Okay, so it's been exactly two months since I returned to American soil. I realize that it's kind of lame to just leave my writing hanging all this time. I have had so many times I wanted to sit down and journal what's been going on. I have been avoiding my summary of our trip as if it was a term paper due two months ago that I just couldn't look at. I have hardly been able to write, read, or look at anything from my trip- partially, I think, because I really needed some time to process.
Well, I can't say the processing is over, but the big-ass summary is done! Which means I can finally write about things that are going on in my life right now. I actually think this break was good for all of us (you lovely readers and myself) because if I had written about every up and down moment the last eight week, we would all be seasick and puking from the turbulence. So, now without further blah-blah-blahing, is as much as I could stand to write about my last three beautiful weeks in Thailand with David...
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
I met Dave at the airport, and as I think I already
mentioned, we couldn’t find each other for over an hour. We finally reunited
and took a taxi an hour back to our hotel. We spent the next day walking around
Bangkok in the hot hot hot heat, Dave high on the same excitement that I was on during my first day in Asia. We walked through lots of markets, saw three beautiful temples,
and Dave took his first tuk-tuk ride.
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| The intimidating steps to one of Dave's first temples, Wat Arun |
The next evening we hopped on a double-decker overnight bus
to take us south to Koh Lanta. Well… it was more like a bus to a van to a van
to a ferry to a ferry to a tuk-tuk. I gave Dave my first nugget of traveler
wisdom that day when I said, “Don’t worry, in Thailand you always get to where
you paid to go, just don’t expect it to be in one vehicle or to get there on
time.” Words we would live by for the next 19 days during our moments of "What the hell is going on and where the eff are we going?"
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| Clueless. We had no idea the journey that awaited us. |
Koh Lanta was beautiful, we
found a beach covered in hermit crabs and spent the better part of an afternoon
playing with them like a couple of 5 year olds. We spent one of the days riding scooters all over the
island from top to bottom. We ended up hooking up with a couple that we met on the bus from Bangkok who would also later on meet us at the end of our trip in Pai.
Koh Lanta was gorgeous, but a little on the sleepy side, and we felt that we had
seen all there was to see in a couple of days. We decided to head towards
Phuket where we had a flight booked to Chiang Mai a few days later. We headed for the
mainland and spent the night at a place called Au Nang, where we made good use of our
18 hours of time there. Beers were consumed that night, and in the morning a
beach full of monkeys was found (now I better understand the phrase 'more fun than a barrel
of monkeys'... because quite frankly, a pile of monkeys is quite fun).
We then spent a positively hellish mini-van ride(s) to
Phuket where we spend the night to catch our flight up north the next day.
We spent our night in Phuket wandering the streets where we ran into a wonderful
open-air market. We were the only white people there, which we both agreed was
pretty great. What better way to experience a culture than to shop and eat
amongst locals only? The Thai vendors, as per the usual, were nothing but
kind-hearted in helping us find a perfect street-curb to eat at (there were no
places set up to eat our food) and wash our hands after picking clean a fried
fish we’d purchased. We even had one man insist that we try a few green
berry-like things in a basket that we were looking at. After we popped them
into our mouth, we realized that he had been playing a trick on us- they were
incredibly sour. But not so sour that the trick was mean, so we all laughed
together at what suckers us foreigners are.
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| A woman at the market shelling some kind of seeds. |
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| Trying some interesting jello-filled tubes at the Phuket market. |
The next morning we flew to Chiang Mai. Our flight went
smoothly, minus them confiscating my little fruit-cutting knife that I had
carried with me since my first visit to Chiang Mai two months earlier. Bummer
dude. Luckily I remembered where I had gotten it and picked up an identical one
at the same vendor at the market down the street from our hostel the next day.
We spent the next two days gallivanting the city. Chiang Mai has too crazy of
street traffic for us to feel competent enough to rent motorcycles, so instead
we rented bicycles. The first time we pedaled away from the rental place, my
brakes screeched loud enough to send a cat up a phone pole. So we brought it
back and returned it for another. We set off into the city again, when I hear
Dave say behind me: “My wheel fell off.” Between the heat and the busted up
bikes, our first reaction was to be annoyed. However, when we returned a bike
the second time, the woman renting bikes laughed (probably out of
embarrassment, Thai people often laugh to save face instead of openly
expressing negative emotions…not sure if it is healthy or not but it makes the
whole experience seem a lot more… “friendly” ) and so we all laughed and joked
that “we hope to not see you soon!” Third time was a charm and we rode off into
the blazing heat to check out the temples in the city square.
