Monday, Aug 27: Bucharest

I spent most of the day, in fact all of the day, buying things for my big hiking trip in the Romanian mountains. The plan is to do three different ridges. The first are Retazat Mountains (spend 4 days there), the second are Fregarasi Mountains (tallest in Romania at a little over 2500m – spend about 5 days), and then another ridge called Pietrele (spend about 2 days).

I was just about to leave and in fact even made it to the train station and the train itself when I realized that the pack was simply too heavy, and the hike might become more of a torture than fun. So, I headed back home to re-think my packing and figure things out. Tomorrow I’m leaving. Hopefully there should no further delays.

Sunday, Aug 26: Bucharest

I spent the first half of the day at home playing with the Internet so to speak.

In the afternoon I went for a good 3 hour walk with the intent of doing some reading in a park. However, the extreme heat was over and it started raining, so no reading for me. While walking I met this Dutch girl (Joanne). She was holding a map and as the gentleman that I am I offered some help. It turned out this is her 6^th visit to Romania – apparently she likes it here.

Around 21:00 we all went for some brick oven pizza dinner. Finally I hooked up with Joanne in the evening for a drink.

Saturday, Aug 25: Bucharest

I woke up at 5:38 to catch an 8:25 flight from Istanbul to Bucharest. The flight was delayed a bit on the runway due to a flock of birds.. I arrived in Bucharest at around 10:00, and was picked up by friends of my parents - Miron and Liana (how very convenient indeed).

The plan is to hook up with brother on the 8^th of Sep, and add parents to the party on the 11^th. Until then however, I plan on going to the mountains for some good hiking. Therefore, a friend of the friends, who is well familiar with the mountains, showed up around 14:00 and we discussed the various possibilities.

Once that was done I spent some time doing the usual things one does when arriving into a new country: Change some money, get a local sim card, get some maps, etc.

I need to mention that while Istanbul was really hot, there seems to be a heat wave in Bucharest that is far worse. The temperature around here is 38 degrees!

Finally, in the evening I went to check the night life and was very disappointed. Now this is either because I didn’t find the right places where all the action is (a rather likely possibilities), or because the night life does suck around here (I sure hope not).

A few words about the language – I have been used in the last 8 years or so that Romanian serves as a great private communication channel (simply put – Tudor and I have been talking about people behind their backs (or rather not) in Romanian for years). It is most bizarre to suddenly have everyone understand Romanian. Very strange indeed!

Friday, Aug 24: Istanbul

The day started with me shortening my stay in Turkey. Not that it's not an interesting place, but I this trip is not about museums.. So off I went to Turkish airlines and for only 50 USD I got to cut one day from my stay here.

Next I went to Dolmabace palace, which was built in the mid 19th century. The palace stretches 600 meters and is enormous. It has 285 rooms and among other things has a 4.5 ton chandelir with 664 lights. I suppose the palace serves to show how human ego is truly limitless. At the palace there were guards that stood motionless in the blazing sun with full uniforms. They stay like that for an entire hour. It seemed to me that it is some sort of torture.

After the palace I walked to the bridge that connects Europe and Asia and is supposedly the fifth longest in the world and the second in Europe. The walk turned out to be far longer than I had thought. Then I had some excitement. I got a taxi to take me over the bridge (one is not allowed to walk over it since someone jumped off of it). As we got to the beginning; a large traffic jam exposed itself and I got off right there. As I was walking away I hit a pole and tore my new Bilabong shorts :( But within less than 10 minutes I found a shop where I could fix them (only 2.25 USD).

Got on another cab and then the tram and I finally made it back to the old part of the city where I'm staying.

One last thing about the Turkish money. I have just noticed it today - it seems that like in Thailand all notes have the same face (in Thailand it's Mr. King and here I suppose it must be Ataturk - the dude who formed the republic) - how very convenient...

Thursday, Aug 23:Istanbul

The flight to Istanbul was 9 hours long. It wasn't too bad despite the fact that I only slept about 3 hours. For the first time ever on a long flight I was wearing shorts and flip flops. I suppose that given the Thai heat I couldn’t' have brought myself to wear long pants and shoes. I was done with luggage claim by 5:30am at which point I realized there was no one manning the supposedly 24 hours a day tourist information booth. Further, the few workers that were at the airport barely spoke any English and were neither nice nor helpful. Welcome to Turkey I suppose. In fact, I was contemplating departing later in the day straight to Romania.

