For those of you who don’t get it…

At this point, I’m writing 2 kinds of entries. The ones about Australia (recent) or the ones about Asia (not so recent). Since I got backed up during the backpacking, I’m having to retrace my steps.

Sorry for the confusion.

Another boyfriend ...

Here's another video of a typical day on the "job."

Koh Phi Phi – You know, where they filmed “The Beach.” Duh.

After our near-robbery in Phuket, we snagged an early tour ferry to Phi Phi. It looked like we’d be fighting for accommodation, since it looked like 1000ish people were getting off our boat alone.

As they starting labeling everyone with huge colored stickers, indicating the snorkeling time slots, we realized that almost everyone on board was part of a TERRIBLE day trip. Lucky us, we were the first stop off.

We were greeted on the island by an unbelievably calm, helpful travel agent who helped us find a place to stay and someone to carry our luggage. Since, you know, there are NO vehicles allowed on the island.

After full days and nights of honking traffic in Hanoi, it was a welcome change. The weather was a little weird, and hot, but still a complete paradise. We meant to stay for a day or two … which turned into 5 or 6. Oh well.

The schedule basically went like this:
12pm – wake up
12:45pm – get out of bed
1:30pm – get breakfast
2pm – dodge rain
3pm – lay on beach
4pm – get lunch
5pm – get snack
6pm – read
8pm – get dinner
8:30pm – get a bucket of liquor
9pm – go to fire show
12am – get drunken food
2am – stumble home, avoiding huge crabs, dogs and drunk people trying to convince you that’s it’s a great morning to get a tattoo.

After a few weeks of intense sightseeing and moving around, this place was just RELAXING and beautiful. I was in love.

I mean, we did do things. We went on a snorkeling trip, and saw the famous Maya Bay (made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio) and other great reef sights. We had some awesome coverage of this portion, but we lost the underwater camera on a train in Malaysia.

The fire shows, and buckets of liquor, were a blast. And, yes, I mean buckets. Like, for making sand castles.

You order a sand pail, filled with a pint of liquor and mixer of your choice. It’s buy one get one free. And one is enough to kill a horse.

We made the mistake of ordering a second round the first night. A centimeter in we were rolling on the beach and don’t remember the walk home.

Fire shows also included drunken fire jump rope and watching people fall on their asses. See below.

The guy in the khaki shorts, at the end of the vid, is Adam. Sadly, I have no footage of him falling on his ass.

On the 3rd or 4th night there, we met up with Damonz, who had been a friend of Kim’s while she was in PP. He introduced us to a few friends, joined us for a bucket and gave us this great idea.

He suggested that we rent kayaks and take a trip around the island, stopping on the small beaches. Since the island is really just a huge limestone cliff with a few small beaches on the far edges, it costs a lot to hire a fishing boat to take you around. This way, we’d save money and see more.

In theory.

Either we went off the wrong end or we’re just stupid. Probably both. In any case, as we headed out around 2pm, neither of us thought to look at a map first. Or a weather forecast.

After making it out of the bay, we suddenly felt the waves get much stronger and the clouds look much darker. Ah, well, a little rain never hurt anyone.

Waves get even stronger and we move further out into the wide, wide ocean. Sky turns black. Fisherman in boat points at the clouds and us. Laughs wildly.

Once the storm actually got started, we hit panic mode. Started packing up our stuff, paddling like crazy and looking for SOMEWHERE to beach this thing.

Apparently, all of the beaches are on the OTHER side of the island.

The boat was filling up with waves, and I had honestly stopped paddling. We were going nowhere, even with both of us working for our lives.

Mind you, there are tons of boats flying around us and motors turning up more and more waves, making everything THAT much easier.

Out of nowhere, the nicest man alive pulls up next to us in a fisherman boat he has clearly chartered for himself and his family. In a gorgeous South African accent, he asks us if we need help and offers to put us – and our kayak – on board the boat to get us to shore again.

Even in this situation, my pride almost gets the best of me. A quick look at Adam and we silently concede to our stupidity.

We awkwardly apologize, laugh and roll our eyes at each other as we make it back to the beach. Even with a motor and a lifetime of experience on the island, the driver still seems to have a hard time getting us back in.

