Full Moon Party: perfect way to recover, right?

Written September 25

So, I had just failed at doing something that I had dreamt of doing for a long time, and I was heading to a massive party on another island?  As I got on the boat with my friends, yes, I realized that going to a party that was really all about getting wasted with 30,000 of your closest friends on a beach was probably not the best way for me to get better, but I felt like it was something I had to experience so I made a deal with myself: I could go to the party, but I would limit my alcohol intake and I would not stay up past 3am.  Doable.

Terry and I playing in the sand.

The scuba gang in addition to an English friend I'd met in Boliva and had met back up with all arrived at the site of the Full Moon Party the afternoon before the party was to start.  Because most of us were planning on partying all night and not going to bed, all but one of us hadn’t made plans for a hostel.  I just figured I would stash the little backpack I had brought in Stanja’s room and would just sleep on the beach amongst the passed out drunken party-goers.  

We all ate lunch together around 1pm and then decided to chill on the beach for the afternoon.  Somehow we got separated and I ended up on the beach with the friend I had reunited with from Bolivia, Phil, and Terry, the English guy who had been in my diving class. The three of us had a hilarious afternoon on the beach just laughing and playing games like “Would You Rather” until the sun started to get low on the horizon and we knew we needed to start getting ready.

Getting painted...

After a quick dinner, we used Stanja’s hostel as a home base to get ready.  Terry said he was exhausted and needed a nap, so he gave in and paid for a bed at the hostel.  I had purchased some neon paints for us to paint on each other in Full Moon Party tradition, and we all got to painting ourselves.  I ended up with one blue Avatar ear while I put hand prints on pretty much everyone.  

I had been emailing with two friends who I’d met in India all day about getting together, and the plan was to meet up at a designated spot at 10:00pm.  She said if she didn’t make it at 10pm, that she would make sure to be there at 11pm for sure.  

As the group was getting ready to leave, I looked down at my watch to see that it was 9:57pm.  I freaked out and worried that I’d miss my friends, and yelled at the group to meet me at the same meeting place at 10:30pm.  The all agreed that they’d be there.

I ran to the spot and looked around.  The beach was already getting crazy with drink stands set-up where before there had been nothing.  I stood next to the sign that we had agreed to meet at and 5 minutes into my wait, realized that they weren’t going to make the 10pm time.  I wasn’t worried... They had said if they couldn’t make it they would meet me at 11pm instead.  

Now I just had to wait for the other guys.  It was only a few minutes after I’d left them, so I ran back to the hostel to see if I caught them, but they had already left.  I went up to Terry’s bed and tried waking him up by telling him that he was going to miss out on the party, but I couldn’t get him up.  Man down.

I decided to just go back to the meeting spot to wait for the group.  I was early, but decided I’d just have a drink and would watch the crowd start to build.  At 10:30pm, I started looking around for the group.  At 10:40, I started getting a little annoyed that they weren’t there.  At 10:50, I realized that they probably had been too drunk to fully comprehend what I had said about meeting me when I had run off, and decided I would just wait the 10 more minutes to meet up with the India friends and would just spend the night with them.

At 11pm, I anxiously waited for them but 10 minutes later, they still hadn’t showed.  Then, just as I was about to hang my head and mope, the sky opened up and the rain started to come down in buckets.  Perfect...

I found some shelter and kept my eye on the meeting point but finally realized that nobody was going to show up.  I had two options: stay out and party by myself at on a crazy beach or go back to the hostel and either try to convince Terry to come out with me or just go to sleep.

I turned around and went back to the hostel again hoping I’d be able to get Terry up.  I crawled into his bed and gently shook him and said, “Friend, you are missing the best party I have ever been to” which was a blatant lie, but I knew I had to lay it on thick.  He opened his eyes and basically said that he was too exhausted, that getting sleep was worth missing the party.  

The bucket stands at the Full Moon party.  

:(

Sadly, this blog entry doesn’t have some funny turn of events.  I didn’t end up going back out, I didn’t end up finding my friends (either set of them), and I didn’t end up sleeping on the beach.  What I actually did was crawl into a bed at the hostel, paint and all, and sleep.  

Frankly, looking back a few days later, I know that this was for the best.  If I had stayed out that night, it would have been almost impossible for me to get better and even have a chance of finishing my dives.  

