Another long weekend? We'll take it!

Bang Phli and Ko Si Chang (12/11-12/13) So we only had 2 days of teaching last week and it was really really great. I wish it were like that every week. This week's special occasion was Constitution Day when the Thailand stopped being an absolute monarch. Friday we got up after catching up on some much needed sleep and headed out to Big C to catch a Sohngtow. The plan for the day? The crocodile farm. We got in a Sohngtow that was headed for Bang Na and realized we really had no idea where we were going...but for 15 baht I guess I'll go anywhere. We got dropped off and had to take a 10b (total) tuk tuk ride for the 4 of us to the farm. We didn't end up going in as they tried charging us the 300 baht tourist admission fee rather than the 80 baht local fee. Now I'll never quite understand the rationale between charging foreigners more, but when it's blatantly over 3 times as much to get in some where I draw the line. We explained to the lady (in broken Thai) that we are teachers from Samut Prakan, etc but she wouldn't budge. So we said forget it and hopped in a cab to Bang Poo Seaside Resort. I'm hoping when we get our work permits we'll have better luck with entrance fees, because I don't feel like getting ripped off when I'm getting my salary taxed by the Thai gov't just like every Thai citizen is.

Anyway we pulled up to Bang Poo and let me tell you the word Resort is used in the lightest of senses here. It's very talked about destination in Samut Prakan and we got there only to find a cement walking pier covered in Asians and Sea gulls with nothing but a restaurant at the end. Hmmm, we weren't really sure what the appeal was. We decided to venture onto the Queen's Nature Path since it was right there as well. Nature Path is also used verrrrry lightly in this context. It was a tar walking path along the water which was nice, but there wasn't much to see except some birds in the water on one side and a stagnant, muddied drainage ditch on the other. Now, in this ditch were the some of the most horrifying little creatures I've ever encountered. They were sort of fish, sort of lizards. They could swim like fish/eels, but were able to use their front fins and long tail/body to slip and slide and scooch about on land. After some research I discovered it's called a mudskipper...Pretty sure it's the missing link in evolution.

After 'sightseeing' throughout Samut Prakan we headed back to Bang Phli and stumbled across a market along the canal behind Big C. It was kinda of closing down when we saw it, but it looks like a cool place to explore more in the future though. The best part was probably having to pay a whopping 1 baht to enter the market after walking across two rickety boats that they had tied together over the canal serving as a bridge. That night Katie, Emily, Josie and I went to Soi 35 and cooked some delicous homemade grilled cheese/tomato sandwiches and vegged out.

SATURDAY
Josie and I got up early and made the trek to Ekamai bus station to catch a bus to Sri Racha (where we would catch a ferry to the island of Ko Si Chang). To get the taxi we both got on a motorbike taxi on our street which was pretty hilarious. The drive wore josie's backpack on his front with her purse in the basket up front and I sandwiched her in while wearing my bag. 3 people on a motorbike definitely wouldn't fly back home, but makes for an exciting excursion. We hopped on a bus and shortly thereafter we realized we were on quite possibly the worst/oldest working bus in Thailand. There were ripped seats and it made stops like every 2 min which turned the 2 hr bus ride into a 4 hr trip. Additionally they didn't tell us when our stop was so after we passed through the town we thought we were supposed to stop at we asked where our stop was. They looked at us and pointed backward. Sweet--they pulled over the bus and let us off at the side of the road and kept telling us 'tuk tuk, tuk tuk.' So, Josie and I played human frogger, dodging cars to cross the highway, and came across a tuk tuk that took us to Ko Loi (the jetty/island where the ferry would pick us up) where we sat down and had some fresh crab over the water until our ferry arrived. It came and we realized all Thai 'politeness' goes out the window when boarding a ferry. People were pushing and throwing elbows trying to get on the ferry that they all had tickets for and knew there would be room for them on. Really?

Josie and I got a tuk tuk (which only have 3 wheels on the island and are basically motorcycles with trailers on the back) at the pier after battling to get off the boat and had him take us on a tour of the various bungalows on the island 'til we found one we wanted. We went to one on the other side of the island called Tham Pang Bungalows which were the only bungalows on the main beach of the island. We pulled up and a lady on the side of the road where the bungalows were said she was out of the cheaper rooms for two people but that she could offer us a room for 4 people for 1000 baht. We said absolutely not and she went down to 800-we didn't feel like searching all over the island and agreed. After paying her and getting our key we went in and realized what we did was just really sketchy (we didn't check in or anything and paid some strange lady kind of a lot of money). STUPID. We figured oh well, we're here, let's go to the beach and relax.

Josie went to buy some water at what we discovered was the front desk where a woman was just finishing telling a guy who just got there that she had a room available for 450 baht/night. We stopped in our tracks and began a little battle with the desk. You told us you had no rooms available at that price. "Oh someone just call and cancel so now we have." Oh really cuz we got here about 3 minutes ago and no one told us. "Oh they just call." Well we weren't notified and we specified we wanted a cheaper room. It went on like this for a few minutes until we finally just said we felt we were being taken advantage of wanted or money back and we would stay somewhere else. One of the male workers goes "okay okay 700 baht." I looked at him and said 600 baht or we go. They finally agreed so we ended up getting a room for 4 (2 big beds) with bathroom (well it had a scooper pooper not a flusher, but still not a squatty potty- i'll get into the types of toilets in a later blog) for 400 less than we were initially quoted. I'm still just not used to this price changing thing, but sometimes I guess it does work to your advantage.

We went down to the beach and got some chairs and just sat by the water and watched the sunset right in front of us over the gulf. The waters around Ko Si Chang are crystal clear and blue; so crazy that only 2 hours from BKK there is such a drastic change. After sunset we headed over to Pan & David which is a really famous restaurant on the island specializing in all sorts of food. It was kinda pricy for Thai standards, but well worth it- the food was great! We headed to bed early which apparently we needed to do cuz we slept for like 11 hours. Not much is better than waking up to the sound of water, putting on your swimsuit and heading down to the beach for the entire day. We got lunch at the restaurant on the beach and just laid in the sun and played in the water all day. It was some much needed tropical R/R to help remind us that we can do this for a year!