Above is a photo I took at Cathedral Cove in mid-February. Now pay close attention to 00:42 in the theatrical trailer I’ve embedded below.

(The following are a couple leftover scribblings I just pulled from my little black moleskine.)

Middle-aged woman in Hat Yai airport with “BURBCURRY” embroidered in a pastel rainbow down the leg of her jeans. [Probably one of my favorite engrish sightings.]

DOG BALLS
CAT BALLS
MOTH BALLS
[The ever-present stray dogs and cats were never neutered, naturally. Some of those dogs had the biggest nuts, and they were usually all chapped and covered in sand. Woo! I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d seen feline testicles in the states. As for the moth balls, well, they seemed to be the fashionable substitute for urinal cakes wherever we went. It was like peeing in my grandma’s closet.]

Brunch cooked by katoey! [I was a big fan of having my chocolate chip pancakes cooked by a ladyboy every morning on Ko Lipe. The novelty wore off by day four, but only a little. PS: The trannies in Thailand were all masters of bershon, especially those working at tourist-heavy restaurants.]

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.

A bear knocked down an oak tree right outside the kitchen window last night. It was trying to get at a bird feeder full of seed. Yeah, the tree was pretty much dead and its roots weren’t providing much structural support, but still.

This is on top of the fact that there are almost always one or two wild turkeys hunting for bugs below the deck to the west (sometimes a parade of two dozen or more will mosey on through), and on my first bike outing I noted both coyote and bear scat within 200 yards of the house.

Welcome to the boonies, population: me.

I don’t recall having much trouble while backpacking above 10,000 ft last August, but Nevada City’s modest elevation was killing me today when I pulled my bike out of storage and took it for a ten mile spin. It might have been due in part to the head cold I just put behind me, but damn were my lungs on fire. Back at it tomorrow, though—I’ve been craving pedal action like a suburban dropout craves Tina, and I’ll take what I can get.

Despite the punishing jet lag, I had a blast dilly-dallying in SF for a couple nights after my return flight from Auckland. Within two hours of running the gauntlet at customs I was drinking noon-time beers with Kevin and the lil’ bro at their place of employ, and things only got better from there. Still on the To Do list: many return trips to Latin America Club, playing with Troy’s new fixie, drinking the Rambow boys under the table, and hopefully a house party or two with Mac’s new co-workers.

The return to my home town has been a bit surreal thus far, but there are a couple of exciting things coming up that should prove thoroughly engaging. Meanwhile, I’m like a walking blizzard as the too-good-to-be-true tan flees my body with traitorous assistance from the dry mountain air.

Thailand is still percolating. Bear with me.

My cat’s breath smells like two turds fucking.

I tore the last 80 unread pages off the weighty sled that is Anna Karenina the morning I flew to BKK from AKL and finished it in the air. The ending was satisfying only in that it meant I could stop caring. Here are the reviews I penned in my head as I tried to nod off on the plane:

Dostoyevsky: The only women who will put up with a mentally-overwrought emo twit are whores, and God is rad.

Tolstoy: Bitches be craaaaaazy. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t stop ‘em from cheating on you. Also, God is rad.

Fairly relevant, if you ask me.

I’m back in Auckland now, and I depart for SF tomorrow. I should have written about Thailand, but the country, the city, the people, the beaches and everything else seem beyond description. I’ll try breaking the trip into discrete portions and tackling it piece by piece. But not tonight. Later.