Advertisement
Published: August 21st 2008
Hello Everybody,
This is Brendon (Eryns brother) finally posting on here after joining up with Eryn 9 days ago. Apparently some of you have been mentioning how Eryn is doing such a fantastic job with the blogging, but her ungrateful brother is doing nothing of the sort. Well I figured it was about time I told my side of the story.
I arrived in Bangkok a full day before Eryn, somewhat exhausted and owning a few less clothing items than I set off with. I intended to explore the area that first night and get an idea of what to do the next day, but I ended up just passing out in my room at around 5:30. 13 and a half hours later I woke up to the sound of monks singing in a nearby monestary.
The first day was spent wandering the narrow streets of Thailand’s largest city, dodging motorcycles and avoiding the somewhat annoying tuk-tuk drivers. Motorcycles drive literally everywhere here—even on sidewalks and lanes usually reserved for oncoming traffic! Traffic is a bit of an issue here because of the large number of people living in the city (over 30 million), and the absolutely insane traffic partterns (who designed this city??!), so motorcycles have an advantage. Combine that with a pretty poor populace, and you end up with relatively cheap motercycles everywhere. At one point I saw a full family of 5 piled onto one little motercycle!
I eventually found my way to the “royal grounds” where a festival was taking place with free food! (who am I to resist?) From trying to communicate with the local people, I eventually found out that the Queen of Thailand was turning 72 the next day, so last Sunday and Monday were national holidays. The people of Thailand seem to love foreigners, and being the only white person at this festival, I was something of a novelty. Everybody wanted to test out the few english works they knew, or just to improve their ability at the game of charades. I ended up eating on a mat in the park with several local people who knew 1 word of english between them. Verbal communication was impossible, but we managed to communicate to a caveman standard through the use of elaborate hand motions and crazy monkey gestures.
After I ate, I ended up talking to a a guy from Chiang Mai who spoke excellent english. It was from him that I learned most of what I found out about the Queen’s birthday celebration. It also turned out that today was not only the day before the Queen’s birthday, it was also “Buddha day” meaning that many of the temples that are not usually open to visiters were open. I late found out that Buddha days are connected to the moon cycle, because Buddha supposedly achieved elightenment during the full moon. Though today wasn’t the full moon (that happened later when we were in Chiang Mai), it was somehow connected (don’t ask me how). It was from this guy that I also learned the most important Thai phrase I learned: “Pand Pai!”, meaning “too expensive!” I then used my new found bargaining skills to hire a tuk-tuk driver to drive me around to several temples for the morning for 50 baht (about $1.50 American).
There are literally temples every 300 feet in this city. The population of Bangkok is over 99 percent Buddhist (don’t quote me on that), so there is quite a demand for these structures. While they are all amazing to see, after you go in 5 or 6 of them, they all begin to look similar. I did go to one of the temples that was only open for this one day though, which was quite cool because it was practically deserted. The only person there was this deeply Buddhist guy who spoke very good english. I ended up talking to him about Buddhism for about the next half an hour. He apparently comes to this particular temple every Buddha day to feed the monks.
At noon I went back to the hotel to find Eryn sleeping in my room. I guess that the rest of this day, as well as the next few days in Bangkok were already covered in other posts by Eryn, so I won’t repeat it. That night though, we did end up on this one street (that we nicknamed tourist street) that had the highest concentration of white people that I have seen anywhere in Thailand so far. It just strikes me as somewhat sad that people come to Bangkok, but then just see Wat Pho, the Grand Palace, and then spend their time on this street buying stuff. Needless to say, we did not spend much time in this particular part of the city.
The last few days we spent trekking through the jungle in northern Thailand. At this point in my life, I can say (without too much pride) that I have, for the first and last time of my life, tasted fried cockroach. Though it is not an experience I will soon repeat, seriously how many people can claim that? It tasted similar to a very small shrimp that had been soaked in salt water for about a decade.
The trek itself was fantastic but I guess Eryn covered that as well. The best part for me had to be the bamboo rafting on the last day. They built the rafts right in front of us on the day we left, and then sent us down the river on a 3 inch thick structure that was constantly flooded with water. By the end we were all soaked, but that was actually a good thing because the sun had come out and it had become extremely hot. It also didn’t help that some people on the other raft (jerks) decided to initiate naval warfare between the two rafts, complete with small fruits and bottles of water. It was all in good fun though and everyone had a good time.
I was making fun of Eryn before for writing a small novel in the last few posts, but now it appears that I have gone and done the same. Oh well, karma I guess. Now, to focus on my next mission—to fit one of those pointy Thai hats into my suitcase…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.185s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.1444s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ethan
non-member comment
Oh Brendon, you crazy.