Reliving Past Experiences

Someone once told me that if you ever try to relive a fantastic experience you've had in your life, it will always disappoint you. And while that is true of this one, it was still pretty kickass.

I set it up so that I'd meet Stroose in Thailand on my way back to the Northern Hemishpere. He'd been living up in the middle of nowhere going to a Muay Thai training camp and enjoying the ridiculous cheapness of it all. We met up for a night of craziness in Bangkok. Strauss has been there a few times so he knew where to go and we met some friends of his out at a real 'Thai club' rather than falling victim to the various tourist traps around town. Their set ups are crazy. You go in, buy a bottle of vodka or whatever and you're provided with your own table with a built in bar set up. Glasses, ice, lemon, lime, various mixer drinks, salt etc. Basically all the ingredients to get one messy. Well that and a crazy little Thai girl who makes you drink far more than you should before dancing around like a lunatic and getting thrown out (at least 3 times) I met some French dudes there and practiced my awesome drunken French. The thing about drinking is that it makes you THINK your langauge skills are getting better but in reality you just care less about how much they suck.

The next day we headed up to Dok Krai Resevoir for a week of wakeboarding goodness. A severe hangover in the taxi and massive underpreparedness meant that it took a lot longer than it should have and we arrived in a bit of a daze...

Once we got used to our surroundings we realised we were the only guests at the resort; being the very start of the season... In some ways this was a blessing but it was a little quiet around there at night. It was a shaky start but eventually we got some good riding time in and managed to get some improvement happening. Strauss had never gotten up on a wakeboard and I was trying some tricks I never thought I would get to. I even had a go of a wake-skate. It's much like a wakeboard but with no bindings. You stand on it barefoot and can do things like shuv-its and the like.

For the most part we were pretty lucky with the weather. We had mornings with glassy water, a little wind would pick up for us to head in for lunch and then it would glass over in the late afternoon ready for another session. It was really like a little slice of paradise. When we weren't feeling up for riding we set up a bungee cord to pull us over the pool and we had plenty of time to hit the gym equipment, watch dvds or just chill out and have access to a kitchen chef all to ourselves. We couldn't really complain (though looking at the state of my mosquito-bitten ankles sometimes I managed to) My last day on the water I was trying desperately to squeeze in as much time as possible. Strauss had gone on ahead to sort out some visa stuff and some Russians had shown up to start their 2 week waterski trip. The forces were against me. I managed to squeeze in 2 sets and finished up not a second too soon. There were thunder and lightning strikes all around us, and with a metal tower on a boat in the middle of a lake in the middle of swapland? We were the prime target for any bolts wanting to come down to earth.

I had a few days on my own as Strauss fixed up his visa stuff and much like my last trip in Thailand, I met some English guys on their way to Samui and we got on the beers as soon as we got there. It was a messy few days but we had a blast. These boys were in the Army and Thailand was like crack to them. Crowds of skinny Thai girls pawing all over them, practically fighting over them? They just couldn't get enough.

After two wild nights I moved on from them as they seemed determined to stick around but I knew that even better partying lay across the water on Koh Phangan...