Of Fish and Fisticuffs. Koh Phi Phi Part 2.

Back again friends! And this one is a doozy. Long post here so hope it doesn't bore you.

So when last we left our fearless leader he had just been rudely awoken from his comfortable sleeping position wrapped ‘round the porcelain throne by the harsh sounds of his own alarm telling him to get up to go get down underwater. I begrudgingly obliged because somewhere in the back of my mind, way back in the part that didn’t feel like a fuzzy blanket was wrapped around my brain and being shaken violently, I knew that I would greatly enjoy myself even if at the precise moment my greatest ambition was to curl up into a little ball and fade into Bolivian.

I found my way down to the dive shop only a few minutes late (I had stopped to acquire a very vital Gatorade to boost my spirit and begin the recovery process) looking very rough I assume (though I can’t be sure since there wasn’t a mirror in the hostel). Julie saw my haggard self and asked if I was okay, to which I grunted in the affirmative and then we proceeded upstairs to go over my tests from the previous night and do a brief review of any and everything scuba. I had crushed my tests (obviously) and didn’t have a lot of questions since my brain couldn’t really formulate coherent thoughts at that moment and besides most of it was pretty intuitive. Breathe under water. Keep breathing underwater. If you run out of air, tell your buddy and surface. Not exactly rocket science. But what should have been a brief meeting turned into an arduous ordeal because every few minutes I had to excuse myself to the restroom. I ended up spending so much time there the owner should have charged me rent.

The astonishing toilet facilities of Adventure Club. I swear this place was actually great.

Sidebar: Previously I promised a long and thorough discussion into the toilet facilities here in Thailand. Not because anyone particularly wanted one but because they are so strange to me that I have spent a fair amount of time contemplating them. After much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no way to include such a diatribe without trampling on the “family friendly” manifesto of this blog. Thus any such section will have to be relegated to the post-trip book that will be written with more thorough descriptions of these adventures plus all the stories that were too risqué to make it here. I’ve always wanted to write a book and by the end of this trip I feel like I’ll have enough fodder to actually do it considering all my stories have added up to almost 20,000 words (not including this one). The average book has 60-70,000 words and I’ve still got the most adventurous part of the adventure left so I think I can make it happen. This is a long winded way of saying, I’m won’t go into detail about these particular toilet facilities other than to say that the Adventure Club moniker was especially apropos in this department.

Needless to say I was feeling on the wrong side of miserable and poor Julie the Dive Instructor had to deal with it. I suspicion everyone at the shop might have been less congenial had it been at all busy and had I not explained to them all, in no uncertain terms, that it wasn’t my fault at all but that the blame lay squarely with my parents. You see, I was born, through no fault of my own, American. And a fact of life as true as Newton’s gravity or me crying at the end of My Girl, is that American’s cannot go out drinking with foreigners. It just doesn’t work so don’t try at home I implore you. And, moreso than just that, if there is one immutable truth I’ve learned in my 26 years on this is Earth it's this: if you must drink with other nationalities, never, NEVER try to go toe-to-toe with a Brit. They’ll drink you under the table and then use your unconscious body as a foot stool while they enjoy another round. I’ve been pretty fortunate in my life to have the opportunity to travel a lot and meet a lot of people from a lot of different places. I’ve drank with French, Germans, Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Spanish. I played rugby in college and partied with South Africans, Kiwis, and Aussies. But none of them knock it back like the Brits. The French drink wine and sip sardonically, the Spanish act like they can drink but really are no better than Americans, and while Aussies and SA’s can get properly tossed (ruggers particularly so) they’ve got nothing on men from the English isle. The closest competitors (in my estimation) are the Germans but where the Germans make great sport of drinking and hold grandiose festivals to the act, the Brits drink in a blue collar, grinding it out, compulsory kind of way. It’s remarkable. Later that morning I ran into George who was sporting a fresh Chang’s! Like I said, I played rugby in college which is a spot defined by drinking and I went to a school that was ranked the number one party school in the nation during my tenure there. I'm not saying I'm Andre the Giant but I'm no stranger to the act either. And if George had offered me a sip of his Chang's right then I'm pretty sure i'd have lost my cookies at the mere thought of it. Anyway, when I told everyone at Adventure Club about my American shortcomings they all laughed and were great sports about it (I think because they were all from everywhere but the US).

