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Published: September 10th 2006
Khao San Road
This is one of the main hangouts for the backpackers. Lots of great shops, restaurants and hostels.Since the last journal there has been a change; I have transferred to another camp called Tallil and it was one of Saddam’s air bases located near the city of Nasiriyah. The area has a huge historical significance; Abraham (yes, I’m talking about the very first Abraham) was said to live here and archeologists have claimed to have located the foundations of his home which is within sight of where I work. There is also a ziggurat (a pagan temple that resembles a pyramid) which dates back 4000 years ago that I can see if I walk outside my building. I transferred here in the hopes of Mike and I finally being assigned to the same location, for we both knew there was no chance of that happening until we went to a camp that allowed married couples. So now I am here and Mike is applying for jobs in the hopes he can get transferred too. The living accommodations are better in some ways and worse in others. Better in that I have my own bathroom and cable TV. I have 10 cable channels and it is called AFN for Armed Forces Network. No regular commercials. The commercials over here
deal with staying Army/Air Force, making sure your tent is fire safe, and all things military. Even the news commentators are military. Worse in that I have a smaller room and the walls are a grey putty color metal. Can’t put a nail in those! Joan, my sister, sent me some small magnets which are prefect for putting up pictures and decorations on the walls. This camp is a coalition camp which means there are soldiers from all over. We have guys/girls from Australia, Japan, Romania, England and Italy as well as some of the new Iraqi military. Makes it interesting at meal times seeing uniforms from all over.
Flying from southern Iraq into Baghdad I noticed some changes. Like much more greenery and cultivation. That may be because it’s no longer summer and 120 degrees. The Iraqis are starting to clean the airport up and turn on more electricity. More Iraqi passengers each time I go to the airport. When we first went thru the flight departure/arrivals board listed many flights as “indefinitely delayed” which I think some American GI did for a joke. But they have cleaned up the place, the overhead page system is now working
The wind in your hair and exhaust fumes up your nose
Riding in a tuk tuk in the streets of Bangkok can be, let's say, "hair raising". and it’s starting to look used again instead of abandoned. Even the duty free shops are open.
Our second R&R was to Thailand. We wanted a good exposure of the country so we decided to sample north and south. We started by flying into Bangkok then venturing north into the mountains and south to the very popular beach areas. As a treat, we flew business class on Emirates Airlines from Dubai to Bangkok. A friend who is reading this (hi John!) told us once we upgrade out of coach we would never go back. He was soooo right. I know several of our family/friends reading this have never had the opportunity to get out of coach class so I’ll attempt a good description of the experience. It starts the minute you get to the airport. Because we only had carry-on bags we were able to use one of the automated check in computers. It spit out our special boarding passes and we headed to the Business Class lounge. There is a special lounge for all business and first class passengers; no waiting at the gate with 200 other people.
About the lounge; it was a large, open room
Grand Palace Bangkok
This place is like a Disneyand for temples! Glitter and color everywhere! filled with overstuffed leather armchairs clustered in small groups, a dining area next to the 24 hour hot and cold buffet, with a large selection of international foods to ensure passengers from any continent would find something good to eat, open bar & cappuccino machine. A separate room was filled with computers for internet use. One whole wall (2 stories high) was glass and looked out onto the runway. There where also rooms with beds and showers, available on the upper floor. Keep in mind this is all free, included in the price of the ticket. A large monitor in the corner kept us updated on gates and departures of the many flights that day, including our own. We ate some breakfast then settled into one of the comfy sofas with our cappuccinos.
Once on the plane, we were tucked into our nice big recliner seats with a drink in our hands and a warm moist towel to refresh ourselves while we waited for everyone else to board. First we played with all the buttons and remote controls. Our chairs had adjustments for head, feet, legs, back and reclined almost all the way into a bed for sleeping. Our
Grand Palace Bangkok
This was one of our favorite guys! own private video touch screen popped up out of our armrest with a selection of over 50 movies and 100 music CDs and various games. We also had expensive noise canceling headphones that cancel out all the aircraft noise. Not only was the service fantastic, but the food was delicious and presented as if we where dinning at a fancy restaurant. We were also given an amenities kit with slippers and eye shades. The restrooms were fully stocked with hand lotion, cologne and toothbrush kits. Spoiled does not even begin to describe it. We arrived in Bangkok 6 ½ hours later feeling fully refreshed and rested. No jet lag for us, even the air smelled better up in business. Hello Thailand!
Our hotel was located in the heart of the wholesale clothing area. It took up the top 20 floors of a building with the bottom 10 floors full of clothing shops. We were on the 23rd floor so had a great view of the city and the river right below us. We learned the hard way to get a taxi card from each hotel we stayed at. The taxi cards have the hotel name, address and hopefully a
small map in Thai which you can show a taxi or tuk-tuk driver. It seems many of the Bangkok taxi drivers don’t know the whole city, but only familiar with their own neighborhood. A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle surrounded by a metal frame and bench seat located behind it. They are a fun, cheap way to get around the city; except when sitting in heavy traffic. That’s when you get a lung full of exhaust fumes. Not fun!
Bangkok was the first time Mike and I have been “taken for a ride” by a taxi. We figured out what was happening after 30 min had gone by for what should have been a 15 minute ride plus the guy was stupid enough to drive past where he picked us up at. When we started kicking up a fuss in the back seat he miraculously realized where he should go and got us to the hotel in 10 minutes. Mike only gave him $1, which is about what the fare should have been if he hadn’t tried to trick us. He didn’t give Mike any trouble either; realizing that he was not dealing with any rookie tourist here.
