Christmas in Thailand

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We left for Thailand at 4:30 am Christmas morning, which is a pretty depressing time to be awake if you’re not on your way to Thailand. We flew first to Guangzhou, my third Chinese airport, and my favorite. They had way more food and entertainment options than the others did, so we spent a fine time on our 3.5 hour layover. Ali bought an iPad game and we spent a good deal of the time trying to figure out what the heck we were supposed to do next, which mainly involved us yelling things like, “Maybe you can dig up the blood with that piece of wood over there!” and making everyone around us feel uncomfortable. As we were getting on the plane and having our tickets checked, we found out that Lindsey was not on our flight, but the one several hours later. And we tried not to panic. I had some basic directions to our hostel and Brittney already had a map on her phone, so we gave our directions to Lindsey.

We had a 3 hour flight to Bangkok and a pretty easy time getting through customs. We also found the taxis easily. Getting our taxi to our destination was a bit trickier. Luckily I had forwarded the hostel emails to Brittney so she could take a picture from her phone of the map in Thai. We handed this to the lady manning the taxi booth and she helped explain it to a driver. He dropped us off at the first of two buildings, which we couldn’t get into. I knew there were two buildings, but the building behind this one was a restaurant. So we were a bit confused. Luckily, an English-speaking local was walking by and he directed us to the building behind that. The first building is for Thai people, the back building is for foreigners. I had realized on the plane that our flight home was leaving earlier than I thought, so we had to book another night in Bangkok before we left. I tried to do this right away, but the English communication was not working out so well, so we decided to try again in the morning.

We asked for directions to the nearest convenience store (also tricky communication until I remembered that there was a Family Mart on the map we were given. “Family Mart” and “7 Eleven” are more easily recognized than “convenience store” in Asia) and we bought snacks instead of dinner and food for the next morning. Our building had a deck on the roof, so we headed up to eat our snacks and relax. Some people were lighting off small Christmas fireworks from various parts of the city, so we got to watch all of those while we talked. We all thought we’d stay up until Lindsey got in, but we all found that we drifted off to sleep and found her asleep in the last bed. I had informed the hostel people that she would be coming, so they directed her to our room. She knocked, but we were all so tired that none of us woke up.

We slept in late because it was vacation and you can do things like that on vacation. We had to catch the metro train to the main train station (Hua Lam Pong) which meant a cab to that station and then going through security with our luggage. They asked us to open our bags, but really, if you’re willing to open your bag, and all they see is clothes, they’re not too concerned. We took the subway to the train station where you can leave your luggage in an office for a couple of dollars, which is convenient.

From the train station, we asked for directions to Chinatown from the information desk. I knew we were close from my map of the city, but we didn’t know which direction to leave. There was another foreign couple walking our direction and they stopped and asked a Thai man for directions. He pointed them in our general direction, but then they took off down a street and we had to debate whether or not to follow them. Did they know something we didn’t? We chose not to follow them and we ran across Wat Traimit, which has the world’s largest golden Buddha, apparently. It should be noted that this is the world’s largest SOLID gold Buddha, as opposed to Buddha’s merely covered in gold leaf. My guidebook tells me that this golden Buddha is 3 meters tall and weighs 5.5 tons. It was moved to this location fairly recently, and the rest of building contains museums about the creation of the statue and the history of the Chinese community in Bangkok. The latter part was particularly well done. The best part for me was the video presentation we watched about this Chinese family in Bangkok talking about the king and the neighborhood. It was clearly dubbed and we were witnessing the English show. The delivery was so hilariously slow. I loved it.

We wanted to eat something, so the people at the exhibit directed us into the surrounding neighborhood, but we saw a Chinese temple first and decided to stop to check it out. This temple is next to a Chinese hospital and this doctor was walking around on his break and saw us walking around the temple, so he stopped to talk to us about our travels and our plans while we were in Bangkok. He recommended taking a boat tour of the river, and immediately wrote down directions for us and prices that we should ask for. He called over a tuk-tuk driver and gave him these instructions for us in Thai (a tuk-tuk is a motorized bike with a seat in the back, like an open-air taxi). It wasn’t until we were on our way that I stopped an asked “Remember that time we got in a tuk-tuk on directions from a Chinese doctor that we met in a temple in Bangkok.” Sometimes you do pretty unreal things when you travel that don’t sound brilliant when you repeat them to yourself.

