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Bars, Boys and a Bakery: São Paulo Nightlife

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One thing I would quickly discover about a lot of eating establishments in São Paulo, and eventually other cities in Brazil, was the use of a card with which you keep a tab on your purchases. With the exception of both fancier restaurants and the cheaper, over-the-counter fast food options, most places operated in a cafeteria style where your selections and choices were recorded to a certain number or card, and often the people serving you food were completely separate from the people who would collect your payment. It was an interesting way of doing things, and while it wasn’t exactly foreign to me, I’d never imagined to be such a widespread phenomenon in one specific area. It was a effective and quite streamlined way of doing things, but it wasn’t until I made my first few trips out to the nightclubs of São Paulo that I realised it was also partly a response to improve security in many places.

***

The evening during my week in São Paulo were spent relatively quietly, having dinner with Fausto or attending a few different events with him – a friend of his was opening a trendy boutique clothing store that was having a launch party with a free self-service cocktail mixing table – you know, as you do. But it was on the weekend, when Fausto didn’t have work commitments the following day, that he really showed me some of the gay bars that São Paulo had to offer. Each night we ended up visiting a few smaller cocktail bars where we would meet with some of his friends before heading to the nightclubs. Some of the places were a bit above my price range, but Fausto generously helped me out with the tabs from time to time – thanks to him, I was able to see a very different side of Brazil that I hadn’t really expected at all. In fact, the affluent and fancy establishments were the complete opposite of what I had been led to believe Brazil would feel like, so it just goes to show that the enormous city really is incredibly diverse.

The first actual nightclub that I visited that weekend was Lions Night Club on the Friday night. There was a queue when we arrived, and upon entering the doors of the venue, every single patron had their ID’s checked and scanned, their details recorded, and their bags and pockets frisked before being assigned with a personal tab card. I was instructed that it was highly important I did not lose this card, because not having it with you when it came time to leave would have you in a world of pain. Once this rigorous security check had been completed, we headed upstairs to the main bar, where I was honestly shocked at how fancy it was. Luxurious looking furniture and seating lined the edge of the large room, a huge dance floor area, a long and extravagant bar located in the centre of everything, a spacious outdoor balcony overlooking the area below and amazing professional lighting and sound systems. I wasn’t surprised to later learn that the event was routinely compared to some of the posh gay bars in New York City – not that I’d gone to anything ridiculously fancy while I’d been in New York, but Lions definitely seemed to fit the bill.

One thing that I noticed while I was in Lions was the way that the tab card system fundamentally changed the way that people behave at the bar. There are the obvious advantages – no one uses cash, so you can’t have to wait for bartenders to count money or give back change, and no one is using credit cards so you don’t have to get stuck behind someone insisting that it must be the machines fault that their card has been declined. You order your drink, hand over your card, the purchase is added to the tab, and off you go. However, for someone like me, who was on a limited budget, it was unnerving because I wasn’t always sure how much the drinks I was purchasing actually cost. The last thing I wanted was to be caught short later with not enough cash to be able to settle the debt when it was time to leave.

The other thing the tab card system affected was the popular, well-established custom of buying someone a drink. Of course, it’s still more than possible to order someone a drink and put it on your card, but it just didn’t seem to be happening that much. Offering to buy someone a drink has long been a pretty standard ice-breaker, in my opinion, but the card system sort of undermined that: “Put it on my tab” doesn’t seem half as fancy or impressive when literally every single person in the bar has one too. I mean, I suppose it’s entirely possible that simply nobody wanted to buy me a drink. But even putting that aside, I just can’t describe the feeling, but it definitely felt different. Though there was the flip side of that very situation: a couple of times I just got handed my drink because someone in Fausto’s group of friends just ordered the drinks and put it onto one card. I suppose that’s a more social way of encouraging people to buy rounds of drinks – a tradition that’s apparently very Australian – although it’s just as easily a way to get roped into footing the bill for round of drinks which might cost a lot more than you could afford.

With Fausto and his friends at Lions Night Club.

With Fausto and his friends at Lions Night Club.