Our main sight seeing in Bangkok was the Grand Palace and the temple next to it. It was like a Disneyland of Thai temples. The pictures say it all. A short distance away was another famous temple called Wat (wat means temple in Thai) Pho. For 50 cents admission we walked thru all the temple buildings to get to the massage school area. The temples were beautiful with lots of contemplative Buddha statues and purple and white orchids growing wild on the trees. There is an open air pavilion where the massage school students practice. It is a large open air pavilion covered with mats on platforms. It’s 180 baht ($4.50) each for a 30min massage and 300 baht for a 45 min foot massage. The Thai style massage is very different from the massage most of us are used to. Thai style is more like a passive yoga where they use a lot of acupressure (applying pressure to specific points in the body) and then twist you into yoga positions. The foot massage was pretty good with a bit of discomfort involved. They use a small, fat stick to apply pressure to certain spots on your feet. Bad stick, bad stick! Neither one of us liked that part.
Dogs are everywhere in Thailand. They all seem to be well fed and accepted. Some even have collars on. The Thai traditionally leave food offerings out on the street for Buddha so now we know why the dogs look well fed. The dogs should all be wearing a sign around their neck saying “Working for Buddha”.
Lucky for us, there are plenty of shopping malls in Bangkok. Some are very upscale for the rich with lots of chain stores like The Gap and Pottery Barn, and some are more like indoor markets. We chose the MBK shopping center to find a salon for our make-overs. Both Mike and I were looking very shaggy and both needed a lot of work. After strolling around the huge shopping center (6 levels) we located a salon that looked acceptable. Luckily there was a restaurant directly opposite of the salon so we decided on lunch while we spied on the salon to see if we liked their work and if their customers came out happy or looking worse. We noticed several westerners come and go, looking happy and styled. Caucasian hair is different from the black, straight Asian hair and you need to find a salon that knows how to work with western hair. We felt we had the right place. No one in the salon spoke any English. Uh oh, trouble coming. Both of us wanted color with highlights and a haircut, but trying to explain exactly what we wanted was a challenge. When we walked in (no appointment needed) and they established we were going to be customers, the front desk girl snapped her fingers and the staff carried us off to our chairs. We each had 2 to 3 (in Mike’s case 4 or 5) staff surrounding us. It seemed to be a race for us to communicate what we wanted by finding pictures in the magazines before they started working on us. These folks were quick and very efficient.
Mike and I both were very nervous about whether we had made ourselves understood, because neither of us had found pictures that showed exactly what we wanted. But life is an adventure so we let it go of the reins and hoped for the best. Mike got a cut, style, color, highlights, manicure and pedicure. I got a cut, streaking and style. At one point, they persuaded us to get a special deep conditioning treatment which was expensive, but we both said what the heck, we earned it. So they brought out a glass vial (like a medicine vial) with some blue liquid in it and proceeded to mix it with mineral water and apply it to our hair. As soon as we were shampooed and back in our chairs they handed us some cold water and went to work. Our hair looked horrible after a summer of dry desert weather; it’s a good thing our love goes beyond appearances or I would be in trouble. Once in awhile I could catch a glimpse of Mike through all the mirrors and he would be surrounded by girls and the gay, lead hair stylist who checked everyone’s work. He had a girl working on his pedicure, one on his manicure, one holding the blow dryer or color bowl and another doing the actual hair work. He was very popular. 2 ½ hours and $150 later we emerged different people. Huge improvement! For just $75 each, we felt normal and pretty again. I can say pretty, Mike is in touch with his feminine side. It’s cool. Looking much better, we prepared for the rest of our time in Bangkok, and the trip north.
Our original plan was to stay just 2 nights in Bangkok and then take the 10 hour, overnight train to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. We had read about how nice, and cheap, the sleeper cars where and thought it would be an interesting way to get to our next destination. We tried to buy train tickets on the day of departure at several travel agencies, but none of them could sale them. We didn’t want to go all the way to the station to buy our tickets, then leave and have to come back in 5 or 6 hours so we decided to wait and get our tickets when we got to the station, later that evening. We had planned all along not to make any advanced reservations and just wing as we go, but we quickly realized that this was not going to work. All the sleeper cars where already booked for the next 2 days. Yikes, didn’t see that coming.
As we entered the train station, we spotted a small desk which read “Tourist Information” and stopped to see what help they could offer. Staffed by some very nice girls who spoke English, they happily took us into the station to buy tickets. While Mike was at the ticket window with the one girl, getting the bad news, another girl started chatting me up, while I was standing guard over our luggage. It turned out she worked for one of the travel agencies up on the balcony level of the train station and spoke great English. Finally accepting the fact that train travel was not going to happen, we decided to give up and ask her travel agency for help. She took us up the stairs and turned us over to an agent. I guess her job was to find all the tourists with travel difficulties and bring them into the agency; either way, she was good at it. It was going to be air travel again and the earliest flight was in the afternoon of the next day. This gave us one more night in Bangkok and the chance to try a different hotel. We didn’t want to return to our original hotel, it was too generic and western and the location wasn’t great. She recommended some hotels and we finally found one we liked, that had an opening. We ended up letting her book our hotel, our flight to Chiang Mai and a hotel in Chiang Mai for our first night. Travel agencies in Thailand are the way to go; they do everything for you. Sure they get a commission but it is more than worth it for the stress and extra work they save you.
Our last Bangkok hotel turned out to be great and we wished we would have stayed there our entire time in Bangkok. It was called the Swanna hotel; very nice and within walking distance of Khao San road (a favorite spot for backpackers). The rooms were smaller but it was newer, ultra clean, and the linens were soft and smelled wonderful. The décor was kind of upscale Asian Ikea with a color palette of cool greens, creams and white, with lots of glass and recessed lighting. The only drawback was the rooster who started crowing at 3am. Our room was on the first floor and very near a private home. Well, they had the rooster, and we had very little sleep. Next time, 3rd floor!
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