Eventually I managed to get my hands on an Istanbul map and directions to an area in the old city that should have hostels. As is the case in Thailand, people here seem to solicit all the time (taxi, food, rugs, and so forth). This is one of the ultimate signs of a third world country.I say keep'em out of the union.

Anyway, after using the train and the tram I got to the relevant area and eventually found a hostel around 9:30am. Next, I got a haircut, which is ok but most certainly far from being spectacular (where is the barber from Nelson, NZ when you need him?). At11:30 I finally went to bed for a power nap.

The nap was good but from the depths of my sleep I could hear a man screaming through some speaker system. Yes, it was the Muazzin. I don't get this. Is God all mighty and deaf? Does he really need people to use speakers? I woke up at 14:30 and shortly thereafter went to tour the old city. I passed by Topkap and Ayasofya museums, and only admired them from the outside. I did go into the Blue Mosque, otherwise known as Sultanahmet, which was built between 1609 and 1616. The Mosque is most impressive and I can see the appeal of becoming Muslim. I was not let into the mosque during prayer unfortunately...

In the evening I went for a long walk along the Bosphorus straıts.

One thing about driving: for the first time in 6 months I'm back in a country that drives on the right (in more ways than one) side of the road. It was slightly confusing at first, but as I had anticipated, it took very little time to get used to it.

Wednesday, Aug 22: Bangkok

This was my last day in Bangkok. As such, it was fully dedicated towards running errands. Specifically, I did some more shopping (it probably sounds like I bought half the country - but as most of you know I'm an exceptionally slow shopper). I went to the MBK, which is a large shopping mall and got myself one of those basic MP3 players (2GB + rechargeable batteries + charger for 37USD). On my way back freom the mall I managed to crack the display...

From 18:00 till 19:00 I had my last massage, which was actually pretty good. Hopped on the airport bus at 20:00, and took off to Turkey at 23:45.

Tuesday, Aug 21: Bangkok

I spent the first part of the day shopping, which is always a painful experience for me. Mostly I bought cloths - although not too many. I met up with Anat and Shira and an American friend of theirs (Sarah) for lunch. In fact, for the last couple of days I've been eating only ion the Israeli place, since I've gotten sick of Thai food, which for the most part is noodles, noodles, and some more noodles. Furthermore, I haven't eaten meat in quite some time, since it hasn't been sitting well with me ever since my ER experience.

I didn't do too much in the afternoon/evening except for devouring a whole pizza myself for dinner...

Monday, Aug 20: Bangkok

It was a rather short night. I woke up at 9:45 so I didn't get much sleep. I didn't do much today. Basically, went to the "Israeli center" for some breakfast. A bit of explanation is in order here: There are two Israeli businesses called: "Lametayel" and "Haksher", where most Israelis around here congregate. The latter is a restaurant only, while the former is both a travel agency, a restaurant, a storage service, and an Internet facility. Both places swarm with Israelis and it's a good bet to meet people here. Indeed we met Anat, Shira, Sharona and Namoi, and had breakfast with the last two.

Other than that the day was spent doing mostly nothing. Nir took off at 13:30 to the airport as he is going back to Israel. So I'm traveling solo again. Naomi and Sharona took off to the north (Chiang Mai) at 18:00, and Anat and Shira are supposed to still be in town.

Sunday, Aug 19: Bangkok

Today was mostly an errands day. First, Nir wanted to have a suit tailored. So off we went to some shop and got that out of the way. Then around 14:00 we went to MBK, which is one of those large malls. We hung out there for a while and got to see "The Simpsons", which is quite funny indeed. Then we returned to Kaho San road, which is around where we're staying. We met up with Anat and Shira and then ran into Naomi and Sharona (met these girls before Kanchanaburi). Ultimately, we went out with Naomi and Sharona (I'm not sure what Anat and Shira were up to). We hung out with them rather late and I didn't get to go to bed until 6:30am.