So after a rough review period it was time to actually get down to it. Julie walked me through all my equipment and showed me how to put everything together and whatnot and then we walked to the beach where a roped off section of water existed for diver’s to do their requisite number of confined water dives learning the skills. My 3 confined dives took about 2 hours to cover all the information. Most of it was stuff to do in an emergency underwater, how to recover your regulator if lost, how to clear your mask, helping a buddy who ran out of air etc... It was all fairly basic and mostly the time was just getting you accustomed to the very different sensation of breathing underwater. It would have all been super easy but for the vicious bouts of nausea attacking me every minute. Seriously, of the many activities that can help solve the bad decisions of a previous night (coffee, cold shower, working out, etc…) scuba diving is not one of them. In fact it may be the worst thing you can do. Being stuck underwater with a foreign object in your mouth doing all your breathing and the constant motion of the ocean exacerbating your nausea coupled with the increased pressure on your body the deeper you go and I can’t rightly describe how miserable the learning experience was. If you're ever in a situation where you are hungover and about to go diving, scuba dooba don't. After I finished it all, we made my arrangements for the real diving on the next day at 7 AM. They repeated multiple times how important it was that I be there at 7 and not in my current condition. I assured them that not only was I not drinking tonight, I would likely never drink again and possibly take the cloth such was my disdain for alcohol. I then left, went back to the hostel, found a comfy piece of cold floor to curl up on, and hugged a trash can for much of the afternoon.

Me. All breathing underwater like a fish and stuff.

That evening I managed to peel myself of the floor to go find some dinner. Those of you paying attention at home will note that at the point in time I had not eaten anything since brunch on Friday, a fact which certainly played a large role in the depth and aggression of my hangover. I had intended to eat something light so as to not upset my already tenuous stomach; sadly on my way out the door I once again ran into Dave, George and the French Canadians. They were in bit of an argument because one of the girls had stepped on something the night before and wanted to go to the doctor. The boys were mocking her because apparently she had been to the doctor no less than 7 times in the last month. Their argument resulted in Dave and George walking off to find food so I decided to tag along and we ended up at an Indian restaurant. So much for taking it easy on my stomach.

Now this may surprise you to know, but I had never eaten Indian food before and didn’t know what dishes were. However, I have a compulsion for appearing well versed on any subject that comes up. Now I am in fact knowledgeable on a wide variety of things because I read a lot and have the attention span of a ferret, however, when confronted with a subject I know nothing about, often I’ll opt to speak in broad terms and act as if I have at least some cursory understanding of what is going on instead of admitting ignorance right out of the gate. It is usually pretty easy to accomplish this without incident and the end result is a “fake it til you make it” scenario where you become versed in something with no one being any the wiser. It is a horrible trait and speaks to my stupidity and vanity and it’s about to bite me right in the ass. Because in this restaurant, when looking over the menu, a singular word jumps out at me that I have some vague recollection of hearing: vindaloo. So when the waiter comes around I promptly order up a large serving a chicken vindaloo with some rice. The boys order their fill and in a few minutes we have plates in front of us. Now for those of you equally as uninformed as I am vindaloo is an Indian curry dish regarded as “fiery spicy” according to Wikipedia and “hell on your tongue” according to me. When the waiter set my meal down, not wanting to seem wary of my order and give away the game, I scooped up a large spoonful and dug in. I wish I’d dug the spoon in my eye instead; it would’ve been less painful. I’m not a man who enjoys spice in his food and I’d inadvertently ordered the hottest thing on the menu. It was like licking a burning coal; only when licking hot coals I rarely have to keep doing it to save my foolish pride in front of 2 Englishmen who, dollars to donuts, I’ll never see again. I’ve long held the belief that men are idiots and I may be the biggest one of them all.

