Bus ride from Hell

The 48 hours after leaving Koh Phangan were basically the most interesting of our lives. We left our bungalow at about 11am and took a shanty truck cab to the pier to get on the boat to the mainland. After getting out of the taxi it was pure madness. There were hundreds of people, all with massive backpacks just milling about. There was of course no one telling people where to go, or what to do...things don't work that way around these parts. We finally make it onto the actual dock and file in like cattle to the various boats. Luckily we were able to find 3 seats together, and we immediately pulled out our inflatable neck pillows and eye masks to try to possibly catch up on sleep. After about 10 mins on the boat, Liz looks up to see that Twilight is playing on the tvs up front. When she announces this Michelle literally springs ten feet in the air out of excitement and frightens all the people within a ten feet radius of us-we we're in heaven. The boat ride took about and hour and then we we're stranded at a dock for another 1.5 hrs waiting for a bus. We of course were the last people once again at the dock, but this time it payed off...or so we thought. All the people were being herded onto shanty buses which we assumed were going to take us all the way to Bangkok. We however got on a deluxe double decker bus with reclining seats and acon. Never mind the fact that it was pink satin and shag carpet and looks like the kind of thing your parents warn you never to board, even if the man who owns it says he has puppies. Okay, moving on. We were on this bus for about 2 hours and then got shoveled off at a bus station in Surat Thani where we we're informed our bus to Bangkok would not be leaving for 5 more hours. So we set up camp under a tree and waited it out. We finally got on the bus and used our teamwork skills to land 3 seats at the very front on the top level. The bus too was outfitted in pink and blue satin and fluorescent patterned carpet. After getting situated we all popped some ambian and attempted to sleep the night away. Liz and Michelle were basically pretzeldon top of each other and spent the night cuddling. Robyn, who was a row behind us, had the fortunate pleasure of spooning with a random stranger all night who may or may not have given her lice. We all managed to doze off slightly, but were awaken at about 1 am when our bus was pulled over by 4 cop cars (2 of them unmarked). Michelle was awake to witness the whole situation and said that our bus driver had gotten in an altercation about 20 mins before at an intersection. Well the cops pulled over the double decker bus that contained around 100 sleeping twenty somethings.We then all watched as our bus driver got arrested and taken away in one of the unmarked cop cars. We all just kind of looked at each other in our dazed stupor and wondered what we were supposed to do. The other cops did too as they just stared at the bus and laughed. After another 25 mins the driver got dropped off back at the bus and just hopped on as if none of that had occurred. At this point we were all so delirious and semi drugged from the sleeping pills and just had to laugh it off. We finally made it to Bangkok as the sun was rising and got a cab to the train station to attempt and complete our journey up north. We were informed that the next bus to Chiang Mai did not leave until 9 pm so we ditched our bags at the travel agent place and decided to brave the streets of Bangkok on about 3-4 hours of sleep. We roamed for a while and did a little too much walking and shopping for the next 12 hours until we needed to be back at the train station. When we got back the train station was completely packed... this is when we learned about the riots going on in the city. Apparently protesters had laid down on the train tracks so all trains were cancelled. Fortunately, we were taking a bus so we figured this didn't affect us. Oh man were we wrong. All the people who had train tickets were now forced to also take buses to their various destinations, causing the whole bus scene to be even more chaotic than usual. This time around our bus had assigned seats and we decided that Robyn shouldn't have to share with a random again so Liz decided to buck up and take the lone seat. Let us remind you all that in the past 36 hours we have gotten about 6 hours of sleep. We were all extremely cranky and very emotionally fragile at the time. Okay, so with that in mind you can see just how delighted (note the sarcasm) Liz was when a Thai woman and her small child sat down in the very cramped seat next to her. This child doesn't even miss a beat and with in the first moment of boarding the bus she is jumping on Liz and throwing pillows at her. Awesome...NOT. She also felt the need to disconnect the iPod multiple times and punch her. Of course her mother could not be bothered with this since she was on the phone the whole time. And this child was barely 2 years old and of course spoke no English. We all knew it was going to be a very long night. About an hour into the ride we stop to get gas and Michelle figures this is a good time to use the bathroom. Liz is trying to sleep so the devil child will stop harassing her so she doesn't even know Michelle is missing. Robyn begins to worry after about 10 mins and gets up to see what has happened. She goes into the hall where she hears Michelle pounding against the bathroom door...she was locked in. The door handle had popped off and Michelle was stuck in the worlds smallest and grossest bathroom while on a moving bus. Long story short, Michelle ended up punching out a screen in order to breathe and a little Thai man somehow helped her escape. Mind you this was all within the first hour on the bus. Oh we forgot to mention that another child in our compartment projectile vomited within five minutes of getting on the bus. After another sleepless night we made it to Chiang Mai and high tailed it to a guesthouse to sleep the day away...

