Day35: First full day at Patong Beach

So I awake at 11 which is good considering I spent an hour last night trying to fix their wifi ... Till 4am. Success. Holly and Annie were both up but Manne was not. Went to his bunk to check his lunch plans, He mumbles something, rolls over, but surfaces 10 minutes later and off we go.

Sheila's guesthouse restaurant and bar seems like a fair enough joint. Drawn in by the false advertisement of all you can eat for 180 baht, which was not true, only 3 cups of coffee, and an English breakfast ... sit down anyway. The American Breakfast consists of 2 eggs, 3 rashers of bacon, fried potato, toast with jam or marmalade, with juice and coffee. Rasher? What the heck is a rasher? Annie looks at me and says, "it's a rasher, you know like a slice, a rasher." Why would you call it that? Is that a common phrase? "Of course, everyone calls it a rasher." Then what do you call it when your skin gets irritated and spotty in need of a cream? "A rash". Ok, so then why would you want a rash on your bacon. "No, because it's a rasher of bacon". Annie, you do know that defining a word with the same word does not equal a definition? Regardless, learned a new phrase today.

The conversation quickly goes to potty talk, literally. The girls apparently are plenty upset that in some mens restrooms in the UK, there's a guy who gives you paper towels and spritzes you with cologne. Yeah, we have that in the US too, in most nice clubs. Apparently, the girls bathrooms do not, much to their consternation. Also, did you know that girls go to the bathroom with other girls so that they have someone to press the door closed and hold their purse? And guys, I mean on the inside of the stall. Think about how small that stall is, and now you have a friend in there trying not to watch, so your squatting and thier tail end's in your face. No thanks. I'll rig the door closed with a piece of hair and chewing gum, McGuyver style. Now onto the purse, why don't they just use the hooks on the back of the door? Annie quips, "We don't have any of those either. We just get royally ripped off." Another reason I'm glad to be a dude. Especially since I usually remove all upper body clothing in any bathroom before dropping a deuce. TMI?

We return to the hostel to grab our stuff for the beach. We pick up Sasha, a full figured, pale, lady from England staying at the hostel with us, and head for the famous Patong beach. It's packed, loungers everywhere, a few folk in the water, majority catching rays. Interesting beach for sure, tons of "westerners" as they call the whites, but more so Euros. Though this is not a topless beach, a number of older overweight weathered ladies did not get the memo, so boobs are out all over the place. A sweet older anorexic Asian lady decided it was keen to wear a thong, though not sure how it stayed up without a butt. Literally, her legs just went straight up, with a litlle piece of string up the crack and tied around the waist, barely on since the hips were square. And don't even get me started on the banana hammocks. You have two types that wear them. Either really fit muscle head types, or extremely overweight, belly hanging over types where you can scarcely tell they are wearing anything. And if you think I'm being a bit jugemental here, my rule of thumb is if your willing to wear it out to the beach then be proud and own it. That way you never care what people say, and clearly, all the people I'm describing were confident and could careless what I think, probably why they were intersting to observe.

After 2 hours of doing nothing but sitting half in and half out of the still water ... No surf here ... We headed back for a shower and some rest.

There we run into the whole group of Manne's Swedish friends, Eric, Joseph, Haki, and Martin. We actually hung out with them at the Hollywood Bar the night before as well, really nice guys. If I had not made mention of this fact before, I've never met a Swede I did not like. They are all very nice however much more reserved, so unless you initiate, they will not interact, and you might assume them to be snobs. Don't be fooled, just start a conversation, they all speak great English and typically want to know about how America really is. Ok, now onto the rest of my day.

At the hostel they have decided they are going to Phi Phi in the morning, something I am dying to do, and they invite me. Only problem... I paid in advance to the hostel for 7 days and they are not too keen on refunds, blurgh! Tip is the manager who clearly has a crush on me. She has more than once reached in my pocket "as a joke" to grab my room key or my money. She always gives it back, but really? Anyhow, she says it's very hard to give me back my money, so we agree that when I return, she will give me 5 nights of free stay, which works since I'm coming back in a few days. Score ... I'm going to Koh Phi Phi.

Another random fact, in Thai, Koh means island, so if I ever say Kho, it's an island, though sometimes I'm lazy and leave the Kho off.

We each pay 650 baht (around $20usd) for a round trip boat ride and taxi to and from Phi Phi, scheduled to leave at 7:15am in the morning. The boat dock is a 45 minute taxi ride, the ferry is 2 hours, so it's a fair price.

After we get all our traveling plans straightened out, I head by myself to Beach Way, the coffee shop with Mocha Oreo Frappe, and catch up on FB and Aggie sports.

That night it was dinner for 8, the 5 Swedes, and the two Brits plus me. They ask if it will be separate checks, first time to hear that, and we say sure! Joseph, the big eater in the group, asks for a double portion as does Manne, Eric, and Martin. The meals arrive, sporadically of course, and out of all of the meals, Joseph's was the smallest. You should of seen the look on his face, priceless. Hes too hungry to argue, but the entire meal, he grumbles about the size. When the bill came, we were sure he would be charged for a single ... Nope, a double. And since he ate it without complaint, he had to pay full price, sucka! We signal for the check and half an hour later, the bill finally arrives as one big number ... Uh, separate bills my arse. We have them break it down, tell us amounts, pay our share and then off we go. We had to make a b-line for McDonalds where Joseph downs a Big Mac, it was a necessity in his words, and head to the market for supplies for Phi Phi.

Side note: Everything in Thailand is backwards a bit, chocolate is expensive, full meals are cheap, playing card cost 500 baht, as do full day snorkeling trips with meals on board. Little bit strange.

We head back to the hostel, get an early start at bed, so with that, it's farewell and nite nite from the iPhone blogger.