I managed to choke down the vindaloo and then left my British companions. They were going back to find their girls and I wanted to make sure I watched the sunset on the PP at least once. I walked to the beach, found a fun jetty and climbed around the rocks for a bit and then perched myself on the tallest one and waited for the sun to go down. There aren’t many things in this world I like better than a sunset and KPP had a spectacular one. I piddled around on the beach a little while longer and then headed back to the hostel. That night, determined to take it easy I did no drinking and just watched the Brazil-Chile game with a Uruguayan guy who I only know as Uruguay. When I asked him where he was from he made me guess and I got it on the 2^nd try (first guess was Argentina) which impressed him a lot and made him say “thank God you didn’t say Paraguay. People think they are the same because the name but no. We are nothing like Paraguay.” That cracked me up and so we watched the game together until halftime when I left to go crash. That night Uruguay ended up going home with Argentina who was sleeping in the bunk underneath mine so that was amusing in the morning. When I got up at the butt crack of dawn to go diving, Uruguay woke up, saw me, and then promptly snuck out with me. Good times.

Sunset on KPP. I don't hate it.

Sunday was the exact opposite of Saturday’s dive experience. I was feeling fantastic even at the early hour and this time instead of beach diving we loaded up on the boat and drove out to the dive sites. There wee two other people diving with me, a couple from Canada who were vacationing for 2 months in SE Asia. Other than that there was no one on the water because we were the first boat out of the harbor. It was a delight. We suited up, got in, and got to diving. The first dive site was called “The Wall” and it is so named because that’s what it is: a wall. It’s on one side of Koh Phi Phi Ley which is a smaller island right off Koh Phi Phi Don (where the rest of the story takes place) and it is basically a vertical wall of coral extending down probably 100 meters. I was only allowed to drop to 12 on the first dive which we did and then we swam along the wall, allowing me to get my bearings, get comfortable underwater, and see some stuff. I’ve always been supremely comfortable underwater and diving sober was a revelation. Afterwards Julie said I took to it like a fish to water and I agree. i had no issues and would have happily stayed down there all day if there weren't the pesky little matter of running out of oxygen. We stayed down almost the full hour of breathing in the tank and I saw a whole host of sea life. Visibility was only about 10 meters but still we saw tons of Nemos and Dorys (clownfish and Blue Tangs) wide varieties of corals, pipefish, grouper, monkish, some truly gigantic angelfish, a couple of crown of thorns starfish, some moray eels, and a few box fish. I saw tons more but if I started listing them all out it would get super tedious for you, the reader and I’m not about that. I’d prefer to just show you pictures however, sadly, my cool waterproof camera is only good to a depth of 30 feet or 10 meters. Since I was at 12 meters (and occasionally trying to drop well below to see what I could get away with) that means my camera was no good. Drat and damn. However, in the interest of entertainment value I’ll include a few pictures of the stuff I saw so as to give you a sense of the colorful wonderment of the underwater realms of KPP.

Angelfish. I should have just pretended I took this one. Y'all would've bought it.

Box fish. Look at all the colors.

Crown of thorns starfish. These things are devastating to coral reefs if there are a lot of them. Really pretty though.

