A query to seasoned LRR travelers

[Geoff_B]

Jealousy levels at critical...

[plummeting_sloth]

Koh Samet:

There is a two man band playing behind me.
A duo playing with the earnestness of a king performing for their court the audience captive with little hope of leaving.
They sing with that perfect, unaccented English that all dialects merge to during a rendition in my mother tongue, accompanied by an infinite orchestra encoded in so many gold lines and switches.
... A couple breaks out dancing to Jimmy Buffet in front of me, the song seeming more at home thousands of miles from it's birthing grounds than in the many franchises that bear it's singers name.
I drink a beer on the beach as the surf laps at my ankles.
This was not done for enjoyment, but caused by the feeling of laid-back compulsion that flows from the ground and from the trees. Enjoyment, thankfully, soon followed when the feelings of cliche faded.
A ghostly blue cloud encloses the ocean horizon and the peers around the green hills behind me. Only the faint glittering of Ban Phon in the distance reminds me that a world exists beyond the aether.
And the band plays on.

The hanger on my door says "Do Not Disturb"
---I'd love to see them try.

[plummeting_sloth]

Back on home soil. Hard to believe I was able to leave this. Stupid working to get money thing... what kinda bullshit is that anyway.


Three surreal things on the trip back.

1: Otter tricks and underwater Thai vaudeville. The countries biggest aquarium is on the many sublevels of one of its nicest malls (the Siam Paragon). Along with a lot of cool fish I never get to see, there was an otter show where an otter somehow carried 4 decent sized balls at the same timeand dropped them in a bucket and ended by unfurling a banner from the ceiling. This was a thing that happens daily. Also happening daily? A song and dance and comedy review with a string quartet accompening band and many of the bits being done with people floating with the fish behind them.

2: Seeing the Discovery parked on top of a plane when landing at Dulles. Very much both "America fuck yeah!" And a representation of loss and decline all
rolled into one

3. Seeing the shear amount of bullshit foriengers have to put up with just to get on a plane to come to the states, not to mention all the scanning at passport control. It's probably testiment to how awesome the rest of the country is to get people to keep coming after all this dickery.

[plummeting_sloth]

One last update. Souvenirs!

A silly hat that I will attempt to get on Feed Dump somehow


A collection of tiny buddha for various special friends


A monkey mask to add to my surprising large mask collection


Butterflies for the museum


And of course the requisite local beer tee-shirt.

[plummeting_sloth]

Man. I'm gonna bump this up to the main page cause I forgot how awesome that trip was and I want more people to bask in it.

[empath]

...thank you.



wow.

[plummeting_sloth]

A good time was had by all.

and by All I mean Me

/and this also gives me a chance to go and fix all the mistakes caused by having to use a crappy tablet for these.

[plummeting_sloth]

Some more Koh Samet shots I failed to upload.

[plummeting_sloth]

And my two favorite shots from the island

[jiawen]

Missed this thread the first time around... Looks like you had a great trip, sloth! I spent about a month in Thailand over a decade ago and didn't get to see nearly as much as you did. If I ever get back, I'll take your itinerary as a model!

[plummeting_sloth]

Thanks! I hope you have a blast if you do.

[Trisha Lynn]

Thanks for the cool pics, and for being such an awesome and conscientious tourist!