Kelly's Transitioning Blog Sites...

Hello dear blog readers!

This is a brief message to let you know that Miss Sam Parker has returned to dear ol' Dartmouth on account of her collegiate education. I am still en route, now in Vietnam. As such I am transitioning to a new blog forum, leaving this one as a testament to the travels of Sam and Kelly. Here's to happy BGB travel reunions in the future, sure to come.

The new blog site will be a personal account of my travels since mid-March, written in cohorts with my sister, and will features the tales of "Global Growers"- individuals on the ground working to make positive change in their communities.We are just getting it started so please bear with us as it develops: veganvagabonds.wordpress.com

Happy reading! I hope each of you is safe and happy wherever you are in the world this morning.

Kelly

In the Jungle the Leeches Sleep Tonight: Highs and Lows from Koh Phangan to Khao Sok

The music today has been singing of home. Sam and I ate dinner tonight at a Thai restaurant on the main road leading to the gates of Khao Sok National park. While waiting for our dishes of Tom Yum and Tom Kha to arrive, the hostess turned on the restaurant’s oversized CD player and the first thing to play is John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads.” I gasped and smiled broadly as soon as I heard the first cord. Two songs later and Cat Stevens is singing “Morning Has Broken.” Both of these songs have been played frequently in my father’s car for as far back as I can remember.

Then walking back to our guesthouse as we passed an open-aired café (they are all open-aired, which is great for enjoying the night air but not so wonderful for mosquitos) “Knee Deep” by the Zac Brown Band and Jimmy Buffet’s sounded on the restaurant’s speakers. My mother and I are the two in the family who appreciate country and we both particularly appreciate this tune because it’s pretty much how we want to be all of the time. That is, “Knee deep in the water somewhere. Got the blue sky breeze and it don’t seem fair. Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair.”

This morning on the playlist of another restaurant on this strip, Maria Carey and Whitney Houston’s “When You Believe” could be heard. This duet is the principle song for the cartoon movie, The Prince of Egypt, and my Aunt Marianne played the soundtrack often. Hearing the brief snippet of this song in passing brought yet another broad smile to my face.

Heck, as I type this Mr. Marley’s voice can be heard singing his “message to you” from the Chill Out Bar across the street: Don’t worry about a thing cause every little thing is gonna be all right.

Too true, Bob. Too true.

Now that I’ve informed you of the music in my life today I should explain where we are at the moment.

Sam and I left Koh Phangan on Saturday morning and we are now in Khao Sok National Park about 2 hours due west of Surat Thani, the major port for getting to the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. I think I will mimic the format of a blog post I recently read by Miss Amanda Lee, Dartmouth ’12 and very dear friend of mine teaching English in Thailand as a Fulbright scholar. She’s a smarty pants and an excellent writer so I think this is a good idea. In Amanda Lee fashion, here are the highs and lows of our last few days in Koh Phangan and our first few on the next phase of our journey.

Lets start with a high.

The sun rises over Koh Phangan as we say good bye.

High: Our last night in Koh Phangan.

After spending a final few hours in Nira’s Bakery, which came to be the café I frequented the most next to Footprints, I headed back to the hotel to pack up and await word from the gang about the evening’s plans. Jeremy- lead chef for the Phangan Project and generally awesome human being- picked me up on his scooter and we headed over to meet Sam, Tiffany, Felix and a couple of his newly-made friends at a Thai BBQ place. Now normally I would be wary of a BBQ place, but this all-you-can-eat buffet had tons of different vegetables and tofu to sample. Needless to say, everyone left very happy and very full. From there we headed to a “lady bar” in the town of Baan Thai. The street we went to is lined with these bars, where a customer can order both a drink and a girl for the evening. Apparently Koh Phangan is one of three places in Thailand, along with Phuket and Bangkok, known worldwide for its lady bars. The Koh Phangan places are more relaxed than others according to a friend and indeed the bar we went to felt entirely normal. Indeed it was far better than normal because the DJ, a big Australian man dressed in a pink lei and straw hat, played the most beautiful selection of 90s throwbacks and current top charters (Sam’s absolute favorite). We danced the night away to the sounds of “Baby Got Back,” “Jump Around,” “Mr. Saxobeat” and “Moves Like Jagger.” Around midnight a friend that we had met at Daruma (the one who wanted to learn the Cheeseburger Song) and was visiting Koh Phangan met up with us to bid us farewell before our departure. We spent four hours dancing our little hearts out and then scooted back to Thong Sala where we sat on the pier staring up at the stars and talking about the beauty (and challenges) of traveling. We got back to our room at 5AM with a little over an hour before we had to report back to the pier to catch our ferry boat. Sam slept for a whopping 30 minutes and I just pushed through, knowing that I take much longer to pack and get my butt out of the door. We were wiped for the rest of the day and our new bed at Smiley bungalow was very welcome on Saturday night, but I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end our time on Koh Phangan. I consumed more alcohol than I normally do (and incidentally ever have probably) and Jeremy took such good care of me- buying me water, checking in on me, taking us to his special spot on the pier to get some fresh air. Later in the day after we were hours away from Koh Phangan, he called my cell to make sure Sam and I were safely to our next destination. So we may have gotten no sleep Friday evening but it was well worth the hours spent in the company of newly found friends.

