Phuket is a small island off the south west of Thailand. It’s a pretty touristy spot and one of the more popular islands (IMO).

We decided to go to phuket and stay in the patong area, the most touristy. I personally don’t mind the tourist spots all that much, at least in terms of short term stays. Touristy spots usually mean a lot around there (be it night life, food, massages, shops, whatever).

Our hotel was in a pretty nice spot…about 5 minutes from the beach. First day we just chilled, tired from the flight/etc. our place was nice, aside from expensive internet.

Not too much to add about our stay in phuket, at least in the patong area. We hung at the beach a ton, just chilled out. Phuket’s beaches were really really nice, some of the best I’ve seen in Thailand. We also went to phuket national park, a large area in the northern part of the island. It was a large rainforest with some bigass trees and streams. We got lost along one way, couldn’t find the path. We exited the trail then decided to go back and retrace our steps. We still couldn’t find the main path, so we followed the stream upwards like a bunchve idiots, slipping in mud, water, and sand along the way. We eventually found the trail (the trail was marked by a bunchve signs, we apparently skipped one or two of them in our off-trail hike) and continued on. Overall a fun time.

We decided to stay a few more days in phuket, meeting up w/ other roomie’s friends. They lived near the chalong area, which is the southern area of phuket. Our second place wasn’t as nice as the first…while there werent’ huge qualms, the location sucked (it was far from both the main road and more importantly, the beach), and not much was around it. It almost seemed like we were on a different island to be honest, as we didn’t go to the beach nearly as often (since it was like a 15 minute drive or w/e).

The first day in chalong we decided to get motorbikes. Man I suck ass at driving these things. I am also psychologically warped wrt bikes as well, since near the end of last semester my bike slid across wet pavement and I busted my chin pretty bad. I was hesitant to ride the bike and held off for the first day or so (which was fine bc my other roomie and I decided to split initially). Man I’m a big pussy.

We met up with andy and pat, two dudes from the UK. They knew my roomie from poker and are both staying in phuket. Fun time, hung out at a lot of reggae bars and such. Second day in chalong I get a ticket for being a fucking dumbass while driving my bike. There was a large circle of traffic around cones, I got confused (idiotically couldn’t wrap my mind around the whole stay on the left thing) and went the wrong way, getting stopped in traffic, then getting charged 500baht for the ticket. Man I’m a moron. We also decided to go snorkeling in phuket…I still have to develop the pictures that I took from my underwater camera (hopefully they turned out). Near the end we saw this gigantic badass moray eel…I wanted to get close to it but was afraid it’d come out of its cave and bite my head off.

We decided to go to phi phi next. Phi phi is another set of small islands nearby and was even more touristy than phuket. Even still, we heard there were some great beaches and scuba diving there.

Our first few nights we stayed in some ghetto ass bungalows that were cheap. Big mistake on our parts…not only was there no AC, but the location sucked a big fat dick. We had to take like a 20minute+ boat ride out to get to the main part of the island, which over rid the $ we saved from booking it initially. After sweating like a bunchve afghan whores, we got the hell out of there and went back to the main pier. We also rock climbed the first day in (or second, I cant remember). Rock climbing on phi phi was pretty fun, and our guide was hilarious. I couldn’t finish the last climb for one reason or another, but my other roomie got it.

view from one of the tops-

We went to this reggae bar a ton. This reggae bar was unlike others we’ve been to, in that there was a large muay thai boxing ring in the middle of it, where you could fight both randoms as well as friends. The fights were 3 one minute rounds with like a 5 minute break in between. While this doesn’t sound like much, every second seems like an eternity in any ring, especially when most participants aren’t trained/conditioned in the least.

There was also a scheduled fight each night. It was pretty evident that the two boxers were fighting a fixed/staged fight…that is, the fighters were rolling with punches and kicks/etc. despite this fact, each of those fake fighters would wreck anyone else who stepped into the ring and it wouldn’t be close.

So roomie decided to go get scuba cert, took him 2 days. My other roomie and I chilled at the beach mainly…he was still fighting a nasty case of sunburn from phuket (lol white people).

