Thailand, Round 1, and the Birth of the Pipi Family

After our short stay in Singapore, we bade farewell to the inspiring June Abdullah and caught a flight to Bangkok, Thailand. This was our first venture into mainland SE Asia, and it was immediately apparent. Tourism in SE Asia is thriving pretty much everywhere, but Thailand carries the brunt of it. Upon arriving at our hotel, (where we would, hours later, meet Shane and George, bedraggled and jetlagged) we were confronted with a tourism establishment unlike anything so far (except maybe Bali). Our hotel was a few streets off the "backpacker mecca" of Kaosan Road. Kaosan is its own tourism-powered ecosystem thriving within the larger Bangkok madness. They serve hundreds of local Thai dishes on the street, but most are overpriced and made with less spice to suit tourists' tastes. We strolled through the main street and were costantly hooked and grabbed by people selling anything and everything, from tshirts to blowdarts, sunglasses to pingpong-themed sex shows. Our initial reaction was dismay. Thailand had been built up in our minds as the peak of the SE Asia experience both gastronically and culturally, but so far we had only been met with "farang" shenanigans.
Late that night, Shane Lohnes and George Maroussis, our two good friends from Seattle (and of course GHS) met us at our hotel. They had been planning to meet us somewhere in Asia for a few months, but the plans never seemed to materialize. And then, quite suddenly, they both had tickets for Bangkok. We spent only a day and a half more in the capitol city (during which we witnessed an amazing rainstorm that flooded many of the streets in our area) before we booked a tour bus down to southern Thailand, with beaches on the brain.
I had traveled with George and Shane before (in Greece and France, respectively), but traveling in a group of four was at first a strange experience. We quickly began amassing inside jokes, and while it may have been somewhat intimidating to other travelers, everyone appreciated us with wary glances. On our way down to the island of Koh Lanta in southern Thailand we stopped for a few days in a local fishing village, and more memorably a bizarre themepark designed to simulate Hell. Grotesque statues - one involving a pregnant woman being stabbed to death by a giant corkscrew- made for an interesting afternoon.
The small island of Koh Lanta, while ringed by touristy bungalows, still has some of the finest white sand we've yet to come across. We spent these three days in full relax mode, staying mainly poolside and admiring the phosphorescence in the warm Andaman sea.