MandyAndBryan.com

The Europeans and Aussies can party a hell of a lot better than we can, but Ko Pha Ngan is a ghost town just thirty-six hours after the full moon. The only people still here either live here, had to book five nights just to get a reservation, are still drunk, or waited until the trains were full to get tickets. We fall into the last group, but fortunately we’ll finally be leaving tomorrow.

After nearly a month of southern Thailand’s beaches, we’re finally heading inland to Bangkok. It’s actually not all that far inland, but at least there will be non-beach related activities. This means that I might actually not get skin cancer, although the tops of my legs are a bit red. I acquired some new swim trunks that are a bit shorter than my old ones (oh yes, I’m sporting euro-style daisy dukes) and therefore expose certain areas to the sun which have never seen it, and thus burn quickly. As Mandy put it, my legs look like Neopolitan ice cream, which, luckily enough, happens to be my favorite.

They say that the full moon sometimes makes people crazy, and here in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand it’s an excuse to get drunk and party. Thanks to a combination of the two, Bryan said he wanted to break up with me, but I should back up and tell the whole story…

We pre-partied and painted ourselves in fluorescent paints with some new friends of ours during which time Bryan and I consumed a bucket and a half (Bryan had the lion’s share of the second one). For those who are perhaps more civilized and aren’t sure what I mean when I say we drank a bucket, we literally drank booze from a bucket. They give you a 350mL bottle of Thai whiskey, a can of coke, and a can of redbull and then dump them all in a plastic bucket with ice and straws. It’s the sort of bucket you could make sandcastles with when you finished with it. I’m not sure what enterprising individual started this trend or what their intentions were, but it does seem to be a great way to cut down on waste from this gigantic brouhaha by eliminating what would otherwise be thousands of plastic cups.

Our group of Candians, Aussies, and Irish headed to the beach a little after 11, and the party seemed to be in full swing. The beach was jam packed with people are far as you could see. There were bucket sales people lining the beach and fire-twirlers every 100 feet or so. At some point, Bryan polished off bucket number 2 and went for round 3. I was dancing on a platform with the girls and took sips from someone else’s bucket. Sometime close to 2 (I think) Bryan decided that was the appropriate time to air out the tension and issues that have been brewing between us for weeks. As you can imagine, that’s a tough conversation to have when there is music thumping and you are shoulder to shoulder with a crowd of people. Bryan shared with me that he thought our problems had been going on for three months (for those of you keeping track, that’s how long we have been on the road), and I was dumbstruck. Since the noise was interfering with our ability to have a conversation as serious as it seemed we were about to have, I told Bryan I was going to head away from the beach and he was free to follow if he wanted to continue.

I walked back to the room and didn’t see Bryan behind me so I called my best friend hysterical. It’s a pretty desperate feeling to think you are in the middle of a break up on an island in Thailand. I had no idea if I’d travel a bit more on my own or go home to live with my dad until I could put my life back together since I had no car, no job, and my house is rented for 2 years. Hell, at this point, I didn’t know my ass from my elbow. I saw Bryan get back and go sit in the restaurant downstairs with the owner of the establishment and a couple other people so I walked back up to the room to continue our discussion.

Bryan rambled on not making much sense, but he definitely said the words “it’s over” more than once. He got really upset, told me he loved me and wanted to marry me, and never gave a reason as to why it was over. He went off on tangents about bald men (guy from downstairs) and hemmed and hawed over his feelings for me completely contradicting the it’s over statement. My fun night of partying was ruined, my trip around the world ruined, my relationship ruined and so I was just a tad angry. I got frustrated with Bryan’s inability to explain himself so I left again and told him to figure out what he needed to say and tell me when I get back. This time I called my dad and tried to explain what was going on; again, I was pretty hysterical. I remember telling him that trying to follow what Bryan was saying made me feel like I was on some kind of drug that was preventing me from connecting the dots or causing me to hallucinate. My dad calmed me down and told me to at least go back to Bangkok together and see if we can continue or if that would be it.

