... Plans changed?

This is a tough post to write as I'm sitting at the airport in Bangkok with mixed emotions. I found out two days ago that Ellis has a bleeding mass in his brain and that he was unconscious in the ICU. What followed was an emotional roller coaster of praying and pleading with everything in me that he would be ok. I sat in a cafe the whole day with wifi getting updates from his sisters and trying to pull it together to figure out my next step. Amazingly the news since then has been extremely positive - he's having surgery on Friday to remove the mass and doctors are hopeful for a full recovery with some therapy. 

While I still struggle a lot with religion, I can't help but believe that all the positive thoughts and prayers he's receiving are partially responsible for this amazing turnaround. I'm reminding myself throughout this trip to pray and be thankful for all the things that are good and remember to be grateful constantly - not just to use prayer as a tool when things get hard. Which they inevitably do. 

Anyway - after a 16 hour bus ride to Bangkok I'm about to board a 24 hour flight to Cincinnati and should be getting in as he's coming out of surgery. If you're reading this - please continue to send positive thoughts Ellis' way. While the situation sucks, I'm looking forward to seeing him and his family and am just focusing on him getting better before thinking about what it means for the rest of the trip. Thanks for all the love and support! 

... a Full Moon brought out the freaks?

The freaks being us of course. And the other 10,000 some people who decided to make the trek to Ko Phanghan for the famous Full Moon party. It felt a bit like spring break on steroids plus body paint and buckets of booze. Some say a photo speaks a thousand words so maybe this will do it a bit more justice:

It wasn't really everyone's favorite night but we were able to make the best of it. We stayed on a nearby island called Ko Samui because Ko Phanghan (where the party is) is super dirty and gross and all the hostels require a 4 night minimum which sounded like hell. So instead we took a boat over from Ko Samui which was pretty wild and fun on the way over but pretty sobering on the way back. Getting drenched with cold salt water at 6am isn't necessarily the easiest way to come back from a long night.

This is the way over however which we thought was hilarious: 

 

We also had to wait 2 full hours for our return boat which was a chaotic scene in and of itself - probably around 2,000 people were waiting to get on the one boat that seemed to be running trips back to Ko Samui. It turned into a scene from Titanic with everyone fighting for their lives to get onboard. We ended up having to climb under a pole, scale a wall, and Liz screamed at a guard to get us on the boat... whatever it takes.

It's been awesome having so many friends along with us for the beginning of the journey! Anna and I had our friend Rachel join us for the first month of Thailand (she should stay with us the next week still), then Liz, Megan and Rachel's boyfriend all joined for a few days in the islands and for the party. It's a good laid back group - we're heading to another island called Ko Tao today and I'm considering trying Scuba Diving.. It's supposed to be amazing and cheap there. 

Gotta get to packing!

A few more pics from the Full Moon...

... Hospitals, burns and IVs?

Well this one is starting out a bit different. The past few days have been interesting - I think the travel gods heard we were having too much fun and decided to step in and do something about it. 

So, recent lows include: Getting food poisoning and some other illness (my self diagnosis: strep throat) and ending up in the hospital on an IV all day and out of commission for about 3. Attempting to communicate my self diagnosis to the non-English speaking nurse with no success. Getting the shit burned out of my leg while jumping rump (the rope was on fire - some would say this is my fault). Realizing I got a sunburn on top of the burn. Then getting heat rash on top of that. Anna getting some weird form of lock jaw. And finally, getting my iPhone and wallet stolen on the beach. 

Other than that, Ko Phi Phi is still beautiful. Tainted, but beautiful. 

Back to the fun stuff - our private longboat tour of Maya Bay (before all that drama) was probably one of the highlights of the trip so far. They have a tour that takes about 50 people and shuffles them quickly through the sites on the island tour but we figured that sounded like a waste of money so opted to pay a bit more for our own boat and headed out at 8am to see the beaches and do some snorkeling. It was awe inspiring. Check out some of my favorite pics below!

Our own longboat

We loved being the only ones out that early

We had a crazy journey to try and get to Maya Bay - I don't have a photo but we had to swim through all these rocks and up a crazy ladder to get to this trail. Super dangerous and fun.

Me and Anna on the viewpoint of where we had to climb up - our boat is somewhere down there

Maya Bay! We watched the Beach later and realized they digitally closed some of the rocks. Really beautiful though.

Wild monkeys love sour cream and onion lays... Who knew

Can't get over the natural beauty

All for now!

...A monkey in overalls greeted you on a beach?

 You would have to befriend him right? Peter the monkey and I met on a beach the other night and I'm happy to say things are going well - today I ran into him again and he gave me a high five. I love this place.

