Thailand!

We get to the hotel, quickly change into bathing suits, and immediately hit the beach. Proud to say that I was the first in the water! While everyone else was standing around enjoying the absolute gorgeous scenery, I ran in - completely forgetting to take off my purple sunglasses given to me by my lovely Aunt Renee two years ago. Alas, Poseidon has them now. :(

We hit the pool and decide to walk to the beach again when BAM. Jacob points and I start screaming "ELEPHANT! BABY ELEPHANT!" Everyone runs up to catch a glimpse. Some guy is walking his pet elephant. We get some petting in and watch a little boy feed/ride the elephant then walk away feeling satisfied. Later, we are chilling at the pool when a different guy with a different baby elephant walks up. We swim over to pet the elephant and it starts giving Jacob and I kisses with its' tiny little trunk. The elephant pushes Jacob into the water and blows a trunk full of water onto his face. D gets a trunk full of water in her face too. Guess the elephant didn't like me as much cos I only got kisses.



We went to Surin Beach for D to take her surf lesson. As we were waiting for her to finish, Jacob and I walked the beach. We soon found ourselves on the porch of a bar that served  delicious mango sticky rice. D finished and we headed into the town where we partook of food at a halal restaurant with a pool in the back. Random.





After, we walked into the woods and found a tiny shack that served up some tasty cocktails. The best part was that the shack was located next to a Muay Thai boxing ring. We watched a Russian dude go in and attempt to show off - unfortunately for him, he was well beyond his prime



One of the days, we went for a bike ride for a couple of hours. We went through towns and found fields of coconut and pineapple trees. Every turn was picture perfect.

Bright sun shining day

Coconut tree field

We stopped at some fruit stand and bought a durian. In case you don't know, durian is known as the stinkiest fruit in the world. Restaurants, public places, and the like have banned this fruit from entering their facility. It stunk. Bad. We took it to the porch and each had a nibble. The texture was alright - it was soft and thick. However...the worst part comes after. Your breath reeks. REEKS. Durian smells a lot like rotten onions so imagine what it does to your breath. Will not be eating again. The taste is not worth the decay breath. I was burping up dead people smell all day.

Soi Bangla

We spent a day on Soi Bangla (a road) in Patong Beach to find some Ladyboys and see the famous Ping Pong Show. This is where everything happens. The night life here is insane. We found ladyboys and got our picture taken with them - they were all so beautiful!


Ping Pong Show. The first one we went into, the staff said we could stay for five minutes and see if we wanted to stay longer. To stay longer we just had to buy a drink. We went in, sat down, and discovered that the drinks were 500 baht each (18$). We said fuuuuuuu and walked out. Disappointed, we went in search of more beverages and street food to quench our desires.

At some point we found ourselves at Bar Alley. A collection of bars, individually rented, in one massive area. Almost every single one had a Go Go Dancer. We went to one with no dancers, just several cute Thai bartenders who wanted to play Connect Four, Jackpot, and Jenga with us. We met a couple who wanted to see a PingPong Show too. So! With eight people total in on this, we had great bargaining power and soon found ourselves seated for 200 baht (7$).

So here it is...If you don't want to know about a Ping Pong Show then STOP READING NOW.

Oh the things I've seen...I cannot wash my eyes of it. It started with me painting an Angry Bird on a woman's belly and smiley face on her boobie. Things went from I-Can-Handle-This to What-The-F@#! pretty quick. I watched a women pull a string out, she gave Jacob the end of the string - he quickly passed it off to me. I held my end and tugged. I pulled a fifteen foot long string from a woman's vahjayjay. Another lady pulled a string out too - but this string had needles attached. You could see the discomfort on her face. Balloons came out at some point. I held one up in the air and a woman shot a dart at it. She shot a dart out of her vahjayjay and hit the balloon in my hand. One put six ping pongs up there. You could pay to have her drop one in your hand. Two people in our party did this. They caught vagina ping pong. Then came the animals...fish. Six fish. Into a bowl. A turtle. A baby turtle. Two frogs. TWO frogs. Not small frogs either. Good sized frogs. No photography allowed.

After this...we got some more street food (mango and honey filled crepes, chicken kebabs with salsa verde sauce, and random meats on a stick) and went home. We knew nothing was going to top that experience.

We went to Phuket Town for shopping. It was fun to haggle with the shopkeepers and look at all the different items that Thailand has to offer. Jacob was super happy when he found the best meat on a stick - it had this spicy red curry sauce all over it. He couldn't stop talking about how delicious it was. He ate so much meat I was pretty sure he was going to be sick. D and Area got Thai massages - we are pretty sure they got a Happy Ending but they wouldn't admit it.

All in all, it was a glorious vacation. Every moment was legendary. Phuket is gorgeous - absolutely magnificent. I got to experience another country with great friends who traveled near and far. I was able to share this experience with the man of my dreams - one neither of us will soon forget. It was amazing.

As for Phuket, the country is poor, the people have very little, but everyone seemed to be happy. Bucket showers, squatting toilets, little to no air con, and no smart phones (didn't see a single one - only those little pay monthly ones). A great reminder of how little a person actually needs to be happy.

Deportation

Wow. Being deported really does blow chunks.

The story? Apparently, you can transfer through China without a Visa as long as you are only stopping ONCE in China. If you happen to have two layovers in China...you need that little square paper. This was unknown to us.

We step off the airport after our plane departed thirty minutes late and rush to immigration so we can hurry through in hopes of making our connecting flight (that is taking off in half an hour). Area gets to the desk and they ask the one question we all dread, "Visa?". After explaining we are just passing through, Chinese officials move us to the corner of the large room. There we wait for someone to come talk to us. A woman finally comes and chats with us for a moment before scurrying off. Our situation is unclear at this point. All we know is that there are a lot of guards suddenly showing up around us.

A gentleman in a clean blue suit, holding a walkie-talkie saunters over - our knight in shining armor. He speaks English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. He is our only translator. He explains that we have to have a visa because we have two stops in China. We explain we don't have one. We discuss options. Our Canadian friend, D, can go on ahead but she'll have to wait for the next flight because we just missed our connecting flight. Since we have two stops, two connecting flights, this would just put her in another part of China with no further flight. Thus our only real option is to purchase tickets back to Korea and see if we can get a flight straight to Shanghai to catch our connecting flight from Shanghai to Phuket.

This seems practical considering we have no other choice. Four guards show up and escort us to the ticket counter. Wait? What was that? No cash? Credit only? Damn. Another bump in the road. Thankfully, our lovely Canadian friend had enough money on her card to help us out - if she had gone ahead, we would have been stuck.

We board our flight, the same cabin workers that waved goodbye are now sadly welcoming us back.
Is it over yet? Nope. We get back to Korea and go to Korean Air to discuss compensation for any of the flights we have scheduled to get to Phuket and/or get back - nothing.

Waiting for CheapOAir to decide if they are going to give us a refund as they canceled all our flights. Apparently, if you have three flights scheduled in one day and you miss one, you cannot catch the last flight. So even though we could have possibly gotten to Shanghai by that night, CheapOAir canceled our flight from Shanghai to Phuket. Our return flight was canceled as well. We only just bought new tickets on Friday to get home Sunday. A very expensive trip to Thailand...we've bought two tickets each to get here and two each to get back. Hopefully CheapOAir will be refunding our unused tickets. Fingers crossed.