You gotta love this! A slow boat to Luang Prabang: serene landscapes of the Mekong river, slanted rays are bouncing off the shinny water surface, mighty buffaloes are bathing along the banks, graceful white birds are gliding above the palms… It’s picture perfect – until everyone on board is gripped with what has to be the world’s most foul smell. Rotten egg meets dog fart times infinity. Moments later, rushed by a powerful current, a giant bloated pig’s corpse torpedoes past the boat. Once it’s gone, the smell is gone with it. It all happens so quickly, I can hardly believe it was real – but a dozen of puzzled glances prove that it was not just my imagination…
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Pai. Night. Cold. Four mildly drunk travellers – Ashley, Ari, Albert et moi – are shivering in front of a large bonfire at a lovely live music joint called “Edible Jazz”. We are wearing the entire content of our backpacks and look – it’s safe to say – pretty pathetic. It came to us as a little surprise, that we can be freezing in Thailand, when in our own countries – Canada, Norway and Ukraine – the current temperatures are minus something crazy. Yet here we are, the embarrassment of our northern motherlands, cold in Pai.
Fastforward to a week later: I’m buying my first-ever pair of Uggs…
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Koh Phangan. My fifth day of blissful beach-bumming. Concerned about too much play and not enough work for my muscles, I harrass two lovely British gentlemen – who happen to be professional yoga instructors – into inviting me to join their evening practice. At 6 p.m. sharp I march up to their sea-view bungalow – in the company of a local pig. Now, the pig (also known as “Piggy”) is everybody’s favorite. Everybody HUMAN, that is. For when we make it to the door, a local dogs is less than impressed. For the following few minutes me and the two yoggies from London are casing the nasty canine away from our adorable little Piggy.
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It’s midnight, and rain has just passed over Lamai beach. In a cosy shelter of a Rasta-themed bar an Irish, a Canadian and four Thai guys, as well as two Russian, one French and one Ukrainian (aka: moi) girls are playing
Jenga. And we are having the time of our lives! Bob Marley is singing about root of all evil in “No Woman, No Cry”, as our international female ensemble wipes the floors with local and Anglo-Saxon dudes alike. We are bold bordering on reckless – quite the opposite of what you need to be to succeed in the game of Jenga – and yet the little wooden towers never fall on our watch. Failing to keep up, the boys surrender to drinking.
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Same location and time of day – Patong, wee hours of morning – but no rain this time. Maria and I had an unmentionable number of buckets and now we’re working on making our upcoming hangover unbarable by chasing booze with beer. We’re sitting on the steps of a 7/11 and talking boys, sex and laser depilation. We are quite content with our night. Until, that is, a fifty-something Thai shop owner and his twenty-something assistant – not five words of English between the two of them – are making a ridiculous, yet insistent pass. Before we know it, we find ourselves in the middle of what got to be the most pathetic double date in history. Predictably, we bail. And by “bail” I mean: we sprint to our hotel with the swiftness that could have qualified us for the national running teams of our respective countries.
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It’s 3 a.m. on a Friday night/Saturday morning and it’s raining cats and dogs in Patong.Three figures wrapped in colored celophane (known locally as “raincoats”) are whirling around street lamps and hopping in the puddles. “It’s Raining Bad” and “I’m Dancing in the Rain” produced by three severey drunken, off-key voices disolve in the general calamity of the downpour. The figures in question – Maria, Roosa and myself, all Bartender School students – have spent far too much money on far too many drinks and topped it off with a 2 a.m. feast of fabulous Thai street food. Now we are dancing in the deserted streets – ankle-deep in the streaming rainwater. We’re dancing all the way from Bangala road to our hotel – 2 km, give or take. And we’re insanely pleased with ourselves!
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