Buhbye Vietnam, sawatdeekah Thailand

After too many days in rainy, cold, sorta mean Hanoi, we jumped on a plane and were back to relative-reality, Bangkok. It was amazing how I felt so at home when we landed – but Thailand made a lot more sense than Vietnam.

We had a few hours to kill between our landing in Bangkok and an evening flight to Phuket, so we headed into the city for some camera shopping and luggage storage.

While I’ve never actually seen it in the States, Thailand has an abundance of Swensen’s stores – as in the San Francisco ice cream chain. It was disgustingly hot out, and I was craving.

I’ve picked up this super annoying habit of pulling Adam’s hair. Mostly picking at single strands of arm and leg hair when he isn’t looking and we’re in small spaces. Like cabs.

As we were walking into the mall, I needed a fix. I needed to pull his hair. But he’d had enough.

I promised to buy him ice cream if I could do it one more time. And I did it again. Twice.

That was going to cost me.

Swensen’s is not cheap, but I had promised ice cream. And taken advantage and pulled 2 hairs instead of one. So that bitch made me PAY by ordering up everything his little heart desired in the super-Americanized Bangkok ice cream shop.

I had to pay 20 bucks. In Asia, that could get you a bed for the night, a couple of drinks and a hot call girl for at least an hour. Eff.

That night we flew to Phuket and got a hotel room in some nutty place that also housed a small Stalin museum.

Yup.

Phuket was just a short stop on the way to the islands, so there wasn’t much on the itinerary. We decided on one task – finding the Hard Rock Café so Adam could pick up a souvenir. His family collects them, blah blah.

There’s a whole freakin’ web site set up for the Phuket Hard Rock Café that led us to believe it actually existed. So we jumped on a rickety bus and make it to the other side of the province, to another beach district, more or less in search of this place.

We get there, and it’s not even open yet. Not finished.

The Hard Rock site had mentioned some grand opening date that had already passed. My money is on the fact that the Americans have no idea it’s not open, and the Thais don’t care.

Whatever.

We played on the beach for the rest of the afternoon, and I played with my new awesome camera. Beautiful sunsets.

Adam found some crabs. To go with my herp.

It turns out that this area had a pretty happening nightlife, so instead of heading back to the hotel we decide to stick around. We showered in public bathrooms, bought some new dry rip-off clothes to wear and hit the town.

After dinner and hookah, Adam decides that he wants to light up a kom loi, which is a Thai hot air lantern that is supposed to help you release worries and send them up into the sky.

Really, boys just like to play with fire.

After bargaining forever and still getting ripped off, homeboy finally gets one. I videotape.

As you’ll see, I end up giving the camera to one of the vendors to record both of us. But then I quickly run off camera. Because when I turned around, some other vendor was going through my purse!!!

He tries to pretend that he was fixing our blanket, which you can see him toss into the air as I run up with a superbitch look on my face.

PISSSSSED!

Luckily it didn’t look like he managed to find anything valuable in the dark.

And then we jumped into the back of a pickup truck-style sawatawng and went back to the hotel. The next morning we headed to paradise – Koh Phi Phi.