Saturday, July 11, 2009

Ting Tong

Since I'm behind I'm going to combine two days and leave a lot out. We won't have access to a computer until monday so my carpal tunnel will have to stick around.

Our last day on Phi Phi was short but nice. More lounging by the beach, one final order of coconut ice cream, more making fun of tourists that order club sandwiches and chicken tenders, and of course roti. Seriously, I've encountered a plethora of food items that would be a rage in LA, but this one is definitely at the top of the list. We had it four days straight. Its a Muslim dessert kind of like very thin fried bread with condensed milk and sugar. Alyssa had described it before and I was thinking I wouldn't enjoy it. But its probably one of my favorite desserts/snacks and I don't like sweet things. Its almost like a bizarro funnel cake, flat and crispy.

The ferry ride back we got seats outside and had a good long nap. Oh before I forget... Russians in mui ne, swedes in phuket, australians/new zealanders on koh phi phi. Everyone everywhere was from there. And the island caters to them and the locals have aussie accents. Its like certain cultures attack certain areas. Back to the ferry... We woke up and discovered that the Austrian from the night before was sitting behind us! We pretended not to see him and were really freaked out. Basically he must have lied about everything and he was just creepy. He was walking around near us like he wanted to talk. Then when we got off the boat, of the 300 people, he somehow ended up next to us in line so we let people go ahead of us. Alyssa was about to hit him. Then we saw a 10 year old Chinese boy wearing these really tight boxer brief swim trunk things and it was so awkward and hilarious I wish I had taken a picture. Speedos and fanny packs are everywhere by the way. But this contraption was far worse.

when we flew back to bangkok, alyssas uncle picked us up and took us to get bum mi. It was once again in a location one would never suspect to have such good food. This bum mi was much better than what we had previously. We each had two bowls and the total for all of us was barely 6 dollars. I love thailand.

Speaking of that, the Thai language is pretty easy to remember... Although the few things I know well are I'm hungry, I'm full, where is the restaurant?, buffalo, cat, stupid, crazy (three ways-- all to describe alyssa to people), etc.

I mentioned before that her uncle carries around thousands of dollars wrapped by a rubber band in his pant pocket. He always whips it out and hands alyssa hundreds of dollars to spend. Its insane. And then her other aunt wanted to give her 10000 baht which is 300 dollars so her uncle fronted the money and handed her ten thousand baht bills. So so so BAH (crazy) or you can say ting tong. That's fun.

We had bum mi for breakfast the next morning (yesterday/saturday). We waited awhile for her family to pick us up because they are alwayyyyys late. Like, almost 2 hours late. Then we headed to Pattaya, a beach town outside of Bangkok. The drive was long but its always nice to sleep. Although Ta kept us awake with her new high school musical 3 dvd (mentioned in the previous post, The Beach).

We stopped for lunch outside of Pattaya. The tide was low so the view wasn't stunning, but the food definitely was. We had fried grouper, some sort of giant snail body sliced up, crab roe salad, crab roe plain, two types of mussels, soft shell crab, and really good fried rice. I think that's all... I may have forgotten something. Things just kept coming.

Then we went to feed the monkeys up the street. That was awesome. First, no one would get out of the car but I HAD to. They were everywhere. Like literally falling from the sky. I got out and started passing out rambutans with her uncle. It was insane. They were so hungry and grabbing them out of my hands. Then they started pulling on my legs and shoulders to get more. The shoulder one freaked me out because that meant the monkey was above me. They weren't very big but there was one the locals call Joht. Joht was the fattest monkey I've ever seen. His body was almost similar to a very fat cat. But his balls were the biggest part. Like he had some inflamed testicular disease or something. He was massive and slow moving. I got a great picture of him and video of me feeding him, I wanted to keep him. Oh my god when you see this thing compared to the others you will crack up. I think it was a vision of my future. There was also a mommy carryong a baby I made sure to feed.

We got into Pattaya and first her aunt wanted to check out D2 a new hotel that was ridiculouslu cool. But she didn't like it so we checked into the Hard Rock hotel. I kinda felt like a failure staying at a hard rock hotel. I don't evenb support the food let alone the hotel chain. But whatever the facilities are pretty cool. And I'm sleeping with a gigantic picture of Ricky Martin over my head, who could ask for more?

We swam a bit and then it was time to get ready and go eat. We had a lite dinner at the new mall food court that was nicer than most restaurants. Then it was time for the ladyboy show. We drove of to the Alcazar, the venue for the show. You could hear the music and almost see the sequins from outside the theater. It was definitely something else. Only a few looked like theuy had been men before. Other than that, they were just beautiful Thai girls. I would be called a man before any of them. It was all lip synching traditional Thai songs from around the country, hits from all the big Asian countries as well as America, and a few comedy acts. After the show you can take pictures with some of the performers for a few baht. We obviously did.

Back at the hotel we watched an episode of Cooks Tour with a very young Bourdain. I freaking love the Discovery Travel and Living channel in Asia. It combines everything I love about the Travel channel, Food Network, and even some Bravo. Except samantha brown and janet hsieh are on it and want to hurt them.

Then it was time for the hotels adult foam party. We went down, paid a few dollars, and entered the middle east. Literally, we were two of the maybe 6 girls at the whole party. Its like a massive tour group of 20-something year old middle eastern men with way too much confidence attacked the small foam party. They were everywhere, and when we were in the actual foam (first experience with this, and now I want a giant foam machine), they wouldn't stop trying to touch us. Alyssa actually pushed one really hard I'm surprised he didn't fall down. Then another popped out of the foam in between us and tried to dance rape me. Alyssa cussed him out. She's my protective boyfriend. We kept saying our very strong and big boyfriends over there will beat you up if you keep touching us. The foam was so neat though. I liked standing under the machine and standing in a foam fort. Neat.

Back in the room we watched some Thai Idol with TA and fell asleep.

Now its time to learn to jet ski...
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