Back to Bangkok

Last night I made a startling realization. My really bad sunburn yesterday? Well, I realized I just experienced my first major side-effect of the anti-malarial drug I'm taking. One of the major side-effects of Doxycycline (sp?) is your skin becomes much more sensitive to the sun. And I started taking the drug a few days ago, so obviously it's kicking in. Had I remembered that, I could have put more sunscreen on!!

Our beach hut here at Naga resort has geckos in it! They scurry around the walls and floor, eating bugs and other insects. They're so cute. And they make a helluva a noise. It's hard to believe such a loud noise could come from such a small lizard. They are neat to watch, though.

It rained last night, it was a nice change, cooled things down a little.

We packed our stuff up this morning, and walked to the townsite with our packs, and got a taxi-truck to the dock. The fare from the townsite to the dock is 100 baht, so the more people you have, the cheaper it is. We decided to wait a little while to see if others would come by that were looking for rides to the dock (we were early), and another guy came, and hopped in, and he wanted to go right now, so decided sure, that's only 33 baht each. When we got to the docks, the other guy said to us he'll pay the whole fare, not to worry about it. Nice gesture, nice guy! Thanks buddy! Caught the boat to the mainland, and got to our tour operator, and waited a bit, then we were pointed to the minibus we were to take. Minibuses typically carry 9-11 people, there were 9 of us on this trip, so we all piled in, and the whole bus was infected with hundreds and hundreds of mosquitos. Everyone started slapping, trying to kill them, then they all started pouring out, refusing to ride in that bus. A couple of other girls complained to the tour operator, asking for another bus. The tour operator obliged, and told us to get on a different bus instead. Through all this, we met up with an Australian girl called Yvette. We talked with her most of the trip, and got back to Bangkok (BKK for short) about 2:00. We walked to the guest house area, and we made plans to go out for supper and argella at 7:00. Funny thing is, Yvette has travelled to Turkey, and loves Argella too, she owns one as well (Court owns two). She had a different name for it, but the same thing.

We tried checking into the Merry V (same one we had before), but it was full, so we tried the one next door, the New My House Guest House, and they had a room for 250 baht, so we took it. This place is quite a bit nicer than Merry V, a tad more expensive, but oh well. We settled in, and then did some errands, booked our bus ticket to Chaing Mai, 200 baht. We looked at a sleeper train, but it was quite a bit more expensive. It's a 10 hour, overnight bus ride, and picks us up at 6:00PM tomorrow evening. Yvette suggested we go to Hai as well, more north of Chaing Mai, so we'll probably head there after we get into Chaing Mai. But you know us, plans change rather quickly!

We took a bunch of laundry in, we went to the post office and put a bunch of stuff in a box and mailed it back home. I brought WAY to many socks and underwear, Court sent back a bunch of clothes, along with a few other things we don't need over here, or don't want to carry with us anymore. Courtney's backpack has been bulging at the seams, she couldn't fit her bra's in her backpack when we left Ko Samet, so I had to carry those for her. The package took take up to 3 months to get to Canada. It's been shipped ground, the cheapest, it cost us almost 1300 baht (a little over $40CDN) to send back. We also air-mailed our first photo CD, separately, to my place, when it arrives, I've asked my dad to put it in my computer, and I'll generate a photo album of all our pictures thus far, for you all to see.

Courtney's hair extensions keep falling out, pulling her own hair out. 4 or 5 of them came out so far. She's getting stressed about it. We walked around to some hair dressers around here to see about getting them removed, but no one will do it. While she was in one hair dresser place, I was waiting outside, and the lady who sold us our bus tickets to Chaing Mai (she sells tickets on the sidewalk in front of this hair dresser place), says to me, "Why you hair like that?" I laughed. She said she thought it was sort of new fashion trend. I laughed again, then explained what had happened. Too funny.

We went to pick up our visa's (and passorts) for Laos and Vietname at 6:00 today from another travel agent, they were supposed to be ready by 6:00 today. We got there, and she told us she didn't have them yet, come back in 30 minutes. So we left, and came back about 6:30, and there was a guy there that said he had them, he would just be 5 minutes, and he'd be back with them. So we waited, about 10 minutes later, he came back, and handed a passport to the travel agent lady, and she said to him, no, that wasn't it, Laos and Vietnam visa's and two passports. So we waited some more. About 6:50, we told the lady we had to leave, we had to meet Yvette at 7:00. The travel agent told us they were open until 10:00, so we said we'd come back before 10:00.

We met up with Yvette, and had supper, then went and did the arghella (well, Court and Yvette did most of it, my throat get's irriated after a little bit). About 9:30, we went back to the travel agent, and sat down, and she had our passports, but she said there was a problem with the Vietnam visa. She told us that the Vietnam embassy forgot to stamp our passports, so we didn't have visa's for Vietnam yet. Laos was all taken care of (which is good, that's the most important one for now). She told us we could get the Vietnam visa done in Vientiane (capital of Laos), or we could leave our passports with her, and when the Vietnam visa's were ready, she could send them up to Chaing Rai, and a guest house owned by her (or someone she knows) would hold them for us until we got there. Chaing Rai is where we'd be crossing the border into Laos. We weren't terribly comfortable with having our passports floating around Thailand like that, so we told her we'd think about it, and come back tomorrow. The travel agent did refund our money we paid to get the Vietnam visa, so we're not out any money. When we left, Yvette said she believes we can get visa's for Vietnam right at the Vietnamese border.

We said goodbye and safe journey to Yvette, and I did a little reading in the Let's Go book, and we can get our visa's in Vientiane, but we can't at the border. So, when we're in Laos, we'll get our visa's in Vientiane. And, just as I was typing this, this is maybe a blessing in disguise. We're not on as much of a date-specific schedule anymore, we have a little time in Laos to decide how much time we want to spend there, and can judge our entry date into Vietnam a little better now.

Court made a phone call to Julio, then Court and I went walking around the market a little more, and Court bought some poi's, which are things you light on fire and twirl around. She has to learn how to not start herself on fire now.

I'm probably going to buy a fire stick. It's a bar that you light both ends on fire, and twirl around. Most of the bars/resorts have people doing these things in the evening, on the sand, as part of the entertainment, and it's quite fun to watch.

We finally got to bed about 11:30.

That's our excitement for the day. I can just see my mom's expressions when she reads about us not getting our passorts, she'll be freaking. Mom, it's never as bad as it seems, people over here are not thieves, and not out to get you. Don't worry about us!!!!