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Published: January 11th 2009
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For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com Sandpails of Whisky-Red Bull All Around
My love affair with Thailand stretches back nearly a decade. In fact, my first Asian travel experience, aside from a brief stopover in Singapore, was in Bangkok, when I was 19 years old. I will never forget it. With my two closest friends at the time, we wandered the streets of this infamous metropolis like infants seeing light for the first time. Everything was exciting and awesome. The smells, the traffic, the heat, the chaos, so many foods to try, and everything is so cheap that you feel like you are a criminal, even though you are getting ripped off left right and center. I was hooked from the first hour.
We went on to spend two months in the country, nearly half of which was in Chiang Mai, the northern cultural capital of the Kingdom,
staying with a Thai family whose daughter had been hosted by my travel mate's family when she came to Canada. They treated us like king's except better, and we formed attachments that persist to this day. Then we finished off on the
beaches in the south, where just before we finished our 6 month adventure we had all of our important belongings stolen from our room. However, the incident had little impact on any of our impressions of the country.
Three years later I returned to Thailand on a more comprehensive South-East Asian venture, and then a few more years later I returned a third time with my sister Leanne after visiting Indonesia together. After she went home I did a trip to Burma, took a
TESOL course in Bangkok, and then
taught English for one semester in a suburb of the city.
And now, a
fourth visit to the Land of Smiles. This time circumstances found me teaching English in southern China, not too far at all from Thailand, and my sister Jen and her fiance Dean were doing the South-East Asia circuit. And of course, happy to see familiar faces, as well as return to one of my favorite countries, I booked the first available flight to go meet them.
We met up in
Krungthep (Bangkok), the City of Angels. Bangkok is different every time I visit. The government has made an active effort over the last
decade to really clean the city up. Traffic is not so chaotic as it once was, though it is as congested as ever. The city is also modernizing at a very rapid rate, and it is no longer as poverty stricken as it used to be.
We spent our time in the city at
The Artist's Place, a very unique and local hotel where I once rented out a room for the time that I was teaching in Bangkok. It is located in an extremely difficult to find and very Thai neighborhood in Thonburi, which felt much more like a small Thai village than it did like urban Bangkok. Because of it's very obscure location, few travelers actually ever make it there, so more often than not you have the place to yourself, and nightly beers can be enjoyed with local neighbors, as well as
Charlie, the eccentric owner and successful artist who has decked out nearly every single surface of the hotel with his fantastic paintings, poetry, and random objects that he has collected or found over the years. It was very nice to see him and again and to spend some time in the neighborhood I used
to live in.
On day 1 we took in Bangkok's premier attraction,
Wat Phra Kaew (The Grand Palace), with it's spectacular array of gold clad stupas, ornate palaces, and revered Jade Buddha, symbol of the Thai state. In a nation where 99%!o(MISSING)f the population is Therevada Buddhist, and the King is universally admired, this central temple complex is of absolute importance to the Thai population.
Right next door is the equally impressive
Wat Pho, which houses the
largest reclining Buddha in the world, no less than 46 meters long and covered in gold plating and mother of pearl. This temple is also regarded as the birthplace of traditional Thai massage, and we popped into the
Wat Pho Traditional Massage School, which was located within the compound on my first visit to Thailand but is now in a hard to find alley down the street, to get twisted, pounded and rubbed into a state of bliss.
We also strolled down the
infamous Kao San Road, with it's stampedes of tourists, backpackers, transvestites, prostitutes, drunks, and freaks of all genres. After doing some shopping we popped into
Mai Kaidees, an excellent vegetarian restaurant with three locations in
the Kao San area, and perhaps my favorite restaurant in Thailand, and then followed up with some Egyptian style hookah next door.
Another night we tried out some excellent
South Indian food, with it's enormous dosas and coconut chutneys. We also got a chance to meet my good friend Sarah, and went to the Banyan Tree Hotel rooftop bar for one of the most spectacular lookouts of the city at night.
On day two we ventured out of the city to
Nakhom Pathom, site of the
tallest temple in the world. I once spent several days stuck in this city with a terrible bout of food poisoning, and things look very different and more developed then I remember them being. From there we made our way to the nearby
Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, where ladies in boats loaded with fruits, tourist junk and soup noodle soup stations bump into each other, competing for the tourist dollar. Super touristy, but I still always like to include a visit to this uniquely Thai place in all of my visits to the country.
Next it was on to the beaches for some rest, relaxation, and boozin. We were plagued with
rain for the first five days on
Koh Phi Phi Don, the island made famous by the film 'The Beach' (actually based on the much better novel by Alex Garland). So we passed the time by doing a lot of reading and afternoon drinking. We also scoped out the local
Reggae Bar, where they have nightly
Thai Boxing matches, and if you get there early enough, they actually play some reggae...
Next we made our way to
Raileh Beach, an excellent little piece of heaven, which is on the mainland, but it feels like it is an island because it is only accessible by water. The main beach is ultra developed, but we climbed the steep path over the cliff to the adjacent
Ao Ton Sai, a much more low key beach with a real hippy vibe to it. Raileh and Ton Sai are also world-famous for their spectacular rockclimbing cliffs, which form a beautiful backdrop to the beaches.
We then made our way in to
Ao Nang, a relaxed beachside town on the mainland, where Jen and Dean did a sea kayaking trip. We also met up with my good friend Julie, who had just been robbed
in northern Thailand and was a little stirred up.
We then ventured back to Koh Phi Phi, and this time got our share of sunshine. For nearly a week we did nothing more then lie in the sun, drink, as well as one
scuba diving trip to Koh Phi Phi Leh, the incredibly beautiful and uninhabited island across from Koh Phi Phi Don. I also got the opportunity to do a little
cliffdiving, and had a very beautiful experience standing high above the bay and seeing all the fish in the super clear water sparkle in the sunlight before I jumped in.
Finally, we we had to make our way to
Phuket, an island I have always made a point of avoiding because of it's over development and reputation for sleaze, to catch our flights out of the country. However, Phuket Town defied my expectations, with few tourists to be seen, and some very beautiful Portuguese colonial architecture.
For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com
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