Friday - Saturday, Aug 17-18: Kanchanaburi

I just wrote a bloody long entry that got deleted. So here goes again - in short. I got myself on one of those organized tours to Kanachanburi, which is 2 hours away from Bangkok. As in the Jeep tour up north in Chiag Mai, the whole group was Israeli. Unlike the Jeep tour, this group was much more fun. most of the time Nir and I hung out with 4 girls that we met - Anat, Shira (sisters), Shani, and Inbar. Here is what we did:

Day 1 - Friday:

1. Visited Tiger Temple - a place where wild tigers can be seen and patted. I think they were drugged though.
2. Had a boat trip along the river Kwai and saw the famous "Bridge over the River Kwai", which was built by POWs during WWII (there's a movie too).
3. Got a 30 minute foot massage (which was in fact only 22 minutes long).
4. Went to the local night market, which was mostly boring and had nothing to offer.

Day 2 - Saturday:

Today we did two things. First went to the 7 Tiers Waterfalls, which is a 2.5 km walk along which there are 7 waterfalls.The highlight was waterfall number 3, where we got into the water. What was exceptionally fun was sliding down two dome shaped rocks over which the waterfall was flowing.

The second attraction of the day was riding some elephants and bathing them in the Kwai river. Elephants are really fun creatures. They walk really slowly and seem as if nothing really bothers them. They also have the incredible ability of taking a dump while they walk (and yes, elephant poop does float).

Finally, on the way back to Bangkok Nir and I had a conversation with an older man who was traveling with with his family. As it turned out rather quickly, this person was the head of the "Lavi" project in its entirety. The conversation was extremely interesting and illuminating. (For those not familiar, the "Lavi" project was the Israeli project of constructing a state of the art jet fighter back in the 80's. The aircraft was built in as little as 4 years from scratch and used new technologies that made it a superior to F-16. Only 4 prototypes were built. The project was canceled upon completion due to American pressure.)


Once in Bangkok we did the bar thing and played some pool with the gals.

Thursday, Aug 16: Bangkok

The day started late at 11:30 when we met Dikla, Sharona and Naomi. We all did three things today:

1. Went the king's palace. it was interesting but I wasn't facsinated.
2. Went to the Massage school next to the palace and had a herb massage. It was ok.
3. Went to the MBK shopping center (one of the main ones) and saw the movie "The Bourne Ultimatum", which was brilliant! We got to the shopping center a "tuk tuk" and it was most amusing. The guy claimed he could get us there in half the time a taxi would. Now I was wondering how could that be given that a tuk tuk is also wide and occupies a lane. The answer was presented to me shortly thereafter when he drove part of the way on the wrong lane...

Wednesday, Aug 15: Pai - Bangkok

The day started at around 9:00 when we drove the motorbikes to a waterfall and had breakfast at a truly Thai place (i.e. a house/restaurant in the middle of nowhere). Then we had a Thai massage (these are actually semi painful but insteresting - more like an extended stretching session I suppose). After that we got on the minivan back to Chiang Mai. This drive is awful. A 140km road which is mostly windy and takes over 3 hours to drive.

From Chiang Mai its airport we took something called a "tuk tuk", which is a 3 wheeled motorbike. These folks tend to be extremely annoyiing as they swarm all over the place and keep offering their services. However, we figured we had to experience it once so we took one to the airport. The ride was quite fun actually.

We then hopped on a plane and flew to Bangkok. The taxi ride to Kaho San road was interesting. Specifically, the driver wanted 200 Baht (the first wanted 500 so I didn't even start negotiating with him), so we hopped on. 200 Baht seemed a bit on the low end, and I was a bit worried he might somehow change his mind. Indeed, when we arrived he asked for 200 x 2 - i.e. 200a person. Of course, I pretended not to understand and quoted his original 200 offer. The driver pretty quickly said "ok ok" and took the 200. Now here's the thing about the Thai people. They know very little English, and often they purposely pretened not to understand things so that the tourists loose their patience and they (the Thai) get things their way. I've learned this and decided to use the same strategy against them. It worked wonderfully well with this taxi driver.


Then at dinner we met 3 Israeli girls that had just arrived (Dikla, Naomi, Sharona) so we hung out with them for a while.