When I got back to the room, Bryan was either pretending to sleep or drifting in and out of it. I kicked him a few times because I was angry and wanted answers. Finally, I gave up on getting them and went to sleep. I woke up to a wet bed thanks to Bryan emptying his bladder of literally buckets of liquid and him swearing he loves me and has no recollection of the previous night’s events.

We are still together.

When I was a little girl, Nadia was my hero. Nadia was a Romanian gymnast (the first Olympian to score a perfect 10) and as a kid, I lived for gymnastics. I spent hours learning to tumble, walking on a four inch block of wood, and swinging from bars ripping the ever living shit out of my hands. I had so many injuries from gymnastics my mom worried that I might not survive childhood. Now, all I have to show for it is I can do a one-handed cartwheel without spilling my beer. So thanks Mom and Dad for all the time and money you spent carting me to and from gymnastics classes, I hope you are proud.

Also, a big shout out to the lovely ladies from my adult gymnastics class at the Marcus JCC. That class made me realize how old I really am.

We dedcided to take a course in Thai language since we plan to be here in Thailand 60-90 days.  Wow, Thai is hard.  Really hard.  After six hours of class, I feel both really proud that I can say long sentences in Thai like, “he does not want to go swimming there tomorrow”, and stupid because I can’t for the life of me pronnouce the word “work” in Thai (perhaps I have some subconsious aversion to work).

Like other Asian languages, in Thai tone can change the meaning of the word, and for those of us that are tone deaf this is a bit of a challenge.  Our teacher was very nice and patient and pointed out every time I was trying to say “come” I really said “dog.”  The problem is, the sound ‘maaa’ can mean three different things- if it goes up, it means dog, if it goes down it means come, if it stays level it means horse.  Apparently, I have a problem telling up from down because when I tried to say “we will come here” I really said, “we will dog here.”  It was especially frustrating for me because like a colorblind person who can’t tell red from green, I couldn’t tell a difference between what she was trying to get me to say and what I was saying.

In addition to not being able to grasp changes in tone at all, I also cannot for the life of me pronouce the sound ‘nga’.  It sounds sort of like what the Coneheads say when they are upset or what retarded kids say when they are frustrated (or happy or sleeping), and apparently I just can’t quite get it right.  Sometimes I’d make some weird sound and the teacher would say I did it, but I have no idea what I did to make that sound and when I tried to reproduce it I failed. 

On a more positive note, I can now count to 1 million in Thai, further proving that I am a 5 year old trapped in a 28 year old body.  In other good news, I only threatened to stab Bryan once during six hours of class.

Thailand has two things in abundance: incredible beaches and hookers, and nowhere is that more obvious than in Phuket.

On the main strip in Kata Beach, there’s nothing but open-air bars. Once the sun goes down (it happens early here), these bars are filled with scantily clad Thai girls ranging in age from 18 (we hope) to 28 (I’m being generous) who sit out front, or dance on the sidewalk, and grab unattended men by the hand as they walk by. For reference, I counted as unattended if Mandy was more than thirty-six inches away at any given time.

Ordinarily, we get our beer from the local 7/11- It’s much cheaper that way. However, the other night, we decided to splurge and spend four times what beer normally costs us to get a glimpse of the tourist environment. We wandered up and down the block looking for the bar with the most action, and settled on an average-looking place with about six girls hanging out in the front; this doesn’t include the three that had already latched onto the unattended (and much older) white guys who were just there to have a drink, I’m sure.

Over the course of the evening, the white guys would inevitably ride off on rented scooters with their take-home prizes. There’s not a huge market in the low season, so competition seemed to be pretty fierce between the girls to get at potential clients; eventually we ended up a bit tipsy (understatement) and joining the sidewalk dance party with all the girls who hadn’t found work that night. They shared their drinks (delicious), their English (they all know the word sexy and not much else) and their dance moves (there were tables involved).

After rocking out to Dr. Dre and Sean Paul for a couple of hours, we stumbled back to the hotel alone, despite a few light-hearted attempts on my part to get the six remaining girls into a menage-a-I-can’t-count- that-high-in-French-and-you-wouldn’t-all-fit-on-a-scooter-anyway.

Sorry, girls, but I’m spoken for.