Trip of a Lifetime

Nuclear Sunburn of Death

Hi all! Glad to hear from those of you who've written me recently! To those who haven't... Well... I still like you. Just not as much. We're still here on Ko Pha-Ngan, and it's been awesome so far!... Well, mostly awesome. Our first beach day produced the worst sunburn I've ever had. Now before you all give me the old "You shoulda put sunscreen on and worn a brimmed hat and kept your shirt on and maybe put on some jeans and a parka or you'll get skin cancer" bit, let me assure you I was not trying to burn my back. That having been said, I couldn't have done better if I was trying. I was careful not to expose myself to too much sun, being my first day without a shirt on in months. I only got about 2 hours of sunshine on myself, and of that only about 20 minutes of it was in the water - you burn more easily in the water cause the sun reflects. See how smart I am?... Well the one thing I didn't take into account is that my anti-malarial medication, doxycycline, makes your skin very sensitive to sunlight. I had not yet understood exactly how sensitive until 2 hours of sunlight annihilated my back. Observe. http://www.geocities.com/spiker43919/P1011374.JPG Don't look so smart in that picture, do I. The redder spots are where the skin has already started blistering. Nice eh? Oh and check out this tan line on the back of my legs http://www.geocities.com/spiker43919/P1011375.JPG That's right kids, I actually burnt the backside of my KNEES. Heinous. At any rate, I've now stopped taking my malarial medication, since I've yet to actually be bitten by more than 10 mosquitoes on the entire trip, and I won't enter any more malaria zones before my flight to Australia. Despite my sunburn, I've still been having a great time over here. We've been reunited with the Swedes! They're crazy, they're fun, they have Swedish accents - what more do you want? We all went out and hit up the nightclubs on the beach 2 nights ago, and we managed to polish off a fair few Buckets between us. For those of you who have not had a formal introduction to a "Bucket", here's what you should do: Go down to your nearest Toys R Us and buy a child's sand bucket, capable of holding about 1.5 liters. Now, head over to your local Safeway store and purchase one can of Coca Cola, and one small red bull. Lastly, infiltrate your local liquor store and buy a mickey of the cheapest whiskey you can possibly find, at 40% alcohol. Mix all ingredients in your hopefully-neon-colored-bucket, and presto, you have a "Bucket"! What's that you say? It tastes like cough syrup? Well, true enough... But once you're halfway done it just doesn't matter :) Oh one last thing I forgot to mention - you probably paid about 20 bucks CAD for your "Bucket", right? Well they sell them to you at Had Rin beach for 140 baht - that's 5 and a half dollars - and they're making a profit... But remember, the "Bucket" is not a safe and wholesome thing. Stumbling home that night I managed to cut the bottom of my foot; not too bad, but I've been limping around for two days now. Don't say I didn't warn you. I'm sorry I haven't been posting very often now that I'm on the beach, it's just that all we've been doing is laying around, eating, watching movies, and suntanning (ha... ha...), but here are some pictures of the beach we're on. I could only get a couple because there are topless women everywhere, and I wanted to keep my website PG-13. http://www.geocities.com/spiker43919/P1011377.JPG http://www.geocities.com/spiker43919/P1011376.JPG It's a tough life, isn't it - dodging half-naked women to get pictures of the gorgeous beach I've been lounging around on all day. Keep writing guys; it's the only thing keeping me going ;) Spiker

posted by Spiker @ 4:14 am