My Thailand Adventures: Phuket

Ying makes a good traveling companion. Because she was also my only traveling companion, I now have a shitload of photos of her on my laptop. It's too bad she doesn't have any rich stalkers or something; otherwise, I could sell these pictures to them for a really good price. "You have pictures of her coming out of the shower wearing just a towel with a look of surprised anger on her face? Pshh, fuck that, I have a picture of her riding an elephant. Yeah, that'’s right. A fucking elephant from Thailand. Bet you don't have THAT, motherfucker."

--

Our very rough itinerary of Thailand:

PHUKET: September 23 - 25.
BANGKOK: September 25 - 26.
CHIANG MAI: September 26 - 28.
BANGKOK: September 29 - 30.

Today, I will focus on Phuket, a Southern province of Thailand known for beautiful beaches and swarms of tourists.

--

My parents would probably kill me if they knew that I just spent eight days in Thailand, especially considering that they just had a military coup (albeit a bloodless one.) They would also kill me if they knew that on the second day there, I was riding on the back of a moped driven by a 33 year-old-man I just met ten minutes ago.

In a bad teen slasher film, the above scenario would have lead to a series of horrors where the seemingly nice guy leads us to a secluded shack and subjugates us to his sadistic experiments made especially for unsuspecting female travelers. Fortunately, what we ended up getting was not horribly disfiguring chemical burns or cut-off limbs, but a nice place to crash for free.

This moped-driving man in question was Dennis, a Filipino American married to an Australian woman named Lydia. They were traveling together with Lydia'’s brother, a chronic traveler who had stories of traveling solo in South America for over a half decade. Ying and I randomly came across this trio when we were stranded in Phuket Town after spending a night at one of Southern Thailand's renowned island beaches that, while beautiful, was actually kind of dirty and so shamelessly touristy it left a bad taste in our mouths. Since we had no idea what the hell to do with ourselves until our flight to Bangkok the following morning, the couple invited us to join them at their hotel alongside one of the beaches. They all had their own rented mopeds, so I hopped onto the back of Dennis's moped while Ying went with Lydia's brother.

Few things are as exhilarating as riding on a moped, especially if it's done during late sunset on an exotic coastline. The only thing that was missing was a song playing in the background that captured both the excitement and uncertainty of being young!

While Dennis and I passed through what seems like an endless procession of bars, restaurants and hotels, we swapped details about each other's lives and where we've been in this world. Dennis was the former owner of a nightclub who just sold his business, which was ample excuse for him and his wife to take a two-month trek across Southeast Asia. He described to me the beautiful beaches of the Philippines, how Sydney was one of his favorite places in the world and how he didn't miss living in Los Angeles a single bit now that he was in Seattle with his wife of six years.

I asked him if it was true that it rained a lot in Seattle. "To be honest," he replied, "“We just say that to keep the Californians out."

--

Dennis and Lydia met each other randomly when Lydia was traveling alone in North America and happened to pass through Seattle. They were the kind of happily married couple who called each other "sweetheart"” and "babe," and you could tell that they were having the time of their lives trekking through all the exotic locales that Southeast Asia had to offer.

I mentally added this scenario as another possibility of where I could be fifteen years from now: tearing down some random coastline on a rented moped, with a husband as crazy as I am.