The worst transportation experience of our trip- and a hilarious email exchange

After Koh Tao we decided to take an overnight ferry to Phuket.  Let's just say I would have rather been biking and kayaking in Laos.

Here's the email Pkimb sent our friend Isaac about our horrific overnight ferry experience.  

From: Pkimb

We just slept here...

Overnight Ferry Prison for Backpackers

And now we feel like this...

Am I really posting this picture??

From: Isaac
Question:  have you been sold into the sex trade, and that’s the cattle car they use to smuggle you across borders?  Regardless, I’ve created a “Free Ashley & Kim² From the Thai Sex Trade” donation/charity on Facebook.  You’re welcome.

From: Kim M
I think being sex slaves would be better.  Let's put it this way...I slept 15 minutes on that boat and had a dream I was in a plane crash.  Yes I said dream not nightmare...you be the judge.

Just had to share this.  It was actually worse than the "after" picture shows, if that's possible.
Love,
Ashley

Koh Tao Recap

Sometime around the end of January

Koh Tao, Thailand

After a few days living it up on Koh Chang, we headed to Koh Tao for some more island fun.  As you know from Kim's post, Tragedy in Paradise, this is where I lost my iphone/3,000 unsaved pictures/only wifi device/heart&soul.  I still have nightmares about it slipping out of my hand, over the railing, and into the water.  It had been such a happy day!  Out on our first ever fishing expedition, ready to catch some giant barracuda, happy happy happy.

And then plonk.  Into the ocean.  ALL THE MEMORIES.  Ok sorry I'm getting emo over here.  Back to Koh Tao.  Maybe I'll just bullet point it.

1.  It was insanely beautiful.

This picture doesn't even do it justice

2.  We happened to be there at the same time as the Full Moon Party was going on just an hour boat ride away on Koh Phangan.  Sounds like an easy jaunt over there to partake in one of the biggest parties in the world, right?  And YOLO, right??  I know, but there were some important details we had to consider.  There was the fact that we had just arrived that morning after a horrific 9 hour overnight train ride from Bangkok and were worried we were too exhausted to party all night long that same night.  Or the fact that not only would we have had to party all night long, we literally would have had to leave at 4pm on a boat to the Full Moon Party to only return back to our hotel/island at 10am the next morning, essentially forcing us to be awake and partying from about 7pm until 9am the next day, without anywhere to sleep or rest or hide from the craziness.  Also, we were scared we might lose all our things, or lose each other, or get drugged, or have one of us get so drunk we'd have to leave them in a place called the "no rape zone" we heard about, or have one of those people who carry around big sn@kes and put them around your neck so you can pay them to pose for a picture approach me- and then I would have died, and so ultimately, it just didn't seem like a good idea.  The next day we saw the people who did decide to take the boat over to the full moon party and we were SUPER happy we didn't go.  

Yes,  I know.  This probably would have been me if we had gone...

3.  Kim and Pkimb talked me into taking a hike in the million degree heat over to some place called Banana Beach where I was supposed to be able to swim out to some amazing old bar in the middle of the water and enjoy the sunset.  When we got there a million hours later, super sweaty ready to swim we found out that there was no bar in the middle of the ocean to swim to, and the beach and water were COVERED in giant banana slugs (hence the name) so we didn't even get to swim really.  There was at least a cool looking rickety old bar on the beach that we got to go to, which was fun until we thought we made a new Thai friend who actually turned out to be a drug dealer and stopped talking to us the second we told him we weren't interested in any opium.  

4.  Pkimb got her first Thai oil massage on our last day on the island, which was one of the best massage places we had been to, except for the fact that Pkimb, the first timer, got stuck on the bed closest to the front window/doors of the shop and, while Kim K and I were back behind our privacy curtains enjoying our massages, Pkimb had to strip down in the front of the massage parlor, without a curtain, rushing to get under the skimpy little sheet they give you.  This was probably funnier to us than it was to Pkimb. :)

All of this takes us to our last day on Koh Tao.  The day before the worst day/night of transportation of our entire trip.  

Love,

Ashley

Tragedy In Paradise

January 28th, 2013

**This post is out of order**

A few days ago we met up with our friend, Kim #2, to spend time on some Thai beaches. One of our stops was Ko Tao, a beautiful diving island on the east coast of Thailand. Since Ash and I can't dive we decided to go fishing instead. We were determined to catch, at the very least, a 4 ft barracuda so after 2 hours and only 1 of us catching a tiny fish, we jokingly asked our Thai captain (Kim #2 would like us to note he looked like an oompa loompa) if we could go to another fishing spot where the barracudas were. We are pretty sure he told us to go f*ck ourselves in Thai, told us in English he wasn't a magician and that we could find barracudas in an aquarium, then took us to the roughest part of the sea where they filmed the movie the Perfect Storm.

And then.....Ashley dropped her phone (our main camera) into the ocean. You are probably as surprised as I am that she didn't throw herself overboard as well. In lieu of flowers please send donations to www.whitepeopleproblems.com. We thank you for your kind thoughts during this dark period.

Kim and Ashley

P.S. Posts will be light on pics for awhile.