Tuesday, Aug 14: Pai

Around noon we rented motorbikes: 125cc Honda, semi automatic (i.e. gear with no clutch) for only 6 USD for 24hours including all types of insurances (not bad..). Most of the day I spent riding the motorbike in the outskirts of this little town. How little is little one might wonder. Well, there are only two traffic lights in town...



That pretty much concluded the whole day.

Monday, Aug 13: Chiang Mai - Pai

Left Chiang Mai at 10:00 to a place called Pai. It was a 3.5 our drive that was aweful. 140 km of winding road that felt as bad as the worst boat trips. It was amazing to have a British couple that was actually reading in the van. How they managed is beyond me...

We arrived in Pai at 13:30 and didn't do much today. I was beat, so I took a 2hr nap, which was brilliant. That pretty much concluded the day.

Friday - Sunday Aug 10 - 12: Jeep Tour

The Jeep tour consisted of about 8 Jeeps with some 40 people or so, all of whom Israelis with the exception of a Dutch family. There were young folks and families as well.

Day 1 - Friday:

We were supposed to be with the Dutch, but then they changed to a smaller Jeep where they can be on their own as they were not feeling to well and didn't want us to suffer their throwing up. So we got Haim (dad), Dana (mom), and Tehila (daughter), who are the typical (yes racist comment) "Mizrahim (i.e., "African Israelis" as I like to call them..). Anyway, I figured it might be fun and these people tend to be more open which had some good potential. I was wrong. But more about this at the end.

The first stop was at a snake farm, which was quite interesting. There were lots of sneaks around and there was a snake show, which was remarkable.

The second stop was an orchid farm, which was not at all interesting for me.

Stop three was an elephant show and riding. This was really cool. First we fed some of the elephants. It was strange seeing them eating whole bananas with their skins.. The elephants were exceptionally trained and performed some extraordinary tricks. Among them was drawing a picture with the trunk. We also got to ride an elephant. Now these animals are huge and so slow, that it's really strange riding them. We concluded the elephant place with an ox cart riding. This was ok, but by no means special.

The next stop was white water rafting. Now the water wasn't really white, and so the rafting was not nearly as much fun as it's New Zealand equivalent. But it was ok.

Finally, there was some Off Road driving, which is basically utilizing the 4x4 capability of the vehicles.

We had dinner and an overnight stay at a place called Faang, where there was nothing to do, which was great as I was under severe lack of sleep.

Day 2 - Saturday:

The first item of the day was visiting three tribes, one of which was the main attraction. That was the " Long Neck" tribe. Basically, these folks put ring around their females necks. These weight as much as 5 kilos, and they never take them off. Also they are only allowed to breed within their own tribe. Obviously this is not such a good idea as far as diversifying the gene pool, especially when the tribe has only 52 people. So brothers and sisters and you get the picture...

The next stop was visiting some monkeys that were loose. This was really amusing. We fed the monkeys with bananas and peanuts. It was amazing to see how fast they cracked the peanuts (which came inside a shell) and peeled the bananas. It seemed they all had the same system for doing so.

Stop three was a place called "Golden Triangle", which is where Thailand, Burma and Laos intersect. The place has its name from the fact that people used to smuggle drugs there and those drugs where pricier than gold. Nowadays there are no drugs in Thailand as they cracked down on it and in doing so executed some 2500 people... So we stopped in Laos for an hour for people to do some shopping. Most of the stuff their was completely useless ("Shmonzes").

Finally, the day ended in Chiang Rai, where we stayed at a pretty nice hotel.

On a completely unrelated note - during idle time when I was bored I toyed with the basic question of proving the existence of Pi from first principles - i.e. without the use of calculus. This is something that should be easy as it has been known for millennia yet I don't recall ever seeing a proof for it. I'm happy to declare that Pi does indeed exist...


Day 3 - Monday:

The first thing on the agenda was a pretty nice waterfall. We had to walk some 2km to get there. Next there was an off road drive, which was very cool. The Jeeps are very resilient it seems.

The second and final stop of the day was at a hot spring resort. It was quite nice but nowhere near as good as the hot springs in Hunmer Springs, New Zealand. On the way to the hot springs one Jeep rolled over in a self accident. Nothing happened to the four guys that were riding in it (they were a bunch of 18 y/o before being drafted). The reason they rolled over was because one of those guys was drinking and driving...

