Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

After getting our Visas yesterday, Santino and I decided to celebrate.  At around 6 or 7 pm we went downstairs on a bit of a mission.  Trying to find the elusive female - not dressed like a "ninja" as Santino likes to say (i.e. hardcore muslim).  We talked to one of the bicycle taxi drivers and asked him what was up.  He recommended some place called Orange Bar/Cafe.  Cool.  However we wanted to drink a bit and get prettied up before actually going out, mostly cuz the cost of alcohol here is insane.  So after talking to this dude for awhile and getting the lowdown on Penang and Malaysia in general, we bought a few 8.8% tall boys and went back to the room.  Hung out for awhile drinking and shooting the shit, then at around 10pm we decided it was on and left our cave in search of some female companionship.  Our cool bike taxi driver dude wasn't around, so we hooked up with one of the other drivers hanging out downstairs.  Told him we wanted to go to Orange Bar and off we went.  A few minutes later we pulled up in front of some sketchy looking bar/cafe/motel front.  Sketchy.  Two dudes sitting out front.  No girls in sight.  We got out of our bike taxi, paid the guy and went inside.  The place was the size of our hotel room, with a little hallway that went off towards the back.  Santino asked the guy working there where all the girls were and he said something about 30 mins.  As though the place would be rockin' in a half hours time.  But there was definitely a language barrier and I don't think either of them knew what the other one was saying.  So I decided to take matters into my own hands and explore a bit.  Walked down the hallway which led to a set of stairs and some sort of back room.  I started up the stairs and Santino stopped me.  He basically said that he had a friend who was in Iraq, and told him the title of this post - if it seems fucked up it probably is.  I looked up the long and foreboding staircase and thought to myself that ya, it's probably not worth it.  "A crowbar in the back of the head" is what Santino said next, and in retrospect it was definitely prime conditions for such an event to occur.  I didn't have much money on me, and had no ID, but I still didn't want to get a crowbar to the back of my head.

We left that sketchy place and walked back in the direction of our hotel.  Ended up passing SOHO (some bar) which seemed kinda hoppin' - at least moreso than it was on our previous visits in the middle of the afternoon.  Walked in there, looked around, and almost walked right back out.  The ratio was about 5:1 - not in our favor.  Horrible.  But we were hungry so we decided to sit down and grab some food.  They had potato skins on the menu, with like 6 different choices of toppings.  I wanted cheese and bacon (beef).  But these were two separate listings.  I tried to tell them I wanted both on the same potato, but I think this just confused them royally.  I ended up with 2 different potato skins, one with cheese and one with bacon.  Whatever.  As we were hanging out downstairs we both tried to get eye contact from the few women in the place, to no avail.  I get more lovin' at Wide Open in Toronto.

After we were done eating we went upstairs.  Had a drink at the bar and discussed the poor ratio.  Santino met some dude on his way to the bathroom and he told the guy that he was Brazilian.  The guy thought that this was cool for some reason.  I suppose it's cooler than being American.  Or at least Santino thinks so.  He's mentioned to me that whenever he tells people he's American they generally take a dislike to him.  So he uses Brazilian as his national alias.  Anyway, we went over to play pool with this guy but he was in the middle of a game so we just sat and had a drink.  The table beside us had about a 4:3 girl:guy ratio, maybe even 5:3, so we thought maybe it was on.  But they were cold.  There's just no lovin' to be had here.  A few minutes of us just laughing at the situation and saying how much we miss Thailand and I knocked over Santino's glass and broke it.  The waitress that came to clean it up didn't look at either of us or say a word.  Nothing.  She just picked up the glass and walked away.  At this point we decided to just cut our losses and take off.

Went back to the room for awhile and had a few more drinks.  Around 3am we decided to walk past the club area which was just letting out.  Almost every girl we saw was coupled off, and the ratio was still horrible.  So we came back to the room and called it a night.  Then in my drunken stupor I again tried accessing the money in my account but it's still on hold.  So I called my bank and they told me that it'll be available Monday at the latest, which sucks cuz I was hoping to buy a new phone while in Malaysia.  And god forbid I ever come back here.  Well, maybe KL as I've heard good things about it, but never Penang.