Koh Phangan, Thailand

Upon departing the boat we were met with another torrential downpour.We were soaked and tired and really hadn't thought about where we wanted to go. We had four days until we were supposed to arrive at the island so we needed to find accommodations. We basically got tricked to go to this one "resort" by a very kind woman with very deceiving brochures. Once taking a 30 min cab ride we drove down a dirt road to what we would come to refer to as Milton's. This is because the owner looked exactly like the Office Space character. Milton's was a joke.Our room was literally built out of twigs and extremely thin plywood by small children. Our bathroom was a door into some boulders outside where a family of extremely large crabs lived. The floor was a bunch of small branches put together in a raft like manner. When we were standing inside and looking at the "floor" we could see a river running down from the hill into the ocean. At night during high tide our hut was completely on top of the ocean. The bed was literally a box spring (we checked the tag and our suspicious were proven true).The hut also was home to about 9 different species of creatures. This is all fine and dandy on its own, but the topper was the most frightening storm that was occurring during our stay at Milton's. We had been counting the seconds between lightening and thunder and were noticing that they were greatly decreasing. At this point we were all piled on the bed under the one faint light that our hut had. Michelle was facing the window and was able to experience the lightening firsthand. All at once we saw the hugest flash, simultaneously followed by the loudest, most fierce crack of thunder ever. The rock that our hut was wedged between had been struck. Consumed with delirium Liz and Michelle found the whole situation amusing. Robyn, however did not.It was basically her greatest fear come to life. It didn't help that she could literally feel the heat of the lightening on her arm hairs.We knew we must escape Milton's, so in the morning we strapped on our enormous packs and hiked the four miles (in the rain) into civilization. Our next home was on Had Yao beach and it was beyond glorious. On top of once again having walls,doors, and a floor, we each got our own comfy bed, we had hot water, and a tv/dvd player to top it off. We were in heaven. The next two days were basically used to catch us on sleep and momentarily experience the luxuries of home in the form of a movie marathon. We would have loved to stay there longer but we had previously booked accommodations farther north on the island. Our new home, Smile beach Bungalows, was extremely kitschy but nice enough. Our room was done up head to toe in pink satin-it was a pretty classy joint. We attempted the beach a few more times but were always met with evil black clouds and hour long downpours. We hiked a bit more and saw some elephants and waterfalls. Then came the fullmoon party. It was like nothing any of us had ever experienced. We got to the beach at about 9:30 pm after an extremely bumpy hour long taxi ride. The only was to describe it is as a giant rave on the beach. Complete with fire dancers, glow sticks, and extreme body paint. We all had a very fun, but interesting,night and only made it till about 12:30 am...even though our shuttle wasn't supposed to pick us up till about 4 am. As we always say, were turning into grandmas in our old age (no offense mom). This leads us to 48hours of extremely interesting traveling until we finally reached Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. This is a very long story however and may have to be continued at a later date, especially since this Internet is so very ghetto.