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| Beautiful blooming trees around the temple |
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| Checking out some local jewelry at the Chiang Mai Sunday walking market. |
The week we were in Northern Thailand happened to fall on
the Thai New Years, known as Sonkran. This proved to both awesome and kind of
obnoxious because the holiday includes the whole country stocking up on water
guns and pails to bombard each and every person with in the world’s most epic
water fight. The holiday wasn’t supposed to start until April 13th-April
15th, and Chiang Mai is where the biggest celebration in the country
is said to happen. We quickly learned that some of the backpackers were eager
to start the water fight though, and three days before the holiday was set to
begin, the streets started to pop up with water attackers. After a particularly
scorching and humid day, we decided to go out for a walk in the evening and see
if we could get some people to spray us down. Within an hour, however, we found
ourselves in the Chiang Mai emergency room after Dave tried to outrun some
people on the street with a particularly large spray hose. I ran past them
successfully and was cheered on by onlookers in a nearby bar, only to turn
around with Dave chasing after me with a hand covered in blood. He had slipped
on some wet tile and cut his hand on a telephone booth (we think it was a telephone
booth, still never figured that one out) while trying to break his fall. Poor
Dave, he was still so new to Thailand that the thought of going to an emergency
room in a foreign country really freaked him out. Luckily I knew several other
travelers that had great things to say about Thailand’s health care, being both
remarkably affordable and efficient. It’s hard to explain that to someone with
a hand covered in blood, though. So I called down a tuk-tuk and tried my best
to explain to him that we needed to go to the hospital. He threw out a
ridiculous price to take us there, and so I found myself haggling with the
driver over what was probably a couple of bucks with Dave beside me covered in
blood…
What can I say?
Thailand turns you into a bargainer, OK?
Anyway, after I yelled at the driver for bringing us to a
PHARMACY and not the hospital (does the bloody hand not spell it out for you, buddy?), we finally got to where we needed to go. We were
relieved that he didn't need stitches, but they recommended a tetanus shot. YES
PLEASE. Without the shot included, the cost of the emergency room was about 11
bucks. Can I say that again? Emergency room with a visit to the doctor was 11
bucks. *sigh* The shot, however, was $65. I have no doubts that the price
mostly covered the actual cost of the shot for the hospital, because Thailand
is the last place you’ll get gouged for something medically related.
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| Not exactly thrilled. |
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| 2,179 Baht- that's about $75 bucks |
After a couple of days in the cultural capital of Chiang
Mai, we hopped on a bus to Chiang Rai so that I could get my visa stamped at
the border of Burma. On the way to our destination, our bus driver was hit by a
car. Yep, with Dave by my side, we checked all the fun stuff off the list of
things to do in a foreign country:
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Monkeys
·
Emergency Room
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Car Accident
That pretty much completes it right? Luckily the bus wasn’t
damaged beyond completing the drive to Chiang Rai, and I was once again amazed
at how Thai people deal with things. The two drivers were very calm (with the
traffic in Asia, I am sure this was not their first accident) and I couldn’t
help but notice the contrast to American culture. As you can imagine, the
contrast came up a lot on my trip.
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| The driver, door-to-door with the other car, keeping his cool. |
We stayed one night in Chiang Rai, and were continuously
bombarded with water- even so far as to have people come up behind the back of
our truck we were riding in and throw buckets of water into the bed. It was all
fun. Until I was tired of being wet all the time, then I was a little big chaffed and irritated.
Chiang Rai was much less touristy and much less English was spoken, so that was
a cool experience.
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| Patiently waiting to obliterate anyone and everyone with their buckets of water. |
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| Putting on a happy face- soaked. |
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| Poor motorcyclists. Five straight days. |
I did my border run from there alone, making the hour trip
to the border by myself and getting to tick another country I had “been to.” I
realize that 5 minutes in Burma doesn’t really count, but who’s keeping track
anyway?
The thing we were really looking forward to in Chiang Rai
was the White Temple. It’s a fairly new temple, as far as temples go. It was
the most beautiful one I had ever seen, and it isn’t even finished being built
yet. The building on the property that was finished was absolutely stunning,
and we both really enjoyed getting to have time to see it. We highly recommend
it if anyone is considering seeing it while in SE Asia!