So, for now I can say that I have gotten ready for a full moon party and that I’ve seen one for 30 minutes, but have not really had the full moon experience.  No worries, I can always come back to Thailand to try it again.  Next time, though, I’m hooking all of my friends together with rope so we can’t get separated.  

Scuba Part II: this sucks

Written September 22th

As soon as I surfaced, I knew something was wrong.  Mario and Knut asked us how we felt and made sure our vests were all properly inflated when I realized I couldn’t really hear them.  When I spoke back to them, it sounded like I had my fingers in my ears and I could hear my own voice echoed in my head.

When I got back on the boat, one of my ears had partially equalized and I could hear out of it but the other one was completely blocked.  The nose spray and medicine I had taken had either started to wear off while I had been under water or the pressure had been too much for my sick sinuses to handle regardless of medicine.  

I told Mario what was going on and he said that I could dive the second dive even if the ear was blocked, but I’d know how to proceed once I got back in the water.  So after our next briefing on the deck and a switch of oxygen tanks, we got back into our equipment and hit the water.  

I tried not to let the feeling of my right ear being blocked bother me.  I got to the descent line with Knut next to me and started to slowly go under water.  Within a few meters, I felt like someone was smashing my brain inside my skull.  Knut motioned for me to come back up a meter or so to equalize before trying to go down again.

I went down again.  Brain smash.  I went up again.  And so it continued until I went a little farther down and felt like not only was someone smooshing my brain but that imaginary person was also stabbing me through the ear and into my forehead.  I screamed into my regulator and came up to the surface.  Through tears, I told Knut that I didn’t think I could do it, that my sinuses were not having it and that I was in a tremendous amount of pain.  Knut got me back to the boat before he went to rejoin the group and I went aboard to take off my stuff.

The crew coming back up after a dive (without me) :(

I sat on the top deck for the next 40 minutes moping and feeling sorry for myself.  I wondered if I’d be able to get my certification if I’d missed this dive and wasn’t doing the required certification skills with my classmates.  When the group came up from their dive, Mario was quick to tell me that I shouldn’t be hard on myself and to just reevaluate the next morning.  If I was okay in the morning, he would help me make up the skills on the next 2 dives.  

The evening was our written final exam and I took it with the rest of my friends while my right ear slowly started to feel like it was equalizing.  Around 5pm, right as we were finishing our exam, POP!  “YAY!  It just popped!” I yelled.  

Again, I hit the hay early.  I took more medicine, prayed to the diving gods that I would be okay for the next morning, and got a full 8 hours of sleep.  In the morning, I still couldn’t taste, but I was hopeful.  We got on the boat and got all of our stuff ready again before Mario’s briefing for our third dive.  He introduced us to Allison, the videographer who was going to record us on our two dives and she starting taping us on the boat as we discussed the skills we’d be doing in the water.

Lisa feeling like a superhero after her dive.

We got our stuff on and I nervously took a breath as we entered the water.  Would I be okay to dive even though there was still a ton of crap in my sinuses?  I got my answer pretty quickly: no.  

The familiar stabbing feeling was back, and despite trying to equalize for about 10 minutes, the fear of busting my ear drum overrode my desire to keep trying.  I went back to the boat dejected and saddened by the fact that I definitely wouldn’t be able to get my certification now.  

I made myself useful for the rest of the morning and photographed my friends getting into and out of the water.  I chatted with Mario in between the two dives and he told me that he would write a referral for me to finish the course later.  

The main problem was that I was short on time and had been planning on heading to the infamous Full Moon party on another island the next night.  I hadn’t planned on coming back to Ban’s.  

Within a few hours, I had reworked my schedule so that I could go to the Full Moon party with my friends the next night and would come back to Koh Tao the following day to try to 3 remaining dives again.  I would have to pay for my room, but the diving wouldn’t cost any additional money due to the fact that I hadn’t really done the other 3 dives anyway.  

Scuba Diving, here I come!: Scuba Part I

Written September 22nd

There are a few things I really wanted to do throughout the course of my travels: the Elephant Nature Park and getting certified to scuba dive being the highest two on my list.  Having already done the former and seeing as though it had met my expectations, I was now really really really psyched about diving.

