So Bangkok doesn't suck after all...

This is Rachel and Caz from England. Caz and her boyfriend Kieren had just come back from 9 months in Australia and had met up with Rachel, who arrived from England that day. We hit Khao San Road with some more people and they had their first buckets (which the girls enjoyed very much, Kieren got an allergic reaction to something in the bucket though!). Lots of fun and dancing that night, best night I've had so far in Bangkok! Rachel is like the Energizer bunny, she danced for 3 hours without stopping...
We stayed in a really nice Guesthouse called Asha, run by a really nice English guy and his relatives. It's a bit offcenter in a predominantly Thai area (which is great as far as i am concerned!), but it has everything a good guesthouse needs: Book exchange corner+DVD/reading room, free washing machine, Pool, Pool table, nice rooms, nice Bathrooms, and it's really affordable (300 Bath), too!
With a place and people like this I guess I'm finally starting to like Bangkok! ;-)

Meet Sarah

This is Sarah from Australia. We met her in the Chiang Mai trainstation and went with her on the bus to Bangkok (where me and the Swedes split up) after the train got cancelled due to a major landslide covering the tracks. She's a very funny and clever person and lots of fun to talk to. Very knowledgable about Asian culture (Thai in particular, since she spent some time living in Bangkok) she volunteers for environmental causes or for the UN. Sarah has eaten almost every food on the planet (not German though), but still she weighs almost nothing (even though she's unusually tall for an asian girl). You can easily talk four hours with Sarah about food and won't be bored a single second. She just loves that stuff! If you're lucky she'll read your palm and tell you lots of flattering things about yourself! ;-)
I'm looking forward to you visiting Germany, Sarah!

My first... err.. fourth Pad Thai

I finally took a Thai cooking course today. The Swedes were... err... "indisposed" from too much partying until the early morning (the course started at 9:30 - basically night-time if you're on vacation! ;-) so I was the only participant at the course. Which was nice, because i could say what to cook (e.g. Pad Thai, which wasn't even in the menu! ;-) and had my very own private teacher.
We first went to the market to buy the needed ingredients, and i learned alot about Thai vegetables, fruit, what they taste like and what they're used for. We made Fried Rice, Pad Thai, Spring Rolls, Red Curry, Chiangmai Noodles and Deepfried Bananas. I learned quite a few tricks and should be able to make a proper Pad Thai when i get back. Since we ate (or atleast tried) everything we cooked I am so fucking stuffed now i can hardly move, I'll try to compensate for this by going on a mini-diet tomorrow, when I'm going to refresh my visa.
Last night was great fun, too, we went to a club called "Bubble" (very good music!) and "Spicy Bar" (beware of hookers!) later on after a "warmup" at the Guesthouse with the Swedes (=hilarious drinking games).

My first Motorbike

Two days ago me and the Swedes (Bjorn and Ted, the girls split off in Bangkok to go to Vietnam) rented some motorbikes and went up the hill to the Monestary/Temple Doi Suthep. First time on a motorbike, and in a foreign country AND left side traffic? I really wasn't feeling too well about this. But the Swedes said it's really easy and the Thais really watch out for stupid tourists who can't drive. And they were right. We went up this winded mountain road, and it was great fun! Bjorn had a flat tire when we reached the Temple, lucky for us there was a small village right next to it that had a Bike shop. 20 minutes and 120 Bath (2,7 Euro) later we were ready for action again.
The Temple was really nice, we chatted with a monk there, enjoyed a great view over Chiang Mai and witnessed their prayer ceremony. Lots of gold paint as always, i really wonder if there's any real gold around in Thailand and how they tell the difference...

My first Elephant

Three days ago i went on a Day-trip around Chiang Mai with four Germans that i had met at the Guesthouse. It was great fun and not very expensive (800 Bath = 18 Euro). The tribal village they did at the start was quite boring, but we were there only a quarter of an hour anyway. Next were the Elephant rides (a piece of advice: Take insect repellant with you! There are huge mosquitos that sting elephants. And knowing how thick Elephant skin is you can guess what it feels like when you're being stung by them! Tom, the guy i was riding with said it felt like getting a shot from the doctor!), relaxing and nice, but not really mindblowing. The hike up to some waterfall was much nicer, and the whitewater rafting at the end (with 20 minutes of chillout bamboo "rafting" at the end) really topped it off.

Thai Mysteries solved

Today I found out why Thai People pretty often repeat words ("Same same but different" "Cheap cheap for you!"). It was as i suspected: Saying a word twice in Thai stresses the word, it's like adding "very" before the adjective.
Still unsolved is the mystery why Thais can eat all day long (while chatting, they call this "snack for fun") and still not get fat.

