Video: motorcycling around Samui Island

[PhillyB]

Just got back from Thailand. One of the places we stayed (my wife was with me) was Koh Samui, an island in the gulf of thailand. we rented a bike for 200 Baht a day (that's about six bucks) and spent the week cruising through the hills, along spectacular cliff roads, beach flats, etc.

we took a video of a small part of it, uploaded it to youtube... it's kinda cool if you're into biking, or islands, or anything adventurous in general... or if you're bored

[Delhommey]

Went all around there in 2000 (Phuket, Ko Samui, Ko Phi Phi, etc).

Interesting to see how everything is so (understandably) new and rust free.

[Skew]

It needs more footage of hookers. C-

[PhillyB]

Went all around there in 2000 (Phuket, Ko Samui, Ko Phi Phi, etc).

Interesting to see how everything is so (understandably) new and rust free.

kinda sucks honestly. koh samui was pretty rustic even ten years ago... now everything's gone upmarket. all the pristine beachfront is disappearing. at this rate it's going to become miami... nothing but condos and five-star resorts and no soul at all.

koh phangan is another island just north of samui, and is a lot closer to what samui used to be. unfortunately my brand new camera broke halfway through the trip so i didn't get any footage of the rides through the much more scenic interior (which included a winding mountain road, waterfalls, mud pits, and a cobra.)

It needs more footage of hookers. C-

that's as good as it gets. during my first time in thailand last year i was columnist for a university newspaper and was working as a correspondence journalist of sorts and i got the idea to run an expose of the sex slave trade in southeast asia, as a way of bringing attention to the global scale of the issue. my idea was to pay the bar fine/entrance fee, find a girl, secretly photograph the interior of the brothel, and then interview the girl and get some information, and then write a lengthy piece about it.

unfortunately i was woefully underprepared... i knew all of three words in thai, and then i found out the brothels are all owned by the thai mafia (when i took the above picture, a sleek, expensive sedan [there aren't too many of those that aren't owned by someone with big connections] with darkly tinted windows glided up behind me and stopped in the middle of the street. a couple men glared at me from behind the windows until i double-timed it away.)

it's not uncommon to find undercover journalists dead at the hands of the mafia for trying to expose the gory details of thailand's most lucrative profession, and the only defense i had was a shiriken and a butterfly knife i'd bought at a market stall. in the end my plans stalled; i got stranded for three weeks in the country's northern hills with no money, starved for days, slept outside on a bench, and played a guitar in a tiny night market to earn enough money to make it to vietnam before my thai visa ran out. so that article was a dream that never quite became reality.

...all that to say that getting footage/photos of thai brothels is a lot more difficult (and dangerous) than one might expect. give me til next july and i should have a lot more. my thai is getting better by the day and i plan to return and do a full writeup on the horrors of the industry in general. look for it then

[thefuzz]

I'd hit that.