We are back from healthy camp, all bronzed, skinny and healthy. It sure feels good to eat Pad Thai from the street stalls and anything else for that matter. We are quickly re-polluting ourselves. Funny though i fill up quickly now. We have yet to get our drunk on either. Johnny and i had two beers last night, but i was too full to drink any more.
  We took off a day before Malika so that we could get a hotel to watch the game. the boat that took us from Had Tien had easily 20 people too many in it. I think there was a total of 45 of us, even the Thais were laughing about how full we were. We had a little run in with a race of people that are really getting on my nerves. First off as i was patiently waiting for my turn at handing my bag up to the guy on the boat where i would then board. We all ready know they will take everybody, so they wont take off unitl everyone is on board. Wow i get shoved right out of the way by this big backpack as this lady shuffles her family onto the boat. There is a Thai guy on the boat efficiently loading everyones packs but instead she stands in the way to try and get her and her families bags on. The Thai guy was pleading with her to sit down and let him do it, but whatever. Then it was this lady who would not move towards the back of the boat so that everyone else could get on. “No more people, the boat is too full” I wonder who is yelling that into my ear, do i even need to turn around, No i don’t but i do need to say under my breath “If you guys get  off we will be five less people”
   Now we are at the dock and i am buying a ferry ticket back to the mainland. There are a bunch of people lying around the grass waiting, I buy the ticket and ask “What time does the boat leave”  She answers “Two hour ear-y” What time? I get the same answer, i figure her English is wrong and maybe she means in Two hours and it might be early. She hands me my ticket and it says 3pm. Cool we have 2 1/2 hours to kill lets walk over and get something to eat. As we return down the street towards the ferry dock at five minutes after one i look up and say “I hope that is not our boat leaving” There is no one in sight and the ferry office is closing up shop. I run over and show her my ticket

Lady: “Why you not on this boat?”

Dumb American:” My ticket says 3pm”

Lady:” I tell you two hour ear-y”

Dumb American: “I thought your English was just messed up?”

Lady: something in Thai that sounded like “Bong bok dong Stupid Farong!

  So we have missed the two hour Express boat and she sends us over to the other ferry dock where we hop on to the Extreme Un-Express boat and 5 hours later we dock on the other side. We sat luckily in the only section of shade on the roof of the ferry surrounded by Spring Break MTV Israel. Lots of frat studs with there shirts off.We took a little bus ride to the center of town the got suckered into a cab ride down the street to the hotel. We were fine with the room 400bht $11 with hot shower and tv. While Johnny checked in i went again with our cab drivers. The cab was a small pickup with seats in the back and a welded on cover. They took me to a travel agent where i purchased two train tickets for the following day to a town 6 hours north called Prachup. By this time i am so exhausted that i don’t even notice how much they just charged me 680bht each. back to the hotel to pick up Johnny cause now they cabbies are going to drop us off at a seafood joint, which i am craving. As we start driving i mention i want to be able to walk back and they say “Oh no this place 10km away” so we get dropped somewhere closer with the only seafood on the menu being shrimp. Johnny gets some very good chicken and mushrooms and i get some dinky little chicken wings in a port wine sauce. they were tasty and considering this is one of our first real meals since the cleanse we fill up quickly. as we walk back we run into our cabbie friends sitting on the corner in a little traffic cop station. It is two seats and a desk covered by a giant police motorcycle helmet. It is hard to explain i will try and post a picture. Johnny goes into a nearby CD store and they hand me a beer and a can of smoked fish, good stuff they also have a bowl of some sort of pork soup, also very good. They handed me the spoon at one point, but on closer examination i noticed that swimming in the soup spoonful was the snout of the pig, nah! but thanks. We hung out with them for a while had a couple of beers went back to the hotel and crashed. The next  morning at 6am we turned on the game. We walked around town a bit, not much there then at 2:30 the cabbies came by and picked us up to take us to the train station. He says he has hooked us up with a car for 450bht, I say “no i think the sign at the bus station says taxi to train 120bht” OK we take you to a different car that happened to be 120bht he then hands me my tickets stapled into an envelope, i guess what i bought was the voucher. The staple happens to go right through where the price of the ticket is. 250bht, yep we were well ripped off. Guess it happens to the best of us. At the train station Johnny and i decide we just want to get back up to BKK so i ask if we can upgrade and go all the way up instead of stopping at Prachup. “Sorry all full, only 3rd class” Hell we don’t care, 1rst class 3rd class, can they really be all that different? How much? “No charge” cool!
NEVER AGAIN!! will my tender ass sit in 3rd class. Poor Johnny his seat was broken and leaned severely forward. I tried to give him a couple of suggestion's on fixing it, but it was too late he was over it by this time. The first ten minutes wasn’t bad since we were the only ones on the train, but then at the next town half the population got on. We tossed and turned and cursed to each other. Johnny swore he was getting off in Prachup and when we finally went through i was ready too, luckily the stop was to brief and we were stuck on the train. We arrived the next morning at 4:30 they tried to rip us off on a Tuk Tuk ride to Koh San rd. but we got around that, sort of. We walked around and everywhere was full, we finally found a room and crashed for about 2 hours until that figging dog started barking. In my dream Johnny had a gun with a scope and we were trying to kill the dog. He barked right through my ear plugs.
  After getting up we spent most of the day walking around china Town. We are really over the whole Koh San Rd (Back Packer Heaven) area so we found a guest house in China Town. Cheap and dirty. Later we looked for a cool night market that Gary Simms and i frequented last time in Thailand. We had a horrible time explaining it to the cab driver and ended up at some crazy night bazaar, a market that was way to pricey. Many rich Europeans and old dudes with their young Thai girlfriends. We ended up eating at a place called Steak Jungle. it was semi pricey but we did not care. Johnny had pad Thai and i had spicy shrimp, I am not much for steamed rice so i declined the offer. Johnny’s pad Thai was great. I took one bite of my spicy shrimp the shrimp was good but my mouth was on fire, my eyes welled up and i started hyperventilating, Johnny was a lot of help pointing and laughing, I fought through the tears and got the waiters attention demanding  a plate of steamed rice. We eventually found the night market, but by this time my legs were tired and my feet blistered so we just headed home. I took a shower and laid down, within about a half hour i awoke scratching my feet, elbows and arms. I was being eaten alive, this is what you get for cleaning the grime off. I put on shirt, pants and covered my feet with a towel and fought the urge to scratch until finally falling asleep. Then at 5am we heard that loud language. I wont name any Israel names but they are so loud and obnoxious. About 6:30 when there was no way we were going to be able to sleep any more we got up and went downstairs to wait for Malika who’s train was coming in that morning. The doors on the rooms where we were staying had a spot to put a lock on the door, on the outside, so as a thank you for the loud noise i went ahead and  tied a piece of string so as to keep those bastards locked in their room until either A: they had to break the door and pay for it or B: someone let them out. doing this act of revenge made my day just that much better.
  We opted not to get the junky China Town place, but instead found a cute little, quiet joint just around the corner from a loud main street. 300bht a night split between Johnny and i, with a nice courtyard and very friendly hosts. We will get our Visa’s going tomorrow morning and be on our way to Chaing Mai early next week. Embassy is closed on weekends. I think we are going to hit up the horse track and some Thai boxing on Sunday night.

Jan 8th

I had the best nights sleep in all of my Thai travels. This place is just around the corner from a very busy street, but it is clean, quaint and quiet. We will be staying here for the rest of our time in Bangkok