When we got to the pier, the prices were a bit higher than the doctor had told us, but we had little means of negotiating and they weren’t that much higher, so we did it anyway. As the proprietor of the boat company told us, while hitting Brittney in the repeatedly on the arm, “Your friend not here. Not know prices.” Truth. Our tour took us up the Chao Praya River that runs through the city. The first half of the tour took us through actual neighborhoods with beautiful local temples. Some of the houses were gorgeous and some of them were boxes of corrugated metal on sticks. We spent a lot of time waving to young monks who were killing time on the banks of the river. Our driver stopped a couple of times to see if we’d buy knick knacks from boat vendors along the river, but we weren’t particularly interested in fans that fold out into hats.

Our first stop was the Snake Farm, which none of us was interested in, but we’d been riding for quite a while and our driver obviously wanted a break, so we went in. Brittney and Lindsey paid to take pictures holding a python in the entrance to the “Farm”. As they were doing this, a European man stormed out and told us “I would not support this. This is an awful place.” And continued to tell the Thai people working there what a horrible place it was. I had a feeling the whole time that he was right, but, unfortunately, we had already paid for our tickets. We went inside the farm, which was predominantly the saddest zoo you’d ever hope to avoid. Just concrete and metal bars. Depressed looking animals. Then they started the “Dangerous Snake Show”, which also did not appeal to us, but we sat down anyway. I regret this. It was so sad. They just kept trying to scare the snakes into attacking them. The snakes obviously didn’t want to, so they just kept hitting them. I just got up and walked away. One man seemed to be enjoying himself, but for the most part, the audience was horrified. The only upside I could think of was that if that was as seedy as our Bangkok vacation got, we were in pretty good shape.

We rode back to the main part of the river and our driver dropped us off at the main terminal in front of Wat Pho. We knew this was the main terminal because it was entirely covered in foreigners. We could barely walk off of our boat. Wat Pho was really nice and possibly one of my favorite temples that I’ve visited. It has a large reclining Buddha covered in gold leaf. His feet have toe-prints and designs on the bottom of his feet made in mother-of-pearl. Apparently the designs explain traits for predestined Buddhas, but I certainly couldn’t read that. There were many spires all over the grounds, and they were sparkly because they were all covered in pieces of cut glass. Some of them were painted. The main word I think of when I think of Thailand now is “colorful”. The grounds also had large stone Chinese guardian statues, which look quite out of place, even though Bangkok has such a large Chinese population. I read somewhere that they were taken off of Chinese ships that traveled to Bangkok to trade hundreds of years ago. (The Thai and the Chinese had special trade laws) The statues were used as ballasts in their ships. Now they guard the entrances to the temple.

We finally ate a meal (our first in Thailand, even though we’d been there for almost a full day!) at an old dispensary across the street. They had renovated it into a restaurant, but left most of the original interior, so it was really interesting to look around. I finally got to eat Pad Thai and Thai Iced Tea IN THAILAND! I was pretty excited. Their food, as explained in their menu, was particularly for foreigners, so a lot of the spices were removed, which I found pretty obvious, but the non-Thai food eaters in the group really enjoyed. I thought it was a clever idea to make food specifically for tourists across the street from a couple of the biggest tourist draws in Bangkok.

