8:11 AM Saturday September 22nd, 2012 On the
train near Jaisalmer, India
When Mariska and I departed for Langkawi from Penang it was
early in the morning and our minds were set on one thing, catching the morning
ferry and getting out to a new island home as soon as possible. A quick trip to the wrong pier and we managed
to find our point of departure and snag our tickets. The ferry embarked and began to slowly list
from side to side, swaying as a pendulum.
The forward rocking and slamming as the ferry’s bow launched out of the
water and impacted the following swell frightened some passengers and added to
the already nauseating journey. Those of
us who don’t get motion sickness were in the clear, but anyone with a
predisposition to feeling queasy I’m sure felt awful. With no windows to calm many people’s minds
and an ever increasing amplitude of the rocking the first cry of the sea sick
rang out. A loud, rumbling, gargling,
and sickening sound that we all know signifies someone just vomited. This was the trigger that caused the
inevitable chain reaction of vomiting to be set in motion. In droves people came up to the front of the
seating, where we were placed, and grabbed empty vomit bags. The sounds of wrenching stomachs emanated all
around me. People came back up to
deposit their used bags in the trash can nearby as I recoiled at the
smell. One man was in terrible pain as
he moaned endlessly in between spasms of dry heaving, making the trip
impossible without the headphones I had deeply embedded in my ears to drown out
the sounds. When I finally made my way
up to the top of the boat I had to step over piles of drying vomit and people
lying down or with their heads in loved ones’ laps actively throwing up into
their bags. It was a war-zone that not
even Mariska escaped. All in all at
least a third of the boat passengers threw up, and those of us lucky enough to
avoid the act had to experience the aftermath.
The sight of Langkawi off in the distance sure was a sight for sore eyes
when it finally appeared three hours after embarking from Penang. Langkawi was a much larger island than I was
used to, and circumnavigating it by scooter took multiple hours.
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| Our home beach on Langkawi. |
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| Pascal, Mariska, and I. |
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| Riding scooters around the island. |
It was a very pleasant island, and I finally
got my fix for waves that I’d been searching for, well at least for the first
day when they were big enough to bodysurf.
They were the size that started me buzzing and left me wishing and
wanting something larger and more exciting.
This is to say they were only about a few feet at maximum, and about
half of what I’d really wanted. Needless
to say my addiction to bodysurfing brought me back the next couple of days to
the same spot hoping to surf, but the winds had died and there was little to
nothing to speak of in terms of surf. The
days were relaxed, and there was nothing to hinder my mind from emptiness, a
feeling I was glad to receive.
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| Getting in the way of Mariska's hammock picture. |
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| Climbing palm trees for fun. |
It was in
Langkawi that I witnessed some of the worst treatment of a passed out
individual that I’ve ever seen. Our dorm
friend, whom I’ll call Bill for anonymity’s sake, had drank far too much and
had proceeded to fall asleep on the floor in the middle of the dorm after a
night out. Bill had thrown up in a pile
around himself on the floor, and upon someone checking for his breathing and a
pulse, that kind person had mostly cleaned up Bill’s sick and provided him with
water to drink. Again Bill fell back
asleep on the floor into a slumber that was extremely deep. As some friends and I arrived back from a
small club around five they came up with
the idea to swaffle Bill. Swaffling,
named by the Dutch, is the act of a man utilizing his penis as a slapping
tool. The two men in the group went in
to the dorm and each swaffled Bill on his legs, shoulder, and face. They laughed about it, recognizing Bill would
never know what had happened to him in his sleep. Luckily for Bill he never found out, but was
greeted with an even worse consequence, an inescapable and immovable hangover
that lingered over him the whole day.
After a five day stop in Langkawi I left Mariska and picked up a new
companion, Loz, to join me up to Thailand.
We boarded the ferry and got into Thailand at the port of entry. A night spent in Trang led us to Koh Lanta
and then off to Krabi all in one day when we realized that Koh Lanta was
deserted.
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| My companion Loz and I hitched on Koh Lanta to get back to the ferry station. |
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| Holding onto my hat so it didn't blow away. |
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| Baby monkey at a guesthouse on Koh Lanta. |
We spent one night in Krabi
before heading off to Koh Phi Phi. On
that night Loz and I decided to have a few celebratory drinks. Once we’d had a few drinks in our guest house
room we headed out to meander in Krabi for a short bit. After getting convinced to come into a bar
for a bucket we started conversation with a couple in the bar and the cocktail
waitresses, playing connect 4 over and over again.
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| Wristbands for sale. I hope you can't read these. |
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| Connect 4 action with the waitress and Loz. |
Loz decided we should get another bucket
each, after I was set and needed no more. I ended up not finishing mine. He also gave me my first ‘Flaming
Lamborghini’ also known as a ‘Gas Chamber.’
Here Sambucca is lit on fire, poured into a glass, poured back into the
shot glass and the big glass placed upside down over the shot glass. The vapors are then inhaled, hitting you very
hard and very quickly. This put me over
my comfortable limit, and I stumbled off to Loz’s disappointment to grab some
food around two in the morning. I was
extremely happy that I entered into a very deep sleep as Loz came back with a
Thai girl around 4 or 5 and proceeded to have sex with her in the bed right
next to me and then in the bathroom. After
she had left Loz woke me to tell me what he had done, though I don’t think it
really registered in my head. Loz asked
if we needed an alarm set, and since I had forgotten in my drunken state I was
extremely happy he had. When the alarm
rang out at seven in the morning Loz could barely make it to his phone to turn
out the alarm, and he slightly threw his iPhone at the ground in an attempt to
turn it off. I was forced to throw his
clothing at him to get him to start packing as the only ferry to Koh Phi Phi
that day left around 8:30. We snagged a
ticket at a travel agency that was open at that hour, barely able to fetch
money out of his wallet to throw at the girl booking our tickets. The next moment Loz laid down and passed out
on the sidewalk outside the travel agency.
Loz ‘played through’ (continued drinking) that morning and pretty much
the remaining three days I’d spend with him.
I don’t think he was sober at all, and managed to get himself two
tattoos, two days in a row while he was completely smashed. So began my nine days on Koh Phi Phi, staying
in the best dorm on the island, and meeting some extremely quality people.
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| Views on the way out to Koh Phi Phi. |