After we got picked up, we ate food on the boat and headed to the net dive site, idly chatting. In so doing, we passed Viking cave which is a cave that is permanently guarded by the Thai government because in it a special type of swallow lives that makes a nest that the Chinese believe, when stewed, promotes virility, making the nests a very valuable commodity. The cave also has prehistoric cave paintings but you don’t get to see those because the government would rather sell bird nest boner bites than let tourists see cool stuff so we drove right past it and to the next site which was an artificial reef built by the Adventure Club during the tsunami reconstruction in 2004. For those not in the know, KPP was devastated by a tsunami in 2004 where an estimated 4000 people died, 70% of the buildings on the island were destroyed, and much of the coral habitats in the area were damaged. In the aftermath, Adventure Club and other outfits helped build and install man made reefs to foster marine development. Now were they likely doing it to help their own business? Possibly. But even so it is a cool thing to do and couple that with their quality staff and equipment and their dedication to eco-diving (they practically berate you about not harming the marine life) and they’re okay by me. If you ever end up in the area, I can't recommend the Adventure Club highly enough.

Anyway, at the second dive site I had my final test which took about 10 minutes and was super easy. We breezed through that and then were off to explore the reef and area. This site was a more traditional area when you think about diving a reef as it was just splayed all around you and you just went wherever instead of swimming along a wall and always looking to your right. There was a lot more of the same stuff here but since the area was more open I was afforded more opportunity to play which was greatly appreciated. Being such an open space also meant this area had actual schools of fish to swim with and through and, likely being disensitized to all the divers in the area, when swimming around the schools of fish they didn’t care at all if you were there. I accidentally kicked tons of fish in the face because they just weren’t moving when I was swimming through them. There is no right of way underwater guys. You'd think the fish would have learned that by now. 

This dive had three notable things. 1) After seeing a lot of morays in their holes there was a great big moray randomly swimming completely outside any coral nesting. Damn thing was 20 feet long if it was a foot and it looked like one of those Chinese Dragon floats you see in movies. 2) In one of the many anemone where we saw clownfish, there was a baby one! I’m talking less than a centimeter long. It was the cutest. And finally, as we were waiting for boat pick up, a school of barracuda came swimming on by and we were right in the middle of it. It circled around us a few times and man was it cool. Then we surfaced and headed in, having successfully completed my Scuba certification and it wasn’t even noon yet. Back on shore the Adventure Club tried to convince me to stick around and get my next level certification but sadly I had neither the time nor money to do it. I would have loved to if at all possible and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t give serious consideration to just staying on PP and becoming a dive instructor for a career. There are definitely worse gigs.

Moray eel swimming. I swear the one I swear the one I saw was at least 15 feet.

Baby Nemo! I found him! Dude is like the child of Waldo and Carmen Sandiego that's how elusive he is. But seriously, the baby clown fish was adorable and i wish i had a working camera to show you the real one.

Not unlike the school we saw.

Close up just so you know what I'm talking about.

After diving, I grabbed a spot of lunch with a new group of friends Dr. England, French Guinea, and Germany. Dr. England had just successfully completed his boards and was spending his last chance to go around being a foolish child before settling into medical rotations back in Sheffield. Germany was from a little village outside of Munich and was about to begin his legal studies, and French Guinea was …well he was just French Guinea. He’d apparently been traveling for 6 month but hadn’t partied all that often so he had been going absolutely ham sandwiches on KPP. We hung around some before and his answer to everything was “but of course!” Hey French Guinea wanna go out? "But of course!" Hey French Guinea, want to go skinny dipping? "But of course!" Hey French Guinea, are you from French Guinea? "But of course!" He was my kinda dude. We all grabbed some Pad Thai and then Thailand did its Thailand thing and started monsooning all over creation. We ran back to the relative safety of the hostel and tried to wait it out. 5 hours later it was still going strong so that put the kibosh on my rock climbing plans and now I had spent all day inside which is less than optimal. When the downpour finally ceased I tooled around the island for a bit and then ate some Mexican for dinner which was horrendous. You’d think tacos would be pretty hard to mess up but I swear you can’t find good Mexican overseas. Just impossible. Outside the Mexican spot and near the hostel there was this fat 3 legged cat who me and the backpackers were feeling sorry for. Until we saw that she and her 3 legs had managed to lock down a husband cat and have a couple kittens. Cat’s hopping around like an off balance table and can still pull a family while I’m 25, almost a lawyer, have 2 good legs, and can’t get a date. Good grief.

