A Phi Phi Island Wedding

Beginning of February, 2013
Phi Phi Island, Thailand

At the start of our trip we had the chance to pass through Phi Phi Island for a few short hours and were determined to go back before we left Thailand because it was the most beautiful place we'd ever seen.  Luckily my friend Aimee from home decided to get married there at the end of January which gave us the perfect reason to go back!

Like usual, we didn't do much planning before heading to the island, so we weren't sure where the heck we were going to stay.  We got a tip from someone on the ferry ride over that the cheapest/coolest place to go was the Viking Resort, and if we wanted to save $3 each we could walk there instead of paying for a long tail boat over, like most people did.  He assured us it wouldn't take more than 15 minutes.  Also like usual, that was a lie.  About 45 minutes of hiking along the water on slippery rocks and up and down dirt hills through the jungle, WITH OUR BACKPACKS ON, we arrived at the Viking Resort.  2 very sweaty backpackers.

It always seems like a good idea at the beginning...

When we finally got to the resort we learned that they only had one room left.  A bungalow with one small bed and a shared bathroom that was about a 10 minute walk away.  Cool, we'll take it.

The front of our rustic bungalow

View from the back

Anyways, enough about our usual lodging and transportation mishaps.  Let's talk about the important stuff.  THE WEDDING!  There´s no way I could do their amazing ceremony and reception justice by trying to recap the whole thing here, so I´m just going to share some of my favorite pictures from the night, of which I took about a million:

Favorite thing #1:  While we were busy getting the bride ready for the ceremony a monkey came knocking on the door!  I'm not joking.  I'm pretty sure it was good luck.

There was a knock at the door, so we went to check it out...

Oh hello monkey!  

Favorite thing #2: The bride arrived by tuktuk

Bigger than a normal tuk tuk, it was like their limo version!

Favorite things #3 and #4 pictured here:  The AMAZINGLY gaudy hot pink and red asian-style wedding decor that the hotel staff put together....and the bride and groom drinking whiskey out of the "unity bucket" after their vows.

And favorite thing #4.5: Their hilarious friend Andy did the greatest job officiating

Favorite thing #5: They are the cutest couple ever!

AND they´re extremely attractive

Favorite thing #6: The bride, groom, and guests all sent off Thai lanterns together

Love this

My wedding date with our lantern

Favorite thing #7:  Still can´t believe I got to celebrate this girl´s wedding with her all the way across the world!  So happy.

Favorite thing #8: I had the hottest date in town!  

This lighting makes us look party animals even though we´re far from it

Thanks for letting us celebrate with you guys, Aimee and Mikey!  I think your thai wedding guests said it best.."the bride was very beautiful and the groom was very handsome". :)

Love,

Ashley

Rags to Riches

Some of the best memories of the trip have been the transportation adventures in Asia.... it is definitely cray. The best/worst travel trip was on a slave boat from Koh Tao to Phuket. It involved an eight hour overnight ferry that looked like this:

Super cozy, right?

Those are Asian sized mattresses, somewhere between a twin and a full, lined up side by side down the length of an old retired fishing boat. If you aren't traveling in an even numbered group then you are sharing a mattress with a stranger. Not that it matters because there is zero space between the mattresses anyway. Once the boat is loaded they give you about 15 minutes to exchange bewildered looks with your fellow inmates and pop some $1 Thai valium. Then it's lights out and everyone lays down like sardines and pretends to sleep under the flickering prison-style light bulbs for the next eight hours.

Don't we look so well rested?

You can imagine how tired we were when we got off the boat but the journey was only half over at this point. We were crammed into tuk tuks and taken to a NASTY looking convenience store, inappropriately named Holiday, with dead cockroaches on the floor, ants crawling all over the walls and an unclean squat toilet with no soap or toilet paper which the owner had the audacity to charge us to use. After two hours at this place, we were ushered to two more convenience stores to spend our money before we finally got to board a bus to Phuket.

Is this journey ever going to be over so Ashley will stop taking pictures of us??

The plus side of Thai transportation is that if your destination isn't too far off the normal route the driver will usually drop your off. So we were dropped off on the side of the highway and ran across to paradise- THE MARRIOTT!!

Getting ready to run across the highway.

pKimb graciously used her Marriott points to book us a night in a $600, two bedroom suite at the Phuket Marriott and ohhh did we take advantage of every minute there. First off, they greeted us with leis and fresh watermelon juice. And they didn't even seem to care we were dressed in dirty rags with disheveled hair.

Finally feeling human again.