Finally we arrived back to Chiang Mai at 21:15.
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A few words about the folks we were driving with in the car. We tried to befriend them and things were fine the first and second day. Mr. Dad was continuously smoking in the car, but we made no big fuss about it despite the obvious annoyance. It seemed however, that Mr. Dad wanted to drive more than he should. On the third day he pretty much tried to monopolize the driving, which was most annoying. Consequently things deteriorated. Effectively, we had a low intensity conflict that seemed to escalate as the day went by.

He drove nearly the entire first day, which meant the rest of the driving were to be divided by Nir and me. We got quite annoyed with him, as he wanted to drive part of the off road driving on the third day (there was no off road on day 2). Now this is the main attraction as far as driving is concerned and he had already driven the whole segment on the first day. There was no reasoning with him (mostly due to his bad breading and exceptionally low IQ). I didn't want to have a confrontation (I was under the wrong impression that it was avoidable) and so I offered that he get the first 30 minutes of the off road, which later turned out to be one third of the whole thing. This was most upsetting to us, and together with the fact that they (the whole family) wouldn't let us both sit in the front (as they did for the whole day) resulted in the sad realization that conflict was inevitable (and in essence was already taking place). So we used Nir's phone as an audio player and made sure to put only songs in English. We figured they wouldn't like them. Mr. Dad made some remark after the very first song (fergalicious - what a brilliant choice of mine).

To make a long story short the situation exploded after the hot springs (40 minute drive to the end) where Mr. Dad was in the driver's seat and I had the keys (effectively this was a standoff, although technically I had the better hand since I was mobile and he was not). He made all sort of silly accusations (of me being a snake etc. etc.) , which were factually baseless and completely unfounded. His wife and daughter joined in as well (I thought they were mostly mute up top that point). Of course, being the feeble minded "Amcha" creatures that they were (for those English speakers - I'm afraid there is no translation for "Amcha"), there was no point in trying to reason with them. It seemed to me that training an elephant to draw a picture would be an easier task. So I gave the dick head the keys and just waited for the experience to be over...

Thursday, Aug 9: Patong - Chiang Mai

A traveling day mostly. Got up at 5:30 got an 8:50 flight to bangkok. Then switched airports (long story, but we made a mistake and got a connecting flight to the north from the wrong airport). Got another flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (in the very north of Thailand) at 12:50 and arrived at 14:00. We registered for a three day Jeep safari with a company called Thena. As it turns out this company effectively serves just Israelis, which is not a good thing in light of the type of Israelis involved. I predict "Gveret Timtemet" might have some good competition for the tittle. I both look forward to the experience and also dread it...

Wednesday, Aug 8: Koh Phi Phi - Patong

Despite the action of the previous night, we decided to go with the original plan. Namely, Nir and I separated from Nadav (he is flying back to Israel shortly) and took a boat at 14:30 to the mainland. The boat was a 2-hour sale, which was not very pleasant. In fact, most boats I got on in this trip were not very pleasant and I mostly find myself lying down waiting for the time to pass and for me to get back on solid ground. Anyway, we arrived in Patong at around 18:00.

We then had dinner, which was the best soup I've had in this country or anywhere else for that matter. Speaking of food, I'm on a three day special diet, which means I can pretty much eat almost nothing... Finally, the day was concluded with a pretty good massage.

Tuesday night - Wednesday morning, Aug 7-8: Koh Phi Phi ER

Shortly after dinner I started feeling not so well. Around 22:30 I figured I had to go back to the guest house where we were staying as the bad feeling got slightly worse. Nir and Nadav came along and fell asleep shortly thereafter. I started having stomach aches the like of which I've never had in my life (a pretty bold statement coming from someone like me as some might know). While typically when one eats something bad the stomach hurts in the belly button area and the matter is easily resolved through diarrhea, in this case it hurt way up (uncharted territory) and there was no output at the little boy's room (at least at first). So around 1:00 am, after a couple of hours of pain, which got worse, and after making friends with the toilet I woke up Nir and Nadav at that point when I was afraid I was going to faint.

