I hadn't really planned what I was going to do in Thailand after Mom and Therese left, other than maybe make my way to Koh Tao for scuba diving at some point, so I decided to spend some time at Koh Phi Phi to meet up with Jared and Miguel (friends we made from the elephant sanctuary) while they were there from December 26-28.
To get to Koh Phi Phi from Bangkok, I took a 12-hour overnight bus ride and a 2-hour ferry ride. During the bus ride, they played a REALLY weird movie, the name of which I found by Googling "Thai movie with midgets in the jungle and evil floating heads." The name of the movie is "The Dwarves Must Be Crazy," by the way, and it is described as such: "A Thai village of little people is attacked by evil, butt-munching, fart-tracking Krause spirits - floating heads with attached intestines - in this slapstick horror-comedy." So... yeah. And bear in mind that there were no subtitles, so I didn't even get to appreciate the banter and non-physical comedy involved. I tried to just look out the window instead but then I'd see the reflection of the TV screen in the window, and I'd get reeled back into its awfulness.
When we got to the bus station in Krabi, I got a ride to the ferry pier, but I was there a couple hours before the first ferry would leave for Phi Phi (pronounced pee-pee, not fee-fee), so I just had to wait around. I met a guy named Amit, who I hung out with on the ferry ride over, which was lovely: beautiful sunny day, sea breeze, bare feet dangling over the side of the roof deck, Chang in hand. Another one of those "how is this my life" moments.
Getting off the ferry was a shit show. Everyone's luggage just gets thrown into a big pile as you come on board, so when you're exiting, you're stuck behind people trying to dig through 100 backpacks to find their own, and then once they do, there's barely any room to get out of the way and off the ferry with all the people crowded around the luggage. But eventually, of course, I got my bag and made it to the hostel. Below is the view from right outside the Phi Phi hostel. Just absolutely gorgeous. I think Phi Phi is the place where most of the "Thailand is so beautiful!" comments come from (and probably also where the Bachelorette had her Thailand date. The movie The Beach was also filmed here).
And this is the view from inside the hostel:
Twelve capsule-style beds: three up, four across, and one foot out
Amit and I hung out for a bit and then arranged to meet up with Miguel and Jared to do the short hike up to the Phi Phi viewpoint, which was, again, absolutely gorgeous:
Just try to ignore the "litter butt" sign
After the hike, we went back to our respective lodgings to shower, and then Miguel and Jared invited me to their room for some scotch (yes please!), and then we went to a restaurant with live music and pick-your-own-fish seafood. The cover band -- which was mostly one guy, who was joined by a female singer later on -- was doing a lot of Western pop hits, and the three of us were singing along pretty loudly. The female singer pointed to me and was like, "you're a singer, get up here!" I was obviously super flattered and went for it. The guitarist and I decided on "Ironic" by Alanis Morisette, and we rocked out, and it was awesome. Miguel got some pretty great video footage of it:
After the restaurant, we went just a little bit further down the road (which is just a pedestrian pathway -- there aren't really any "real" roads or cars on Phi Phi, just scooters) to a place called Carlitos to see a fire dancing show. This, too, was fantastic. One of the performers did this thing where he made a circle of fire that continuously spun between his arms and then he lowered the fire circle in front of audience members who he'd seated in front of him with cigarettes in their mouths, and LIT THEIR CIGARETTES WITH THE FIRE CIRCLE. Crazy. I can only imagine how hot it must have been to have a ring of fire inches from your face like that. Here's a video sample of another performer:
After the fire show, we had a dance party on the beach for about 20 minutes, and then everyone needed to rest up so we would feel okay for the main Phi Phi event: Captain Bob's Booze Cruise.
The thing about the booze cruise that they don't tell you is that it isn't one big cruise ship; it's six different speed boats. And when you get to the meet up desk, they make you write your name on your arm in a certain color (red, green, black, blue, etc.) and then you're in the speedboat with people of the same color. We didn't know any of this beforehand, so Miguel, Jared, Amit, and I didn't make a special request to be in the same boat. Miguel and Jared were in one boat with Amit, and I was in another. We were told we would get to hang out at each of the destination points with everyone from other boats, but it just wasn't the same without them cruising around with me.