Here’s the thing, I had no reason to think that I would love diving except for one thing that I have always found interesting: I often dream about breathing under water.  In my mind, this meant only one thing -- I craved breathing under water.  So what if I get scared by most non-mammals and refuse to touch the bottom of any non-pool swimming area when I’m in them...

When we pulled into Ban’s, the diving school I had picked out a week before, I set eyes on the beautiful complex that was to be my home for 4 days.  It was such a sight for sore eyes (literally, as my eyes had started hurting a little bit, no doubt because of the fact that I was sick and slightly dehydrated.)  Ban’s has an amazing complex with 2 beautiful pool, jungle-like walkways made up of big palm-trees and little bridges over waterways, a bar and restaurant, and a small village housing a mini-mart, pharmacy, and internet cafe.  

A view of Ban's pool from my room.

I checked in and found out that they had upgraded me to an air con room for free.  Score!!  My bags were brought to my room and I saw that it matched the rest of the complex: big king size bed, tv with movie channels, a desk and armoire, and nice big bathroom.  Yay!!!  If I was going to end up being alone, at least I had a nice room to myself!

I explored around Ban’s area for a while, took a dip in one of the pools, swallowed some  more medicine, and had a nap before I had to show up for my first diving class that evening.  When I got to the classroom, I met my instructors, Mario and Knut, along with my fellow classmates.  Luckily, there were 9 of us in the class and we were all right around the same age.  

Our first class wasn’t particularly exciting and basically was just an introduction to each other followed by watching videos for 2 hours.  Afterwards a guy from class rallied people together for dinner.  As we sat in Ban’s restaurant and I had a disappointing Thai curry, I was happy to get to know the people who would end up being my diving friends and family for the rest of the week: Sonjia, from The Netherlands, Lisa from Germany, and Terry from England.  The other people in the class all had boyfriends or girlfriends who weren’t enrolled in our class, so they had gone to eat dinner with them.

After dinner, we went to bed early so our 7am wake up wouldn’t feel like murder the following morning.  I retired to my amazing room, popped some more pills, and crossed my fingers that I’d feel even better in the morning.

Sadly, I woke up the next morning feeling worse.  I was really bummed because I only had 2 more days of antibiotic pills left and I didn’t have any more to take a second course.  I decided that I would will myself well, and luckily we were only going to be going in the pool today.

Terry and I realizing we have the same camera!

After a quick breakfast, Mario and Knut sized us for all of our equipment before we walked up to one of Ban’s pools together.  Once we got there, Mario explained how to properly set up our equipment before we did it ourselves.  Then we got into the pool and prepared ourselves to experience underwater breathing for the first time.

That morning, we went through several examples and explanations about how our equipment worked and we worked on skills that we would later practice in open water.  We shared an air source with our buddy, controlled our buoyancy simply with our breath, and towed each other around the pool before getting out for lunch.  After we ate, we met in the classroom again for the rest of the mandatory videos.  This time, the videos made more sense because we had actually used the equipment now, and we relaxed a little bit now knowing that anything we didn’t understand after watching would be clarified the next morning.  We grabbed a quick dinner again and headed home to rest up as much as possible for our first real day of diving!

On the boat about to attempt our first dive!

The next morning, I woke up at 6am, took a shower, and headed to the pharmacy to get some nose spray on Mario’s recommendation.  I shot some of the spray into my nose and cleared it the best I could before meeting my new friends for breakfast.  Over toast and eggs, we all chatted nervously about our first dive and I told everyone that not only were my sinuses clogged, but I also had no sense of taste.  Any time I get moderately to seriously ill, this happens to me, so I was worried.  

Mario met us at 7:30am and we went to grab all of our equipment together before getting on the boat.  We transferred from a small boat to the large boat waiting off shore for us and hooked up our stuff to the tanks.  Before jumping into the water, we all met on the top deck to discuss the planned dive.  Mario basically gave us a pep talk because half of the group looked like they were going to throw up and explained that the first dive would only be fun and that we wouldn’t do any required skills.

Mario & Knut discussing the dive.

A few minutes later, we were all down below putting on our BCD jackets, tanks, fins, and masks.  We snapped a few photos before putting all of our stuff away and entering the water by stepping off the side of the boat.  

Step 1: water entry: accomplished!  So far, so good, I could still breathe.