They were of great help. First, Nadav found Lili (I am not sure how he managed that) and brought her up. They asked me if I wanted go to the hospital (I was surprised there was one), and I figured I should since things were getting worse. So off we went. Now getting to the hospital wasn't a simple matter. At first Lili suggested they take me using a two-wheel transportation device (hell if I know what it's called), which was the most uncomfortable thing in the world. About 10 seconds into the ride and after banging my head I decided walking was a better option. Nir helped me with the walking, and the distance seemed endless since when a wave of pain came the walking was halted. Close to the hospital we passed by some sort of a cop who helped as well.

The hospital was the worst one I've ever been. First of all it was not very clean. Mostly the problem was with the toilet (which I visited all too many times during the night) - it lacked toilet paper (except for some that was outside and thus outside help was needed) and there was no soap to wash one's hands. Furthermore, there were loads of mosquitoes, which made the whole experience not too pleasant. More about mosquitoes shortly.

As we were getting to the hospital I told Nir that if needles are involved he must make sure they are disposables and never been used. Also, since I had no idea what was to come, I told him that only under the most severe circumstances should he allow blood transfusion. I was very worried about the possibility of HIV.

When I was in the ER communicating with the outside world was a problem. I was under nearly continuous pain and could not talk to anyone (although I could indeed think properly mostly). They wanted me to drink water as I got dehydrated. In fact Nadav, ran to get bottled water (you shouldn't drink water from the tap and they had no bottled water in the hospital). Anyway, the water made me feel worse and I had to use pen and paper to write in the most basic manner that water was bad and IV was needed. So I got an IV and spent the night there. I was fortunate that Lili was there at the ER as she made communicating with the nurse much easier.

The nurse didn't make any decision and I found it extraordinary that there was no doctor on call. I thought they should treat the situation methodically by running some tests. Of course none were performed. We decided that it would be best for me to spend the night at the hospital and so I did. At that point Nadav took off (the next day I learned that he threw up a couple of times..) and Nir stayed for the remainder of the night.

The night was packed with mosquito fun. I spent the night in the lobby, which had fans to keep away the mosquitoes, but with little success. Both Nir and I got beaten really badly. At some point my left arm was completely swollen, but that somehow faded away in the morning.

The pain subsided as the night progressed and in the morning I checked out. The whole thing only cost 1300Baht ~= 40 USD....

Tuesday, Aug 7: Koh Phi Phi

We (Nir Nadav, Daphne, and me) rented a taxi boat for the whole day with some Thai guy who called himself "The Boxing Man", although he had no resemblance to one. We went to a place called "Maya Bay", which is where the movie "The Beach" was filmed. In order to actually get to Maya Beach one needed to get to the shore and get past some big rocks. Many got slightly injured. I didn't. But then again I didn't go since I decided to stay with the boat (a precaution against having Mr. boxing man still our stuff). We also did some snorkeling, which was very nice and would have far better if I had worn my contacts...

Afterwords, we continued to a place called "Bamboo Island", which was about an hour away. As we arrived some guy demanded we payed 200Baht (~6.5 USD) to enter. The boxing man never mentioned that and when we asked him why he hadn't he just shrugged. So we figured this was some sort of a scham. We did some arguing and Daphne proposed we pay 200B for all four of us and the "ranger" agreed. That in my opinion was an indication that it was indeed a schem. Furthermore, the note the ranger held had loads of English mistakes, which strengthened my belief in the schem theory. Ultimately, when we were about to pay the guy let us in without any payment.

We returned to the main island (Phi Phi) at 18:00. We ran some errands among them was to ask Lili (a Hebrew speaking Thai travel agent who worked in Haifa for 11 years!) about the whole 200B thing. She claimed it was legit. Who knows..

At around 20:00 the four of us went for dinner in an "all you can eat" meat place. It wasn't bad. Or was it?

Monday, Aug 6: Koh Phi Phi

In the morning I we ran into Daphne, who is a Dutch girl that I met a couple of days before in Railay Beach after dinner when we put our own movie up (Jack Ass 1). She seemed pretty cool (unlike the three Israelis) as she was actually enjoying the silly stuff they were doing in the movie. Anyway, she was hanging out with this German girl Silvi and we all went to the beach together. It was pretty damn hot with absolutely no shade at all.

