rabies angels chiken fights ear piercing dancing elephants manholes nightmarkets cardgames and more,(thisis the longest post ive ever done!)

alright its been so long since ive posted, and for that im sorry, this one took me a while to write, and even longer to procrastinate about writing it!

so heres what happened
so i rode with my 2 moms to korat, where my mom got to meet my friends, after she said good bye, she headed out with my host mom to bangkok, leaving me.
you know once again.
to fend for myself.
but hey ill be fine!

where was i oh yeah, after making some runs to 7-11 and playing some football with my friends in the parkin lot we ate, then piled on the bus!
buss ride was pretty uneventful, just hung out listend to music(new jack johnson cd is awesome thanks aunt lisa!)
if i remember any thing monumental ill be sure to add it later ok?
anyways we rode all night(just to get back home) and arrived in this place called crabbe, at a resort that was about 1 k from the beach arrivng there zach and i got our room key and after we got settled we all walked to the beach and swam for a couple of hours, the beach was beautiful, and you could see these crazy lookintg islands out in the water, you know thier taller than they are wide like big cliffs risin up out of the water, we actauklly had the genius idea to swim out to one, and i swear that stupid rock was at least a mile offshore, also there were these little jelly fish thingies in the water and theyd sting the hell out of you if out swam into them!
well after like 20 min of swimmin we made it walked around a bit, then headed home, we ended up staying there something like 3 nights.
one of the days we wend snorkeling, we all got in to a boat, and it took us all over the place, to different snorkelling spots and islands, at this one island we were shoked to find out that clayton(brazil) my friend couldent swim, so we all gave him impromptu lesson, and well now he....
can doggy paddle-confidently

ok so this next part was probably the craziest funniest thing ever one of the stops on the bat tour thing was this sand bar connecting 2 islands so we got out and jumped in the water which is only like 4 feet deep and started doing chicken fights, you know were the guy holds a girl on his shoulders and the girls try to push the other girls off, cmon everyone knows that game, anyways we had a few bouts with all the guys playing(it was hillarious we started getting crowds of thai people cheering us on and everything),and they always turned into a grudge match between julian an megan and karley and me(karley its not your fault, meg just has man arms)
while we were resting some of us started talking with a group of old thai ladies, and one of them started to talk about the chicken fights, so we asked if they wanted to do one!!
my parter agreed in a heartbeat, but it took a while to convince the lady in blue to hop up on julians shoulders, but eventually she agreed!

so herejulian and i are with 2 50ish year old thai ladies on our shoulders charging at eachother in the ocean off the cast of thailand.

i cant belive this is my life.

after a glorious and hardcore battle my parter trumphantly threw the blue lady off of juliand shouders, and we both celebrated our vicotry...over a thai senior citizen.

besides fighting old ladies we snorkled alot, and let me tell you this water was gorgeeous!
it was a good 20 feet to the bottom, but you could see every thing!!
there were fish in all shapes and sizes and in colors that i didnt even know!
it was great, you could swim down to the bottom and chill with the fish, and feed them bread and suff like that!
sweet. what else
oh this was a crazy thing, so zach and i just got back from the beach, and we were goin to our room, when we found a cat, we hung outside with it, and i followed us into the room we played with it for a while, and when zach took a shower i fell asleep with the beastie on my chest.(alight im gonna take this time to call zach and me idiots, do you know why, well... were in an improvished country and we let some wild animal into our room and played with it, catch my drift?) so when i woke up i took a showere and when i got out i asked zach hey where did the cat go, he looks at me and lets out a few choice phrases and starts ranting how the "#@$!ing" thing bit him!
and we didn t think too much about it till later at dinner when zach was talking about it and one of the girls brought up the questiuon about rabies!
so half an hour zach me and holly and karely are in the er of the local hospital and zach and holly are gettin rabies shots.
moral of the story:
dont be an idiot and play with wild animals!
that noight was easter, and all the exchng students had a candy hunt kinda thing, but since the 4 of us were at the hospital we didnt see it, but they did saveus alot of candy for later!

