The 50 Baht Adventure

Well, our trip was coming to a close. I was very sad for that to happen. Saturday was our last day in Phang-Nga, and we spent it like most of our days off, with beach and pool swimming and going to town. Our plan in town was to have lunch; get a Thai massage, since it was only eight bucks; make Kent wander around while I get a mani/pedi; do some final shopping; get a Swedish massage, since it was only fifteen bucks; have supper; go home.


Unfortunately we didn't plan our money very well. I'm not sure how that happened. After lunch, the Thai massages, the manicure and pedicure (which were the worst I've ever had, by the way), and a couple sarongs I had planned on getting, we hardly had any money left. So we had to superbudget our supper by just going back to the same place we went to for lunch, which was the cheapest we'd been to so far (but still decent food), and skip the Swedish massages. Boooo-urns. We did end up having enough money for me to force Kent to buy something besides a Red Bull shirt and some requisite sunglasses and a hat. He ended up finding a set of small wooden bowls that were 600 baht, in a rare shop that actually put prices on things, telling the shopkeeper that all he had was 500, take it or leave it, and finally getting her to agree.


So when all was said and done, we still had 50 baht to burn, and were determined not to leave town with change too small to bother exchanging at a bank back home. We also had time to burn before our taxi was meeting us, since we had time budgeted for two one-hour massages and only got one.


We decided to go around and tell shopkeepers that we had only 50 baht (which is about $1.65), to see what they would offer us. In Kenya, that could have gotten us something decent, but even though Thailand is cheap, it's not that cheap. We figured we'd get shown the postcard racks, mostly.

Kent told the first guy we tried this on about our money situation as we were walking away, and the dude called after us jokingly holding up what I think was a rubber ducky in his hand. We didn't go for it. The second shopkeep showed us the postcards, as expected. After that we just quietly browsed various stores for a while. Then finally, we were talking to a guy who knew English probably the best of all the people in town that we talked to, and Kent had to tell him about the 50 baht, as I think he was trying to get us to buy a bunch of stuff (of course). He showed us a shelf of little incense packages with two sets of mini-incense sticks, a tiny elephant-shaped holder, and a tiny candle, all inside a wooden open-topped case, to catch the ashes. It wasn't half bad for under two bucks. So we went with that--for me to keep, not him.


Here is the set. Cute, eh?



And for scale purposes, here it is with me, still with remnants of the bad manicure, holding the elephant:

Day 6: Monkey Temple

This is my 100th blog post, everyone. Congratulations to me. To commemorate this occasion, I think you should all go read every one of my previous posts, just to be sure you got them all.

Our last stop on the James Bond Island excursion was a Monkey Temple. This was a temple set into a cave with a bunch of monkeys and vendors running around outside. The vendors were kind of stationary, actually. This was one of the best parts of the whole trip. These monkeys were not the vicious, two-faced monkeys of Monkey Beach, near Phi Phi Island. No, these were cute, cuddly, friendly monkeys, who just wanted to play and eat bananas. And steal my camera bag. I didn't allow it.

Here are some monkey pictures:

This is a rock. There must be a monkey in there somewhere.

Monkey, monkey, monkey:

This is a short video of a monkey jumping around on the branches. Then I lose track of him a little.

Here is a video of monkeys running, playing, eating, and fighting. It really doesn't get much better than this:

The best part about this trip were the little monkeys that thought I was hiding food under my skirt. I was videotaping some other monkeys when we first got there, and I felt this little tug on the back of my kanga. I turned around to find this little monkey. I'll never forget the innocent look he had on his face. That one (I think it was the same one) kept coming back for more, too. Then later, he brought a friend, and they both tugged at, looked under, and opened my skirt, ever so gently, to try and find food. Very cute.

Here is the video I was taking while Kent took the above photo:

After a little while with the monkeys, we decided to check the temple out, not because it was a temple (boring), but because it was a cave. We climbed up into the big upward crevasse, where Kent took some pictures, but I'm not sure if they came out. It was pretty dark. We didn't take any other pictures inside, because it was a temple and that's rude. We did manage to find this little trail to walk on, around the outside of the caves:

We walked for a few minutes, found another tiny cave with some Buddhas in it that looked barely used, then found the end of the trail. It was a big field, which I thought was the field just outside the entrance, but as we walked a few feet into it, I saw that there were monks about, and it was actually the property behind that field where the monks live. We didn't want to disturb them, so we had to walk back through the trail. There were many bugs.

A few more minutes with the monkeys after that, then we headed home for the day. Love those monkeys.

And here's another monkey video for the road:

Day 6: James Bond Island and Sea Canoeing

Thursday was a major off day for us. We didn't even leave the hotel, except to walk on the beach. The most exciting thing that happened was that we walked along the beach in the other direction, found another river inlet, and I almost drowned in it while trying to cross. It looked shallower and calmer than it really was. Also, Kent got attacked by biting ants while that was happening. Oh, boy.

