Fishtrip

So this is it. The final leg of our journey is traveling home. We've been gone for a little over a month. By the end of the trip we will have traveled by: train, bus, car, bicycle, tuk tuk, elephant, sea kayak, motorcycle, boat, walking, and 14 seperate flights. We've stayed in hotels that have ranged from $15 a night to $50 a night and bought food from both street vendors and top end restaurants. It's been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot of lessons from this journey that will stay with me throughout my life, I think. Traveling is an interesting thing; it's fun and exciting, but at the same time tense or tedious. Today, for example, we spend about ten hours waiting in the Seoul airport. It's worth it in the end, though, because tonight I'll get to sleep in my own bed. My very own bed.

Thanks for reading our blog over the past month. We've really enjoyed posting and reading your comments. I guess that's it from us, as the "Fishtrip" draws to a close.

Here's one more photo:



I know! He shaved off the 'stache!

We are back in Bangkok and getting ready to return to the USA on Saturday. I have to admit that I am getting ready to go home. The sad part is that we are just getting used to the beds here in asia which are slightly softer and a little more even then the bed of a pickup truck. We are tired of asian cuisine which has an infinite number of variations of noodles and rice but in a uniquely asian fashion all kind of tastes the same. We almost went to McDonalds yesterday but decided to hold out for a real burger when we get home (or at least to San Francisco).

Bangkok is cooler than when we left a month ago or we are finally getting used to the heat. There is quite a bit of political unrest because the prime minister made billions of dollars on a telecommunications sale of his private company, and the Thai people are unhappy. We need to stay out of the center of town where demonstrations are taking place. It is more a matter of convenience than personal safety but very difficult to get around. We have also noticed that the tuk-tuks have disappeared. Maybe they know something the taxi drives dont know.

Bangkok has not been our favorite location to visit so it will be easy to leave from here. Today we are going down to Kohsan Road the famous hippie hangout to look around and maybe do a little shopping. On our last day we might leave Bangkok and visit the bridge over the river Kwai built by the allied prisoners during the second world war.

Then home.

We are still in Koh Samui. Yesterday we went to a monkey show and it was, well, look at the photos and we'll leave it up to you. It's probably better left to your imaginations than having someone try to describe it to you. Anyway, just to make this clear, rock and roll is not dead at the Koh Samui Monkey Theater (where did I put that gun--for me, not the monkeys). Today we were hanging around a waterfall and some guy offered us a cheap elephant ride (special early morning deal) so we went for another trek through the jungle. The best part was that there was a baby elephant that we got to see before. It was about waist high, but when I got next to it for a photo, it head-butted me and nearly knocked me over. The guy offered to sell the baby to us for only $5,000. Mom, if you're reading this, can we buy a baby elephant? We also rode around the entire island on our rented motorbikes today. It's mainly coconut plantations and beautiful beaches with a sprinkling of seedy bars and restaurants. The island was settled by ethnic chinese who came to be coconut farmers. They were the ones who trained the monkeys to pick the coconuts, in case you were wondering.

Tomorrow we are going on a day trip to Koh Phangan, the neighboring island. It's the place where the europeans have their all-night, full moon raves once a month, and tomorrow is the big night. Don't worry, though. We come home on the 4:00 PM boat. The island is about 14 km away so hopefully we won't hear it all night.


The elephants are much better than the monkeys-better behaved and cleaner, I mean.



Like all rock and roll stars should be, he is kept on a very short leash.

In case we've presented this trip as nothing but good times and laughs, we should add a disclaimer here: it isn't always fun. True, we've had a lot of fun so far and I'm sure we will in the 9 days we have left, but travel can at times be a frustrating and annoying process. To get to Koh Samui (where we are now) for example, we had to take a bus ride that was supposed to be two hours on an air conditioned, luxury bus followed by a one hour ride on a ferry boat that showed movies. The bus ride turned out to be a three and a half hour ride on a bus that kept stopping every twenty minutes or so and had a broken air conditioning system. Once, the driver pulled over at a gas station to buy himself some ice cream while the fifty sweating westerners sat and waited for him to come back from his treat. Just to show you that retirement has relaxed my dad, not once during the trip did he get up to try to murder the driver, although I did have to restrain him at least twice. Then, when we got done with that ordeal, we borded the ferry that turned out to take another three hours. The ferry was full of european "hipsters" going to a full moon rave party that they have on one of the neighboring islands. Every row of seats was taken by one israeli and three soda cans, so if you tried to sit down someone would yell, "You can't sit there! That seat is taken!". Serenity now. Maybe that's what it's like to be Palestinian...