so the next big thing we did was that we all got onto a boat and took it too this one island, alright are there any james bond fanns out there???
anyone remember the man with the golden gun?
rember the island with sacaramangas secret lair, with the cool island, the midget and "THE PLANE!!!"

yeah we went there...
like a dream come true!!!!(cause, well i love james bond)
it was fun we hung out for a while, along with evey other foriegner on earth!!
after that we went to this man made island that was just one huge market!
thats where i saw her..
the angel.

ill tell you about that in a min ok..
so we really just walked through this market checking things out and getting pictures with monkeys!
yeah they had these random dudes carrying around monkeys that you could take a pic with, we felt like farangs doin it cause it was a total tourist thing, but cmon... who can say no to an monkey?

alright dudes so heres the angel story-
so im just about to leave with maria and thers this door that separates the expensive market from the rest and im jsut about to walk throught it when-
i was graced by beautiful-no stunning, gogeous woma-no i dont belive she was a mere woman!!
an ANGEL was sent to me that day!
i opened the door and there she stood in all of her glory, my mouth dropps, i frezze and kinda get this dazed deer in the headlights look on my face- and she flashes me a coy smile that melts me!
then she kinda does this thing where she looks down, bobs her head catches eyes with me, and as i gaze into her sea grean eyes shewhispers, as if just to me
"hello"

and then i feel my heart being ripped out as maria shoves me through the door and her tour group pushes her the opposite way.
i gotta say though in those 2.5 seconds of bliss my life flashed forward and i saw myself in a whit victorian style house with a red door a tire swing in the yard, white picket fence, a dog and 2.5 kids!
so when im ranting this story to my jriends in the boat, julian jumps up grabbs me and goes"ryan. chances are you will never ever see this girl(angel) again, you are gonn a come with me right now and find out her name!"
"done."
so here we are racing through this floating market pushing past old germans and tour groups trying to find this mystery girl.
we searched high low, scouring the entire island, we even ran through a couple backyards(people livethere too) until we finnaly admitted defeeat(at this point we were pretty late for the boat)and started walking bach when out of the corner of my eye i catch a flash of baby blue, i look and i see herleading a group of older german dudes back to the boats, julian and i ythink fast and take stratiegig possitions in the expensive part of the market, i start to "buy shirts" and wait for her to come in,
closer...
closer...
closer...
NOW!
i turn to talk to her...
and she walks right past me!
we probably should have given up there, but no , not us!
i again straticely place myself and jjulian comes in an flanks her so she stops and since im rather smart and cunning, i ask
"hey you look alot like a friend of mine"-
"well im not"(ooooh that kinda stung)
julian and i ask her name, julian points to a name badge shes wearing, and she, in that voice that will haunt my dreams says
"hannah"
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
then we hear champ(one of our guides)yelling HURRY UP WERE LEAVING!!!
so we say goodbye and thats the last time i saw her...

