Monday morning brought with it a close to the past week and the opening of new adventure: island hopping in southern Thailand.

The day started like any other, as we were woken up by a herd of drunken Australians at 4am, bursting into our hostel and proudly recalling that "Jeremy, the absolute legend, almost got arrested on our last night in Thailand!!” It really was unfortunate we left two hours later, as we were clamoring to hear Jeremy’s tale, but that’s the way the spring rolls.

Cab rides brought us to Bangkok's DMK Airport in time for an 8:45am flight to Phuket, a large island in the south with access to the surrounding beaches, cliffs, and smaller islands. The view flying in was awe-inspiring, a smattering of tree-covered hilly islands strewn about across deep turquoise waters. Earlier reports of monsoon season making the islands unenjoyable seemed false alarms.

After haggling with a cab company at the airport who on multiple occasions confirmed that 200 * 7 is in fact 1400, we eventually secured transport to our hostel, Capsule Hostel, near Patong Beach. The hostel itself was located on the main boulevard in the basement of a shopping mall, which kept it cool and quiet at night. Each bed was a little wooden capsule with a bed and a couple reading lamps, providing a cozy and private relief from the madness outside.

We walked through the town towards the beach to grab lunch. Patong was probably the grossest collection of Australian bars, cheap souvenir shops, and strip clubs that we've seen on the trip. It really is a crime against humanity that such a place is allowed to exist next to a beautiful ocean. We loved it. We ate at a Thai/burger/shawarma/pizza place on the beach.

After lunch we decided to rent motorbikes after much prodding by Mengs, who had been itching for some mechanized speed for days. Terrifying at first, we eventually got a hang of driving on the left side and the lawless traffic of the road, with only a few minor bike spasms to flex the nerves. We drove out of the city along a windy coastal road that led us up and over the hills, with plenty of oceanfront views to take our breaths away. Think Malibu coast but in a jungle. We arrived at a beautiful deserted beach to lay on for an hour.

Coming back into town with the bikes proved more difficult as we got stuck in traffic, forcing us to weave between cars and navigate one way streets with the finesse of a baby coloring inside the lines. We finally made it back unharmed to see our first oceanic sunset of the trip.

But as Kanye crooned, "all good things gotta come to an ena," and we faced our first attempted extortion of the trip. The bike renters "found" a scuff on one bike's kickstand that they insisted must be from us, even though we didn't use that kickstand the entire day. We were then treated to a 45 minute argument where the owner lectured us about his 25 years of motorbike expertise, yet still couldn't event give us a price estimate to fix the "broken" stand. Not willing to back down, and because they still had our passports as collateral, we involved a local police officer who patiently heard their story and miraculously sided with us. In the end we only paid about $9 for a lost key.

Needing a pick me up, we settled on an quaint and dainty local eatery with tremendous atmosphere: Hooters. Turns out it was just what we needed, as the wings, burgers, beer, and overzealous manager who insisted we go to his favorite brothel no matter how much we explained our disinterest cheered us right up. We had an early morning ahead of us the next day, so after dinner we sought the comfort of our capsules, but not before stopping by a hilarious bar called Tiger Bar, filled with tourists, drinks, and a ruckus. We were challenged to many games of Connect Four by the locals, coming away with a group losing record of 4-11. Even after a potential disaster, we went to sleep in good spirits.