We headed back to Chiang Mai that afternoon to start the
real Songkran experience. We splurged for the “big gun” the next day to prepare
for the battle. Pictures don’t really do this celebration justice. The entire
city, young and old, Thai and foreigner, participate in this fight. The city
square of Chiang Mai is surrounded by a big moat, which becomes (and I try not
to think too hard about this cause it’s kinda gross) the ammo for the whole
city. Moat water is one of those things that you don’t usually want thrown in
your face, let alone to throw in a stranger’s face, but there we were- with
plastic buckets on strings, throwing them in and bringing them up to reload our
guns. We met up with the couple we had me in Bangkok and Koh Lanta– Jarden from Australia and Renee
from Colorado. We spent the whole day soaked from head to toe walking around
the outside of the moat with our guns and buckets. It was easily the largest
public party I had ever seen and probably ever will see. The streets filled up
with foam near the stages which were showcasing tiny beautiful Thai women
super-soaking the crowd and playing loud music. We had a great time. Especially
when we got to go home at the end of the night and put on dry clothes. Best.
Feeling. Ever.
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| Mmmmoat water. |
Our next destination was Pai. At this point, you probably
have gathered that this is my most favorite place in Thailand. I was quite
excited to finally share it with Dave, and because lodging was cheapest up
north, we were able to get rooms at two very nice places while we were there.
Our first bungalow was the most beautiful place either of us had ever stayed,
with an open-air bathroom and swan towels to greet us. The view was nothing
short of perfect and we had a wonderful time.
We met up with my lovely Belgian friend Julie, whom I spent
a lot of my time with the last time I was in Pai. Her and Dave had met on Skype
before, so it was kind of fun to introduce Dave to my traveler friends that he
had been hearing about for months. The three of us set aside one of our days in
Pai to make the 2-hour motorcycle ride to Cave Lod, a huge cavern that you can
take a bamboo raft through. I was also on a mission to find my favorite Asian
beer- Beer Laos. I had it once before when I spent the night in Laos and knew
they had it at the lodge at Cave Lod, so obviously we had to go. Two hours of
scootering, and 6 beers later, we rounded ourselves up a little Thai tour guide
named Goon who led us through the caves with a gas-lit lantern.
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| The ride to the cave was semi-terrifying but beautiful. |
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| The end of Cave Lod |
While in Pai, Dave and I also took the cooking class we had
been long looking forward to. There was only one other person in the class
which gave us pretty much one-on-one instruction. If you every want to take a
cooking class while in Thailand, we highly recommend Charlie and Lek’s class.
They also have a restaurant which is amazing as well.
We wrapped up Pai with a tearful goodbye to my elephant
friends, which we found in the same field at sunset that I found them the last
time I was in Pai. I was so happy to share that with Dave. What beautiful
creatures.
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| Waving goodbye? |
Back in Chiang Mai for a day, we decided to try what is said
to be the nastiest fruit on earth: durian. The host of Bizzare Foods wouldn’t
even eat it- and he eats everything.
And ya know what? It wasn’t that bad. The Thai woman we gave our leftovers to
said the one we were eating was particularly firm (good), and usually it’s a
creamy pudding-like texture, with the flavor of onion and feet. Ours had that,
but also a sweet fruit undertone. Would I purchase it regularly? No freaking
way. But I was enjoying the challenge in the moment and even had a second bite.
Not THAT horrendous. If you remember a previous post I wrote, durian isn’t
allowed on public transportation because of the smell. Yep, that’s the fruit.
I insisted with Dave that we had to experience the
overnight train before we finished our expedition, so we got tickets for our
one-way trip back to Bangkok the day before we were set to go home. There were
four drink-holders just begging to be filled- so we stopped into the station
and got four cans of Singah to appease them. Also, we drank them. J The ride back was fun-
Dave was glad to have tried all the forms of transportation the Thailand had to
offer:
- Overnight Bus
- Taxi
- Tuk-tuk
- Minivan
- Ferry
- Scooter
- Plane
- Train
- Skytrain
- Etc.
And so, we arrived at our final destination: sweaty and
miserable Bangkok. We made the best of it by visiting the city’s (and
country’s) largest market for the afternoon. We didn’t even see a tenth of it
by the time we had to catch the skytrain back to our room. Dave was leaving a
day before me so I spent my last night in Bangkok alone.
It really amazed me how quickly I was used to having my
travel buddy by my side again after being alone for so long. I felt that
familiar lonely feeling that I hadn’t felt in quite a while and made my peace
with making the move to the next chapter in my life. So April 23
rd,
I boarded the plane and said goodbye to good friend Thailand. I am so grateful
to have had my time there. What an experience. <3
