yesterday i decided to take off from bangkok and head to kho tao. i took a taxi to the train station and tried to get a ticket that night for kho tao. unfortunately, they did not have any more sleeper cars, so i would have to endure the whole 9 hour journey sitting up and awake all night. damn. the train station by the way, was totally insane. people rushing everywhere, everyone’s yelling, attendants are pushing their huge luggage carts around and slamming them up and down so that people will get out of the way. after the train is over an hour late, i try on a whim to ask if for some reason there have been any opening in the sleeper carts. there are! shweet!<\/p>\n
9 hours later we arrive in the town of champong. it’s pitch black outside (6am) and i stumble out of the train half awake. i need to buy a ferry ticket to kho tao and all of a sudden i realize i have no $$. i ask the guy where there is an atm and he says “follow me”. i follow him around the corner, and he hops on a motorcycle and looks at me expectantly. huh, excuse me? moments later i’m flying thru the streets of champong on the back of this motorcycle. as far as i can tell, the motorcycles here have even less rules than the taxis. they go through red lights, drive on the wrong side of the road at will, and drive more recklessly than i can imagine. in other words, it’s hella fun.<\/p>\n
the ferry ride to kho tao was pretty mellow. when we got there, i realized just how beautiful the island is. palm trees and lush jungle everywhere, and the island has that amazing tropical island smell to it. this is definitely a huge change from the cluttered streets of bangkok. when you get to the dock, there are a ton of pick up trucks waiting and everyone wants you in their pickup to take you to their bungalow or their diving class. after piling about 8 or 9 people into the back of a pickup, the truck will take off.<\/p>\n
it’s pretty trippy how here it seems that no one has any regard for safety. so much of the stuff that goes on here would never fly in the states. sometimes i wonder if the Us goes a bit overborad on safety. maybe most of their problems are cause everyone is used to being pampered and kept safe so no one actually uses common sense? over here (and in russia too) where everyone drives w\/ no rules… somehow there are hardly any accidents, probably cause people are always alert?<\/p>\n
so i rented this bungalow by the beach. it’s super tiny and looks like it came straight out of a movie. i also signed up for scuba diving lessons starting today. should be hella fun. i’ve never driven a scooter or anything.. so i’m kinda pondering whether to try it here. i dont think you need a special license or anything.<\/p>\n
-v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
yesterday i decided to take off from bangkok and head to kho tao. i took a taxi to the train station and tried to get a ticket that night for kho tao. unfortunately, they did not have any more sleeper cars, so i would have to endure the whole 9 hour journey sitting up and … Continue reading “kho tao”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thailand-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}