With all it’s pros and cons, this payment system in Brazilian clubs was perhaps one of the biggest culture shocks I experienced that weekend in São Paulo. I’ve been assured it’s not a particularly new phenomenon and that it exists in many places around the world, but this was my first ever encounter with it. I can’t say that I liked it, but there were other factors such as the language barrier with the bartenders that made the whole set up a lot more difficult for me to navigate. When we were getting ready to leave Lions, we had to line up to hand over our tabs and pay the difference, and of course I somehow managed to end up in the credit card only line. Fausto swooped into rescue me as the cashier was shouting in Portuguese while staring incredulously at my cash, but after he paid her and I paid him back, we had our tabs scanned one last time by the security staff. Only when a green light appeared, indicating we had settled our tabs and owed no more money, were we allowed to exit. Functions like this serve as a way for people to have a night out without having to carry any cash – which I supposed can be ideal for places were street crime  and mugging is relatively high – but it also made me cast my memory back to times when I’d felt terribly ill and had to make a quick getaway from a nightclub, and how that would have been completely impossible with this payment and security system. Nevertheless, it was an eye-opening experience about the ways in which the nightlife in other cultures can operate.

***

On the Saturday night, we once again started the night with some drinks at a classy low key bar before heading to the nightclub, and I was also introduced to a handful more of Fausto’s friends, luckily most of whom could speak English. The nightclub we were heading to that evening was called Club Yacht. However, all the Brazilians were pronouncing “yacht” in Portuguese, so I really wasn’t expecting what I would totally have been expecting if I had actually known the name of the club prior to arriving there. Club Yacht had been recently renovated on the inside and was, as one would expect, nautical themed. The walls and bars were decorated with mirrors, shells, and trimmings that recalled visions of the lost city of Atlantis, and the whole scene was nicely underscored with blue neon lighting. There was a large dance floor and a well stocked bar, with bartenders dressed in sailor outfits. There was even a huge fish tank towards the back of the clubs near the bathroom. I have to admit, while some themed nightclubs can turn into a horrible and misguided shambles, I was actually pretty impressed with Club Yacht. Of course, there was still the same security procedures and bar tab setup as their had been in Lions, but by now I was getting the hang of that. It felt a little confronting to be subjected to such precautions, but in the end having them in place probably made the whole environment just that extra bit safer.

I preferred Club Yacht over Lions. Maybe it was the fun nautical décor, or that I liked the music a lot more, or that I ended up having a sneaky make-out session with one of Fausto’s friends behind the fish tank (somehow made even more physically charged by the fact he had a very limited English vocabulary), but I really had a good night on the crowded dance floor. We’d arrived at about 1:00 AM, having lost an hour to daylight savings, but we stayed well into the early hours of the morning. When it came time to leave, Fausto insisted that he show me a place that was something of an entity in the post-nightclub eating world of São Paulo: a place called Boston Bakery. A 24 hour eatery that is much more impressive than the simple name suggests, it was a hybrid café/restaurant that served such a staggering variety of foods that I was quite torn when it came to deciding what to eat. Some of Fausto’s friends opted for sweets or baked goods, such as those you would expect from a bakery, but my post-drinking stomach usually has a craving for a burger, and there was a selection that could be ordered off the menu.

Apparently Boston Bakery can be completely packed out during the day, especially for things like weekend brunches, but at a modest 5:00 in the morning there weren’t too many other diners to share the place with. Again, we were issued with numbered tokens when we entered the building, and rather than waiting for the waiter to bring over a bill at the end of the meal, we simply had to flash our tokens and pay for whatever we had ordered on that number. After that we walked home through the cool dawn air and spent the majority of Sunday sleeping.

***

I was lucky to have had Fausto to guide me through the nightlife of São Paulo. The combination of being a thrifty traveller and having lived a stones throw away from the gay nightlife in Sydney meant that I still had a bit of an aversion to getting taxi’s if I could help it. But if there was one piece of advice that I would give to absolutely any traveller in São Paulo, it’s that taxi’s are definitely your best friend. Especially at night. Usually I’m pretty adventurous, although I think if I’d been left to my own devices and tried to navigate my way around the concrete jungle at nighttime via public transport, I feel I would have been telling a very different story in this blog – if indeed I’d even made it out alive to tell the tale. But as luck would have it, I was blessed with some friends who were more than happy to take me out and show me a local perspective of São Paulo nightlife.