We took a tuk-tuk back to the train station where we stocked up on snacks for the train and stood for the national anthem which plays in public areas at 8 am and 6 pm every day. Unfortunately, you had to pay to use the bathroom. It’s always pennies, but it’s still a pain to find those coins. We were sitting at a restaurant, getting ready to pay when I noticed that our train was in red on the signs and we had to be done there immediately. We ran to the checked-baggage office, got our stuff, and headed to the train. I had an unfortunate problem when I booked our train tickets because they were on a long vacation. So when they finally got back, all of the sleeper cars on the way down the coast were full. This meant we had to sleep in chairs. They reclined, quite a long way, but not quite enough. Brittney asked somebody if we were on the right train, just to be sure. I find that I’m less sure of these things when the train schedules can get so far off, but Thai people are really on top of making sure foreigners are in the right place at the right time. We passed a lot of beautiful Christmas lights in trees on our way out of town. I thought it’d be a pain to put them all up just for Christmas and New Year’s, but the King’s birthday is at the beginning of December, so we figured that they leave them up all month. There were vendors selling food on the train, but the quality of food sold on trains is not high (cooked food particularly). We’re always a bit nervous when we travel that we haven’t gotten something right, and the conductor took quite a long time to look at our tickets, which scared me terribly, but we were right after all. Success!

Unfortunately, none of us slept well. The chairs in front of Brittney and I were broken, so they were on top of our knees. There was a baby in our car who was having none of it. And the vendors kept walking through and calling out what they were selling, which nobody wants at 4:00 in the morning. Our train was two hours late due to stopping at many different stations to wait for other trains to go by. Luckily, we weren’t too worried about when we got to Surat Thani. When we got off the train, I had to ask at information where we could find our ferry company and we were directed outside. Off to the side of the train station is a parking lot where all of the ferry companies park their buses and it’s chaos. People are running around with signs trying to direct people to the right bus and many people don’t have tickets, so they’re trying to find someone to sell them a ticket and then the tour people have to make sure that the people who already have tickets get onto buses before the people who have just purchased tickets. It was a bit hectic.

One older couple was having trouble figuring out which bus they were on and they were pretty vocal about how upset they were. I tried to help them by explaining what bus we were currently loading, but they just looked at me and walked away, still complaining about how nobody would tell them where to go. After having to deal with tourists like this all day, our tour guide was not in a good mood either. She was not putting up with having to repeat her questions more than once and got snappy at us. I found it all pretty funny, because she was acting just like I do when I teach science. You follow one direction at a time and you PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! After we were on our way to the coast, the guide was trying to help arrange taxis for when you got to your specific island (one of three: Koh Samui, Koh Pha Ngan, or Koh Tao). The same couple from before was on our tour bus and when she explained that they would pay 200 Baht each (approx. $6), the woman freaked out and yelled about how expensive it was. The tour guide couldn’t care less, so she walked away and I heard the woman tell her husband “200,000 Baht just to go to the hotel? That’s outrageous!” That would be outrageous, if that was true. It most certainly doesn’t cost $6,000 to ride a taxi to your hotel.

When the tour guide came to help us, she didn’t recognize our hotel, which scared me because Ali had said that she tried to look it up and had trouble finding it. I looked at the confirmation I had printed and was dismayed to find that it only had the Bangkok address on it. I knew they had 3 locations, and one of them was in Bangkok, but that wasn’t particularly useful to be at the moment. All we had was the phone number, which the tour guide didn’t call. Eek. When we got to the coast, we had several confusion-filled hours waiting for our ferry with some incredibly annoying Spanish tourists. You don’t actually have to scream everything you say. When we got onto the ferry, we were all so exhausted that we slept the whole way there. (2.5 hours)

As soon as we got off the ferry, we were approached by bike taxi drivers, asking where we were staying. The first man I talked to knew of my hotel, which was very exciting! But then I realized that he was a bike taxi and I was the only person in my group who was carrying a backpack instead of a rolling suitcase. Not useful. So we had to keep walking into town. Many people were calling out the neighborhoods that their taxis would drive you to. But I didn’t know what neighborhood my hotel was in. So I walked up to a table and asked if they knew where my hotel was. She did! Hooray! AND she gave me a map of the island and showed me where our hotel was on that map. Lifesaver. So I kept walking to find more taxis and told them where our hotel was (Chaloklum. Obviously) and we got right into a taxi that was ready to head out.