Step 2: descent: it was painful, but I did it.  Basically, for you readers who have never gone scuba diving before, when one descends the first 10m, the air pressure in our body doubles.  If you have anything blocking your airways and sinuses, like, say, tons of mucous and snot, it can make for a painful and frankly not very smart descent.  But, I got down and managed to equalize my ears before we swam around the reef for 40 minutes.

Step 3: ascent: it was really uncomfortable as I started to go up.  My ears were popping incessantly and I just wanted to slam to the surface of the water, but I knew that was the wrong way to come up.  But, I did it.  I had successfully done my first of four required dives.

Back to Thailand: Shit, I'm sick

When you were growing up, what did your mother always tell you about pushing yourself too hard, not getting sleep, and not treating your body well?  For starters, it’s not good for you... but also, you’re going to get sick, right?

Cue my body.  

One last outing in Bangkok with Tasha.

As soon as I left Siem Riep and Tasha and I made our way for Bangkok, my throat started to feel a little scratchy.  When we got into our room that night, the scratchy feeling had turned into an inability to swallow without some pain.  We had planned on going out that night as one final night for Tasha, as she was flying back home to England and I was going to Koh Tao the following night, but I didn’t last long.  

I felt badly when I went home around 11pm and left Tasha with some new friends we had met, but I really wanted to get over whatever I was catching as soon as possible.  I was heading down to the island of Koh Tao to get my scuba diving certification and I knew that diving while sick was a no-no.  Without knowing what I had, I started in on my last pack of antibiotics I had hoping that they would help me get better as fast as possible.

The next morning, I woke up positive that I had some sort of infection, probably sinus.  I always get sinus infections and they really suck.  I tried thinking positively, noting that I had 2 days before I was going to actually have to dive, and spent my last day in Bangkok with Tasha trying to take it easy.  We went to the big Bangkok weekend market for an hour before admitting that neither of us were really in the mood to shop because she was hungover and because I felt like crap.  

6am at the pier.

So, our uneventful day seemed to come to a quick end and I got my stuff together to catch my night bus to Koh Tao.  Tasha walked me to my bus and I said goodbye to my last friend from the big Vietnam/Cambodia group and boarded the bus.  I realized that this was the first time in over 5 weeks that I was traveling without any friends and kept my fingers crossed that I’d meet people in Koh Tao.

On my way to Koh Tao.

I expected the worst from the bus ride because as you all know from reading this blog, they’re almost always beyond terrible.  This bus ride, though uncomfortable, wasn’t that bad, probably because I planned for it to suck.  The only annoying part was that we arrived at the boat port at 3:30am and our boat to the island wasn’t until 7am.  I passed the time by watching one of the DVDs that I had purchased in Vietnam for $1.  At 6am, I passed the time by taking some photos of the sunrise.

When we finally boarded the boat, I dumped my stuff in the downstairs area and went onto the deck to watch the sun continue to rise and to add to my tan a little bit.  I practiced taking more photos with my SLR and before I knew it, we were pulling into the pier in Koh Tao.  The waters surrounding the island were crystal clear aquamarine and the sand was almost white.  I reached into my purse and took my antibiotic pill.  Time to get better, and fast.

Siem Riep: Angkor Wat and Angkor What?

 Written September 17th

We left Phnom Penh in a hurry after we realized that it wasn’t going to be much fun.  Frankly, I felt like we just needed to get away from it just so we could snap out of the funk we were put in after the museums.

7 people in a tuk tuk in Siem Riep!

A (thankfully) short bus ride later, we were in Siem Riep, the home of Angkor Wat, the largest temple complex in the world.  We had found a hostel through a friend and we were psyched -- hostels are synonymous with fun, social, and awesome while guesthouses are synonymous with boring, isolating, and gross... or so I had decided.  

When we got to Siem Riep Hostel, I was floored.  This place was only a few years old, had a pool, a bar, a restaurant that had a good menu, and big, comfy dorms that we could all stay in together for only $7 each a night!  It was especially exciting that each dorm held 6 people and within a few hours, 2 more of our friends from Vietnam would be meeting us so we could all stay in one room!  Perhaps I should explain why we were so excited to cram ourselves into one room together: this was our last stop as a group.  From here, Tasha and I would be heading to Bangkok, Charlie would be going back to Siagon, and Richard, Carola, and Rozan would go south in Cambodia.  :(

Our tour guide for the day, Richard.