hmmm what else happened, oh ok so we left that hotel, and packed our backpacks for 3 days, and left the rest of our stuff in the bus and we were told that we would be staying 2 nights in some national park, ok so i grab my guitar and bag and hop in the bus!
turns out that that this national park was an island... about 4 hrs off of the mainland!
we all scramble aboard a 2 decker boat and pass the time by playing guitar, watching the flying fish(very cool, first time ive ever seen them, they qwould fly right in front of the boat!) playing cards, you know just hangin out...
4hrs later we are at a pit stop, its an island nearby ours where we can snorkel and swim to the beach where theres these huge rope swings hanging from these ancient looking trees!
we d'd around there for a whle, as usual, the beach was perfect, water like glass, and fish aplenty(it was sweet, wheni i was heading back to the boat with my friends, we found ourself right above one of those huge swarms of massive silver kinda fish(you know like those videos you see on discovery channel right beore a seal comes and snatches em up?)i was able to dive like 10 feet down into the center of the swarm(whats a group of fish called? herd, a family, a gaggle? i dont know..)and just watch the 60+ fish swim all around me!
we got to the island in the afternoon, zach daniel andrew and i all calimed a choice bungalow 20yards from the shore, then all the dudes met down on the beah with the glorious scheme of build ing the biggest snd castle/man-fort on earth(a couple of the guys had already bought a huge 40 gallon bucket to help do it with) we soon found out that the bucket didnt work too well(we couldent flip it and get the sand out in one pice at all, so we refined our original idea so that we would be digging the biggest man-hole(ha get it) in thailand!
with the help from a metal pole, and 2 buckets the hole had grown a good 12 foot circle, and about 3-4 feet deep( we were actually makin a fire place, but the park ranger came and yelled at us(in thai of course) so we ditched that idea, but overall we had dug one huge triumphant bastard of a hole.

that night megan and i played guitar on the beach, we all went for a night swim, the guys succedded in buildin a good fire on the beah(castaway style too, you know with the trough that you blow air though!)and i learned how to play what could quite be one of the greatest card games on earth(its called euchere,appaerntly its a polish game... i dont know what thats supposed to mean, but it is. ill teach you guys when i get home, cause like i said, its the funnest card game ive ever played)
oh yeah also this island was INFESTED with hermit crabs and massive bats, which was way cool, cause if you looked close enough you could see tons of shells walkinthrough the shadows and if you looked up you could see these big batman symbols flying from tree to tree and screeching like crazy!
the next day we got up early, and piled on the boat and it started taking to different snorkelling and swimmin spots on different islands.
it was great, whenever weed get to another spot, weed dive, flip, jump or fall off the second story of the boat into the crystal clear water swim ashore, or chill in the water and watch the fish lazily swimming below us.
we ended up goin to some cool island where we would climb the gigantic rock/mountain andnd stand ontop and look out over the whle ocean(actually its a sea, but i forgrt the name of it, so ill just call it an ocean ok?)
we also had diving and flip contests of of this boat, it was hillarious diving 20 feet or so into the water!
we ate on the boat, and got a huge euchere tournament going- oh i almost forgot!!!

one of the stops was supposed to have sea turtles at it, but we never saw any, and while we were eating lunch, my frinds and i were playing cards on the first floor, wwhen all of a sudden we hear a thai dude yell
"Taow!!! Taow!!!" i look over and see him pointin to the right side of the boat, i wrack my the thai section of my brain for what the heck taow means, and i reamember a roung doughnut hole kinda food that vendores sell on the side of the road called kai taow(which means turtle eggs) and i realize that he saw a turlte!
i hear people jumpin over board, so i mask off the table and hop out the window and land in the water about 5 feet from a huge turtle, that looks over, sees all of us then casually starts to swim away(sure i had just dried off, and we totally had to star the card game over again, but it was so worth it! i swam with sea turtles off the coast of thailand!)
that night we basically did the same thing and chilled on the beach, we all played a game of beach football, and when it got dark we all went over to the manhole and hung out in there for a couple hours.
only lame thing was that we got moved to a tent inland, and away from the beach
where the mosquitos were the size of small birds!
im serious these were the biggest mosquitos ive ever seen-and i live in thailand!
after a night of bug bites(i seriously think i lost like a pound due to blood loss)
we all got onto the boat and settled in for the ride back to mainland, once we got back we hoopped in the bus and drove for the island of phuket.
as usual we listened to music played cards and slept, i really dont know why im telling you all that, it should be a given!
hmm what happended in phuket?
first night we went to this crazy lookout where you could see up and down the coast, later on we went out to some discotheques, and saw thai bands
alright so heres one major thing that happened, i mean major MAJOR!
we were all out at a mall one day, when me 3 guys and 3 girls ran into a accesory store, you know the thind that pierces ears........