Cat family.

After dinner I met back up with my lunchtime companions and the night began in earnest. We all got daiquiri buckets and sipped them in the common room area while chatting. We started by playing this really weird drinking game that Germany showed us which was surprisingly simple and practically impossible. We were all awful at it and the drinks began disappearing rapidly. As the daiquiris diminished our casual conversation turned into “Ask the American” and I was quizzed on the eccentricities and rules of our great nation. All of them were surprised to find out that getting a gun in America is incredibly easy and that they even sell them at Wal-Mart. I then told them all about gun shows and how people making even very modest and reasonable suggestions like restricting magazine capacity are met with vitriolic hate. They couldn’t get enough and just kept asking questions. French Guinea and Germany had never shot a gun before and Dr. England (who I just now recollect was named Pierre) had only done it once before, shooting skeet with his professor (who was o the English shooting team) as a special reward for graduating. I then told them how my first time shooting a gun was on my friend’s farm when we were all drinking by a campfire and just tossing clay pigeons in the air. Quite the juxtaposition of experiences.

French Guinea on the left and Pierre on the right. Pierre is enjoying a daiquiri bucket.

We moved from guns to other aspects of living, mostly travel related. We talked about how Euro kids want to spend their summers far away like in the states or Asia where American kids just want to go to Europe. Germany told us all about how great driving on the Autobahn was and I told them how awful the middle of America was, a vast wasteland with nothing but corn and abject sadness. Then we talked about the law and underage drinking and DUIs and how the US is still incredibly racist. This genuinely shocked them as they all thought America had the race thing figured out what with a black president and it being conclusively established at this point that racism is entirely idiotic an all. I had to inform them that no, racism is not “solved” and that while we’ve made strides since Jim Crow we still have incredibly disproportionate numbers of minorities in jail compared to population percentages and that the poverty line is a crushing weight of systemic disenfranchisement. Pierre then asked about stop and frisk laws so I then explained to them how these were not racist on their face but in practice were absurdly racist. It was funny being essentially ambassador and teacher to a curious group of worldly travelers but I did the best I could and made sure they were aware that for all our glaring stupidity, America is still the cat’s pajamas.

As our buckets dwindled to nothing we made the decision to get the party started, so we headed out into the humid night to begin the festivities. This night of debauchery would be much of the same as Friday so I won’t go into all the gory details but there were a few notable events that merit retelling. First, our night began at a bar with beer pong, where the United Nations (the 4 of us) took on 4 Aussies all on 1 table. This is only notable because at the beginning when discussing rules one of the Aussies came over, looked at me, asked if I was American, and then said “Oh well you know the rules already then. Game on!” which made me proud of our country. Can't drink worth spit but internationally recognized for our love of drinking games. Also, I did us proud by sinking 5 of the 10 cups. Pierre sank the other 4 and our German and French Guinean companions were super dead weight, bricking so many shots they could have built a better hostel than the one we were staying in.. The Aussies also had a girl on their team who threw absolute laser beams but hit half their cups for them. A frustrating defeat for international diplomacy.

Beer Pong board. They were playing re-racks only within the confines of  the pre-set dots. Totally absurd. Best re-rack is two offset lines and you can't do that under these rules. Amateurs.

The biggest happening of the night occurred post beer pong when I got into a fight. You see, there was a bar on the island with a Muay Thai ring in it and they offered you a free bucket of booze for anyone who would volunteer to get in there and fight. (For those of you unaware, Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand and it is essentially kickboxing with elbows and knees allowed. It can be pretty rough.) Now I’ve been training Muay Thai for the last couple years and while I’m in no way a world beater, I am relatively competent on the feet and felt pretty confident I could hang with a real Muay Thai fighter for a few rounds and then enjoy a free bucket. Plus I was kinda interested to see how I would actually stack up against a real fighter since I’ll start competing in the States soon. Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose) the house fighter wasn’t in that night so I didn’t get to fight a seasoned vet. Instead the bar was letting foreigners fight each other so they put me in there with a guy named Danny who also wanted to fight and also had some experience in the art form. The bar outfitted us with headgear and gloves and Danny and I decided beforehand to not go full tilt as we were both still trying to have a good time tonight (and not go to the hospital) and then we mixed it up for three 3 minute rounds.