So, in case that little tale didn't get to the point as well as it should have, here are some things that we think everyone should know about traveling in south-east Asia:

1. Hotel rooms never look as good as they do on the internet--so pay one night at a time,
   
2. Never shake hands with anyone on the street you don't know (this is for both sanitary and commercial reasons)
   
3. Never take a taxi, bus, ferry, scooter or any type of transport unless the fare is negotiated in advance (and don't put your bags in the trunk.)
   
4. Remember, chances are you're arguing with a salesperson over pennies. It may just be better to give in.
   
5. The battle goes to the biggest, strongest and fastest. Lines don't exist, so don't be afraid to push people away.
   
6. The more they say "okay okay", the worse it's going to be. More than four "okays" means keep walking.
   
7. Never hire a fishing guide who chews coca leaves all day. Trust us, we learned that the hard way.
   

Here are some more photos:


This is one of Koh Samui. It's a bigger island, and it's very very beautiful here.



"I am not a man! I am an elephant!"--Mark Fishler



For sarah, a vietnamese lucky dog

A large percentage of the tourists here are from Germany. After being around them for the past month, we've made a few interesting observations. For example, at the beach, it is very difficult to tell the middle-aged German men from the middle-aged German women. They both have almost identical body shapes and they wear the exact same swimwear. It's also impossible to tell by distinguishing marks like tattoos or body piercings. From the back, you couldn't do it. Also, the color of the swimwear doesn't help either, as the males also tend to like the pastels. Today we rode on a tour bus with a German federal police officer. He specialized in observing criminal activity all around Germany. I wanted to ask him how he does it, but I was too afraid.

We're in Ao Nang now, and we went on an elephant safari. My dad finally met people who didn't say "you so big!" to him. It was a really cool experience riding on the back of an indian elephant. They live to be 80 or 90 years old in the wild, and the guide told us that elephants cost around $40,000 in Thailand. They also eat around 250 KG a day. After we rode them, we fed them pineapple and banana.

When we finished our elephant ride, we went sea kayaking through a canyon with thousand foot cliffs on each side and yes, sarah, we saw monkeys. By the way, there's a monkey school here. They teach the monkeys to climb up trees and harvest coconuts for plantations. My dad says that if I can keep my grade point average up, I might be able to go to graduate school there.

We're on the downhill slope of our trip, and we smell like we've slipped a couple of times. I promise that we will get laundry done before we get home.

We're at Phi Phi island now. It's the place where they filmed the movie "The Beach", if you ever saw that. The island is dumbell shaped, so really it's kind of two seperate mountain peaks with a narrow stip of sand connecting the two. The town is built on that strip of sand. It's really nice here because the town is so small that there are no cars here and everybody rides bikes or walks.

Yesterday we went fishing. We booked a full day trip, 9 AM to 4 PM, and took a long-tailed boat around the island. We only caught bait fish all day. As for the bait fish, my dad and I only caught about 5 or 6 of those. We aren't the world's greatest fishermen. I guess that's what you'd call "American Morning Luck".

The town here has recovered very well after the tsunami killed 3,000 people here and wiped out a good part of the town. They've rebuilt everything (pretty much) and judging from photos of the town as it used to be, it looks much nicer now. The people still haven't recovered, though. The ones we've talked to say it isn't the same living here afterwards. We hiked to the top of one of the mountains this morning. It was a beautiful walk and we got some photos of the island.

This is Phi Phi island. The tsunami covered the whole town.




The ill-fated vessel we went fishing on.

We've decided to follow the advice given to us by my brother Nate. We're in Phuket right now, and it's the most touristy place I've seen on our trip so far. I think I might go crazy if one more person offers me a suit, massage or tuk tuk rides and we've only been here since 8:30 yesterday night. Basically, this place is for tourists; we are travelers. However, we have had fun ruining what's called "morning luck" for all the chinese merchants. Here's how it goes: They believe that, in order to have a good sales day, they have to make the first sale early in the morning. I should mention here that they force us to come in. We aren't doing this just because we're jerks. They force us in and then say things like "Must Buy! Morning Luck! Early Good Price For You!". That's when we say "No thanks. Not interested". Then they get mad at us for not buying their stuff. Then we get mad at them. They say "where are you from?" and we say "Germany" and walk out.

Phuket could be really beautiful. There are all these long white sand beaches all over the coasts and large mountains in the middle of the penninsula. Instead of being a tropical paradise, it's just concrete high rise hotels and stores selling the same low-quality merchandise. It's just another example of what too many tourist dollars do to a place. I'm sure some people really love it here, but I don't think it's for us.