I have two words to summarize my life over the last couple of weeks: Island Hopping. And this lifestyle is living up to it's stereotype; fan-fucking-tastic! The majority of our days has been spent soaking in the glassy turquoise ocean. The waters are almost too warm. I don't have the audacity to suggest that this is a complaint and it is certainly not to rub it in (well, perhaps a little), it's just that the water is so warm that it doesn't quite have that refreshing effect you strive for on a scalding hot afternoon. Luckily their are other amazing island things to do besides bathing in the ocean such as lounging in the sun or perhaps playing with some baby elephants.
My hippie sensibilities won't actually allow me to ride the elephants due to their lack of ethical treatment, illegal poaching, forced eating, all of the bullet points on the P.E.T.A. website, the rapid decline of the elephant ratio in animal crackers, etc. That is a soapbox rant for another time on my less entertaining blog. This doesn't mean, however, that I won't go and pet their adorable little baby elephant trunks and giggle at their ridiculous pachyderm antics. For christ's sake, they look like they're wearing permanent feetie pajamas. You're just a bad person if that doesn't make you slightly giddy inside. They don't actually even have to do much of anything and I still will coo over them like a pigeon with tourettes. One of the babies produced a baby elephant sized bowel movement, turned around, smelled it, shook his head with dizzying disgust and I just about teared up over the pure cuteness. Forget what state I was in when they let the little guys out for their bath and one of them escaped and ran into the nearest restaurant. A toddler elephant in a restaurant! Trust me, you can't imagine anything more darling then seeing the caretaker having to lure the little guy out with a bag of crackers (part of a complete herbivore breakfast).
Speaking of morally questionable activities, we traveled to Koh Phangan this week to throw down at the ridiculous festival that is the Full Moon Party. Ranked as one of the Top 10 Parties in the World (yes, they officially rank parties in addition to the Top 10 Natural Wonders, Ancient Wonders and Man Made Structures) the Full Moon Party is part of the prestigious list along with Brazil's Carnivale and New Orleans' Mardis Gras. Haad Rin Beach explodes with tens of thousands of whities sporting more neon than was ever produced in the early 90s. Some drunken beach activities include fire limbo, fire jump roping and fast paced water slides; each of which at least one of us participated in. Dressed in our best neon and sparkles we hit the beach armored with tubes of glitter, our objective to leave Koh Phangan just a bit shinier than we found it. Witness to inevitable drunk fights that evening, I lurked around the perimeters for the right moment to dump a sparkling vile of peace and happiness onto the confrontations . The water slide, however, proved to be the most effective way to mass sparkle bomb the beach though. In order to load myself into the slide properly I had to have Kelly fill both my fists full of sparkles before launching myself into the abyss. As I flew through the air, the surrounding crowd on both sides got a flash flood of twinkle and shine. My glitter bombing skills are notorious in many countries, but even I must toot my preverbal horn here and say this was some of my best work yet.
As it turns out, Kelly and I have different strengths when it comes to these drunk-tivities. I may be the glitter queen, but Kelly is the fire goddess, braving the fire limbo AND fire jump rope. She even made it out relatively unscathed with only a couple minor burns. Turns out jumping is much harder in the sand when compared to solid ground (and sobriety). Later that week when we were getting tattoos (is this a passive agressive enough way to tell my mom I got another tattoo?) the tattoo artist told us the locals actually refer to those Full Moon injuries as the real Koh Phangan tattoos. The day after the party an outstanding number of tourists were liberally bandaged from burns accrued from the previously mentioned activities, cut feet from broken beer bottles and nasty road rashes from motor bike skid outs. My favorite siting being the guy who's entire left side of his body was heavily wrapped in gauze. I'm talking his head, arm, chest, legs and even his toes were bandaged from an apparent motor bike incident. He was spotted astride a motorbike, mummified up to his noggin and yet, he still chose to ride sans helmet. I wish I knew what kind of grudge he was holding against his brain. At least I paid a professional for my injuries.
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