The 4 of us decided to explore the small town of Siem Riep after we put all of our stuff down and set off on foot.  Luckily, our awesome hostel was only a 10 minute walk from all of the restaurants, stores, and bars, and we memorized the lay of the land to use for the following few days.  As we passed “Bar Street”, we saw several fun looking bars but with the best titled one being “Angkor What?”  I laughed and decided that even if this bar sucked, I would later patronize it for the mere fact that it had a clever name.  I love clever.

Keeping it classy at Angkor Wat.

That night, we wanted to keep things simple so we could go to bed early in order to wake up the following morning for our big Angkor Wat tour.  We got manicures and pedicures at a place where patrons were allowed to write all over the walls after the services had been rendered.  Things like “I’m walking on sunshine, waaahhhhh! Thanks for the foot massage!” or “I got so excited during that massage that I think I peed my pants a little bit” etc.  

The next day, with everyone finally present, we got ready for our all day trip around the Angkor complex and split into 2 groups of 3.  Each group had their own tuk-tuk for the day and luckily our guides seemed really fun.  When we got to the entrance, we had to have our photos taken for our passes.  We laughed as we compared the passes that had our terrible photos on them (the people in the ticket booths didn’t tell us when they were taking our photos, so everyone aside from me was caught in non-photo poses.)

Decapitated statues.

First we arrived at Angkor Wat where Richard bought a book that we hoped would be a good substitute for a guide.  We entered the various parts of the Wat with Richard flipping through the book to announce what it was we were looking at.  We saw the headless statues that were throughout the complex that were without heads because of the destruction the the Khymer Rouge had done a few decades ago.  

Finally we realized that our book was kind of useless and that we should have just sprung for a guide.  We wandered around for a bit and I snuck up on a few guides so I could overhear what various things meant.

Our vertical climb to the top.

For the rest of the day, we went around the ancient city of Angkor.  We climbed another wat that had such steep steps that we had to climb it as if we were rock climbing on the edge of a cliff without a harness, another that had faces carved into each pillar, and the one that Tomb Raider was filmed at.  The latter one was particularly incredible with trees growing out of and around the walls.  Apparently the tree photographed at the right is the most photographed tree in the world!

After a full day of wating it up, we decided it was time for some Angkor What-ing.  We went for a quick hop in the pool and played an impromptu game of pool volleyball before taking turns in the shower and headed out to Bar Street.  

Where Tomb Raider was filmed!

At midnight, it was going to be Carola’s birthday, so we choose a nice looking restaurant and had dinner before heading over to Angkor What?.  We found ourselves a big table and within no time, we were back to playing our usual card games.  As before, we attracted half of the bar over to us by doing absurd things during our game, and eventually the table was sitting 15 or so people.  

The gang's regualr card game shenanigans...

The next morning, we compared photos and realized that we had collectively taken about 200.  It was a little bittersweet because we knew that it had probably been the last night out that we’d have together as a group ever again.  

We spent the day just relaxing and watching movies together and tried to recreate another night out that evening, but I’ve realized that the nights you try to make awesome are never as great as the unexpected ones, and the night ended up being uneventful.  

Happy Birthday! Here's some silly string in your face!

The following day, we woke up early, packed our bags and said our sad goodbyes.  My travel buddies of 5 weeks and I were finally going in separate directions.  On the way out of Siem Riep, I shed a tear or two...  

But, onwards I must go.  To Bangkok again!  Goodbye,Cambodia, and goodbye friends.  Hello Thailand!

Phnom Penh: a sobering experience

Written September 16th

So where were we?  Last entry, I had summarized half of another country, Vietnam.  Our group started to splinter off at the end of Vietnam: one had flown home and another had flown to Indonesia.  We were down to 4 people now :(

At the end of the Mekong Tour, arriving in Cambodia.

My plan upon entering Cambodia was to only stay in the country for less than a week.  I had started off my travels down Vietnam thinking I had all the time in the world to get through the rest of SE Asia, but realized as we were getting to Siagon that I was actually really tight on time.  I had already moved my next flight from Bali to Australia back a week, so I had to squeeze things in the best I could unless I wanted to spend more money to change my flight again.  No can do, I’m on a budget!!