Koh Samui, Thailand

Hello all, we've fionally had some time to update the blog. For those of you hearing about the unrest in Thailand right now, do not fear we're perfectly safe. We made it out of Bangkok a day before the protests escalated, and are now in Chiang Mai.


Its been about three weeks since we last left off. At the time we were headed up to Thailand, Koh Samui to be exact. We got to the airport extremely early in Singapore since it was so hot and we had already been venturing around the city for hours. After about five hours at the airport we boarded our plane to Thailand. We just can't get over how much they feed you on the planes here. Even if your flight is only an hour long, like ours was, you get a full on meal every time. Iguess we are just all used to cheap American airlines that rarely give us peanuts. We landed in Koh Samui at around 10pm and had to go through immigration for what seemed like hours. We were literally the last three people at the airport, and saw them gate things off and turn off the lights as we were leaving. We had read in Lonely Planet that Lamai beach was the place to be so we hailed a cab and headednorth. The island was absolutely beautiful. We were staying directly on some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Sounds too good to be true...and it sorta was. The thing is that we were in an island paradise, during Thailand's dry season, and we experienced some of the gnarliest storms ever. It poured for the whole 14 days that we spent in the islands. Lightening and thunderstorms-the whole deal. We realized that we weren't going to be able to truly enjoy the beaches during the tumultuous storms so we figured we might as well explore the islands. We decided to take a cab to this supposedly gorgeous waterfall one of the days. We hiked for a few hours until we reached the top of this mountain where we were able to see all the surrounding island for miles. The waterfall was straight out of a movie and we made sure to get a major photo sesh in. The icy cool water felt so nice and refreshing compared to the boiling ocean water. A few days later we decided to sign up for a group boat ride/treck thing out to a marine sanctuary. We all piled on a huge boat where we were given bananas,croissants, and coffee. We all hoarded the "free" food and stuffed ourselves like usual. The boat ride took about 2 hours to get out to the islands. We then donned life jackets and zinc and piled into kayaks. The three of us decided to share one, and Liz sat in the middle like she was the other girls' child. About ten minutes into kayaking we noticed that the huge black clouds in the distance were now located directly above our heads. About 2 minutes later the sky opened up and we all got drenched-from the rain and the waves that had suddenly developed and were now smashing over us. We continued like this for about 20 more minutes until our guide lead us into some caves. We were able to stay dry for a few moments before being bashed into the rocks by the now fierce ocean. Having all lost our minds weeks ago we found the situation hilarious, especially now that it was thundering directly above us. The rest of the adventure consisted of hiking to this salt water lagoon that was extremely gorgeous. We were most likely the coolest people in those parts since we decided to keep our life jackets on while hiking. After another rain soaked day we decided it was time to get off the island and see somewhere new. We then booked boat tickets to Koh Phangan to begin the next leg of our journey.

Singapore: city of robots

Hello again,
So today is our last day in Singapore before we head out to the much anticipated Thailand. The city is amazing and so different than anything you would see back in the states. Its so clean and you can't smoke or chew gum anywhere. We've been ridding the MRT all around town which is the train/subway. Everything in this town goes a million miles an hour. For example, after getting of the MRT the masses of people literally sprint up the escalator(which, by the way, is the fastest escalator any of us has ever been on). The people here are so friendly and helpful which is always nice when in a new town. We have now completed our first hostel experience which had its ups and downs. It was fun to pretend we were at summer camp, especially for Liz and Michelle who had adjoining bottom bunks. There were 10 beds total in our room, which of course means we got our fair share of people watching in over the past 4 days. As much as we all enjoyed the city, it is ridiculously expensive here, and we are all so excited and ready to finally get to Thailand. We fly into Koh Samui island tonight where we plan on spending the next weekish if we like it. After that we head to Koh Phanang, another nearby island and the home of the fullmoon party. From there we plan on heading north and exploring the jungles of Chiang Mai and such. Hope everyone is well, and we'll try to update this more often in the future.