Now, this wasn’t much more than a glorified sparring session and neither of us was really trying to kill the other guy but it was still a fight in front of girls and our friends so neither of us was trying to lose either. From the outset it was clear Danny had at least some cursory understanding of kickboxing as he started with leg kicks early. I won’t give you long play by play because this post is already gargantuan but the long and short of it is I knew how to jab and Danny didn’t really so I won the fight. I fight southpaw so from the opening bell I kept my center plane directly in his chest and worked behind a jab, double and tripling it up whenever he came forward, and using my lead hand to parry his lead to jab over top of it. At range we exchanged pretty lackluster leg kicks and whenever he came forward I pumped a jab in his face, circled to get him off center and then fired in free shots with the left straight or a body kick. I only remember taking one clean shot to the head from a looping left that I got too cocky about slipping but other than that it was mostly leg kicks from Danny (that I eventually started checking because they are uncomfortable after a while) and wide hooks that I parried or dodged. During the fight Pierre (who was cornering me) kept trying to get me to throw straight front kicks but the one time I went for it I accidentally low blowed Danny so that was the end of that and I went back to jabbing. At the end, the ref raised my hand and Danny and I were so exhausted we could barely move. Everyone watching said it was the best fight of the night (we’d been preceded by a brawl between two girls who, it seemed, had only ever read about fights in books but certainly never seen one much less been in one). We both got our buckets and, now fast friends after struggling in the crucible of combat with one another, we all went back to the beach and Slinky’s and the bacchanalia.

How can you pass up on that deal? Sidebar: I know it was in pads so it was an amateur bout, but since I got a bucket in return for services, that kind of makes me a professional Muay Thai fighter now.  With an undefeated record. NBD.

The bout that preceded us. Look at that technique!

Flattering shot of me in the corner with Pierre handy on the water bottle.

Check my footwork. 

That's a sway and a right hook coming.

The groin shot.

Got him on roller skates!

I think Germany had my camera. Hell of an artistic shot here. He could do something like this but didn't have the forethought to get a picture of me with hand raised at the end. not sure how that happens.

Fighter and cornerman. Pierre is probably telling me to front kick him and i'm telling him how tired I am.

Here is where my experience showed. When I covered up I circled out. When Danny covered up  he stood flat-footed and was an easy target. Here he's about to get lumped.

Slinky's. This place went hard in the paint.

The tower. Which looks less impressive from this angle actually. There is a big drop off on the other side making drunk people atop it a horrible idea.

Me and Danny. Darn cool guy. 

Since I’m nearing double the normal amount of words I usually post, I’ll wrap it up there. The night had many more fun and exciting stories but those aren’t for all to enjoy. The following morning I woke up and spent my last few hours walking around the island enjoying all the serenity Koh Phi Phi had to offer. Twas a wondrous place and I seriously considered just calling work and resigning to live on the island. But alas the call of duty and the knowledge that it’s better to leave perfection as it lies rather than hold on to it too long outweighed my intense desire to live the pirate life. I said my farewells to my new friends and boarded my ferry, homeward bound. It’s safe to say that my extended weekend on Koh Phi Phi was one of the best of my life and I look forward to whatever new adventures Thailand brings. 

Tree I found on my final walkabout.

Awesome beach swing I found on my final walkabout.

Okay, these last 2 pictures could be postcards. Maybe I'm not such a bad photographer after all.

As always, thanks for following along. You keep reading and I’ll keep posting.

Jed