When we got to Phnom Penh, we were a little surprised at what greeted us: a dirty, crazy, crowded city.  We were at the end of our “Mekong River tour” and hadn’t showered in 2 days when we pulled into the street to get off of our mini-bus.  Men and women were knocking on the windows of the van trying to get us to take their tuk-tuks or to stay in their guesthouse.  

I sighed a deep sigh and got out of the bus ready to politely tell about 15 people that I didn’t need their tuk-tuk or didn’t want to stay in their guesthouse.  Armed with a guidebook, I figured out where we were and led our group to the guesthouse that we had picked from the book.  As we walked there, I saw plenty of signs for Indian restaurants and I almost had a heart attack - INDIAN FOOD!  YESSS!  At this point, I was totally over SE Asian cuisine and my mouth salivated for a nice Indian curry with some naan bread.

Our attempt to find something fun one night...

That night, I got my Indian food while my friends tried some classic Cambodian dishes which were surprisingly good. I was shocked when I found out that my Dutch friends had never had Indian food before.  “What?? How is this possible????” I asked them.  We decided the following night, we would go to a legit Indian restaurant for a full-on meal.  

The next morning was part II of the serious and heavy tours of SE Asia: the killing fields and the Genocide S-21 Museum.  For those of you who don’t have any idea what those places are, it is worth looking up.  To summarize what happened in Cambodia for those of you who are unfamiliar, in the mid-70’s, after decades of fighting against various other countries, a new ruling group called  the Khmer Rouge came into power.  For about 5 years under the insane leader Pol Pot, there was a movement to go back to “Year Zero”, aka to begin again in Cambodia and to eliminate all modern things and ideas. Over this period of time, approximately 1 to 2 million people were killed.  Depending on the source, anywhere from 1/6 to 1/4 of the Cambodia population perished under this regime.  

The killing tree.

At the Killing Fields, we saw several of the mass graves that were used in addition to the killing tree, a tree that was used to beat babies against before they were dropped into one of the mass graves.  It was disturbing and something I will never forget.  We were then shown a video about how the site was found at the end of the Khymer Rouge’s rule, because it had been kept secret until then.  

As if that wasn’t heavy enough, we then went to see the S-21 Museum.  What is now the museum was once a high school turn main torture and interrogation center that fed people into the killing fields.  Only 7 prisoners survived, and their graves are located in the main courtyard of the complex.  We were able to walk the halls and could go into each of the rooms that had once been torture rooms or cells.  The furniture, if you can call it that, that was in the room 30 years ago was still there, as were the stains on the walls and floors.  The second half of the museum had board upon board covered with photos of each of the prisoners on them.  It was impossible to leave this museum without shedding a tear.

The hallways of the S-21 Museum.

Our evening was somber and I realized that I felt like shit both inside and out, so I decided it was time to return to an old pastime of mine --  a workout!  

“What?  A workout?   You mean you haven’t been working out throughout your whole trip, Alison?”  Sadly, dear readers, no, I haven’t been.  But I decided that night that it was time to start again.

I wrote up a program for my 2 Dutch friends and I to do, told them to get suited up, and started to assemble the room for the workout.  When the girls came downstairs, they were wearing flip-flops.  Instantly my inner trainer came out and I asked them, “What do you think we’re going to do here?  A few sit-ups and push-ups?  Get on your sneakers!”

10 minutes later, we were all properly suited up and ready to go.  I blasted some motivational music and explained the workout.  Their faces transformed from big smiles to serious wide-eyed stares as they realized I wasn’t kidding... I really was going to kick all of our asses.

45 minutes later, I took us through a cool down and felt like a teacher leading some weird aerobics class, but I felt good.  So did my friends.  We vowed to keep up the workouts together until we all separated at the end of our Cambodian escapades.  To follow up the fat-burning, we showered up and headed to our next destination: the Indian restaurant we had found earlier in the day.  Time for my friends to try their first Indian food!!

God help me if this keeps taking so long

I'm in Bali.  I'm alive.  I know I just posted something I wrote a month ago.  It took me 4 hours to get it up. The internet sucks here.  A friend tells me there is a way to email my posts so they upload automatically... I'm looking into it.  Ugh.