We rode in the taxi with a couple of older Australian men, an Australian couple, and a couple about our age. (the guy was Canadian, job unknown. The girl was American, Spanish teacher in Bangkok) She was particularly helpful after everyone else had gotten out. This was her third Full Moon Party so she had lots of useful tips for us. He was pretty much just drunk. Which was less helpful. They got off first and then we headed to our hotel, the Buritara Resort. We basically relaxed there for the rest of the day. We checked out their small beach and their restaurant (where we actually ate almost every meal while we were there. It was fantastic). Sam got in later at night and we had a small reunion party.

The next day, we swam in the pool a bit and then went down to their small beach. I grabbed my guidebook, which I hadn’t bothered to read yet and looked up our area. And I quote: “The beaches in the northern part of the island…are the least desirable on the island.” That is unfortunate. BUT I read that there was a beach nearby that was really nice, which couldn’t be accessed by land. So I took my guidebook to reception and hoped I’d be able to explain what I wanted to the lady there. But she’s actually an old pro at these things, so our conversation went like this: “I want to go to Hat Kuad. How do I do that?” “Boat taxi?” “Oh…yes!” “Now?” “Um, yes!” *picks up phone, conversation in rapid Thai “Ten minutes. Over there.” So that was easy.

So we took our boat taxi to Hat Kuad (also known as Bottle Beach). I don’t know why it has the nickname, but it could be because of the restaurant that dominates the middle part of the beach. We spent our time swimming a bit, but mostly we hung out at the restaurant, drinking smoothies and playing cards. Sam had picked up a card game in the few months that she’d been traveling Asia, and we really enjoyed it as well, so we played many rounds. After several hours, we took the boat back to our hotel and walked to the nearest town (maybe 15-20 minutes away, but with enormous hills) and picked up things we’d forgotten and some fluorescent body paint for the Full-Moon Party. We ate dinner and then started painting ourselves. This was a very stressful process. What does one draw? So we put our paints into a bag and brought them along to the beach to continue the process.

Sam and I had to sit in the front of the taxi with the driver so that everyone could fit in the truck. This did not bother me because our driver was a fan of Backstreet Boys, apparently, and we had some interesting conversations. He apologized for the level of English that Thai people speak, since it’s not as high as in other parts of Southeast Asia, like the Philippines or Malaysia. Luckily, as English teachers, we understand a lot of broken English. He also told us to wear helmets on motorbikes. He said that many people die every month on the island from getting drunk and then riding motorbikes without a helmet. This didn’t seem like a problem for me, but it was good advice to have nonetheless. I asked him if Thai people like karaoke, like Koreans do, but he told me that they don’t enjoy it as much as Filipinos do. This is not surprising. Filipino people all seem to be professional singers/musicians. He also cracked me up because cars would pass us on the road since we were a bunch of people in an old truck. And every time a car would go around him, he would yell “You win! You are the champion! Congratulations!”.

When we got to the beach, we still had quite the maze of shops to figure our way around before we got down to the water. We got to put the advice we’d heard into practice, only buying buckets from vendors who sold closed bottles of alcohol, instead of reusing small bottles. That’s how you accidentally get roofied, which I was not interested in. We met a lot of interesting people at the party, mostly Australian because it’s Southeast Asia and the entire continent of Australia seems to spend all of their time vacationing in Southeast Asia. I got the opportunity to impress some people with my geography knowledge, which is always satisfying “It’s not ALL Americans who don’t know the difference between Switzerland and Sweden!” We left fairly early because we had signed up for an “Action Adventure Tour” at 9:00 in the morning. Sam was not joining us for that and she had found friends from her travels, so we left her there to party. We got a taxi back with a couple of Eastern European girls who didn’t talk much and a bunch of drunk British friends. One of their friends had just gotten there after 50 hours straight of traveling. So he was NOT in good shape, and his friends were taking him back to the hostel. They were all really nice and helpful (the drunk one was accidentally pushing Lindsey out of the taxi, so one of his larger friends switched places with her). When we finally got home, we showered to get as much of the paint off as possible, but that stuff was pretty much stuck on.