Sunburned roomie decides he wants to fight on the last night we are there. I’m going to put it all up on youtube later.

I was just chilling at the bar, friend put his name in to fight a random. He points to this skinny bitch looking guy and murmurs “this guy’s still thinking about fighting…he doesn’t’ know yet. He says he’s never fought before in his life, I’m going to wreck him”

10 minutes or so pass and I hear the announcer talk, the crowd’s attention diverted to the center stage. My friend is dressed blue gloves and headgear and his opponent in red. He looks up at me and shakes his head furiously, pointing to his opponent and still shaking his head. This was not the same guy who was mulling over the fight decision, but a larger guy.

I knew from the sound of the bell that things were not going to be good. The guy was clearly experienced in at least some form of fighting (be it boxing, muay thai, etc). his kicks looked devastating and my friend was scrounging around for dear life.

The last two rounds went smoother than the first. Both sides got in a few punches, but no huge damage was exchanged. Red clearly won and my friend looked exhausted. He walked up to me (I was filming on the top floor)-

“so instead of matching me up with that skinny pussy, they put me against some 200 pound irish killing machine”

“haha what do you mean? I mean, the guy looked good but he didn’t look that great”

“he’s been training off and on in muay thai for the last 8 years. He was going so soft on me”

“jesus Christ. What a freak”

“he could have ended it in the first round at any point if he wanted to…I felt like a bitch” he had a shiner and couldn’t really walk much the next few days due to the few kicks the guy threw.

We stay the rest of the night, watching some other hilarious fights. Our last night in phi phi resulted in me losing 2k baht (~$65 or so) on fucking rigged fights. I should have won a ton of them but for some reason that retarded judge picked friend’s fighter instead of mine. Fucking horse shit. also didn’t get many pics of the fight at all since i filmed the entire thing, will put them up on youtube when i get back home w/ better internet.

By this time it was about time to head to the full moon party, on the other side of Thailand. It was in koh phagnan (spelling?). FMP is about 10-30k people on a beach going insane.

It was a pretty big bitch to get there. We had to take a ferry to krabi, a bus across Thailand for a few hours to the other port, then a last ferry to the island. It was tiring as fuck and we nearly missed the bus to the last pier. The ferrys are also a gigantic clusterfuck, and if you ever take one of those things, try your best to put your stuff in an area that you know instead of with the rest of the stuff. Basically, they pile everyone’s shit in one huge area, then after the ship lands, dump it all out. You have to find your shit in this gigantic mess with little light. Clusterfuck is the true word for this scene.

Anyways, went to FMP for a night, was fun. My alcohol endurance is a fucking joke (both in general and currently) and I passed out multiple times throughout the night, eventually sobering up while going insane to techno music. Other than the FMP, koh phangan is kindve a shit hole, not a ton to do there. Pretty desolate island, at least the part we were in. the beaches weren’t as nice as some of the previous spots either. But the FMP was fun and I’m sure you have to try it at least once while in Thailand.

Last night there we decided to go to a muay thai fight. Unlike the bar fake fights, these were real. I had been slowly paying my roomie off from losing all the other fight bets.

I started to lose nearly all the fucking bets. There was a fight between two chicks. Naturally, I took the one who looked partially like a boy, hoping that she actually was a ladyboy. Unfortunately the other kneed her way to victory and I was stuck again.

I pretty much lost every fight. The hilarious one was where I took this fat fuck woman who looked like she was some war goddess from thai fairytales. She sported a SINGHA shirt and looked ready to kick some ass. I decided that I needed to change my betting strategy since I had previously been taking the skinnier fighters (in hopes that they would be faster and more agile). Unfortunately, the bigger fighters were outmuscling the smaller ones, and my strategy clearly wasn’t working.

So I chose fat fuck in the blue (my friend and I decided that loser gets to pick the next fight, I think this is a fair way to do it). Friend’s fighter was also stout but seemed softer.

