Benny Bigggs: Asian Invasion ‘06

There hasn’t been a whole lot of time to blog but we’ve arrived in Greece safely and now Regina and I are headed to the Greek Island Ios which is suppose to be the European version of Cancun. So I guess I should start with the half moon party…a crazy time. Everyone at our bungalow went including the staff who gave us a ride. The ride up was crazy, the guy who ran the place plus the staff made some buckets of who knows what and we were all drinking them. We also cheered on the driver to have some and he caved under the pressure. When we were flying to Ko Pha Ngan we got a brochure with a lot of info about Ko Pha Ngan and one of the things it said was please try not to drink and drive. Apparently our driver never got the memo. Once we got to the party there was a lot more drinking of buckets, house dancing, drugs (apparently benny bigggs IS shady because while I was offered them twice no one else was offered drugs) and welcome back 1997 because there were glow sticks a-plenty. The rave was definitely a good time and I don’t remember what time we eventually got home but I do remember someone puking outside the parking lot and forcing us to hitch a ride on the back of a truck because a van would make that person puke some more.

We were suppose to get up early the next day and make the 11 o’clock ferry to Koh Samui and to our credit we were ready to go by 10:30 but the staff was too hung over and hadn’t reported to work yet so we couldn’t check out. We ended up catching the 4pm ferry and eventually got to another bungalow. We did some more cheap shopping in Koh Samui that night and the next day we went elephant trekking. Elephant trekking is awesome. At first we rode the elephant (shout out to my girl Elle) on a mini couch thing but then the guy asked me to sit on the Elle’s neck and ride her that way. Sorry Johnny, I might have to trade in my bigwheel if someone ever starts a elephant riding gang. I was also pretty proud of Regina who rode on Elle even though she was bit nervous at first. If only she showed that kind of bravery while riding on the back of the motorbike with me. Riding a motorbike is the best way to get around on the islands and there aren’t very many traffic laws so it’s kinda a free-for-all. I also have to admit at first I wasn’t so great on the motorbike but once I figured out how to turn I was much better. My only advice is don’t try to learn how to ride a motorbike with a nervous backseat driver and in case you’re wondering while I’m slow as hell on the bigwheel, I’m a speed demon on the motorbike.

Anyways we were very sad to say goodbye to the Thailand Islands but at least we were headed for the Greek Islands and not Delaware (yea Widner). Our plane ride kinda sucked; after our crazy day we had to be at the airport by midnight for a 10 hour flight to Athens. Once we got to Athens at 7am Greek time we were going to figure out how to bus to the Pirease port and then get on the 7 hour ferry ride to Ios. Unfortunately the ferry was completely sold out when we got there and the next ferry we could get on wasn’t till 10:30pm the next day. Regina was not very happy with me that day. Luckily we were able to get a hostel in Athens that night (not an easy thing on a sat night) and talked the Ios hotel guy into letting us change the dates we were staying at the island even though it said the hotel was booked online. AND it turns out lots of backpackers make the ferry mistake because the girls we dormed with last night did the same thing (plus 2 other groups of people at the ferry ticket agency) so while Benny felt like a big idiot for not getting tickets in advance, at least he wasn’t alone. The only potential problem now is that the only ferry we could get coming back docks at 5pm and we have to make a 7:20pm flight to Rome that day, so hopefully we won’t get stuck in Greece (sorry mom I might not be coming home).

Well that’s all for now, I’ll write all about Athens and the islands the next chance I get. We’re now 3/4’s of the way around the world and while the Asian Invasion was a complete success, there is a lot of work left to be done on the Eurasian Invasion….

B