I wake up, proud of myself for having survived last night, ominous tarot prophecies be damned. Actually, I can give myself a pat on the back there: after Jessie went to bed, I wasn't quite tired, so I decided I would go back down to the beach for another drink, maybe another shake, and see what happened. It was when I got past the porch (and noticed that our dog had moved to another, perhaps cooler, porch) that I realized I couldn't remember the way back to the beach, and even if I was to make it there and get even more fucked up, there was no way I'd be able to make it back to the guest house. Rape-free, at least. The whole situation seemed to be exactly what that Tower card wanted, and I wasn't going to give it the satisfaction. After giving the dog another couple belly rubs, I went back into our room and retired. I am pretty sure this rare moment of lucidity is the only reason I'm not dead, in a Thai prison, or worshiped as a skinny god somewhere.
So anyways, with that crisis averted I was in good sorts on Thursday morning, which is the morning we had decided to finally ride a goddamn elephant. Taxi cabs around the islands always have a laminated tourist map in the back so passengers can just point to whatever touristy thing they want to be taken to, and we gave a truly vigorous point to that little laminated elephant picture.
At the elephant ride place:
This is their backup elephant, I guess. He was just hanging out. The elephant we took was already suited up and ready to dance:
Oh yeah. We doing this. Me and the elephant are gonna have the greatest time and we'll bond so when I'm gone and the moon is full he'll let out a soft elephant cry and his owners will shake their heads wistfully, trying to console the gentle beast, but to no avail.
So, that whole elephant cry thing actually came true. Although instead it was more of an elephant scream, and it was because the owner was hitting it in the head with this fun number:
Every time the elephant would stop to eat some grass, or to freak out at a passing car, the owner would just wail on its skull with that wicked-looking hammer/velociraptor claw tool.
Oh yeah, and we passed the rare and mythical Elephant Shityard:
And some wild cock. Cocks.
It wasn't all dung-fields and elephant-abusing though. We had some good views:
Back at the camp (about half an hour short of our promised hour ride, I am almost positive) we stopped for some pictures. Here we are astride our noble companion:
And another (with our tour guide trying his damndest to lean out of the way):
And another, now that the elephant is tired of posing:
Now that we could cross "Ride the fuck out of an elephant" off our to-do lists, we still had some time to kill before catching the ferry back to Ko Samui. There was a waterfall on the taxi's tourist map, why not check that out?
After about 80 billion hours of walking through stifling hot jungle, we reach where the waterfall is supposed to be. There's some sort of guesthouse built in the area, and a foreigner hanging out asks us if we're here to see the waterfall. We give the affirmative, he takes a sip of his drink, chuckles, and points us to this:
No, that's no trick of scale or proportion, dear reader. Here I am, standing next to the mighty waterfall in all its thunderous glory:
Fuck you, Nature. Seriously. Fuck. You. Also, a special fuck you to the cab driver who picked us up and confided that "the waterfall might have dried up a little this time of year". Fuck you and everything you stand for.
We did, however, successfully relax on the beach.
Or at least, Jessie did.
Meanwhile, I had to "use the facilities" something fierce, and apparently there were no bathrooms anywhere around the beach, Thailand, or the world. I finally found the back of a restaurant I could use (and by that I mean the bathroom in the back, I didn't shit in an alley or something) and bought a beer. After all that hard work it was time again to visit a pharmacy, since I had to throw away everything before our plane flight to Ko Samui, and I didn't have the foresight to realize I would have to throw away everything again tomorrow before the flight to Pattaya.
By this point, I was getting tired of valium (zing! 'cause, it makes you tired? no?) and ineffectual ritalin and was wracking my brains for something new to try that I could conceivably get without a prescription. My conversations with pharmacists became a lot more like this:
Me: Can I get something for, I dunno, pain relief? Like, bad pain?
Pharmacist: What kind of pain?
Me: Fuck, I dunno. Back pain? That's the worst, right?
Pharmacist: Here be drugs.
When I finally got back to Jessie at the beach, I was too worn out to rent a jetski, and just swam around for awhile till we had to catch the ferry to Ko Samui. My memory of our night in Ko Samui is a little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure we just went to a ping pong show or two and drank a bunch. However, I will wait for the post about Friday in Pattaya before I give the skinny on ping pong shows, because Pattaya is infamously sleazy, and also because I have to wake up super early to teach tomorrow. See, we all suffer.
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