http://youtube.com/user/rynalias

check out my youtube site for the videos of what happened!!!
cause im not gonna say any more on that subject!
(i added part one and 2 of the piercing, and a video of me and zach washing our clothes in the hotel bathtub)

where was i?
oh, so after that episode that night we went out to this thing called uhh..
something like phantasy thailand, in short it was kinda like a thai disneyland, that had the biggest buffet in thailand and had a kinda cirque du solei type show!
it was fun, we all got dressed up and ate at this massive buffet, it had eveything!
what we all devoured though were the french fries(good frenchfries in thailand are hard to come by)i even got in a pretty heated discusion whith yuki(shes from japan)about the best kind of sushi, she said the raw salmon, i say its the raw tuna, whatever, what does she know, its not like shes jappenese or anything, oh nevermind.

ok you know how some people in america say clowns scare them?
thats ok, sometimes they can be creepy, but for me its nothin to have a phobia over.
thats until i saw thai clowns.
these could b-words could quite possibly be the most horrifying things ive ever seen!
theyre super tall and dressed in these cultlike robes, have huge devil eyes(you could see thier balck souls) gargantuan hook noses, claws and terrifying rows of needle sharp teeth!
i couldent handle it.
no.
not. at. all.
ant then thed come at you and try to get HUGS like they were just mickey mouse, or tigger, and not this monstrosity from hell!!
i ran.

so.
about the show...
it was cool from my understanding it was the story of a boy who had a magical elepahant, and he traveled thailand righting wrongs until some bad dude took his girlfriend, then he and the magiacal elepant, along with an amry attacked pad dudes castle and tooke her back! the show had some pretty intese accrobaticts, with sword fights live elepahnts onstage cannonfire and people bunggee jumping off the celing
overall a pretty sweet night!

the next day we strted the long ride home, it took us a day and a half to get back, and we stayed in some random city in the south, cool thing though was we got cheese burgers and fries at our last hotel!
like i said before, good fries and burgers are hard to find(the other day i found out that 7-11s sell hot dogs with actual buns and mustard, IT BLEW MY MIND!!!)
that night jullian and i went out to see if we could find a dance club or place with music, but all we found was one of the biggest night markets wed ever been to, so we walked around there and picked up these thai versions of strawberry milkshakes before heading back to the 7 and eventually the hotel.

oh i forgot to tll you about how my how one night my heart broke!
i was walking around the city one night with my friends when all of a sudden and no warning at all my foot catches in a grate, and my left rainbow(you know my glorious leather indectuctable sandals ive had for like a year)snagges and i hear a rip.
i look dow and my heart breaks.
the middle part of my sandals shredded out of the leather!!!
i was so piossed! i ended up walkin 2 k barefoot back to the hotel, i mean these things have a garurentee on them, thier not supposed to rip!
anyways, i brought my old pair to thailand with me and once i get home im gonna try to send the broken pair in for new ones, i think they mighta ripped cause of the humidtiy here ahnd that might have damaged the glue or something like that.

nextday we just rode a couple hrs in the bus till we got to korat(oru breakawya point)
so we all said ou=r goodbyes(were all meeting again on the 2nd week of may)
all the people from khon kaen and 2 from udon piled into a pick up truck, only problem is thats eight people andbags nd a guitar in a tiny pickup, and we dont have time for 2 tripps, so i ended up perched precariously on the mountain of bags with 2 girls riding on the open tail gate as we fly down the city roads!
i love thailand.
well thats my trip, i got in late that night after a remakable uneventful bus ride, this last week was prety uneventful, other than zach came over for a couple days, we stayed with friends in khon kaen and watched movies but like i said nothin groundbreaking...
hmmm tommoro im going to korat for 4 days to visit my friend andrew, then im comeing back for song kran!

whats song kran?
youll find out once im finished with it!
well thats all that i have time for thanks again for reading, and since i can heres my youtube again

http://youtube.com/user/rynalias

ryan