To The Beach

Took a sixteen hour night train from northern Thailand back to Bangkok. The Dirt Squirrels slept through most of it while I drank in the dinning car with a couple of Norwegian guys. I didn't get to say much as yelled stuff at me and over each other for several hours while insisting to buy all my beer. They had been driving motorcycles around northern Thailand for a few weeks and decided that it was time to terrorize the country around it's middle parts. Around four in the morning the train stopped, the bikes were unloaded. Tom and Giller finished their beers, stumbled off the train and drove into the night.

Got into Bangkok at around seven in the morning. We booked a bus to the island of Koh Chang and then drank in Lucky Beer* till noon when our mini bus was ready. *(Lucky Beer is currently the only Dirt Squirrel approved bar in Thailand.) It took us about seven hours to get to the island but I'm sure that five of those hours were spent at gas stations as our propane fueled bus could only mange about thirty meters of travel on a tank. The Squirrels noticed that the person who signed our tickets was named Poo and made appropriate jokes for the better part of two hours. I was suddenly and completely grateful for my three hundred dollar, noise canceling, squirrel proof head phones.

After a short ferry ride we were ready for beach life but couldn't find a place to stay. I took us farther and farther down the island looking for a quiet place I had visited seven years before. We acquired a map and I decided the place I was looking for was Lonely Beach. In route I bored the squirrels with stories of how chill and perfect our destination was with its little huts, beach barbeques and complete lack of amenities. The driver dropped us off and assured me that I was exactly where I had asked to go. Instead of a quiet unlit path to the beach there was a street lined with bar's, restaurants, tattoo parlors and vendors. Shitty dance music came at us from every direction and Thai working girls cat called us from the seedier bars. Seven years is a longtime, welcome to Koh Chang.