Our honeymoon pic. We decided a three wives marriage might be pretty perfect.

Can you guess which side is mine and which is Ashley's?

Even though all we wanted to do was pass out for 24 hours, we couldn't waste any time sleeping. This place was FANCY and we didn't even have to sneak in. They have a baby elephant that plays by the pool! We spent most of the day playing with him, playing in the pool and taking veggie carving classes.

Ash and pKimb shooting some hoops after stealing the ball from a little Chinese kid.

We were able to communicate with this elephant thanks to our Mahout training.

Apparently the Marriott has a private beach because when we went to watch the sunset, there were only four other people on the entire beach. Heavenly.

Ashley swimming under the sunset.

pKimb, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! The trip has not been the same since you left :( We love you and miss you in the weird way.

Our third wife. 

-Kim

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

Meet Pkimb

This all happened about 2 months ago....we're a LITTLE behind... but this blog is our journal and we don't want to leave too much out, so let's just pretend it's still the end of January and we're still in Asia for a bit, k?  K.

A quick backstory:  After spending time in Laos with our 13 new friends, Kim and I headed out on a flight to Bangkok to meet up with our lovely friend Kim M (we'll call her by her asian name, Pkimb, for the purpose of this blog) from home who was flying in to spend 10 days with us in Thailand.  

The good:  We got to see Kim!!  I mean- Pkimb.

HI KIM WE MISS YOU!!!

The bad:  Kim K came down with a very nasty case of something very nasty.  

A tiny Asian version of Kim 

I had been really sick with the same thing the day before so I can say with complete understanding- it was bad.  When we arrived in Bangkok to meet Pkimb at the airport, it was pretty obvious Kim K wasn't going anywhere except the bathroom.  The only problem with this was that the 3 of us we were supposed to be getting directly on a 7 hour bus/ferry ride to the island of Koh Chang.  After a few seconds of trying to figure out what we should do, Kim K noticed a sign for an airport hotel and was like guys- you go ahead I'll meet you tomorrow- and ran off to go puke her brains out. 

Fast forward a day or so and the three of us are sitting pretty on a beach in Koh Chang together.  It was so amazing having Pkimb with us.  She's the most hilarious, easygoing, up-for-anything travel partner you could ask for and there are way too many stories that happened while we were traveling with her to share here, so I'll just pick a few of my favorites over the next couple of posts.

Pretending to fit in at the fanciest hotel on Koh Chang

Enjoying all the hotel had to offer

One of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen

To start- there was the time (or 7) we snuck into the fancy hotel in Koh Chang next to our budget (gecko-infested, cement bed, situated next to a night club) hostel.  We spent the day swimming in their infinity pool, playing darts by the ocean, and buying rum and cokes like they were going out of style so that the waiter didn't kick us out.  We then snuck back to the fancy hotel's beach area that night to enjoy the cocktails and the ocean view from their cozy beach chairs.  About 20 minutes into our private cocktail hour, their security guard started walking around the beach with a flashlight looking for trespassers.  (Us.) We didn't really have anywhere to hide and we didn't know what to do so we just got really quiet and sat perfectly still, which worked fine until he shone his flashlight in our faces.  And then.  He walked away.  I know I'm not explaining how funny this was very well and it's probably one of those I guess you had to be there moments, but it really was hilarious and we could not stop laughing.  We were sitting there, giant cocktails in hand, at the fanciest resort on the island and we were apparently invisible.  After the security guard left we just kept laughing saying... if he's not looking for us...what IS he looking for?  

The next night we had a similar we-must-be-invisible experience when we decided we wanted one of the fruit shake vendor guys on the street to mix our favorite cocktail for us for the price of just a fruit shake ($1).  All it took was buying our own bottle of vodka, bottle of baileys, and ordering a banana shake.  As he started pouring all of the ingredients into the blender for the fruit shake, I leaned over and started pouring in our vodka and Baileys.  Don't mind me.  Just adding a little something extra.  Nothing to see here.  He literally did not look up, threw the lid on, and started mixing our shake.  Have I mentioned how much I love Thailand??

Here's our lovely fruit shake vendor

Here's me, adding in the special ingredients

Love,
Ashley

13 Reasons Not To Travel With 13 People

Hannah and Neil messaged us before they got to Luang Prabang asking us to book a room for them and two other friends they had picked up on the way. We booked the rooms, made them a welcome sign, and headed down to the river to pick them up from their two day longboat journey.

