesting, much more of an indoor market type feel in parts, more traditional shops and fast food (Thai style) in other parts, the other malls been much more western in look and feel, with known brands and prices that pretty much match what you can find back home with little effort on the Internet.

My more random adventures involved meeting Chris – A fellow traveller from Phuket Backpacker – within seconds of getting to the hostel, so I checked in, and walked right out the door to take a trip to the big weekend market, which was huge though much of the stall contents is identical shop to shop, there were some unique items here and there, and I found it very worth visiting.

Yesterday on the way back from getting tickets I found myself and Ruth – Who I’d just met at the Hostel, also needing tickets to Chiang Mai, so we headed off together – faced with a Tuk Tuk ride to the Sky Train stop we wanted as our plan of walking rather then getting the Underground didn’t really work! We were offered a cheap fare of 10 bhat each, but would need to visit a Tailor on the way and spend 10 minutes there, so, it’s basically a scam, but I was impressed the guy was up front about it, and hell, we had noting better to do, so we agreed, and bounced around busy main roads, down back streets and wound up at the tailor where the guy seemed to focus on getting Ruth to buy a suit set rather then me,  I suspect my look suggests I am not really one to be buying suits, but who knows. He was asking about £50 per item, so jacket, trousers and skirt for £150 which you could easily get down to £120 if not less was actually a really good price, to be honest I really wish I had enough money to get a suit made up before I headed home as it would be very handy for interviews! Anyway, we played along and then decided we’d done enough to head out, and on the way the Tuk Tuk driver did try and take us to one more stop, we firmly declined, and insisted we go to our requested destination of the MBK center, and to his credit he smiled and agreed without hassling us any more.

Last night was also the inauguration of President Barack Obama in America, and I was pleased to find that as we arrived back at the hostel the small TV in the corner of the lobby had CNN’s live coverage of the event, so we added into our plan of drinking a few beers on the roof time to watch the event unfold later in the evening – Washington D.C been 12 hours behind we had a few hours to drink and banter with the girls we discovered already up on the roof, and at about half 11 when much of our group decided to turn in, I picked  up my laptop and settled down to watch history unfold.

There was an eclectic mix of people watching from the lobby of this Bangkok hostel, a few Americans – Included a woman who was a proud Republican – Which stood out as most Americans you meet travelling are committed Democrats, or at least that’s been the way things have seemed to me so far – Australians, and various Europeans.  Some people clearly cared deeply about what was happening, others were just having a beer and watching the ceremony just because it happened to be on. Personally, I was fairly moved to see so many people taking an interest in the event and was impressed with President Obama’s inauguration speech, and now if anyone asks “Where you the day Barack Obama was made President of the United States?” I’ll know exactly what I was doing: Drinking beers on a roof top garden in Bangkok.

A couple of days ago as I took a walk down Klong Khong beach as I had every evening for the last week I decided that it seemed a bit quieter then the past few days, a few of the people I had been talking to regularly had moved on and it didn’t seem like anyone had come to take their place. So pretty much there and then I decided to book rooms in Phuket and a boat trip over from Koh Lanta that left 7:30 the next morning.

Getting to Phuket was a very enjoyable boat trip, appraching Koh Phi Phi on the first boat we transfered to the second boat still out on the sea, so I didn’t really step foot on the island, but got some good views of it from not to far away, and then on to Phuket, the whole trip was as always a step by step mission of swapping tickets and getting stickets (I ended up with three stickers in total this time) interestingly the boat company involved used different coloued stickers for different destinations so they should easily herd people around, pretty clever I thought.

I stayed one night in a hotel, which was okay but I was pretty keen to get to my ultimate destination, the Phuket Backpacker Hostel in the heart of Phuket town. The place got Awesome reviews on both websites I checked, and was in my price range of 300 bhat per night (With a slight increase over christmas to 400 bhat) but now I’m here it’s definatly the kind of hostel I was hoping for, the common room has plenty of people comming in and out all day, there is free wi-fi and computers with internet which saves a small fortune on it’s own, and there is a massive and diverse DVD collection which means people ar constantly throwing something on, and I can just pick up a couple of cheap beers and snacks from the 7/11 next door and have a cheap night in, banter with people.

Just around the corner Phuket’s food market provides and interesting place to mooch into and if feeling adventerous sample the various meat on a stick type products, some of which are clearly identifiable things like chicken wings for around 30 bhat, others are sausages and meatball type things which are cheaper and I find, best left unidentified as to what they actually are.

There are beaches just a bus or Tuk Tuk away too, last night myself and six Australian chaps I meet in the common room headed over to Patong beach for a couple of beers – It was a frankly incredibly seedy place, like Amsterdam with sand and fake rolexes for sale, but with out that European cleanliness that made the Dutch capital seem much safer. Even so, it was full of tourists of all kinds, from families with small children, to older white gentlemen with disturbingly young Thai girls on their arms. We left the place after a couple of beers and came back via the 7/11 where we picked up more beer and nibbles and watched the movie back at the Phuket Backpacker

So this is where I plan to spend Christmas, the flow of people, cheap food options all around and comfortable rooms (Not to mention hot showers!) makes this an ideal place for me to settle for the next week, on the 29th I’m schedualled to move on, so will see how things pan out and either head further south to Had Yai with the intention of starting the new year at a Meditation Retreat, else I’ll stick around here and party, and then move on to Khao Lak to do some volunteer work building kids play parks and other projects.

I finally made it to Koh lanta – Though getting here is a tale in it’s own right.

I’m in Doha, capital of the state of Qatar in the Middle East, sitting in the airport (DOH) connected to a free wifi hub. Which to be honest sucks so far, but then it’s free and I have 5 more hours before I can board my flight to Bangkok(BKK)so it’s not like there is a huge amount to do here. It’s improving over time as people try to get some sleep and fly out, so able to post now.

First, to bring my progress upto date, long story short with all the protests aginst the now ousted government in Thailand my flight was delayed and finally rebooked for the 9th, but some where along the line that actually got booked for the 8th, so last night at 3am as I was about to finish a late night coding session and decided to check in online, found it telling me the flight was the next day, and had a mad panic to throw everything together leaving a lot of mess in my wake (Sorry Mum!) I had a nice easy day in mind to just tie the last few things together and going for carvery, but instead here I am, sitting in Doha tapping out a blog post.

So far it’s all been a bit dull to be honest.
Manchester Airport: Seen it before.
Fly to another country on my own: Done it before.
Doha Airport: Seen it before.
The Dark Knight in flight movie: Seen it before.
Hancock in flight movie: New!

Yes, so far the highlight of my trip has been watching Hancock, which was surprisingly good, and i’d recommend giving it a watch.

When I finally make it into Bangkok this afternoon I still haven’t decided where I’m going to head on the 11th, it might be a little close to the full moon to head to the party on Koh Phangan, so perhaps my initial track of heading to Koh Lanta – one of the quieter islands to the South West of the gulf of Thailand – might be the best option to get some sea air and just chill out for a few days while I chill out and plan some more wild adventures and work on some website stuff.

Oh and the food in Doha Airport is terrible, not because it’s strange, but because the quality just seems very poor – I’ll have breakfast on the next flight though, and worst the coffee chain in residence is Costa Coffee, which I loath. Why couldn’t it be Starbucks?! And I have no idea what the exchange rate is or anything, so just avoiding buying anything here for now.