This is the first part of the trip that has involved chocolate truffles. They arrived on a tray that was also bearing apples, oranges, and bananas. Flowers came a few minutes later. We ate the truffles on one of our four balconies from the 59th floor overlooking the massive Bangkok skyline and spent the night relaxing on couches under a glass chandelier, enjoying a few glasses of wine as the city hummed around us. It was a fine way to cap off a day of travel from Kho Phi Phi.
But this demands some explanation and far more backtracking. Last Friday I left Chiang Mai to meet up with a few friends in Bangkok. We dove head first into the nightlife of Sukhumvit, eating meals at streetside restaurants, exploring dive bars, and getting lost in this chaotic city of neon lights and pounding bass. Saturday afternoon we bought tickets to a Muay Thai match and saw Thai boxers beat the crap out of each other to the wail of strange music and the crowd roared over the flurry of fists and sweat and crippling knockouts. It was unlike any sporting event I had ever seen in the sense of sheer speed and violence.
Up next on our journey was Koh Phi Phi, the tiny island best known as the setting of the movie The Beach. We spent four days and three nights on the island and it was a strange mix of local culture, tourist sleaze, and some of the most striking natural beauty I have ever seen. Turquoise water kissed the sand with green rocks and mountains studding the landscape. The streets twisted between two bays, lined with restaurants, tee shirt shops, and day trip vendors who shouted at tourists from their stoops. There were no cars and very few motorbikes, and the small town was filled mostly with people walking from place to place and people on bicycles weaving through the crowds shouting "Beep Beep!" as they passed.
We hiked the surrounding hills and kayaked in the bay for the first few days, and tried to avoid the beachside tourist traps at night, which were essentially like the Jersey Shore with fire dancers. But then, one beautiful day, we decided to take a day trip on a boat with a bubbly French tour guide and about 15 other travelers. They drove us out to the bay where we snorkeled around the reef for a while and leaped from the top of the boat's roof into the water. They took us to an island cove surrounded by mountains where we lied in the sand and walked through the jungle camps of the rangers who maintained the island.
At night we ate fried fish and rice on the deck of the boat under the stars. I've been living in cities for so long that I forgot what a secluded starry night looked like, and how awe-inspiring it can be. But that night came the favorite moment of this trip.
We knew that we would be swimming with the bioluminescent plankton that night, but we didn't quite know what to expect from it. We couldn't see them as we fixed our goggles and snorkels at the stern of the boat, and I was starting to doubt if it was going to be as beautiful of a sight as the one I had created in my head. I jumped in, but still saw nothing. I popped my head above water and heard our guide shouting "Shake Shake Shake!" I ducked my head below and waved my arms around to see beads of light trailing each of my movements. I wiggled my fingers and the lights danced and flickered like sparks in the sea. I kicked and shook and waved my arms like a conductor in the silent world below the water and generated swirls and streams of light with each motion. The light was all I could see, an expanse of blackness and silence broken by the stars I made with my body. It was a dream.
It was a beautiful way to end our trip, but our travels brought us back to Bangkok last night, where my friend was somehow able to land an affordable rate for a suite in the Lebua at State Tower hotel, a ludicrously luxurious hotel best known (and heavily marketed as) the hotel from The Hangover II. We're taking these days to rest and recover. One of my friends is pretty sick and I'm just exhausted from two weeks of traveling so far. I leave for Cambodia tomorrow and will once again be on my own, which scares me a bit. I still love living in the unexpected and being in a place where everything is new and different, but this week with my friends was great in that it brought me a sense of home. I've started to get bouts of homesickness here and there, missing a few things specifically, but overwhelmingly I miss the sense of familiarity. I miss waking up with the knowledge of my surroundings, a familiar place to sit and think, and the sense of control I have with my thoughts when I'm not constantly being bombarded with new sights and smells and information every second. But things are certainly better than they are worse, and the thirst for adventure still tingles. Off to Cambodia for Chapter Two.
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