On Friday we had our final excursion to James Bond Island in Phang Nga Bay, about a half hour away. The night before found out that the Belgians had booked a trip for Friday to the bay, as well, through a travel agent in town (we booked through the hotel) and we figured we'd see them at some point during the day. They ended up being our travel companions on the boat all day, haha. The lady, I think she said her name was Micha? asked, Are we the only tourists in Thailand? For everywhere except Phuket, it sort of seemed that way. We found out the twins' names were Tille (pronounced "Tilla"), the shy one, and Rhode ("Rhoda"), the outgoing one. Their dad's name was something like Yoss or Yost (or Joss or Jost). Oh, these foreign names. They had some trouble with my name, too, though. Luckily, the little girls had their names written on their shirts.

We took a boat through the bay for a while and saw a lot of jutting rock islands, mangrove forests, and this floating Muslim village:



Our first stop was James Bond Island, named so because it was used as a location in the 1974 film "The Man With the Golden Gun." The local name for it is Ko Tapu Island. I don't have a lot of pictures from there. I must have taken most of them with my film camera. Here we are on a rock leaving the island. We were only there for a half hour, but we explored some shallow caves with stalactites and stuff. I have a bunch of 4x6 photos of them, but nothing to put up here. Sorry.


After leaving James Bond Island, we boated around some more, saw more rock islands and rock formations, and ended up at an island dock in the bay, where we would go sea canoeing. We were given plastic bags for our cameras and put into a little inflatable canoe with a rowing guide. He brought us into caves to show us stalactites and other rock formations like these:





Here's another boat, by the way:


The biggest cave we were in:


More rocks. I'll be honest with you: with all these rocky pictures, I'm not sure if they're taken from the boat or the sea canoe or during what part of the day, but enjoy.





I took a lot of these photos because the rocks looked like something (usually an elephant, according to the guide), but I'm not recognizing anything from the pictures.



We also went through a mangrove forest:



The guide took us into these caves so tiny that we had to lie down on our backs to get in, and I almost lost some forehead and nose a couple times. The first time he did it, I didn't even believe we were really going in at first. I thought we were just going towards that two-foot opening (or whatever) because he had to get around a tree trunk or something, or he was just psyching us out. But no, he told us to lie down and we went right through. It was nuts. This is a photo from inside one of the caves, just barely big enough for us to get through:


More rocks:



This is the cool part. These are videos of us going into the big and little caves:

After canoeing and having a soda on the dock we went to lunch in a big floating restaurant and then our guide took us through some shopping alleys. This woman and a tranny each threw a monkey on me and Kent and told us to take pictures, which we did. Then they tried to charge us 50 baht (about a buck fifty) a picture for pictures we took with our own cameras. We would have paid them something if they had just asked for a donation, but they were so pushy and scammy and overpriced about it that we didn't pay them.

That wasn't the end of our day, but the Monkey Temple is a post of its own. I'll do that one in the next day or two. I took about a million photos.

Day 4: Bamboo Rafting and Animals

After our elephant trek and having some pineapple in the shade and feeding the elephant and buying an overpriced photo of us on the elephant, our driver took us to a river, where we went bamboo rafting. It was pretty cool, but wet. The raft sunk down a couple inches into the water, and we would occasionally go over some minirapids, which got us wetter. Glad I was wearing fisherman's pants.

Here's our river guide, guiding:


Here's Kent on the raft, behind me:


The river:


A hut overlooking the river:


Sometimes it got quite shallow, and there were nice rocks:



After bamboo rafting for maybe like 30-45 minutes, we were taken to a really nice looking outdoor restaurant with tables out on docks, overlooking the water to have curry lunch. I really feel like I took some pictures here. Kent, this would be your cue to send those to me, or any you took yourself. Plus any of my video of the rafting, because I really feel like I took some on the card, and I don't have it on my computer.

When we finished with lunch, we went to a "turtle farm." I was hoping it would be like the one I went to in Kenya, where enormous turtles were walking around a large sanctuary on an island, but this wasn't even close. The turtles were all in tanks, and the biggest ones were only about a foot or a foot and a half long. The ones in Kenya were the size of me.

Here's one of the big guys:



The employee who was walking around with us took one of the bigger turtles out of the tank so we could touch it.



Here are some of the little guys. I liked this one because of the way the middle one rests his flipper atop his back and just floats around.



Some more of the little guys.



The turtle farm was a little boring. We were only there for twenty minutes. Then for some reason we got a bonus trip to a temple (boring), but it had some animals in a yard on the grounds that we got to see.

Here's one of the temple buildings:



Here's me next to one of these island pagoda thingies:



Here's a crocodile. Sucks to be him. Notice my arm shadow, with camera.


A deer:


Pile o' tortoises:


Oddly enough, porcupines:


This scraggly cat was wandering around, screaming about something:


A baboon:


And a bear. He was really hot.


After the temple, back to the hotel for a nice early end to the day. I think we got back at like 2:30, which left enough time for a full day of beach and pool swimming. This was much better than the grueling, yet exciting, Phi Phi Island. When we got back to the pool, the Belgian family, who were the only other guests in the hotel except for the Frat Boys, asked to see our pictures of the elephant trek. One of their twin daughters was much less adventurous than the other, and her parents figured if she could see what went on first, it would be less scary. Kent showed them some pictures while we waited for our food to be served at the restaurant, and he said it worked. So they scheduled their own elephent trek for sometime after we left, which was now feeling very soon. Booo-urns.