About 15 longboats were all pulling in at the same time and we weren't sure which one they were on until the loud party boat appeared. We heard a group of people singing "Na, na, na, na...GOODBYE" and knew without a doubt that Hannah and Neil were on that boat and had something to do with the singing. Turns out Hannah and Neil made a lot more than two friends since we spoke earlier that morning and the next thing we knew, we had a group of 13. 

And here are 13 reasons why you should not travel with 13 people.

1. You can't get enough rooms for everyone in one guest house.  Everyone starts frantically running around town with their 15 kg backpacks on trying to find rooms near each other and inevitably, two guys will have to share a double bed. No judgement.

2. Going anywhere takes forever. Because everyone is split between four different guest houses, you have to pick a meeting place and hope that everyone shows up near the agreed upon time. There will always be hangovers and French people working against you (we love you, Chloe!) so you end up waiting quite awhile until everyone shows up.

3. Everyone has different bargaining techniques. This also makes getting anywhere a very time consuming process. Unless you want to get ripped off, you have to bargain for everything in SE Asia. It's a way a life, even the locals bargain. 13 people huddled around a tuk tuk driver, all trying to negotiate the best rate is quite amusing. I chose to step back and watch because my bargaining technique usually ends up in us paying more than the driver originally requested. Some people act offend, one girl going as far as to say "I'd rather be raped that pay that price" ($3/person). Some people act indifferent and walk away, knowing the tuk tuk driver will eventually follow them down the street and agree to a lower price. With all these different methods going on at the same time, you can imagine it takes awhile until everyone, including the driver, can agree on a fair price.

Kuang Si waterfalls is the most beautiful place we went in Asia and my camera died when we got there. Do yourself a favor and google it.

4. 13 people can't technically fit in one tuk tuk. But as we've mentioned before, "Safety Standards" doesn't translate into Lao so you just hang a few people off the back.

5. It's nearly impossible to find a table big enough for 13 people. I quite enjoy sitting in people's laps now.

6. Food takes forever to come out. Half the group will be done eating and have paid before the other half gets their food. And someone's order always gets lost in the hustle and bustle. 

7. Much to Ashley's dismay, everyone talks about poo and their stomach troubles at dinner.  Ashley here- Who talks about their deepest darkest poo secrets with their brand new group of friends... WHILE THEY ARE EATING?  Everyone.  Why though?  Why do we have to know that you haven't had a normal poo since the day you arrived in Asia?  We're in Asia too.  WE KNOW.  Keep it to yourself.

8. Everyone has a travel horror story to tell. At the end of Round Robin Horror Stories with 13 people, all you want to do is lock yourself in your hotel room and not eat or drink anything until you can hop on the first flight back home. Restaurants in India will purposefully poison your food because they get a cut of medication sales from the pharmacy around the corner?? In Cambodia they reuse plastic bottles and fill them with unsafe tap water and resell them?? People hide in the luggage compartment of the buses and steal your stuff?? This last one actually happened to Ashley and she had to cancel her credit card after she noticed a $300 purchase at Adidas and realized her card was missing.

9. Jenga isn't as fun. Ash and I are a little competitive when it comes to games. Everyone reading this has probably lost a few games of Cranium or Scattergories to us. The game of choice in SE Asia is Jenga. We mastered this game pretty fast, building towers so high that it would be structurally impossible to add any additional levels. We had to start playing No Hands Jenga where you use your nose, tongue or toes, because regular Jenga became too easy. Throw in 13 players and all the fun of Jenga is lost. There is always someone half invested who insists on playing. They start talking to their neighbor and don't pay attention which means you have to wait forever for it to be your turn. When you finally do catch their attention , they put zero effort into calmly and strategically removing pieces. They will either take out the base piece holding the whole tower up or remove a piece all willy nilly causing the tower to fall. So you only get one, maybe two turns before the tower falls even though it has potential to grow much taller. You can imagine how irksome this is for us.

30 rows.

10. Someone always ruins a picture.

11. There are lots of people that can post ugly pictures of you on Facebook. Back when Facebook was in its prime, we had to send an email to our girlfriends, imploring them not to post ugly pictures of us on Facebook  We are single girls trying to meet our husbands. Posting ugly pictures of us on the internet is not helping our cause. Unfortunately there is no way to police this with so many new friends taking pictures of you.

12. When one person gets sick, everyone gets sick. And it hit me 10 minutes before boarding a flight to Bangkok. I ran to the bathroom eight times on a two hour flight. Fortunately I had the foresight to take my airsick bag with me because I wasn't able to make it to a bathroom in time when we got off the plane.

