Day 52 - Tuesday, April 5 - Ko Pha Ngan

I woke up very early as many people were just getting home from their night of debauchery, probably at "the Cactus Bar" just down the beach from Palita.

I re-evaluated my plans. I had a great day on Had Rin and not sure what I'm rushing out of here for. If I am meeting Logan on Ko Tao, it's not until tomorrow at the earliest. I decided to stay on Had Rid on Ko Pha Ngan for another day.

I also checked my journal and realized that almost all I've done lately is sit on my ass and eat (aside from our little rock climbing the other day) so I decided to get some exercise out of the way. Boy, was that a DUMB idea.

I left Palita at 8:30AM to hike over to Had Tien, a neighboring beach. The hike is 5km and it's not easy. There were times I wanted to just lay down and die and hope someone came my way to send my body home before some of the local wild life came and got the best of me. This hike was a KILLER, climbing a steep steep mountain range (i.e. the Rockies) to finally get to the next beach over which was an ugly mess. Along the way, I hiked through beautiful lush green jungle occassionally coming to areas that were dried, brown, and ugly, always following the "green dot trail" to safely get me to my destination. I was supposed to see all sorts of Ko Pha Ngan wildlife but all I saw were 36 different species of butterflies and a few monkeys, which don't excite me anymore.

By the time I got to Had Tien, I was sweat SOAKED! I quickly found a bunglaow operation and bought 2 bottles of water - one to drink and one to pour over my head. I found the beach and decided on a water taxi back to Had Rin as there was no way in gods green earth that I was heading back over that trail. It took me 100 GRUELING minutes to get there and it was plenty of exercise for one day.

While I was waiting for the water taxi to take me back to Had Rin, I met 2 girls and a guy from The Czech Republic and we had a nice time chatting for quite a while as the water taxi departs when the water taxi driver decides he's in the mood to.

Well, it was back over the same rough seas as yesterday, this time, not in a fishing boat, but a long-tail boat packed with 24 people and lots of luggage - something the US Coast Guard would NOT approve of! Midway through the trip it started to rain. I now wasn't only soaked with sweat covered up with Thai drinking water, but now I had Thai rain water on top of it all.

The water taxi dropped me off at Had Rin Nai, I walked very quickly over to Nok, jumped in the ocean, then showered, did a quick washing of my clothes and sat on the porch for a while observing the goings on. I can sit on my porch for 29 hours a day, as I forgot to mention the eye candy that is visible upon looking in every direction from my porch. I wont get into details as there are grown ups, children, and religious folk who are reading this blog and I don't feel it would be responsible reporting to all of a sudden turn this into a porn site.

After a few swims, a few sits on the porch, and my eyes had enough exercise, I walked around the streets a bit, got a pretty great foot massage and caught up on some e-mails and blogs. While I was internetting, the skies opened up and it rained like I haven't seen in years. I waited out the rain, headed back to Palita and had dinner there. Wherever you go on Had Rin, every bar, bunglaow restaurant, etc. is playing a movie. There is usually a chalboard out front giving a time table of what they are playing that day usually starting at Noon and going all the way til 7PM or 9PM. The establishments vary, with some having big screen TV's, to one place that has a big screen along with 10 smnaller ones positioned around the restaurant, and even one that has one TV that looks like it's no more than 13".

As I sat down for dinner, they were playing "Bridget Jones" - the second one. I only saw the last 40 minutes or so and it looked AWFUL! After dinner, I sat on the porch and fell asleep in the hammock.

At midnight, I woke up and heard some thumping bass from down the beach at "Cactus Bar" so I took a walk to see what was going on. I think everyone on the entire island was partying and dancing at the bar and on the beach so I found a vacant spot on a bamboo mat on the beach with a bunch of people and made some friends pretty quickly. I have no idea as to who they were and I don't remember their names as I got back to Palita after 3AM after many beers, a few Thai Whiskey drinks and who knows what else. I now understand why people were stumbling home as the sun was rising this morning being that the bar was still packed when I left at 3AM.

I went to bed hoping I had shut off my internal alarm clock that was set last night to see the sunrise.