the land of 1,000 smiles

so it has managed to rain for about the third day in a row here.. and now honestly i dont mind that so much other than the fact that they don't do the massages on the beach when the rain is pissing down.

massages on the beach-- thats right. all for 200 baht (roughly $5). doesnt that sound nice? i think that is the selling point for convincing anyone to come to thailand.

last i left off in patong beach we had still quite a bit of time left. we spent some time on a couple of different islands-- phi phi and pang nga. both were really incredible. phi phi was more beaches (first pic at the top) and snorkelling type whereas pang nga was more mangroves and mountainous types of views. and monkeys... monkeys... tons of fricking monkeys. both islands were really incredible.

so we are in ko samui now which the previous post alluded to. as i had wished before, we managed to get a quiet place on bhoput beach. by quiet, i mean it is nearly desolate. the beach is quite small, but as you walk further down there are some other resort-type places which are just screaming for me to come back to in years to come. continue down the beach and there is a fishermans village which actually has some world-renowned restaurants. apparently the locals tell us that this is the up and coming area for tourists. currently, chewang beach (an area about 5 km away) is taking the top spot, but i couldnt be bothered hanging out there as much-- it resembles quite closely patong beach with all the commotion.

amidst the rain and quiet time, i picked up a used book at a book shack. lord knows what enticed me to grab this little pot of gold off the shelf-- its called "the politics of experience" by r.d. laing. its extremely heavy on the psychology end (if you are reading lamia, perhaps you can confirm this guys notoriety?). i damn near have to read every page 16 times to take it all in. i stand up after reading the thing and i am dizzy... however, it does parrallel a lot of the thoughts i have in life. it talks a lot about personal "experience" and how our "experience" of others relates to the way we lead our own personal life and how it affects the way we limit our existence as human beings in relation to others "experience" and our "experience" of them (which of course isnt a good thing). ok, ok.. thats too much. haha..

we went for a trek through the rainforest yesterday. "intense" would be about the best word to describe our little adventure. there was a giant waterfall tucked in the middle of this rainforest and we decided it was a fantastic idea to climb up the rocks to the top as opposed to the nicely fenced off path.. brilliant.

...now, it was a challenging climb/hike but it was pretty fun as well. at left you can see the time we took to take our glamour shots for the summer 2006 patagonia catalog. we are going to send the photos in next week. bryan lost his watch whilst falling on a rock which was a bummer, but other than bruises and a lot of soreness i think we all came out ok.

and see, i continue to get shit for my stylish swimming apparel. but all the hipsters are going for these new "board shorts" and i couldnt be bothered with that. i'll gladly stick with my 1989 vintage hawaiian print trunks. thank you.

thailand is pretty big on their sports-- thai boxing is of the brutal variety (roundhouse kicks to the face and spinning punches-- its like mortal combat) but we happened across a more friendly sport called dah kroa. i have certainly butchered the spelling, but this is one of the more amazing things i have seen in a while. its like volleyball with your feet and head playing with an oversized hacky sack. we found a match one night and were just absolutely amazed at the way these guys were hopping around and kicking back and forth. when they go to spike the ball, the "spiker" physically gets his legs above his head to kick the ball down extremely hard on the other side of the net. its unbelievable-- the pictures dont even give justice.

other than that, been doing a whole lot of nothing-- which has been nice.

the full moon party is coming up tomorrow evening so we are really saving our guns to go all out for that. the boat takes us to the island about 8 pm and then picks us up at 8 am or thereabouts the next morning. accomodation is all booked, but your not supposed to sleep anyway.

more on that madness later.