Low: A Lady Bar

I don’t think I can categorize the entirety of our last night in Koh Phangan as a high when we spent most of it a Lady Bar. While, like I said, it really was just a normal bar for all extensive purposes and we had a ton of fun, it still raises a lot of ethical questions for me- namely about the fact that middle-aged white men fly in from around the world with the purpose of frequenting these lady bars... Jeremy and I had an in-depth conversation about this while waiting for Sam and Tiffany to arrive to the dance party. It’s clear that there exists a wide range in the violence and severity associated with the industry. Who knows what the individual stories are that bring these women into this line of work, but to be sure they are not all by choice. I won’t go into all that we talked about here but I think it’s worth mentioning because the sex trade in Thailand is renowned and clearly a pervasive part of the culture and economy. We danced the night away and I had a wonderful time in the company of friends (and in the company of a delicious pina colada) but I definitely remained conscious of our surroundings and the industry that feeds it.

High: 9 hours on a bus!!!!!!!!!!! Yahoo!!!

Just kidding.

Low: 9 hours on a bus.

Sam and I have spent a lot of time on buses clearly. So perhaps you might think that a day of traveling from bus to a van to another bus would be incredibly enjoyable and comforting for us. In truth it kind of was comforting to hear that diesel engine kick on and the air-pressure powered door open and close as the coach bus driver let new passengers on. But like the Big Green Bus, the bus we spent the most time on traveling from Surat Thani to Khao Sok did not have the luxury of air conditioning. I felt little wafts of warm air blow on my shoulders from the vent above my head every now and then. However this did not prevent the layer of sweat that pooled on my skin an hour into the trip. It was quite cramped as well and some poor souls that hopped on board later in the trip had to stand for over an hour and a half of the journey. We were wiped from the night before though so every time we sat down, whether on the ferry or a bus, we fell asleep fairly quickly. When I wasn’t drifting asleep, I was taking in the view as we drove along the trafficked roads of whatever cities we were passing through. It seemed that the transition from city to wilderness happened instantly. One minute I was looking at a market of food stands lining urban streets, the next I stared out onto lush jungle rising up over bare limestone cliffs. In all likelihood I fell asleep for longer than I realized by the time we approached Khao Sok.

Given the views, the opportunity to sleep, and the familiarity of a coach bus, perhaps I would categorize our day spent in transit from Koh Phangan to Khao Sok as a mixed bag of high and low.

View of the mainland as we approach Surat Thani via ferry.

View from our bungalow outside of Khao Sok National Park. Please observe the mist covered jungle mountains and the rainbow!