Still fun, though! Our first stop was "monkey island," where we fed bananas and peanuts to monkeys (gibbons, I think?) Someone put a peanut on their GoPro so that the monkey would come super close to the camera (clever move!), and a few people got selfies with monkeys on their shoulders. My favorite part of the cruise was when we put our lifejackets on with our legs and wore them like diapers so we could just sit buoyant in the water, chillin' and drinkin'. If you finished your beer, you just swam up close enough to the boat to chuck your empty one in, and then the boat leader would throw you a new one. It was pretty fabulous.
One of the stops we made was to a lagoon for snorkeling. I had been on the fence about whether to do the scuba diving lessons, but after snorkeling, I was convinced that I'd really enjoy being able to go deeper into the water and have time to explore a bit more.
Our boat leader, Eliza, told us a story about a group of guys who signed up for the booze cruise together to celebrate a bunch of important events and have one last bromantic "hurrah": one had gotten engaged, one had a baby due soon, and one had just gotten married, so these guys were ready to party HARD. The booze cruise starts at 1:00pm and lasts until 7:00, but they were so drunk by 3:30 -- jumping-off-the-moving-speedboat drunk -- that they had to end the cruise early and use wheelchairs to get the guys back to their hotel.
After the cruise, we all went back to our hotels/hostels for naps and met up again for dinner at the same live music & seafood place. (The guy performing recognized me and invited me to do a song with him again, this time "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi). Then, we walked to a beach party, and I was there for about five minutes before I just felt partied out and started walking back to the hostel. Phi Phi is also very lovely at night, I discovered.
I know that I’m allowed to have fun on this trip, but I’m starting to feel weird about the fact that I’m using Bonderman money to party on the beach. It was only a couple nights, but still. This was not my original intent when I said I wanted to come to Thailand. I wanted to come here to learn more about Buddhism, and to explore a non-Western culture. But this has proven a little trickier than I imagined it would be, for a few reasons:
1) I’m not really sure how to take advantage of being present in Thailand to learn more about Buddhism. I could go to the temples and meditate, but that seems like a superficial change of scenery; what I’d really like is to study under the guidance of a teacher for a week or so, but I didn’t plan ahead for that, and when I’ve googled “study Buddhism in Thailand” I don’t get results that could connect me with a spiritual teacher. It's also probably expensive to do so, even if I did find an opportunity.
2) Southeast Asia is a very popular backpacker destination, especially the gorgeous islands of Thailand. There are soooo many tourists everywhere, so it’s hard to get away from Western culture and find ways to explore the “real Thailand” in a genuine way. Plus, I'm not sure how far I could get in "real Thailand" without knowing any Thai...
I've started reading "The Energy of Prayer" by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, which is helping me refocus on my spiritual goals for this leg of the journey, but I'm still trying to figure out activities I can do to help as well. It has been suggested to me that perhaps if I learn about the historical and religious context for some of the temples, then visiting them can be more than just a superficial change of scenery for a moment of meditation and reflection, and I think that's true. Exploring the role of Buddhism (and other religious/spiritual practices) here should include learning about the context of the external structures and symbols that I come across, because those have provided the structure for the strengthening and evolution of internal beliefs. People need ritual and symbols and holy places to anchor the otherwise very airy and abstract world of spirit and energy exploration, so visiting and learning about these things is a great way to start to understand the deeper essence of Buddhism (and later, Islam).
KRABI & THE TIGER CAVE TEMPLE
There's not a ton to say about Kabi; I just had to stay over there a couple nights to plan and organize things between Phi Phi and Koh Tao so I didn't explore much. I did climb 1230 steps to see a Buddhist temple on top of a huge hill called the Tiger Cave Temple (photos from that are posted on Facebook and Instagram if you're interested), but that was about it.
It's weird to have people taking photos and selfies around people who are there to pray... although even the people who prayed got up and took photos also. I suppose all of it is okay, really -- we interact with these things in the ways that we relate to them, and someone relating to a huge golden Buddha in a touristy way doesn't have to diminish someone else's ability to relate to it in a spiritually strengthening way... right? I guess I'm not sure where to draw the line between someone's touristy behavior in sacred spaces as being simply "distracting" vs. "irreverent/disrespectful." Hoping to strike a fair balance so I'm not just going "ugh" at tourists whenever I see them taking photos of sacred sites, especially since I'm likely to be one of them...