We swam in the morning and had a really amazing continental breakfast (their bacon was really REALLY good!) and left for our tour at 9:00. The tour consisted of us, the guide, and a Norwegian couple who were super nice and funny. Our first stop was a zip-line course, which is pretty much the greatest thing I could ever wake up to. I went last to help Lindsey because experience has shown us that she’s a bit terrified of heights. It was much more fun than the course in the Philippines because we got to do more challenging things than just sitting down in the harness and letting go. I got a blister from breaking too hard, but other than that it was a blast! Especially when Brittney got in trouble for not paying attention and our French instructor yelled at her. I found it hilarious.

Second, we went to a WipeOut! course on a lake in the middle of an island. They had a rope swing, where you swing off a raised platform into the water and many different things to climb up and jump off of. I pretty much failed at everything, but that’s sort of the point and it was a lot of fun. At one point I got almost to the top of an enormous inflatable and the two guys at the top managed to pull me up the rest of the way. Of course, as soon as they’d jumped off, I slid right off the side anyway. I didn’t have much arm strength left, but I wanted to do the rope swing one more time. I totally biffed it and hurt my ear a bit. I consider it my Christmas present to everyone watching.

We went back to the tour base and ate Thai food that they’d prepared for lunch, which was FANTASTIC! I can never have too many spring rolls. It’s a fact. After that we got to ride an elephant. Because there were four of us, someone had to ride on the elephant’s head and I was elected. I wasn’t upset about that, but it was a bit scary because I had nothing to hang onto, so when the elephant turned suddenly or went up or down hills, I had a bit of a hard time. I’d also lose my balance a bit every time it flapped its ears on me. The next few days, I had very sore ab muscles! After that, we got to have the elephant lift us with its trunk, which was pretty cool, but pretty difficult to get out of, because we didn’t know how to signal getting down and we weren’t allowed to jump off.

The next item on the agenda said “Visit a waterfall” and none of knew that meant “Hike to a waterfall” and the Norwegians and I were the only ones cool with that. But everybody went along with that. Unfortunately, because it wasn’t the rainy season, there wasn’t much of a waterfall to speak of. It’s called the Phaeng Noi Waterfall and our guide said that in this season, he likes to call it the Phaeng NO Waterfall. Ha. There was a spring that the top of the mountain that some people swam in a bit and then we came back down.

Our last agenda item was snorkeling, but that really just amounted to swimming in the ocean because it was at a beach with too many tourists, so the water was really murky. But it was nice to swim and relax and the beach had a restaurant so that we could get a sandwich which was really all I wanted after such a strenuous day.

We came back at 4 to hang out with Sam and watch Days of Thunder on HBO. This was magical because our rooms weren’t supposed to have more than 4 channels and this disappeared after we ate dinner. We had to start figuring out settling the bill because Sam was leaving at 6 the next morning. This was complicated because we hadn’t paid for the meals that we had eaten yet. But we got everybody’s total worked out so that they could pay me before I paid the hotel. We stayed up and talked until we were exhausted, knowing that we wouldn’t get to see Sam for a while (hopefully she’ll be in Shanghai when I get there!)

We said goodbye to Sam in the morning when she left and our taxi left at 10:30. We already had tickets for a ferry that left at 12:30, so we knew we were going to have to wait around at the ferry terminal for a while. It was lucky that we had time to spare because our driver dropped us off at the wrong ferry terminal. Luckily, I asked for directions immediately, so we had time to walk over to the next pier (about 10 minutes). They were fully prepared for tourists, looking at our tickets, giving us new vouchers, and giving us stickers that showed that we had booked the bus to the train station as well. Our ferry stopped by Koh Samui, which looked less developed than Koh Pha Ngan, but supposedly is the most developed of the three islands.