Fullmoon Party

One thing every backpacking Thailand traveller has to have been to atleast once is the Fullmoon Party in Haad Rin on Kho Pha Ngan. Joe and me took a hell-ride there from Thong Nai Pan Noi with a bunch of stoned guys (who let us wait for about an hour, even though we had to meet the rest of the people) on the back of a truck that was fishtailing its way up the muddy slopes of Kho Pha Ngan. I already saw us dead in the drenches, but crazy Joe just laughed his ass off. We made it there in one piece nonetheless. It was one hell of a night, completely insane, but good fun and i ended up with two huge blisters on my feet from dancing too much. 2.5 buckets and 3 Chang-beers are quite a bit for me, but -as always- i still didn't get a hangover the next day. I was lucky my only "injury" were my blisters, since alot of people get injured (mostly various intoxicated injuries or drunk driving, which on these roads is an even worse idea than in other parts of the world) and sometimes even killed. It put quite a bit of a dent into the fun when I was told by a life guard in the morning that i shouldn't go into the water (i was just cleaning a wound on my toe because several people had stepped on it) because five people had died in it that night. They just go into the water (which is a stupid idea to begin with, as almost all the guys take a leak in it), pass out from too much boozing (or other drugs) and drown. We saw one guy being carried off on a stretcher that looked pretty damn dead, and Joe revived one girl with CPR (He's a fuckin hero, not that anyone took much notice of that!). The irritating thing is that this happens on every Fullmoonparty (and the various others they have - Halfmoon, Dark-Moon), somebody said that an average of 3 people die on every party. They didn't even stop the music when a body was found, it seems to count as "collateral damage". I realize that dead people mean bad business, but why not simply prevent people from dying? You don't even have to forbid them to go into the water (the toilets couldn't handle the extra load anyway), just post a bunch (that means about 20, not just a few guys) of life guards that watch out for the people going into the water.
Anyway, we (the Tropical Garden Gang) survived the night without any losses or injuries, and Joe and me were the last survivors, even beating some guys on 3 Es. It took us some time to get back to Thong Nai Pan Noi, we had to travel with a pretty annoying spanish guy that kept buggering the Thai locals on the Taxi on how much they paid for the taxi or how much the sack of rice they had with them cost. Joe said he'd have punched the guy in the face if he had to stay there just five minutes longer, but then again he says that all the time and never does it, cause he's just a really nice guy after all! ;-)

The I-Land Cafe

This is Veronika, a friend from Augsburg. Veronika moved to Thailand, lives with a thai guy called Dam and has a lovely boy called Janosch (a name that no Thai, not even his dad, can pronounce properly!). They opened a nice little Bungalow Resort called I-Land Cafe and this is where we stayed for three days. Veronika has adapted quite well to Thailand: She loves Thai showers (nothing beats splashing a scoop of water onto yourself after sweating all night on some party, try it!) and can survive major floods during the rain season. Even her English sounds like classic Thai English! ;-)
Thong Nai Pan Noi has a few nice bars and a nice beach, which we unfortunately never found the time to check out by daylight. The only thing to stay away from is the Thai Karaoke Bar. This was by far the worst Karakoke I've ever heard, these guys don't just miss single notes, they get EVERY note wrong. And they're not the least bit shy to sing really loud, too! Unfortunately the Karaoke Bar was just next to the I-Land Cafe, and they can easily do a whole night of Karaoke without hitting a single note. I'd like to see these guys do Singstar on the PS2, that should be fun to watch. ;-)

Joe - the raddest dude in the Universe

This is Joe from Canada, my travel buddy for about 6 days. Even though he's about the last person to use the word "rad" on this planet, he was great fun to travel with and we shared lots of laughs and fun times (like discussing the fallacy of god in a Tuktuk on the way back from the Fullmoonparty). Joe does basically every sport there is: Rugby, Snowboarding, Bobsleighing (!), Track & Field and quite a few more. He is also know for never showering or changing his yellow sports jersey (but he can fake a new jersey by just turning it inside out - clever Canadians!), but strangely enough he never stank. I met Joe on the way to Haad Rin, where we stayed for one night. The next day Veronika picked us up, since I wanted to stay at her place on Kho Pha Ngan, even though it was in Thong Nai Pan Noi, quite some way from Haad Rin, where the parties were happening. Unfortunately Joe was the only one that came with me, but we had a good time in Thong Nai Pan Noi, which is pretty laid back and not crowded - great for relaxing after the party!

The Tropical Garden Crew

If you ever decide to visit Kho Phi Phi, you just have to stay at Tropical Garden Resort. It's a bit hard to find though, but that's a good thing, otherwise it'd be totally crowded all the time. Here's how to find it: Starting from the Reggae Bar, walk to the beach opposite the one with the port. When you reach "The Rock" (that's the restaurant that looks like a wooden ship) take the left path and walk until there's a path branching off to the right that leads across a bridge. Walk straight on until you see "US Guesthouse", right after the left turn behind that you should see a small sign pointing up a path that leads to Tropical Garden. I had a really great time there, not only because of the pool (see below), but also because Peud, the guy that runs the place, is just an awesome guy and thanks to a lot of "social areas" (Bar/Table/Pool/Movie-Chillout Bungalow) you quickly meet all the other people staying there and believe me: it's gonna be alot of fun!
One day some of the guys went deep sea fishing and brought back a whole bag of fish, which were then grilled with some garlic and served with various sauces for everyone to enjoy. Afterwards we hit the bars with the whole gang of about 15 people, and it was by far the most fun night i had so far (it easily beat the Fullmoon party).

English spoken here

Finally an update again! Starting with this entry i will switch to English since most of the people i meet on the trip don't speak German, and they should be able to get more from this blog than just the pwetty pictures...