13. So many people to say goodbye to :( Even though it can be annoying to travel with 13 people, it's definitely fun to make so many new friends. We've learned a lot of new games and dance moves, have done things we wouldn't have done had we been traveling alone, picked up useful travel tips and laughed a lot. Despite only spending a few days with people, it's always sad to have to say goodbye. 

Steven dancing and jazz handing for a spork.

Group hike to watch the sunset.

-Kim

How To: The Journey from Thailand to Laos

January 11-13, 2013

You have three options when traveling from Thailand to Laos.

1. You can fly. If you wait until the last second to try to buy tickets like us then you'll be forking out $400+ to fly from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang. When trying to travel on $30 a day, this isn't really your best option.

2. You can take a 24 hour minivan ride to Vang Vieng. Despite the crazy minivan ride we took to Pai we almost chose this option. We had actually purchased tickets for this but our new friends convinced us to change and take option #3.

3. The slow boat option. To begin this journey you hop on a jam packed minivan and spend the next 7 hours on the windiest, craziest ride of your life. Your driver will be borderline mentally crazy and will speed up on the turns instead of slowing down. The first 3 hours will be a repeat of your drive to Pai, containing 762 consecutive curves. The second half of the journey probably doubles this figure.

At the halfway point, you will pull up to a remote 7-11 where a second van full of Korean tourists will disembark their van and try to steal your seats while you're inside buying Ovaltine cookies and cheetos for dinner. After a lot of head shaking, frowning and shuffling people around you will get back on the minivan and continue your journey. The best way to survive without having a panic attack is to pop some Dramamine, anti-anxiety pills, close your eyes and hope that the back and forth motion of swaying into your neighbor, then crashing into the window will put you in a semi coma.

At 3am you will arrive in a small border town where they have prearranged sleeping accommodations for you. Your bathroom will probably smell a little funky which you will gladly take in exchange for the hot water coming out of the shower. You will fall asleep to the sounds of the local pteredactoyl squawking, wondering why there is a pteredactoyl living at the border. Tomorrow you will find out it was a rat.

Four hours later you will be woken up and enjoy a free breakfast overlooking the Mekong, your road for the next two days. You'll smile in anticipation of cruising down the river past local villages and bonding with your fellow passengers.

The beautiful Mekong River.

Getting on the slow boat will be a 3 hour process. First there is the ubiquitous ride in the back of a pick up truck where you hold hands with the person sitting on the ledge across from you so you don't fall out. Then you will pass through Thai immigrations, take a boat across the river, go through Laos immigration, then you sit around for 2 hours.

Just riding in the back of a truck again.

And then you will finally get to board your vessel; a beautiful, distressed long boat with huge open windows. You keep walking allllll the way to the back of the boat to the engine room, to your makeshift we-will-fit-as-many-people-on-this-boat-as-possible seat. Any hope of relaxation and talking to your neighbors will quickly fade as the engine roars to life. You might try to dance to the beat of the sputtering engine to keep yourself entertained but that's only fun for a few minutes. Your iPod full max will not be able to compete with the noise and the only way to communicate with your neighbors is with sign language.

These are the first class seats.  Pictures of our steerage seats are at the bottom of the ocean.

So what is a girl to do? Fortunately safety standards are non-existent in Laos so the retired bus seats that you are sitting on aren't actually attached to the ground. Simply pick them up, turn them around so they're facing the window, and ride with your legs dangling outside the boat. This will help keep you cooler because the engine makes the back room quite toasty. It is also acceptable to start drinking Beer Lao at 10am so be sure to do that.

When you get tired of dangling your feet out the window and yelling at the person sitting 2 inches from you, make your way to the front and ask every person next to an empty seat if it's taken. Eventually you will find an empty one and you can spend the rest of the trip in cool peace and quiet. The next day, make sure to get to the boat 1 hour before it departs as there is no assigned seating on the second day.

Once you manage to get a decent seat on the boat, the 2 days pass much quicker than anticipated. The entire ride is extremely beautiful as you are surrounded by beachy shores and mountains on both sides of the river. The boat stops at small villages to pick up large bags of rice and other goods and all the local children come running out to wave at you. There are tons of cows grazing along the way, and actually, after dinner last night, I think they might have been water buffalo. And you get to drink lots of beer and eat lots of chips, the only food they sell on board. If you are lucky, there will be fun backpackers sitting next to you to play DIY boggle with. In all honesty, I think I would rather spend two days on a slow boat again then 24 hours on an airplane. Option #3 is definitely the way to go.

-Kim