Low: Leeches

We spent our first day in one of Thailand’s most famous national parks hiking to waterfalls along a trail that leaves from the park visitors center. Before we departed this morning Sam mentioned the appearance of leeches at the national park she visited in Thailand before arrived and suggested that I might wear long layers as a precaution. I took her advice, trading my capris for long khaki pants and my short sleeve shirt for a long sleeve. Thank goodness I did. By the halfway point into our daylong adventures, we were stopping every 30 feet to check our sneakers and shoes for these nasty little creatures. Well before that I had taken to tying the strings at the bottom of my pants tightly and tucking them into my socks. Even still, three leeches (of the thirty or so that I pulled off over the course of the day) managed to draw blood. Somehow, despite swearing to do so after our motorbike incident, I did not bring my first aid kit on our trip and had nothing to stop the bleeding. So the bottom of my pants and one of my socks are now soaked with a nice blood and sweat mixture. The first part of the trail was largely flat and wide, but once we crossed over the first small stream the trail became significantly narrow and more densely thicketed with brush. That’s when I noticed the first “inch worm.” It was the only wildlife I had seen up until this point on the trail so I excitedly told Sam about the numerous inch worms I had seen scattered on the path. They resemble stick bugs I told her, curiosity in my voice. She hadn’t seen them but she nodded and smiled as I talked about my sighting. Later, when we breaked for a snack, I felt something crawling on my shoulder. I casually flicked off the “inch worm” that had somehow landed on me. Again Sam smiled and nodded, now getting pretty skeptical that the critters I had seen before were inch worms but not wanting to freak me out. Sure enough 20 minutes later and I see something on my show. It’s fat and swollen but Sam enlightens me that this is the same guy who had been on my shoulder earlier. Well maybe not the same guy, but one of his bazillion brothers or sisters. He was a different shape than that first one because he’d had a few minutes to enjoy sucking on my blood. You’re welcome you nasty leech. After I plucked off those first few, I noticed them everywhere. The jungle floor is littered with them. I have always associated leeches with water. The only time I’ve thought to look out for them was when swimming in lakes in the northeast of the United States. Apparently they don’t need water, and if they do the moist jungle environment is enough for them to not just get by, but thrive. And these things are seriously sneaky. They sit on the path upright, thin strings reaching up to the heavens awaiting some innocent passerby to grab ahold of. Then they can use their extremely malleable bodies to fit into small crevices (like the small rip in the fabric of my shoe) and move quickly if needed. They scrunch up their body, making themselves very much resemble inch worms (in my defense), and then hurl the front half forward from that scrunched position so that they can grab on with the front part and scoot forward quickly in that fashion. It can get up your leg pretty fast if you’re not careful. Thus I tucked my pants into my socks and we stopped for leech checks every forty feet. I did a full body check at one of the waterfalls, unashamedly stripping down to my underwear, to make sure that none of the dirty stinkers had gotten past the sock and pants tactic. None had, but I’m still wary… Leeches lurk abound! That’s a serious low.

High: Hike through one of the most ancient forests in the world

While there were leeches, there were leeches in a forest that dates back some 160 million years old and plays host to some of the most beautiful biodiversity in Thailand. Elephants, wild dogs, tigers, tapirs, hornbills, monkeys, and the largest flower in the world (which Sam believes to be a fungi in truth) all call Khao Sok National Park and the adjoining wildlife sanctuaries home. We only saw leeches today, but it’s pretty awesome to be immersed in a landscape where theoretically I could see any one of these animals. If I had two weeks here I would love to venture to some of the less visited areas of the park in search of some fauna. As it is Sam and I will only be here for a total of three nights and two full days. So we chose to hike close to home today. The entrance to the national park is about a 10 minute walk down the road from the bungalow where we are staying. We started from the visitors center on a fairly trafficked trail that had 9 off-shooting trails leading to waterfalls of varying magnitude and grandeur. Despite Sam’s current handicap with her still-healing stitched up knee, we booked along passing everyone who had set out on the trail before us. (They would have been blown away by Sam Parker at full hiking speed!) We also went further than anyone else on the trail today, venturing all the way to its end at Tom Kloi waterfall. At this point the trail became quite narrow and lined with some thorny jungle plants. We were quite the trekkers and the sounds and sights of this ancient forest felt like something directly out of a children’s story book. Tomorrow we head to the Cheow Larn lake as part of a day long hike through our guest house. It’s supposedly a must see with dramatic limestone cliffs jutting out from the water and stalagmite-encrusted caves lining its sides.

We’ll report back tomorrow and let you know. For now, good night! I’m off to take some welcomed Benadryl to ease the itching of my healing wounds.

Wishing you a leech free Sunday,
Kelly

P.S. I'm about to post this blog and Avril Lavigne is wafting across the street from the Chill Out Bar speakers. Music of my childhood, of course.

Remember That Time I Said Kelly and I Weren't Bad at Driving.....

Doctor: “You are going to need stitches.”

Sam: (Beat) “Are you sure?”

Kelly: (Mildly Frantic) “Stitches, really? She needs stitches?”

Doctor: “Yes.”

Sam: “I might pass out.”

Doctor: “Can you please lie down?”

Sam: (Looks at Kelly anxiously)

Kelly: “Want me to hold your hand? Or, I can sing! Ummm......On my own, with no one here beside me....”