It becomes very clear that, without this dude, we would have been toast.

Apologies continue, and we try to figure out how much a life-saving rescue is worth in baht. We hand it to the driver, apologize again, and drag the damn kayak back to the hut where we rented it.

Lesson learned.

On some other night, we saw this huge crab on our walk back up. Evil children that we are, we tried to convince the neighborhood dog to battle with it. He lost, but only got a small scratch on the nose.

Events all blur together for me during this portion of the trip. 6 pints of SangSom will do that to a girl.

After the islands, I was meant to head back up north to see the girls. Buuut, somewhere along the line, I was convinced to head south to Malaysia and Singapore instead. Sorry Marianne.

And as simply as that, I was crossing another border on a night train headed to Kuala Lumpur.

Trapeze School!

2 loooong flights, 3 encounters with bitchy airline employees and a van ride later, I arrived in NYC!!! YAYAYA

I arrived at my old apt and visited with my old roommate, the one and only k.hel.

Celebrations/drinking commenced.

I was hoping to meet up with my friend Dayna, but when I called to make a date, she said she was a bit busy.

"I have this TRAPEZE thing ..."

I signed up immediately.

We went to the top of Pier 40 or something, and learned how to fly with the greatest of ease. With the hottest trainers ever.

I nearly cried every time I went to the platform, since, you know, I'm a wimp. You had to lean forward, over the platform, 23ft in the air, and reach for a bar. Which doesn't look or sound nearly as scary as it is. At first.

But then you jump, and you feel like you're 5, and it's amazing.

Until the next day when every muscle you haven't used since the last time you played on monkey bars goes totally sore, and you can't even run because all the pieces around your boobs hurt.

I stole some zoom shots of the hot instructors for your viewing pleasure. One of them is a personal trainer for Hugh Jackman, my fav Aussie. Yum.

Below are vids of some of my rounds on the bar. I would show you Dayna's, but she's better than me.

Cheers mates! Stay tuned.

I'm baaaaack!!!

Sorry for the hiatus guys. For those who don't know, I was in the States for 4 weeks, and then visited Cairns for a 5th. Which means I have TONS of material to come.

Plus, you know, I never finished the Asian stories.

Sorry guys. I was too busy being really really busy.

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.

Free food moments

We've ALL been there. It's the weekend, you've been out for hours drinking your ass off, and the clock hits 2am, 3am, 4am? And all of a sudden you are FAMISHED.

ME NEEDS FOODSIES NOW!!!!

That piece of pizza, that gyro, whatever, it tastes amazing. No matter what.

But lemme tell you, it tastes SO much better when you get it for free!

Free food moments have been abundant in Oz. I've had 2 that I can remember. I'm sure there are more that I don't.

(Free drinks don't count)

Free Food Moment #1- leaving the crazy King's Cross club with Marianne at 3ish I think? We've been dancing our butts off. I see pizza-by-the-slice.

This dude is line turns around, looks at me, pokes me in the face and tells me I'm beautiful. I have a beautiful smile. He tells Marianne, his friend, another person in line and the pizza dude. Puts his arm around me, hangs drunkenly. I almost slap him. Annoying.

But THEN he put 20 bucks in my pocket. WTF!?!?!

I was much nicer after that.

Finally, his pizza arrived. A whole freakin' box of pizza, one of every slice flavor. I grab the super veg, smile nicely, scarf my pizza and enjoy my cab ride home, subsidized by the free pizza beautiful smile guy.

Free Food Moment #2- Last weekend, or maybe 2 weeks ago? Leaving the Ivy with the German ladies, hit up Mackers (McDonald's in America) for a Fillet-o-Fish and some fries.

No tomato sauce.

I go up to the counter to ask for some. The dude hands me a bag with tomato sauce AND 2 Macs. I open the bag, look at him confused. He smiles, nods and walks away.

I announce to the whole place (which is packed) that I just got 2 burgers for FREESIES. And then I share one and eat the other, after finishing my fish. And then order a sundae.

I don't care what ANYONE says. I love me a Mackers chocolate fudge sundae!