19 hours to Phuket and counting.

I got it! So, as I understand it, I don't have to do anything involving Visas or borders or anything of the sort for 90 days, at which point I have to go to the Immigration office, pay 1900 baht for an extension (about an hour out of my life). Thus giving me 1 year in the Land of Smiles without having to do any sort of shitty Visa run to Ranong in a hot, cramped minivan full of farangs (about 10 hours out of my life). Let's compare the two, shall we...

	Tourist (Double-Entry)	ED (Single-Entry Education)
Day 1	Visa Run to Penang	Visa Run to Penang
	Cost: 13000 baht (flight, hotel, visa)	Cost: 13000 baht (flight, hotel, visa)
	Time: 3 days	Time: 3 days
Day 60	Visit Immigration Office (Extension)	---
	Cost: 1900 baht
	Time: 1 hr
Day 90	Visa Run to Ranong	Visit Immigration Office (Extension)
	Cost: 1500 baht	Cost: 1900 baht
	Time: 10 hrs	Time: 1 hr
Day 150	Visit Immigration Office (Extension)	---
	Cost: 1900 baht
	Time: 1 hr
Day 180	Visa Run to Penang	Registered Mail Address Report
	Cost: 13000 baht (flight, hotel, visa)	Cost: 300 baht
	Time: 3 days	Time: 15 mins
Day 240	Visit Immigration Office (Extension)	---
	Cost: 1900 baht
	Time: 1 hr
Day 270	Visa Run to Ranong	Registered Mail Address Report
	Cost: 1500 baht	Cost: 300 baht
	Time: 10 hrs	Time: 15 mins
Day 330	Visit Immigration Office (Extension)	---
	Cost: 1900 baht
	Time: 1 hr
Total Cost	36600 baht	15500 baht
Total Time	About 8 days	About 3.5 days

Now all I have to do is get out of this shit hole they call Penang and back to beautiful Phuket. Too bad there's no flights tomorrow so I'm stuck here til Friday.

Sources:
http://www.thaivisa.com/279.0.html
http://www.thaivisa.com/315.0.html
http://www.thaivisa.com/272.0.html
http://www.thaivisa.com/298.0.html

Finally made it to Penang.  Like Phuket, it is a tropical island.  However unlike Phuket, it takes about an hour to get to a beach from where I'm staying (I can walk to a non-swimming beach in Phuket in about 2 mins, or a 10 min drive to the nicest beach on the island).  Also, the nightlife doesn't seem as promising as Phuket.  But the location I chose is apparently the heart of the bar/club district, so that's a plus.  Wandered around for a bit upon arrival.  Found a nice dingy pub to eat some food and drink some beer at.  Then followed the 4HWW advice of trying to find shaving paraphernalia instead of bringing it with me.  Which took me to both a pharmacy and 7-11 (as the pharmacy sold razors, but apparently not shaving cream).  Also got a haircut which is a fair bit superior to my last one, but which also cost $6.30, or 2.5x more than my crappy Thai haircut.  But it is better.  The woman actually brought out a book of haircut pictures and let me point to one - take THAT language barrier!  I've also discovered that all (or a lot anyway) of the beer here is super strong.  There's Guinness Special Export Stout in the minibar which purports to be 8%, and at the 7-11 I picked up some Carlsberg Special Brew, rated at 8.8%.  In fact, most of the beers at the 7-11 were of the "Special" variety, all with higher than 8% alcohol content.

At any rate, tomorrow I'm going to go to some sort of Visa Agent who apparently brokers the whole Visa process, thus saving me both time and money (when you factor in 2 return cab rides to/from the consulate).  It's too bad I'm not a big fan of Chinese food and even less a fan of Indian food, as those seem to be the prime genres of food here.  Oh, and also, get this... no one sells pork!  That's right, there's no bacon to be found.  Except for some sort of beef bacon, which I'm quite hesitant about, but will likely try at least once before leaving.  Damn religious ideals!