Good Morning Baltimore

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So while I didn’t end up going back to New York via Philadelphia, I did jump at the opportunity to visit another city along the eastern coast of the United States. That was one thing that I loved about the US – in most places you can just jump on a train or drive a short distance and suddenly you’re in a whole new city, or even a brand new state. In Australia there aren’t a huge amount of cities or towns that are really worth visiting, for purposes of tourism at least, and the ones that are worthwhile going to are separated by miles and miles of desert and bushland or the vast, bleak expanses of suburbia. Thought I’ve heard of American and Canadian tourists visiting Australia because of that exact reason – to see the expanses nothingness – so I guess it’s only fair that I was fascinated by the exact opposite. Mike had gotten up early to head to university, but on this particular day I managed to pull myself out of bed at a reasonable hour, get ready and head down to Union Station, where my bus from New York had dropped me off and where my bus back to New York would eventually leave from. Today, however, was all about the spirit of the day trip. I was heading to a city that I had often heard about, in song (thanks to Hairspray) or otherwise, and where one of my favourite bands (All Time Low also created For Baltimore) hailed from, but somewhere I had never actually visited: Baltimore.

***

There is a service called the MARC train that connects Baltimore to a number of different places, one of them being Washington DC. The journey only takes approximately an hour, and the train is actually used by a lot of commuters who make the trip on a regular or even daily basis for work. As a result there is a high concentration of trains in the mornings and evenings, around peak hour when the regular commuters need to travel. I obviously wasn’t awake for the morning peak hour, so I planned to catch one of the less frequent late morning trains, and arrived in Baltimore when the sun was high in the sky. When I made it outside of the station, I found my bearings and headed towards the harbour, the focal point of the city of Baltimore. The surrounding city itself wasn’t anything too spectacular or different – just a regular American city with houses, apartments, churches and shops. But after about 20 minutes of walking – the further south I got and the closer I got to the harbour – the city seemed to swell up around me and the air of suburbia gave way to what felt like a city centre. Out of the high rises came a business and tourism centre, and after passing through a couple of streets that were like huge concrete hallways, I stumbled on a gorgeous view of the waters of Baltimore’s Inner Harbour.

A church on the streets of Baltimore.

A church on the streets of Baltimore.

Inner Harbour - the USS Constellation and the World Trade Center Institute.

Inner Harbour – the USS Constellation and the World Trade Center Institute.

The first thing that comes into view when you step into the the sunshine at Inner Harbour is the USS Constellation, probably the most impressive looking of the handful of historical ships that are scattered around the harbour in Baltimore. I walked past it, but instead of going on board for a tour of the ship I kept walking towards the Baltimore World Trade Center. It was the tallest building around the harbour, and it also claims the title of the tallest regular pentagonal building in the world. At the top there is a viewing platform called ‘The Top of the World’, so I purchased a ticket and went on up.

The view from 'The Top of the World' in the Baltimore World Trade Center.

The view from ‘The Top of the World’ in the Baltimore World Trade Center.

From the top you could see out into the horizon and the harbour that stretches out into the wider bay, and all of the surrounding city. There was also a lot of exhibits and notices about the history of the city, so I spent a little bit of time wandering around and reading. I also learnt a little more about the initiative in the city, in the harbour just south of the World Trade Center, to create or ‘build’ a wetlands using a collection of environmentally friendly floating frames. The grass growing in the frames is expected to help gradually clean the the waters of the harbour, and the underside of the wetlands will eventually develop into a habitat for small marine creatures such as crabs, eels, fish, worms and barnacles. Even trash from the harbour, such as plastic bottles, will be embedded into the structure to help it retain buoyancy, and the whole thing seemed like a cool little project that was creating a thriving ecosystem that would even help keep the wider environment clean.

The floating wetlands in Inner Harbour.

The floating wetlands in Inner Harbour.