     

We're in the southern islands of Thailand now on Ko Phi Phi which I'm thinking will be our home for the next week or so considering it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. After Bangkok we took a boat from Krabi and spent 2 days in Ko Lanta - a much more chill island that was nearly deserted (of non-Thais that is). We met some new friends from the US and England on our last night along with a super creepy Thai man named Gof who had a green cutoff on that said something about the USA with a weed leaf under it. Fun fact: If you get caught with weed (or any other drug here for that matter) you get the death penalty by firing squad. Unless you're able to bribe your way out of it. Which I guess also happens often. None of this seemed to stop Gof of course. 

Below is our $5/night view in Ko Lanta - pretty awesome.

   

Koh Phi Phi is amazing so far - we've spent a lot of time on the beach, did some hiking today to another spot called Longbeach with a group of German girls we met, and are taking a private long boat out tomorrow at 7am to check out some of the smaller beautiful islands including Maya Beach where the movie The Beach was filmed. 

We're spending the week in a tiny bungalow that we were able to negotiate down to $4/night. It's pretty bare bones (no hot water, ac, etc) but I'm enjoying it since it reminds me how little we actually need and how low maintenance I can be when needed. There's something so exhilarating and freeing about waking up, throwing on a bathing suit and heading out to enjoy the world. Note to future self: keep it simple.

A few more favorite pics - loving the long boats in Phi Phi

Refreshingly honest signage 

The main beach near us - definitely going kayaking soon 

Little hike to Longbeach with our new German friends

Random swing we came across 

Longbeach

More to come!

... Massages were only $7 and hour?

You would get two in two days, right? To be honest, Bangkok has not been the best but the massages here are unreal. Imagine a tiny Thai woman using her entire body weight on your back and just becoming  a mushy ball of dough under her, then when you least expect it, she twists your whole torso in half and things you never thought could crack do. I might be addicted. It's the perfect mix of pain and pleasure. 

The massages probably stick out as the highlight so far because everything else has felt extremely stressful. Which I suppose is to be expected in a city of 10 million people. Still, I was surprised to have a hard time adjusting to the crazy fast paced crowded streets, odd smells of street food meat and garbage, and just boiling in the heat and getting constantly turned around and lost. Our first day trying to make it to Wat Pho to see the famous sleeping Buddha took about four times as long as it should have but we got to see quite a bit of the city which was cool... but 3 days was plenty.

A big highlight of the trip so far include meeting up with my mom's friend Deb's old foreign exchange student named Champ who lives in Bangkok. He is probably the nicest human being I have ever met and took us out to an awesome authentic Thai restaurant and insisted on treating all of us even though we had  never met. It was so generous and we got to try lots of interesting Thai food we wouldn't normally have ordered. Thanks Champ! 

Other highlights: Eating a scorpion, tracking down a sex show in Pattpong where girls blew out lit birthday cakes with their... trying laughing gas, getting giant blisters on the first day of walking, convincing a hotel to let us use their pool for the day, seeing the floating markets while extremely hungover, Khao San Road craziness, lots of temples, and un-neutered cats with balls. 

So far so good although not all of those were positive highlights. Rachel, Anna and I are on the night bus now to Krabi hoping that the 12 hour ride will be worth a few weeks in the southern islands. I'm looking forward to more relaxing days to be able to do some exploring! All for now.

... Taiwan stole a day of your life?

Ok so maybe I'm being dramatic. We've only been in this airport for 6 hours and have 3 more to go but it's freezing and sleep seems out of the question (although I'm going to keep trying). That being said, the Taiwanese people seem super nice so far - a few kept checking on Anna while she was attempting to sleep out of genuine concern and care.

So far on this trip (about 20 hours in), Anna dressed up like Ellen Degeneres which is causing a lot of buzz in the airports. I began bawling crying on the plane while watching a movie in which a vivacious Kate Hudson is diagnosed with terminal ass cancer -- this really freaked out my new Taiwanese friend in the aisle seat as I blew my nose repeatedly and told Anna I was most definitely losing my mind. Oh and I used a squatter toilet for the first time successfully!

 

My main realizations so far are that I don't like long layovers and should've listened to Anna when she tried to steal the airplane blankets when we were exiting the plane. I've also realized how staggeringly uncomfortable I am with death. I used to never cry (twice a year max), and now it's a regular thing typically triggered by someone dying - Cory Monteith, a girl's mom in the book I'm reading, and apparently Kate Hudson dying of cancer in an airplane movie. Maybe it's just having experienced so much of it so deeply but each time someone dies it hits me hard. I definitely want to work on this.. maybe explore my spiritual side and figure out why I'm so scared of what comes after death.

So this is a lot of rambling for 3am but I can't believe we're well on our way and the hard part is (hopefully) almost over! Bangkok you're next...