“Eat Shop Tan”: My spontaneous Asian adventure – Part III

Continued from Part I and Part II

Continuing on the adventure, where I check out a fire dancing show on Koh Phi Phi island, have my feet nibbled by tiny fish at “Doctor Fish”, ride an elephant in Krabi and end off the trip in Hong Kong in a slight whimper!

Day Six: Free Day

Another free day to do whatever we wanted to do. What I wanted to do: be a beach bum and shop. And probably find wifi because since going to Koh Phi Phi, I hadn’t been able to get on wifi and I was having withdrawal symptoms.

While our hotel was right on the beach, there was also a constant barrage of boats docking there and I didn’t really want to be swimming only to be hit by a boat. Long Beach was down the way by the hotel so I made the trek to that beach, as it was a lot more secluded.

And it was! I could honestly stay there forever.

BTW these are my knees… my mom thought it was err, something else.

Then I went to grab food. Surprisingly, not pad thai again but chicken satay with my newly found Thailand obsession, a mango shake.

It was a beautiful view.

I walked around town, shopping and came across Doctor Fish. Little tiny fish that eat off your dead skin — 15 mins for 100 baht.

It felt a bit weird at first, but you get used to the nibbling after a few minutes.

We went to Hippies Bar for some open mic (brutal) and fire dancing show.

A bit disturbing to me, as a person from cold climates, is the amount of geckos that show up at night. They were all creepy-crawling around my door! I had my fingers and toes crossed that they wouldn’t somehow get inside the room and, god forbid, into my bed or the shower WHILE I WAS SHOWERING!

Also, observation about the island, everyone seems to have a Hello Kitty bike.

Day Seven: Off to Ao Nang, Krabi

Last few hours on Phi Phi, I mainly just leeched free wifi from a restaurant with another tour buddy, eating some mango sticky rice whilst doing so (and of course, my mango shake). After leeching off the wifi for a better part of the day, we went to the Thai massage place. I had a “face massage” which was kind of like a facial with the amount of goop they were putting on and off my face.

We then took another 1.5 hour ferry to Krabi. I listened to, on repeat, OneRepublic’s Good Life — not to sound lame, but it was the official soundtrack for this vacation and I liked to imagine a montage in my head of the sights I was observing with this song in the background. That way, when I want to re-live this trip and its awesome moments, just press play on the song. Nostalgia in a snap!

We sailed for awhile and then stopped. Turns out, for some unknown reason, they had boarded us into a boat that couldn’t dock at the port so OUT MILES AWAY FROM LAND, we had to get off the boat we were on and get onto a boat that came up beside us. A tiny plank was dropped and we, with our hand held luggage, had to leap across to the second boat.

Our hotel was nice and modern, much improvement from the previous Phi Phi island hotel.

That night, we went to the beach to light these hot air balloon lanterns (or “sky lanterns“) that filled up with hot air and would then lift up into the sky. One was supposed to make a wish as it was lifting off and I was more concerned with my fingers getting burned, so I made my wish hastily.

After dinner, we went to Chang Bar, which had this amusing flyer.

Day Eight: I rode an elephant, bitch!

‘Scuse the language but I was pretty damn excited, I got to ride an elephant! It was awesome! No amount of exclamation points can show how excited I was!

We went to Nosey Parker, which is an elephant reserve that brings in elephants that have had their tusks taken by evil poachers. They were beautiful creatures and very calm, no random elephant stompings.

An elephant taking a whiz RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!

Trekking through the forest.

On the elephant! I’m not gonna lie, during this whole exercise, I was holding on for dear life to the bars and profusely sweating through my palms. So much so that my camera, which I was also gripping, stopped functioning — likely due to all the sweat leaking through. I was scared of falling off! Needless to say, when the elephant wrangler (?) asked if I wanted to sit on its neck, I politely declined.

View from atop the elephant.

Afterwards, we got to feed the elephants!

Getting back, we had more free time. Went out for lunch with fellow travelers and had pad thai again (and again, say it with me, MANGO SHAKE!)

I went shopping with them for awhile and then I disbanded to go get myself a Thai massage, something I was looking forward to for awhile. The lady made parts of my body crack that I didn’t know could crack. It wasn’t too painful and felt good afterwards. 1 hour of a Thai massage for 200 baht (equivalent of about $6ish CAD).

I wandered around for awhile. Came across this pimpin’ tuk tuk.

Speaking of pimpin’, OUR HOTEL HAD A PRIVATE HOT TUB ON THE BALCONY! A fact I only discovered later when someone was mentioning it and I was outraged that I didn’t have a hot tub too (but I did).

A personal hot tub with a view!

Other observations:

A creepy leaf bug found by our hotel lobby.

And Ronald McDonald bows to people here.

Last meal that night was a pad thai with shrimp (there was a mix up with the orders, oh well, still good).

Day Ten: Goodbyes to new friends and goodbye to Thailand

Next morning, I had to depart earlier than most people in my group because my flight was earlier. At breakfast, I said my goodbyes and then boarded a personal transport to the airport with two other people and the nuttiest driver, ever! At first, he just kept freaking out about how there were now 3 of us and prior, it was supposed to be 2 of us to drive to the airport early. Someone also had to leave early so added to the numbers. He couldn’t wrap his head around this at all! After eventually sorting this number mix up, he was relatively calm and quiet… that didn’t last for long. Suddenly, maybe the Red Bull kicked in, but he got super energetic. Here’s some secret video I took of the hilariousness.

Then we left Thailand, the airport runway being right along the shore. 🙁

December 23 – 25th

I got back to Hong Kong and it was rather chilly. By “rather chilly”, I mean it was about 12 degrees Celsius and this is considered BALMY back in Canada but going from 30+ degree weather to that, I caught a cold. That, or I caught one of the circulating bugs that were infecting people on my tour.

The last few days in Hong Kong, my last few days on vacation, were terrible. I felt like death. My mom got so panicked about me getting a fever and not being able to board the plane the next day for my lovely 15+ hour flight back home, that she called my aunt and made her take me to the doctor on Christmas day to get checked up. Let me tell you about healthcare systems. In Phuket, someone on the tour had to get stitches and if memory serves me correctly, it was under $2000 baht so roughly under $64 CAD. In Hong Kong, it costs money to see the doctor, unlike in Canada, but you get all your prescription drugs right there at the doctor’s office and it’s included in the cost. My consultation and all these drugs cost just $260 HKD. That is roughly $34 CAD! Prescription fees alone would cost about $10 and you wouldn’t get that many drugs. I even got lozenges from the doc!

December 26th

Bright and early morning, I went to Hong Kong International Airport for the long flight back home. Unfortunately, it required a layover in Detroit and Homeland Security required us to go through the screening and take our checked baggage (which, may I add, cost me an extra $75 USD to check a second luggage in) out to then recheck back in to its final destination. Seriously, never again. Flying via Canada or direct next time. The savings weren’t worth it.