Finally. I finished the malaria meds more than two weeks ago. I’ve dawdled long enough.

While things weren’t drug-addled enough to be called ‘gonzo’ in the sense that Hunter S. Thompson coined, there were definitely stretches of sensory overload during my too-short two weeks in Thailand. Beginning with the damp, scorching heat that slammed into me the second Fonty, Elise and Troy escorted me from the air-conditioned airport, the country felt like a rapid series of over-saturated snapshots. A Lomographic flip book, but invading all five senses.

Bangkok was bonkers. We invited it by staying on the periphery of Khao San Road. I could try to describe things in terms of globalization/tourism/culture flow, but I’m feeling less pedantic (read: less dickish) than usual, so I’ll say it like this: we were on a well-worn path, but one which is renowned for its healthy dose of anarchy. Chaos and knock-off designer goods stretched as far as the eye could see.

My first full day in the city was spent taking in the two opposite ends of its spectrum—the royal palace and its neighboring multitude of gilded monuments in the afternoon, then a ping pong show come night. The least depressing moments of the latter involved my cohorts being hit with flying objects. The rest was pretty tragic. (The pussy tricks, not the sacred royal treasures.)

36 hours after I landed in Bangkok, we flew south to Krabi. From there, a boat escorted us a half hour west to Railay Beach, which would be our home for the next four nights. ฿2000 ($62) per night got us an air-conditioned room and a spacious bathroom with a flushing toilet. The price—split four ways—was by far the most we would spend on lodging in Thailand. We were royalty! There was a pool 30 feet from our door! There was a busty Swedish girl sunbathing topless at the pool every afternoon! We tanned, we snorkeled, we ate, we drank, and we (well, Fonty) made friends with some of the rock climbers who flocked to Railay for the vertical limestone walls jutting from the ground all around us. We flirted with cheap Thai whiskey and took pictures of our butts in empty restaurants at 2:00 in the morning. Later, after a six hour pool+beer marathon, we slept for a few hours, hurridly packed our crap, and caught a boat back to the mainland at dawn.

From there, we took a ‘VIP bus’ (filthy, beat-up minivan) five hours south to Pakbara. Following that was a speedboat which sprinted us two hours west to the island of Ko Lipe. The island could be crossed with a 15 minute walk and was surrounded by the bluest, most beautiful water I have ever seen. We ate more cheap, awesome food, we snorkeled more (with equipment rented from Porn Resort), we drank in bars cobbled together from driftwood, and we spent many hours laying on white sand in the crystalline sunlight while young boys alternated between fetching us cold beers and sneaking ice into our bathing suits. One afternoon, as we read our books on the porch, rain fell so furiously that my first reaction was laughter. After what felt like an eternity of lazy, sun-drenched days, we headed back, opting to fly out of Hat Yai, which was only two hours’ drive from Pakbara.

Once back in Bangkok, we shopped. It was intoxicating—a helpful exchange rate paired with manufacturing abilities light years ahead of other tourist countries like Mexico. The knockoff Wayfarers and Burberry duffel I secured from Chatuchak market have yet to cease entertaining me. We all got massages ($12 for 90 minutes, natch) near Siam Square, which was full of trendy teenagers, complete with competing boy bands. We also trekked out to Kanchanaburi to see Erawan Falls (seven tiers, yo), and the tour included a tiger-petting stop. The day before our departure, the girls and I took a lengthy cooking class from an energetic woman whose maniacally type A personality had spawned four successful restaurants in Bangkok.

To get back to California, I first had to backtrack to Auckland. This meant two twelve-hour flights in as many days. Troy and the girls, on the other hand, got bumped to business class. Bitches.

I’m in a delightfully modern two-story suite outside New Plymouth tonight, and the king-sized bed waiting for me upstairs is almost a foreign concept at this point. It has been ages since I’ve slept on anything larger than a twin, and not having my feet hang off the mattress edge will be a welcome luxury.

I most recently dallied in Wellington after saying goodbye to the south island and ferrying back over Cook Straight. My last couple nights have been spent in a room shared with five other travelers, some of whom hailed from countries that shun deodorant. Despite its 300 busy beds, the YHA Wellington hostel was surprisingly efficient and clean, and I certainly can’t blame the establishment for the hygiene of my roommates. Within hours of checking in I found myself drinking a couple English blokes and a pair of Welsh girls under the table, and I won a complimentary Guinness t-shirt for my efforts. The next day’s wind gusts were strong enough to cause me and my fellow pedestrians to lurch about unpredictably as we walked—the “Windy Welly” moniker is well-deserved.