When we got off the ferry, we were herded with the other tourists onto buses to the train station or the airport. I got a little nervous when I saw a sign to Surat Thani that was pointing in the opposite direction that we were going, but we arrived at the train station right after that, so the station must not be in the town proper. We spent a bit of time in Surat Thani waiting for our train, which was about 40 minutes late. This is not that much of a delay for Southeast Asia, so nobody was concerned. While I waited for the train, I finally read up on Thai customs in my guidebook. A bit late. It’s embarrassing to find out all of the faux pas you’ve been making.

We had sleeper cars on this train (thank goodness!) and Brittney and I watched a movie on her iPad. We all slept pretty well. I swear by sleeper trains. I think they’re the best invention ever. You can sleep, they get you to a new destination, and they’re cheap! When we pulled into Bangkok, we left our bags at the station again and wandered back into Chinatown, using my map as a guide. We passed a temple, but it was full of activity and I’m never sure if I can do tourist-y things while people are actually praying. So we just walked around the temple grounds a bit and moved on. We passed a dim sum restaurant, so we HAD to stop. One waitress spoke a bit of English, which was all that we needed. And we only needed a bit of a snack at that point in the morning. We were trying to find the Thieves Market, but it was so sneaky we went past it, apparently.

We found the Royal Gardens, which were beautiful. They had traditional houses set up in the gardens, just like the park in Intramuros in Manila. There was also a monument to Chulalongkorn’s (Rama V) wife and daughter who drowned in the 1800s. People still leave dolls there for the little girl. Apparently the gardens were their favorite place. There was a small pond and Ali said “These fish are so scary. They have these beady eyes.” When I went to look, it was pretty clear that they were not fish. They have these lizards living in the pond, occasionally coming up on the fountains to sun themselves.

We walked a little farther on and found the Grand Palace. We walked practically all of the way around it first, as we turned the wrong direction for the entrance. We were all wearing shorts, so we had to rent sarongs outside the entrance for 30 Baht (about a dollar?). We walked around the palace, which was PACKED because it was all going to be closed the next day for New Year’s Day. There were also many temples and we got to see the Emerald Buddha, which had the most insane crowds of anywhere we visited in Bangkok. The interior walls of the palace complex had murals from the Thai epic “Ramakian”. These were very interesting to look at as we wandered around the complex.

Our ticket also allowed us to visit the Victorian palace built by Rama V, so we took a tuk-tuk to the other side of town to see it, only to find out that it was closed for New Year’s. This was quite unfortunate, and we had a hard time getting a cab back. This was the first time we’d ever had a problem finding a cab in Bangkok. Bus stops in Bangkok also have buttons to call cabs, but for some reason, the first couple that we tried didn’t work.

We finally got a cab to pick us up and we went to Khao San Road to get dinner. I had green curry pizza, which I highly recommend! I wished that I had more money for shopping while I was there, because they were selling a lot of nice clothes, but I didn’t plan adequately for spending money, so I just got to wander and people-watch. We took a tuk-tuk to the train station to get our luggage and there was a massive fire near the station. Everybody was stopped, just watching the smoke and flames and the firefighters slowly trickle in. Some of the firefighters didn’t have their shoes on yet. It was a mess.

We took the subway to our hostel’s neighborhood and overpaid for the taxi from the station to the hostel, but as it was still incredibly inexpensive, I didn’t care enough to argue it. As it was New Year’s Eve, we were going to watch the fireworks from the roof of our hostel, but we were just too tired. We played some games trying to keep awake, but no luck. I set an alarm, but I ended up turning it off because we were all more concerned with sleeping than with celebrating the new year.

The next morning we had the easiest cab pick-up ever. I just walked to the street and a cab turned around and stopped right in front of us. Lindsey and I got a plate of Pad Thai at the airport and it was the spiciest Thai dish I had on the whole trip. It was fantastic! We flew back through Guangzhou to Seoul. We had to take the airport train into Seoul Station (which a cab driver told me was shut down. Liar.) and then get a cab from Seoul Station home. I fell right into bed as soon as I got back. And that was my vacation in Thailand.

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