Sam: “Les Mis, really. That is not a happy song.”

Kelly: “Sorry sorry! It’s the first thing that came to mind. What about the Beatles?”

            Two full days after the Full Moon Party, Kelly and I are back in Haad Rin....at the hospital. Why? Motorbike accident. HOW stereotypical. Of course we’d been told not to drive down Thannsedet Road......during orientation. Good thing Kelly and I paid absolutely no attention to that little detail, assuming we were never going to rent a motorbike. But alas, we ventured along the dreaded road, hoping to see some gorgeous waterfalls on the northeast side of the island. Coincidentally, before we actually got to any of the waterfall trailheads, we stopped to get gas and Kelly ended up burning her right shin on the exhaust pipe trying to help me back the motorbike up. This sparked an active conversation on past injuries, namely my lack of them. Should have knocked on wood.

            As we continued along the road, we passed a sign – waterfall - and decided to stop before going on, just to make sure we were going the right way. We were. I had been driving and after seeing the upcoming downward slope, decided I no longer wanted to drive. So Kelly took the wheel, and we began our decent down the very steep gravel and dirt road. We were essentially riding the brakes – front and back- the entire way down, going at an extremely slow pace. Big mistake. We learned later that you should only apply the back brakes down steep slopes and, as Tiffany advised us, the more terrified you are of the slope, the more you should apply gas.

            Needless to say, we were not setting ourselves up for success. Thus, we crashed. The bike fell on top of us and we scraped ourselves up pretty badly. Lucky for us, a couple of extremely good-looking German men passed us coming up the hill on monster-size motorbikes. One of them turned immediately around to find us a taxi and the other stayed with us, distracting us from our open wounds with his charming accent and travel stories. The taxi arrived shortly, wanting 1800 baht to drive us to the nearest clinic. Are you kidding me. The taxi driver was actually going to charge us $54 USD to take us, two bleeding young female adults, to the nearest clinic. We couldn’t believe it. We decided to look for another option.

            Lucky for us again, two park rangers passed us almost immediately after the taxi fiasco. One jumped off the motorbike and began cleaning my wound with iodine. The other rode into town to get a truck to take us to a clinic. This did not become fully apparent until the truck actually showed up and we were hoisted into the vehicle. There was a bit of a language barrier. But these two guys saved us. They drove us up the steep, sinewy road towards the Baan Tai clinic, where they dropped us off before being transferred to Haad Rin hospital via ambulance.

            We arrived; they cleaned us up, gave us a zillion pills and sent us on our way. But it wasn’t over yet. Our bike was still stuck on Thannsedet road. Lordy. We called up our friend Jeremy who sent our other friends Felix and Egor via motorbike to help us retrieve our bike so we didn’t have to call the motorbike company and get charged a ridiculous retrieval fee. We were too shaken up to ride it back ourselves so Felix and Egor did it for us. Our heroes. Seriously.  They deserved far more than the beer we purchased for them upon their return.

            Maybe Kelly and I shouldn’t have ventured onto Thannsedet road. But we did. And we crashed. And we got injured. But we also learned how wonderful friends and strangers can be. I don’t know what we would have done without the two german strangers that stumbled upon us, the two park rangers who did the same and the other incredible volunteers here at The Phangan Project who rescued our bike and saw us safely home. Wonderful hearts – all of them.

Gimp love,

Sparx

Guest Blogger

This is a short, surprise blog post from a guest writer. Such a surprise is it, that this guest writer doesn't even know his words are being displayed on this blog. But indeed, here they are for your enjoyment.

We shall call this writing segment: "A Father's Response to Sam's Full Moon Party Blog Post."

From: timothymc@aol.com

To: Kelly.M.McGlinchey.12@dartmouth.edu

Subject: Fwd: BGB Goes Global

Monday, March 04, 2013 6:26 PM

1. Glad you opted out of the mushroom shake.

2. This sounds very much like what I've seen in the French Quarter in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. And just like Sam, interested to have seen it once, Never feel the need to see it again. 

3. What is "tried to Mack on me"?

4. Never mind. I don't really want to know 

5. Glad you opted out of the mushroom shakes.

Love you,

Dad

Full Moon Party

I am long overdue for posting a blog. I attribute this to 1) laziness and 2) my new philosophy of saying yes, which I will write a more thoughtful (this ones for you Kelly!) blog about later.

            As for now, a much needed post on recent events. 

