Saturday, January 30, 2010

Koh Phi Phi, Krabi, Thailand

After island hoping once again, I have now landed in Koh Phi Phi (the h's are silent) for a few nights. Yesterday was spent on a speed boat to Koh Lanta, where I email bombed the world while I had wifi for a few minutes, then proceeded by ferry to Phi Phi. Now that I have seen Lanta and Phi Phi, I am starting recognize the Thailand that I saw 10 years ago. The isolated islands that we were at before did not look anything like what I remembered of Thailand. Now, I am back in familiar territory and feel a little more at ease amongst the chaos.

Phi Phi is a location that I have visited in the past, but is another location that was drastically affected by the tsunami (that's the hotel I'm staying in by the way). I'm guessing that this island had changed a lot before the disaster, but since then this place appears to be thriving as a tourist destination. It's substantially larger than I recall.

Anyways, I have kept myself busy with various walks, runs, boat rides since my last post and as a result I have had several issues. The biggest issue seemed to be a blister on my foot that I got from running my first day in Koh Mook (squeemish people should stop reading now). I ran 5km along the beach barefoot and as a result I developed a blister on my 2nd toe on my left foot (I had several blisters too, but they weren't problems). So after a day of rest, I ran again on the beach, this time 9-10km and I noticed that my toe really started to hurt, but I didn't think much of it because everything hurt. After some rest, my feet started to feel normal but my 2nd toe remained in agony. I left it for a day where it got bad enough that I couldn't feel the toe because it was numb with pain. After telling my mom about it she freaked out and told me to pop the blister. I went up to my room with a sewing kit, scissors, band-aids, tissues, and ointment and went to work. First I tried to pop the blister, but nothing came out which did not make any sense. So I cut it open further to find out that the blister had filled with sand, probably from the second run in Mook. At that point I realized that I needed to cut the entire blister off to get rid of all the sand. And if that isn't gross enough, after getting rid of the excess skin and sand, I discovered two more blisters underneath the sand blister. The numbing pain was starting to make sense. Anyways, I have cleaned everything up and I can walk pain-free once again.

And because I have no pictures to show you today I will give you one more story. Today my parents met up with a friend of theirs who is from the UK originally, now lives in Hong Kong and vacations in Phuket. This gentlemen brought along a friend of him who seems to be a recreation of the Most Interesting Man in the World. After spending 4 hours on a boat with him, here are some of the highlights of his life:
- lives in LA, vacations in Thailand
- produces movies
- owns a Siberian tiger (he has pictures with him)
- appearently Sean Penn owes him a favour and is going to do a movie for him
- was telling us about how he was hanging out with Oliver Stone on the set of Alexander
- father was a world class motorcycle racer
- rides motorcycles better than you
- owns a Buell motorcycle
- recently was hit on a scooter by a drunk driver causing a $100,000 hospital bill

That is all for now. Hoping that I have good internet in Phuket. Talk to you soon.

2 comments:

  1. Haaaa fun, not so much about the toe though. That story sounded vaguely familiar of running 5km in -25 with shorts on. What the f are you doing running on the beach bare foot? Can I say with only your best interest at heart of course? PEOPLE IS DUMB!

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  2. Rivals my cyst on my spine I got during my honeymoon. Erika popped the hole in my back and proceeded to squeeze out stinky puss all over our $400 a night suite on Pender Island. No doctors until we got to the island a couple days later. Got a scalpel out and drained the thing, man did it stink!!!

    Be careful with wounds in places with bugs like they have.

    Kelly

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