After speeding too quickly through the books I hauled across the Pacific, and being too thrifty to restock with overpriced fluff (outrageously, trade paperbacks are NZ$20-30 and every second-hand bookstore I sought out was picked clean of all but usual Danielle Steele garbage), I decided to purchase a couple meatier novels that could give me more bang for the buck. In other words, I bought discounted classics with an eye towards maximizing reading hours per dollar spent. I ended up with 1400 pages of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (for NZ$25), and holy shit I can’t wait to wallow in some gratuitous laser-titty sex alien holodeck DNA-splicing spaceship moon-jewels crypto-jizz while my poor neurons work to forget that 19th century Russia ever existed.

Briefly, some other highlights that have transpired since I last posted: turned 25 in Invercargill, NZ’s southern-most city; bungy jumped from the Karawau Bridge 143 feet into the brilliant, turquoise river below; visited two glaciers in as many days; woke up and watched thirty-odd dolphins playfully cruise up the coast across the street from the night’s modest lodgings in Kaikoura; and ate for dinner a wild pig which had been shot in the expansive, grassy valley behind our motel in Blenheim.

Now to succumb to sleep while the river below fills my head with soothing white noise. Six days ’til Thailand. Six days ’til 50 cent beers, exquisite $4 meals, depraved ping pong shows, malaria medication, unbelievable waterfalls, even dirtier eurotrash backpackers, and drinking buddies who can sympathize with my unspeakably strong burrito cravings.

I woke up in a hostipal bed at 5am on Saturday morning (March 1st).

Okay, let me back up.  I met a couple people at Moose McGillicutty’s after work on Friday and had a drink and an order of fish and chips.  We then wandered around looking for the right place to go into downtown, you many know that I despise going out around the Gaslamp area.  We settled on Star Bar on E Street where we had a couple drinks and bantered about work.  From there I said we should hed to Hamilton’s in South Park, and everyone agreed so I jumped on my bike and raced up the hill into South Park and chugged a couple pints of water before everyone else got there.  I introduced myself to a man there who had a dog and I told him how much I miss having a pet like that around to play with.  As far as I know I was fine when I left the bar to ride the 2 miles home from Hamilton’s.

The story after that had to be gotten from a phone number I found stuffed inside my backpack on Saturday afternoon.  Apparently I managed to run myself into the trunk of a parked car halfway home.  The man I talked to heard a crash and checked outside and found me laying unconcious in the road.  He called an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital and cleaned-up.  They did some scans to make sure I hadn’t broken anything and they came out clean, no broken skull.  As soon as the nurse said I could leave I did.  I jumped on my bike, stupid idea, and rode home from a Hospital near SDSU.

I am alright.  I came out of the whole ordeal with a fat lip, a bruised nose, a little skuff on my hairline, and a pretty bad headache.

New rule, no riding home from a bar alone.

I flew the coop. I left San Diego. The mourning process was exhausting, and I miss my friends already.

I’m in New Zealand now, and things have been fantastic so far. We’re staying at a quaint motel in Thames—a tiny town just south of Coromandel—and I should make this quick because it’s late and the free wi-fi is spotty.

Auckland is pretty and reminds me of Vancouver—lots of tall, modern buildings and fobby asians. Even though I’ve only been a passenger so far, driving on the opposite side of the road was quite unsettling for the first day. My cousins are great, and the bars and clubs they showed us make me miss North Park (RIP Scolari’s). King’s Cup has slightly different rules here, the drinking age is 18, and you can drink on the street or in a car if you’re a passenger. Bars stay open all night. Gratuities do not exist.

It’s warm and humid here, but I’m enjoying it because the snow that greeted me as I drove to my parents’ house in Norcal was a pain in the ass. I’m already a bit sunburned, though—the ozone layer is thin down here.

Things that are disappointing: Comic Sans on shop signs, no turning at a red light, and fat people. (The fatties are preventing me from pretending that this is Europe.) Also, it’s pretty heartbreaking to see dead hedgehogs on the side of the road.

Onward! I’ll probably groom this post later. Maybe.

This is the worst thing I’ve seen all weekend.

Scolari’s Office is being sold to the owners of Bar Dynamite. It will close in two months and undergo renovations for three to six weeks. After that, I can’t imagine ever seeing the same shitty bands, lowbrow crowd or fantastic drink prices there again. Picture a single tear gathering in the corner of my eye before silently sliding down my face and dropping onto my lap.

(A special shout-out to the octogenarian we saw there before the end of 2007 with the hairpiece, stunna shades and portly El Cajon streetwalker.)

PS: It’s not actually the worst thing I’ve seen all weekend, jeez. That honor should probably go to the 60 Minutes report on rape as a weapon of war in Congo.