FULL MOON PARTY

            For those of you that do not know, Koh Phangan is known for beach parties of all kinds: Jungle Party, Half Moon Party, Sramanora Waterfall Party, Shiva Moon Party, Secret Garden Party, Eden Party and so, so many more. However, the island is known for its Full Moon Party, which happens once a month during the full moon. 20,000-30,000 people show up to participate in the most hedonistic event I have ever witnessed. People literally fly in from all over the world to drink their brains out, dance violently to electronic music, trash Haad Rin beach and then leave when the party ends at noon the next day. It’s insane. I’ve never seen Koh Phangan as busy as it was the day of the party. Even our hotel, which is usually deserted, was filled with what appeared to be hundreds of MTV spring-break goers.

           

           

            Naturally, Kelly and I had to see the mayhem. We drove down to Haad Rin early (around 5 pm) to avoid traffic, especially taxi drivers looking to make massive amounts of money by shuttling as many people as possible to and from the beach. We parked our motorbike near sunset beach, the area farthest from the party and walked around, watching the chaos begin. People arrived in swarms from taxis, motorbikes and ferry wearing bright, neon colored clothing and carrying nothing but bottles of hard liquor and Chang (Thailands most popular beer). The streets of Haad Rin were lined with stands selling buckets (quite literally buckets), filled with miniature bottles of hard liquor, a red bull and one other mixer such as coke, mango juice, pinapple juice, etc., and stereotypical drunk food choices, namely pizza, pasta, mystery meats on sticks and donuts. Kelly and I opted instead for Indian food at a restaurant highly recommended in Lonely Planet’s Thailand travel book. When we finally made it to the Haad Rin beach, we were greeted, almost instantly, by an Australian frat boy who insisted on covering our faces with bright orange neon paint. If we didn’t fit in before that point, we most certainly did afterwards.            

            And then the party began. We had agreed to meet some of our other friends at Dive-In Bar around 10 pm, so we headed over there first, dancing on wooden picnic tables to America’s top 40, looking for familiar faces. Luckily, we found our friend Alanna who looked far more put together than we did. We failed, however, to meet up with Melanie and Maurice, the couple we met at Daruma Eco-Farm from Switzerland. Days later we found out that they had, in fact, been to the party.......for about 5 minutes. Not really their scene. With Alanna on board, we figured it was time to buy our own buckets from the lady at the stall who had called us her “special friends.” And we must have been, because she gave us our buckets at a much cheaper price than anywhere else we could find. And we were off. We let Alanna pick the DJ this time (“Call Me Maybe hadn’t really resonated with her earlier) and had an awesome time raging to electro-funk on a 4-foot platform with 400 of our closest friends for the night. The two highlights of that scene: Alanna making out with some hunk from down under and the small asian woman who pulled me aside to say, “you have a very beautiful face,” before trying to mack on me.

            We eventually met up with Jeremy, another volunteer here, and headed over to Mellow Mountain, a bar on the northern-most side of the beach. This particular bar is known for its “Mushroom Shakes,” which Alanna and Jeremy decided to try out before the bar was shut down by local authorities. Good timing on their part. Kelly and I opted out of the psycodelic, but from Jeremy’s perspective, everything, especially Kelly’s face, looked like an animated cartoon. Apparently it was better than TV.

            We ended our night around 5 am where we walked back over to sunset beach to watch the sunrise and go for a swim. Neither of which I participated in. Instead I attempted to steal a water raft from a near-by bungalow and when that failed, I was so tired that I decided to nap on the lawn of the bungalow directly next door.

            When I woke up, the sun was nearly up. Our group headed back over to Haad Rin and watched the party close out from an upstairs bar.

            All in all, this was potentially one of the sadder events I have witnessed. Thousands of people committing shameless acts and consuming to no end. I think the term “wild excess” sums it up pretty well. But what is most sad is the fact that this is what the Koh Phangan locals know of Westerners. This is their impression of us. No wonder none of them want to engage with us in a friendly manner. We disgust them. We show up with the expectation of drinking as much liquor as we can stomach to trash a beach and forget it happened 24 hours later. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s just too easy not to worry about it. And of course, once we return home we automatically become civilized human beings again; we would certainly never engage in those sorts of behaviors back home. Truly fascinating how we quickly we forget. 

            That being said, I had a great time at the party. I always do. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Would I do it again? No. But I appreciated the experience. I really did.

-Sparx