It was a fucking massacre. No, not in the way I would have preferred. From the moment the thai music sounded, my fat ass fighter was doomed. Not only could she barely throw a punch, but her kicks were so slow and pathetic, I don’t even know what the point of throwing them were. She probably got knocked down about 20+ times and by the end, the crowd was howling in laughter. This crazy azn behind me was nearly crying at the sight. I continued to fume with bitterness, both at how pathetic my fighter was (it wasn’t even a fucking fight) and how poorly I was at choosing fighters to begin.

not really the best picture but it was dark and you can already see the fatass about to topple over.

So having almost erased my 2k debt, it was back at 2600 by the end of the night…up until the last fight. We decided to go double or nothing on the last one.

Things weren’t going my way at the opening round. I took the blue fighter, who looked like he had longer limbs and taller. The opening round was pretty pathetic, as red kicked him repeatedly (and blue did nothing).

They were tied up in the corner and a loud CRACK resounded throughout the stadium. Red collapsed instantly and didn’t move (I thought he was dead). The movement was too fast to truly confirm, but we think it was either a knee or like an elbow or something that floored red. Man I wish we had a replay there. Red didn’t move for like another minute and blue obviously won, thus erasing my debt.

My friends and I all decided to go our separate ways, at least for now, eventually meeting back up in bkk later. We still had about 10 days till we fly out of bkk on the 18^th.

Fighting friend wanted to go back up to bkk, he loved that place. Other friend wanted to go to koh tao, a neighboring island near koh phangan. I personally wanted to go to railay beach in krabi, supposedly one of the best rock climbing spots in the world.

My first night was a clusterfuck. The winds were blowing like crazy and I wasn’t able to get to railay. Despite railay beach being a part of the mainland, you still can’t get to it by car…have to take a taxi boat. So the first night I was stuck in Ao nang and forced to get a room there. I met a poker player at the bus station (the guy grinded micro tourneys and sngs) and we hung out the rest of the night.

Traveling alone is definitely different. I made a lot of idiot mistakes that I probably wouldn’t have made had I been with others. I still didn’t really have any idea where my hotel was that I booked online a few days previously was…some of the hotels on krabi were titled ‘railay resort’ despite not actually being on railay…it was confusing as fuck.

So after wandering around and getting a boat to railay beach, I wandered around, tired as hell. Lugging my shit around was a pain and I was ready to just book some random place and write off the $100 I spent on that hotel. That place would be a sort of mythical palace that I could never reach, something like a shangri la.

After wandering around, lugging my shit around, I just booked this other place. Note to self- don’t book more than one night at a time in weird places. It’s not smart. I idiotically booked 2 nights and unpacked all my shit, took a nap.

I walked railay. Railay isn’t the nicest beach, at least railay east. Railay as a whole doesn’t offer a tremendous amount of stuff to do, and its more of a relax/wind down place than any other. I walked around and eventually did find my hotel that I booked previously. Seeing as I got no refund if I canceled my reservation, I decided to just check in, maybe using two spots or whatever if needed. Kindve stupid, but I figured I was sort of freerolling in a way…if the new place was nicer, I could just stay there.

Turns out that it was indeed nicer…a lot nicer than the other shit hole place I booked. And a better location as well. I decided that I was going to man up and lug the rest of my shit back to the new place…while this seems like a stupid thing (or not even a difficult task), I was probably walking about half a mile away with all my shit in a tired state. I wrote off the 600 baht that I paid and just chalked it up to me being a dumbass/me deserving to lose that money for being a retard and walked onwards.

I decided to go rock climbing the day after. Railay and tonsai beach are known for their rock climbing spots, and the limestone cliffs are really really fantastic for outdoor climbing. I did a half day climb.

it was a great time. i did most of the easy ones pretty easily. they rated like 5.7-5.9 i think. the last climb i did was said to be a 6A (french rated)…but when i completed it (after falling a bunch, still finished though), my instructor said it was really a 6B+ and he lied to me. i’m not sure if i would have done it had he said that before so good deal. 6B+ turns out to be like a 5.10c in the american scale. i probably can do 6A or so, thats probably where i’m at.

some other pics-


anyways, dont want to write any more now. will finish up last bit of bkk later sometime. and post some of said pics (ladyboys/fight video/etc) later. cheers.