I returned to the ground level to see the floating wetlands close up, and then continue my walking tour around the harbour. It was already well into the afternoon, so I stopped for some lunch. After deliberating for far too long about where I was going to eat I finally chose a place at random, but making sure that they offered some kind of seafood, as I had read that it was somewhat of a specialty here in Baltimore. Unfortunately, I’m not the biggest fan of seafood, particularly fish, but instead I opted for a Baltimore classic: crab cakes. They were the only other kind of seafood that was within my budget, but I have to admit they were absolutely delicious. Since I was eating solo, all throughout the meal my server would occasionally swing by and chat with me, and ended up asking where I was from and what I was doing in Baltimore. In the end, when he was fixing up my bill, he tried to offer me some tips or advice for anything to see while I was in town.
“There’s the aquarium just over on the other side there,” he said, pointing to a near edge of the harbour.
“Tell him to go to Fayette Street, man,” one of the other guys working there called out to him. “There’s nothing else worth doing here during the day.” He chuckled to himself, as did my server, but he looked a little too embarrassed to elaborate on what his co-worker had been talking about.

The complex of shops on Pier 4 in the harbour.

The complex of shops on Pier 4 in the harbour.

I walked over to the aquarium and had a look around on the inside. It seemed pretty cool, but it was such a beautiful day that I didn’t really feel like going inside – I’d spent quite a lot of time in the museums back in DC – and watching a huge group of school children marching into the aquarium was definitely enough to put me off following them in. So I walked along the walkways between the harbours piers, soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the breeze blowing in from the bay, and the gentle sounds of lapping water all around the harbour. After a few absent-minded turns I found myself heading back into the city, away from the harbour, and another random turn had found me on, lo and behold, Fayette Street. I could now see why the guys from the restaurant had sniggered a little at the recommendation – it appeared to be Baltimore’s answer to the Red Light District in Amsterdam, despite it being in the middle of the day. Yet there were no illuminated windows or coffeeshops like there are in the eccentric Dutch capital, just a few oddly located sex shops and a bunch of men trying to coax me down into their strip clubs where they claimed there were plenty of hot naked girls for me to see. It was my turn to chuckle to myself as I walked on past the clubs, ignoring their catcalls, though I was actually quite amused at one of the remarks made by one of the men as I walked past his club without a single hesitation in my step: “What is that in your ear, anyway? A goddam pencil?” It was a reference to my earring, a fake stretcher fashioned into a large blue spike. I probably laughed out loud, but I didn’t stop or look back.

View from inside the fountain on the harbourside.

View from inside the fountain on the harbourside.

I spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around the centre of Baltimore, browsing through shops and exploring the nooks and crannies of the area. The theme of the city seemed to largely revolve around water, with the seafood and the boats and the fountains that you could walk under when they were built into the designs of some of the mall complexes. It was pretty interesting, though from what I had heard, and now seen, the city is definitely a location that thrives more during the evening that the daylight hours. Unfortunately I hadn’t been able to find a place to stay in Baltimore, even for just a night, so as the sun began to sink towards the horizon I made my way to one of the MARC stations – luckily at this time there was one going back to DC from the station much closer to Inner Harbour – and boarded the train back to Washington to spend another night relaxing with Mike. My visit to Baltimore wasn’t wild or exciting, but it was still a pleasant excursion for the day, and it checked off another city and another state in my list of places that I had visited on my journey.

Life’s a Beach

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While Bangkok may be a glistening gem of a city, full of flashing lights, broken streets and chaotic, life-threatening traffic, the country of Thailand is home to a huge range of other travel destinations, particularly the beaches and islands that are scattered all around the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. My time spent in this mega city had been incredibly eye-opening, but once again that travelling itch was gnawing in the back of my mind, and I felt like I’d been stationary for too long. I needed to keep moving – to keep travelling – and so I decided to make the most of my time left in Thailand by making my way south to explore some of the coastal delights that the country has to offer. After a quick search through locations and hostels, I set my destination as the small coastal town of Krabi.