After the beach we pretty much all met for some dinner. I was up for this meat place but Silve is vegetarian..

Sunday, Aug 5: Railay Beach - Koh Phi Phi

We (the guys and the three girls) left Railay and arrived in Koh Phi Phi at around noon. Now I had not been feeling to well, and consequently I made the horrendous mistake of entrusting the girls with finding a place to stay. The girls being as spoiled and whiny and that they are, wasted our time tremendously. Specifically, we went to a different part of the island (called Long Beach) using a taxi boat. Again, as was the case with the taxi boat from Railay (I haven't mentioned this yet) they whined about the possibility of it going under, and about the holes it had and so on and so forth. Most irritating. Once we got to Long Beach we couldn't find a satisfactory place for them. Things have gotten even worse. There was this one English person at a hotel, which is a rare commodity (i.e. an English speaking person) and the girls were so nasty to him that I literally wanted to bury myself. Anyway, it was so bad that I ended up walking up to him later and apologizing for their behavior. No wonder Israelis get such bad reputation (and these Israelis didn't even mean bad...). Anyway, after this we found only one room and I was quite glad as it was a good excuse for us to do the "gentleman's thing" and let the girls have it and have walk to the other side of the island (30 min). Nir picked up my thought right away as was clear from our exchange of stares. Unfortunately, Inbal found a bloody taxi boat and my hope of dumping the girls shattered. So off we went to the other side of the island (together). At that point we finally split when nothing seemed good enough for the girls. We had little trouble finding a satisfactory room.

One last thing about the girls. It seem they are (especially Nati) the most spoiled and whiny people I've ever met. Now this is interesting in light of the fact that the dumbest person I've ever met is also Israeli ("Gveret Timtemet" as we called her from the Whitsundays sailing). Makes me wonder...

The rest of the day was just dinner, since there wasn't much day left...

Saturday, Aug 4: Railay Beach

Today was hardly any different than yesterday. Again spent most of the time at the beach. I finished reading "Angels and Deamons" by Dan Brown. It was an interesting read, yet it seems the guy writes all books in the same fashion. There's always the sexy smart bitch that somehow gets invovled in the plot. Anyway...

In the evening we all went for dinner. Now I have to say something about the gals. They are starting to get a quite annoying. They keep whining and complaining (especially the sisters) and for the second time already they had the need to give back a dish at a restaurant since it was not meet their taste standard. The most complaining one is the little sis, who behaves like a 4 y/o. The older sis ain't much better (she sometimes behaves like a 4 y/o and sometimes like an 80 y/o grandma). Either way they all seem to suffer from ADD and a severe lack of reasoning. For example, we had an option to play a DVD at the restaurant. There was no reasoning with them about the movie, and it was painfully obvious to both Nir and I that once we put their movie, they still wouldn't watch it due to their severe ADD. Of course we were right.. (There are more details but in the interest of interest I'll spare them..)

Friday, Aug 3: Railay Beach

Woke up around 11:00. We went to another beach today, which was possibly even better than the one from the day before. The beach was a great success as I have finally managed to break my record! I held my breath for 3min and 22 sec! As I've noticed before, holding the breath for a long time involves certain strategy. First, I can never get to even 2 min right away. It requires a few attempts and basically working my way up slowly. I'm thinking that it takes the boy time to acclimate and maybe it takes time to reduce the heart beat which I presume happens as well. Other than that as far as strategy is concerned it is important to reduce anything that's energy consuming. So no movement, eyes closed, and all muscles need to be as relaxed as possible. Then, there's releasing small bits of air at the right times, and swallowing (swallowing nothing really, but just having the motion in the throat). All these prolong one's ability to stay under water. Also, there's a breathing reflex that makes a drowning person drink water, when that kicks in, you need to have a "make believe breath", namely, breath in but keep the mouth closed (sounds strange but it can be done). This buys a few more seconds. After I open my eyes (that happens at the point where holding my breath becomes difficult) I have about 30 - 40 seconds left in me. (The time before eyes are opened is the most fun part, as it is the time where one can reach a high level of relaxation.) This time, I opened my eyes after 2 min and 20 or 22 sec. I thought I would not be able to break the record, yet I did want to go beyond 3 min. Once I did the record seemed to be within reach and so I held for a while longer until it was broken. Then I wanted to get to 3:20, and ultimately, figured a round number wasn't cool so I managed to get to 3:22...

