Voyage Of The Odd Essay

Sometimes you have to take an idea and run with it, and sitting in the pub for a quiet pint and catch up with friends on Thursday we ended up talking about the Big Lebowski and going bowling, I’m not sure which came first but I did find it pretty funny as it was the second time this week I’d been talking about the film. The upshot was we booked a lane at Warrington’s LA Bowl for Friday night and set out to take full advantage of the facilities on offer. (more…)

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.

The first few days on Koh Chang where our most active, thanks to our friends Paul and Shell who were also on holiday for a couple of weeks, though arriving a few days before us.

15th March - Lonely Beach, Koh Chang
Just off Lonely Beach there is a set of three smaller islands not far from the coast, the closest of which has an easy to get to beach so six of us jumped in a couple of kayaks, and paddled out to them to what we had in mind as a deserted island. Of course, we weren’t the only people with this idea, there were a couple of other people milling around as well, but still, it was a good find, and a fun paddle out. Though a rather large wave right on the outset broke my phone (And thus, camera) turns out the water proof pouch didn’t have a water proof zip, and it leaked just enough to break. You live and learn though. Was well worth going out there though, considering I nearly bailed out as I don’t swim so I was slightly nervous about heading out over the ocean, but I didn’t fly half way around the world not to push my comfort levels.

At this point, I don’t really remember which places we partied at - my note book was rain damaged from the previous nights tropical storm, but I think it’s safe to say we went out and drank a lot! I also realize around this time that when you’re in a tropical climate, you really need to pay attention to waterproofing items that needed it. If memory serves, this was Kelly’s - a traveler the guys we had gone out to meet had been hanging out with - last night, so we went out for pizza, and did some drinking out and about.

16th March - Lonely Beach and Bang Bao, Koh Chang
The big event of the day was the elephant ride, we got picked up by taxi about 9am, and it was a short trip north to the elephant place, were we were placed in pairs up on small benches held a top three huge elephants. You have to climb up a set of steps to the boarding platform, and step on to them and shuffle into your seat in pairs, and then off you go, plodding and at times running along on top of this frankly, massive creature. It was all very surreal, but a fantastic time, and a great way to see some of the deeper jungle of the island. Our route took us on a ride of about 45 minutes out to a small pool, where we got off via some more platforms set up on trees, and then chilled out for a bit, the rest of the group when swimming in the pool, and were joined by a couple of the elephants as their riders cleaned them down. Again, not really a water fan so I just sat and watched and had a mooch around before we rode back. At this point, my elephant took a shorter router back then the other two, because it was been a moody bastard. It’s rider wasn’t best please with him, and he tried to do his own thing at several points.For dinner we went a bit further south to the next beach Bang Bao, to the Buddha View restaurant, watched an amazing sun set from the lighthouse watch point at the end of the peer, and enjoyed an amazing meal. While we were in Treehouse we randomly bumped into the woman who runs the tree top adventure, when we told her what we were planning the next day she exclaimed that it was her place! Small world out there.

17th March - Lonely Beach and Tree Top Adventure Par, Koh Chang
The last day of really doing any serious activity was the Tree Top Adventure Park, climbing up high wires, going down zip lines (One of which was 150 meters long) and generally working really, really hard to get around the pair of amazing courses which over looked one of the bays from a perfect vantage point and wind through the jungle. Of all the activities on the island, this is the one I would really recommend. I was pretty surprised at how I coped with it, I always figured I didn’t have a problem with highs, but never really tested out the theory so when I was pottering though the tree tops I was very happy to find it didn’t phase me at all.

This was Paul and Shell’s last day, so we went out for another good meal down at a place we knew only as the decking, a cozy restaurant that over looked the more rocky part of the beach, somewhere in between paradise and sunset. I was once again really impressed with the food and had one of the best first I had ever eaten. I’ll go out on a limb and guess we went out and partied, I think at sunset and then lemon bar, for a pretty crazy night of dancing.

At this point, we’d had a nice run of making sure we did something of note everyday, though with Paul and Shell been the main motivation to get out there from this point we slipped into a much more relaxed pace which formed a familiar pattern of beaches and parties for the most part, It was good to have a few active days though.