***

Sticking to my commitment to travel as cheaply as possible – and to also get the most “experience” out of my journeys, I booked a ticket on the overnight train from Bangkok. It was a 12 hour journey from there to a town called Surat Thani, from where I would travel via bus for a few more hours before finally reaching Krabi. Including delays and waiting time, it took me about 17 hours before I finally set foot in the hostel – a long time considering Krabi has an airport which is a one hour flight from Bangkok, but it was also remarkably cheaper. Getting the train also felt like an adventure itself – the staff working on board came down the aisles and set up the beds, and an hour into the journey I was curled up in my own private bunk, watching the countryside pass by under the cover of night. It was actually kind of fun – I felt a little bit like a child again, hiding in a cubby house or a fort made out of pillows. I admit that it may not have been the best sleep of my life, but it was adequate, and the option had the advantage of covering both transport and accommodation for the night, killing two birds with one stone. The morning of my arrival in Surat Thani was a confusing wild goose chase, with buses and vans taking me from place to place until I finally arrived at the hostel in Krabi. It was a little unnerving when you weren’t 100% sure where you were going, but sometimes you really have no choice but to go along with it and pray whoever is taking you wherever just knows where they’re going.

I soon learnt that I should probably put a bit more effort into my research in the future, as I made a startling discovery upon arriving in Krabi – the town itself doesn’t actually have any beaches. I was a little put out – gone were my fantasies of strolling down to the beach, with nothing but a towel and my ukulele, and strumming little ditties among the backdrop of paradise. But I hadn’t come through 17 hours of transit to sit and feel sorry for myself. After showering and changing out of my soiled traveling clothes, I enquired with the hostel staff and learnt of a “local bus” that could take me straight to one of the nearby beaches. So away I went, in the back of what was essentially a ute with a roofed cage mounted in the tray. I rode for about 20 minutes before we turned onto a long strip of road that ran parallel to a long beach called Ao Nang. I alighted and made my way down to the sand.

It was early afternoon at this point, and I was faced with another problem that I hadn’t properly considered – low tide. The beaches in Thailand are particularly shallow, so when the tide goes out, it really goes out. I probably had to walk about half a kilometre before the water was even above my thighs. Since the water is so shallow, it also stays very warm. As I crouched down in the shallows to fully submerge my body, it felt more like I was taking a sandy, saltwater bath than a dip in the ocean. It was still quite pleasant, but not exactly the refreshing dip I had been expecting, or that I really needed in the sticky Thai humidity. Nevertheless, I was glad to be out of the city and washing away the rest of my worldly cares on a beach somewhere.

Ao Nang beach

Ao Nang beach

I had been told by a few travellers that he beaches down in this part of Thailand were some of the most beautiful in the world, with clear waters and pristine white sand. Yet as a made my trek through the waves breaking around my ankles and back go the shore to walk along the beach, I was quite shocked at what a found. All along the sand and in the wash along the shoreline, the beach was polluted with all kinds of litter. T-shirts wrapped in pieces of driftwood, lost shoes, beer bottles and other shards of broken glass, beer cans, plastic bags, water pistols and other toys – after closer inspection the sand along the beach resembled somewhat of a dumping ground. “Untouched” was a word I had heard used to describe these so-called pristine beaches. Maybe Ao Nag was an exception, or maybe that person hadn’t visited this area in a long time, but as the sun set on the otherwise beautiful seaside setting, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed in what I’d found. I climbed aboard the local bus and headed back to the hostel, making a determined promise to myself to continue my search for the pristine beaches tomorrow.

***

My trip to Krabi also marked the first time that I would be staying in a hostel. I’d heard some horror stories about stolen possessions and other traveling nightmares, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. After showering and changing I ran into a couple of guys in my room and introduced myself. We sat around chatting for a while – Jens was a traveller from Sweden and Sam was from London – and we ended up going down to the local night markets for some cheap Thai food dinner. Back in hostel room, we got chatting to a Moroccan traveller, a girl named Sarah. The four of us, complete strangers until that evening, made an unlikely group of friends, yet we ended up chilling out on one of the hostels balconies, drinking and smoking and just talking about our lives. It was at that moment that I really felt like a traveller – just an individual in a collection of wanderers, making our way through the world, whose paths intertwined for that one night, for that brief moment in time.