Hello again

Hi friends and fam,
Its been a while since we've updated this thing so we wanted to give you all a little glimpse into our lives in the past month in Bali. After leaving Ubud we headed up to Lovina, a little beach town on the northern part of the island. We only stayed for a few days because we all got a weird vibe from the place. The whole town seemed to be deserted, and there were all kinds of huge abandoned mansions that looked straight out of Europe. Oh, and the main demographic of the town seemed to be couples in their seventies who wore Velcro sandals... not our cup of tea you could say. We than headed back to Kuta and spend a few days in the hustle and bustle of the city, which is where we celebrated Michelle's 21st. After Kuta, we had about a week left on the island and decided to head back to where we started-in Bingin. We taxied back there and spent our last week on the beaches of Bingin and Uluwatu. We sadly had to say farewell to Ali, and after dropping her off at the airport, the three remaining travelers spent the next 4 hours in the a con Starbucks at the airport. We had a bit of trouble at the airport when trying to get into Singapore, but luckily we made it into the country without any problems.
p.s. we are having major issues putting pictures on this thing, but for those of you with facebook-Liz, Ali, and Michelle have all put up albums

araak attack

hello to all,
We've just reached civilization again after spending a week on the quiet and lovely island of Lembongan. We headed there after spending a week in Bingin, which we all absolutely loved. We ended up renting scooters once Ali joined us and toured the southern tip of Bali via scoots. Robyn was of course a natural speed demon, but those who know her would quickly see that scooting, and the no rules roads of Bali suited her well. Michelle on the other hand was a much slower, but much safer driver. The frisch's ended up holding on for dear life to the end of the scooters for dear life. We met some pretty interesting people our first week, and loved our "home" but were ready to see more of Bali. A few different people had mentioned how beautiful and peaceful Lembongan was so we decided to give it a try. The trip started off a bit rough in the form of a two hour boat ride on some pretty choppy waters, but once we landed we all realized it was worth it. The island let us get our fair share of sun, swimming, and snorkeling in before we headed back into the center of Bali... and that's where we're all now, in the lovely town of Ubud. Immediately upon arriving we loved Ubud and can't wait to fully explore its wonders in the next few days. The computers at the Internet cafe are kinda slow, but we'll try to put some pictures up in the very near future. All of us are well,but as expected by many Liz already has her fair share of scrapes and bruises from her lack of balance and knowing how to walk.
xoxo

paradise...finally

hello friends,
for those of you who didn't know, we've made it to Bali all in one piece. We spent the first 2 nights in Kuta which is basically a ghetto. Its a super dirty tourist town filled with people harassing you to purchase who knows what. Definitely not what we imagined Bali to be. Yesterday we headed out from our hotel and got dropped off in a town we found in our guide book called Dreamland. Turns out it wasn't really even a town, but after about a two hour walk uphill with our 40lb backpacks we finally found the bali of our dreams. We're staying in a little beach town called Bingin in the South. We stumbled upon a villa, and are paying 200000 rupiah which is about 20 bucks a night totally for the room. Our balcony overlooks a lush garden and beautiful blue tiled pool. We've met quite a few interesting people in our 1 day there, including a very nice Australian girl our age who gave us the lowdown on the area. Oh and I forgot to mention that in the room next to ours are three extremely attractive surfers from Cape Cod who have also been very friendly and helpful. we're currently in a very cute little cafe that took us about 30 mins to walk to and we are all enjoying ice cold tea and air conditioning, which seems to be quite a luxury in these parts.

We'll be picking up Ali this afternoon from the airport which is about an hours drive from our villa. And lucky us, the Cape Cod boys offered to drop us off on their way to town. Note to parents: do not worry they are not sketchy , and we are smart. haha

well this is just a little glance into our lives so far here on the island
missing you all
xoxo charlies' angels (this is what the Balinese people have dubbed us)