Thursday, Aug 2: Krabi - Railay Beach

Left early in the morning (9:30) to Rai Lay beach, which required just a water taxi for some 15 minutes. The place at fist looked awful. As is the custom in Thailand, the garbage is simply burned. This induces a perpetual smell of burning, which one could do without. Furthermore, the place where we landed seemed like a place I would not dare go into the water - way too disgusting. Anyway, we got ourselves into a hotel for 800 Baht (25 - 30 USD for all three), and then we met 3 Israeli girls (2 sisters and their cousin - Inbal, Nati, Liron) who claimed there was a much nicer beach. Off we went, and sure enough they knew what they had been talking about. The beach was quite lovely with beautiful massive rocks on the side, which gave the place a rather unique touch.

We spent the whole day at the beach. We also met an Israeli new weds couple (Yoav and Rachel). other than that I tried to break my "hold the breath" record but with no success. It still seems elusive.

In the evening we went for dinner. It was most amusing to have the little sis argue with the old one about where to eat. Frankly,I couldn't care less. I went for an entire fish, which ended up being a bit of a blunder. Food was followed by a session at the pool. Finally, we were all planning to play Yaniv, but that didn't really work due to the incredible attention deficit disorder from which half the people (at least) seem to suffer. I am always amused (and disappointed) to see people that cannot concentrate on one thing for more than 15 seconds..

Wednesday, Aug 1: Koh Phangan - Krabi

There was no point in staying any further in koh Phangan once the full moon party was over. So off we wet to Krabi, which is located on the other side of the country (not that far though since Thailand is quite narrow here). This entailed taking a taxi, a boat, a bus and a minibus, and it consumed the entire day. Our goal was actually to reach Railay beach, but it was too late for that.

Tuesday, July 31: Koh Phangan

Again, I spent most of the time at the beach (this phrase is getting somewhat dull). The most exciting part of the day was the full moon party, which if I were to guess had perhaps as many as 20,000 people! The whole beach was simply covered with the. Drunk (and not dunk) guys peeing into the water was part of the view and most amusing. I figured this was as good a time as ever to drink (or get dunk) and so I went for the "bucket". The "bucket" is basically a plastic bucket that is filled with some alcoholic beverage. I am not sure what it is that I got, but it sure as hell worked.. However, unlike some of the folks out there, the experience for me was not gruesome. Namely, I didn't throw up, nor did I loose any memory or any of the bullshit some people claim. I retired from the party at 5:30am...

Monday, July 30: Koh Phangan

Nothing particular happened today. The usual time on the beach plus a back massage that Nir and I had, which was pretty good. I have to say a few words about food. While Thailand is mostly quite cheap, the island seems a bit more expensive and the quality is not that great. For instance a banana shake would cost a little over a dollar but it's not nearly as good as one you could get in a "normal" country. We have been eating most of the time in a place called Mama's Schnitzel, where like many other places there's tons of Hebrew written papers on the wall glorifying he place. Some of the waiters actually speak some Hebrew which is most amusing.

In the evening we all went to the beach party, which seemed to have grown in size since the days before. No doubt as a sign for the upcoming full moon party.

Sunday, July 29: Koh Phangan

Like everyday here, I woke up rather late (I guess around 12:00). So the day actually starts at mid day. I had a quick internet session where I met this Russian-Israeli-Canadian girl (Tanya) who travels with 2 others like her (Mai and Yulia). After that there was the usual food followed by the beach. The beach was packed with people, which was quite nice, among them there were various topless gals, which made the scene even nicer (most of the time, except when dealing with whales...). The beach entailed reading, matkot, going into the water, and work...

I tried again to break my "hold my breath" record but have been unsuccessful and managed to get only 2min and 40 sec. I met again the Irish-English girls, who apologized for not showing up the day before (apparently they went to bed).

The evening was rather slow as there was no major beach party because of some Buddha holiday. Instead we hung out with Tanya, Mai, and Yulia and a bunch of other folks. I retired early.