The Hangover 3, Day 1

Koh Phi Phi

And so begins the tale of some of the 3 most ridiculous days of my life. This post will cover day 1, so stay tuned for days 2 and 3!

On the morning of December 29, I was to meet Karima in Krabi – where we would then take the ferry to Koh Phi Phi. A few days beforehand, I had asked the guest house owner if I could arrange a minivan ticket from Khao Sok to Krabi, and she said no problem and to remind her the day before. So on the evening of the 29^th, I went to remind her and she said that she was going to make the booking and things wouldn’t be a problem. I proceeded to blindly enjoy my evening with dinner with the 2 Americans, and then learning to play 3 Card Rummy with the Austrians. However, just as I was going to bed, one of the guest house employees came up to me and said they were unable to get me a minivan ticket, as they were sold out. I was not pleased... But at this point, there was nothing I could do. There was another way to get to Krabi – I could catch a big bus to a town called Takua Pa, and from there, a bus to Krabi. So I figured it wouldn’t be so bad. HA!

I got up early on December 29, and got a ride to the bus stop from the hotel staff (who were very helpful and friendly while I was there, except for the minivan issue). The bus was supposed to come around 9 am – I arrived around 8:30am. I had to wait a bit over an hour for a bus to arrive. By this time, there were about 15-20 people waiting for a bus in that direction, and the bus that eventually came was destined for Phuket (a popular route). But I was determined to get on: I hurried to the front of the group and handed my bag to the attendant quickly. This is definitely one advantage to travelling alone! The bus was jam packed – I ended up standing in the stairwell. Fortunately, Takua Pa was only about 40 minutes away.

Once I arrived in Takua Pa, I asked a bus station worker for a bus to Krabi, and they put me on a bus. However, once we had driven for about 10 minutes, I found out that this bus DIDN’T go to Krabi after all. It did stop at a town basically on the way to Krabi, and I could catch another bus from there. At least it wasn’t going somewhere out of the way, which would make my travels even LONGER. Yet still, aat this point I just felt like sobbing quietly to myself. SIDENOTE: The last ferry to Koh Phi Phi leaves Krabi at 3pm, so it was a bit of a race against the clock. I really did NOT want to end up stranded in Krabi. This bus was also a bus that didn’t have air-conditioning, so all the windows were open. That didn’t stop the driver from going at least 100km/h. I was happy were going fast, but it felt like I was riding on an open air rocket ship – when I got off, my face was quite raw from the wind. We arrived in the other town just as a bus going to Krabi pulled in, so I immediately hopped on that. It was also very crowded, but a young Thai woman offered to share her seat with me. The entire time, I was checking my location on my iPhone GPS and thinking “Ok, so if it took 15 minutes to get that far, it’s about another 3 times that distance to Krabi, so I should be there in 45 minutes” and so on.

Around 1:50pm, I finally arrived in Krabi. As usual, I was swarmed by taxi drivers asking ”where you go?”. At first, I just replied “to the bathroom”, as I really had to pee, was very frazzled, and was not feeling very nice. After a few minutes, I hopped on a motorcycle taxi, and was on my way to the port. It was actually quite a nice ride – there wasn’t much traffic, and Krabi is quite scenic. It was refreshing after all those buses. I arrived at the port around 2:10pm and bought my ticket. Hooray! The ferry took about 2 hours, and I met Karima at the pier around 5pm. I slept most of the way on the ferry, as I was exhausted. Once I arrived, I dumped my stuff in our room, put on my bathing suit and headed to the beach. I also really wanted a beer. On the beach, we met up with Karima’s orientation friends and a group of Finns and Norwegians who looked more like Australian surfers – tan and with bleach blond, long hair. After a bit of wandering, we met up with a group of 3 Australians Karima’s friends had been hanging out with. They wanted to go to a fancy restaurant for dinner, so Karima and I went to our hotel to prepare our drinks for the evening, and then had dinner at a more standard Thai restaurant. After my fiasco of a day, I was definitely ready to get my drink on.

We met up with the orientation-Aers/Australians at a nice restaurant by the water. The thing about Koh Phi Phi is things can be quite expensive: food, drinks, accommodation. You can find things on the cheap, but you need to look a bit harder than most other Thai places. After dinner, we decided to head to the beach – it was the full moon the previous day, and we were lured to a beach club with the promise of body paint and fire shows. While we were walking around, a local basically shoved a monkey (a gibbon, I think) in my arms, and asked if I wanted to pay to take a picture with it. I declined, but it was still fun holding the monkey – it was very soft and fuzzy. And also wearing a shirt and diaper... teehe. 

We arrived on the northern beach, and were able to immediately find body paint. The guy working there painted quite an elaborate scene featuring butterflies on my arm – I wish I had gotten a picture of it! On the beach, we ran into a big group of people from my orientation. One girl had her own supply of body paint, so I had another piece done on my face. At this point, the fire show started. This fire show was much more...ahem...audience participatory than the one I was at on Koh Samet. It included skipping with a flaming rope, jumping through a fire hoop, and limbo-ing with a fire bar. Probably not the best combination with copious drinking, now that I think about it. I did all three, and spent a lot of time doing the skipping. It was exhilarating, that’s for sure. But a lot of fun too!

After a bit, the party started picking up on the beach - it spilled out from the club onto the sand. It was quite amazing, especially considering how it was late December. We were dancing like crazy in the sand and water. At various times, we went to get apply more body paint. One of the Australian guys was with us for a while, but he vanished after a bit. It was like a huge group party – even one was just dancing with everyone else, it that makes any sense. I had A LOT of fun!

PS Apparently body paint is stronger than laundry detergent, as it is still all over the tank-top I was wearing. Memories, I guess!