The quiet streets of Krabi Town at night

The quiet streets of Krabi Town at night

The next day, after trading tips among the hostel dorm room, Sarah, Sam and myself decided to catch a boat to a beach called Rai Leh. A pair of Norwegian girls had promised us beautiful beaches there, and I figured we could trust the word of someone who had visited the area just days before. And we were not disappointed – as the boat cruised in to anchor just off the beach, even the towering sheer limestone cliffs that filled the scenery around us were breathtaking. Sam said it looked like something out of Jurassic Park, and as a fan of the movie I most definitely agreed. This place was simultaneously beautiful, soothing, and awe-inspiring – this is what tropical paradise was supposed to look like. Rai Leh was a strip of land that had two beaches, with the eastern side acting as more of a port for the various boats bringing people in, so we made our way over to the western side which had been a little more developed for the tourist population. There were lots of bars and resorts just beyond the edge of the sand, so we had a few drinks before making our way into the water.

On the boat pulling into East Rai Leh.

On the boat pulling into East Rai Leh.

I soon discovered that the shallow beach at Ao Nang wasn’t a one-off thing. The water at West Rai Leh was a similar depth to begin with, and I had to walk out a long way before the water even came up to my chest. But when it did, the water became much cooler, and it was lovely swimming around, diving under the waves, and then kicking back and marvelling at the sweeping scenery that surrounded the beach. While the water wasn’t as deep as I would have preferred in a beach – or probably more accurately, what I was used to – it was definitely the visuals of the location that made it so appealing. The sand and water was also a lot clearer than Ao Nang, so I was satisfied to have finally founded these fabled, pristine beaches.

On the stunning shores of West Rai Leh.

On the stunning shores of West Rai Leh.

I also learnt a few travelling tips from Sarah that day. As we boarded the boat to take us to Rai Leh, she had brought along her large rucksack, while Sam and I only had our smaller backpacks. “You must never book more than one night in a hostel,” she said to us in a thick French accent, when we asked her why she had checked out and brought all her gear with her. “You never know where you might end up, or where you might want to stay. Krabi Town has no beaches! I do not want to spend another night there.” She had been travelling around the Thai islands for months now, and she had definitely mastered the tricks of the trade. And she was right, of course. When we got to Rai Leh, she sniffed out some budget accommodation – a mattress on the floor of a bamboo hut on the east side – and checked in straight away. “The beaches… This is where I want to be.” Sam and I still had our beds booked back at the hostel, so when it came time to get the last boat back to Krabi, as the sun set behind the clouds and turned the sky a glowing pink, we bid Sarah goodbye and good luck in her new home for the night.

The sun turning the sky a beautiful shade of pink on the boat ride home.

The sun turning the sky a beautiful shade of pink on the boat ride home.

***

My original plan had been to leave the next day, but I felt like my time in the beaches had come to a premature end. So after sniffing around some of the tourist information centres in the street, I booked a full day SCUBA diving tour for the following day, and secured my room at the hostel for one more night. I hit the hay early that night, to rise for an 8am pick up, in a car that took me back Ao Nang beach. From there, a boat took the group – the dive instructor and a pair of stern looking European men who spoke very little, and when they did, it was rarely in English – about 40 minutes out into the sea. We geared up, and soon we were descending into the deep blue.

I had completed my Open Water SCUBA Diving course when I was only 12 years old, on a family holiday in the Maldives. I had been diving periodically since then, but it had been about 4 or 5 years since my last dive. So I was a little nervous, but as I flipped over the edge of the bloat and plunged below the surface, it all came flooding back to me – unfortunately, like the sea water into my mask. But other than that, it was like riding a bike – some things you just never forget.

The first dive reached a depth of about sixteen metres. The visibility wasn’t the greatest, which meant the distance you could see through the water was limited, but it wasn’t awful, and we were still able to see all the marine life that was just teeming in the water around us. Schools of fish that looked like walls in front of us parted as we swam in their direction, and our guide pointed out some other less obvious creatures, such as sea horses clinging to the coral, or small stingrays that would gently hover above the surface, and then take off once we got too close. It really was like another world down there on the ocean floor, and I realised just how much I loved and missed SCUBA diving, as I marvelled at the marine alien world. I made a promise to myself at that very moment that I would make more time for diving in my life, and later went on to scope potential diving destinations on the rest of my year long world tour.

After the first dive, we had a break in which I was able to do some snorkelling. This far out to sea, the water was clear and cool, and an absolute dream to swim through. The boat was anchored to a small limestone island jutting out from the sea, and as I swam around the perimeter I discovered a cuttlefish nestling in the safety of the rocks. The second dive was going to be in a cave – something I was a little nervous about, knowing some of the potential dangers. Armed with flashlights, we descending a second time, not just into the deep blue sea, but through the mouth of a cave below the limestone island, and into a black abyss. I experienced a strange sense of vertigo in the darkness of the cave. The ground can be rushing up to meet you one moment, and the next you’re bumping your head on the roof. It found it difficult to maintain a stable neutral buoyancy at the best of times, so trying to do so with no real idea of where I was proved a little stressful. I made a point of not losing sight of our guide though, not only because I knew he wouldn’t be lost, but also because he was pointing out some of the marine life with his torch. We saw a couple of nurse sharks, a few more stingrays and seahorses, plenty more fish, and a strange creature that looked like an octopus but had far too many legs, so I can only assume it was either a type of cave dwelling squid or jellyfish.

The island above the cave, and the surrounding blue water.

The island above the cave, and the surrounding blue water.

As I followed our guide in what appeared to be in upward direction, we moved through a small grotto before coming to a halt. When he shone his light at the walls around us, I saw about 5 or 6 lobsters at several points, all curiously climbing out of their hiding holes to get a better look at us. It was odd to see a lobster in the wild – the closest I’d ever really come was seeing them was in tanks at Chinese restaurants. We continued up through the grotto when, to my surprise, I broke the surface of the water. I pulled off my mask to look around to discover we’d found ourselves in a little pocket of air inside the cave, completely closed off from the outside world – the only way in was the way we’d come, through the sea. Sunlight was coming through from somewhere below, so the caves entrance wasn’t too far off, and the water lapped the edges of the rocks so that the cavern echoed around us. The light and the sounds and the serenity of the whole place made it strangely beautiful, despite being quite visually uninteresting. I’d been unable to bring my camera and so couldn’t photograph the cavern, but similar to the temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok, being unable to take a photo made the experience feel that much more special – a little personal memory that was mine to keep and treasure.

(NB: I did take a few photos with my underwater camera while I was snorkelling, but until I have access to a computer with an SD card reader I’ll be unable to upload them.)

After we made our way back to the boat and then back to the shore, clouds began rolling in over the ocean and eventually a downpour of rain was released upon Krabi Town. The driver who took me back to my hostel said it was a good thing, and that it hadn’t rained there in about a month. I spent the rest of the evening with Jens, Sam, and a couple of other British guys, who introduced me to some of the local beers, the most notable being Chang. I’m not usually a big beer drinker. Maybe it’s because it was just cheaper and easier, or maybe it was the peer pressure of hanging out with four straight guys – I guess we’ll never know – but the local beer was much easier for me to stomach than any of the brews I’d tried back home in Sydney. Chang was supposed to be particularly potent though – and the next morning, after about 5 or 6 drinks and a round of beer pong, I can vouch for that supposition.

Changover.

Changover.

Getting out of bed with one of my highest ranking hangovers ever – dubbed a “Changover” by the boys – and getting out of the hostel by 11am check out time was not an easy task. The rest of my day was spent navigating various modes of transport in an attempt to get back to Bangkok. It took just as long as it did to get there, although since the overnight trains were all booked out due to the upcoming Songkran holiday, I had to catch a bus for the 12 hour stint of the journey. Overland travel can be long and tedious like that, but I eventually made it home to Bangkok in one very tired and worn out piece.

***

My trip to Krabi marked an important step for me on my gap year world tour. It was the first time I’d really gone out on my own for more than just a day. Finding a place to stay that wasn’t a friends house, organising and booking transport merely hours before it actually leaves for the destination, and making friends with the fellow travellers around me were all things that I’d been very keen to do since I’d set out on my journey. I was only heading back to Bangkok to celebrate Songkran and gather my things before heading off to Vietnam, an entire country where I truly don’t know anyone. I’d had a blast in my short time at Krabi, so now I was more excited than ever to travel to more new places and really live the life of a world wanderer.