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Published: November 1st 2006
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Patpong II
Babala trying on Dad's Christmas gift. OK, I just posted a blog that I meant to do in OCTOBER, and here I am trying to sum up the last 4 and a half months. I’ll be surprised if I get many readers considering the long hiatus and inconsistent posting.
I last left you at the Tiger Temple and Floating Market. The Floating Market was about a 2 hour drive from Bangkok; we met at 8 in the morning to be herd around like cattle. Our driver did not speak English very well, and did not see a reason to let us know what was going on, so we were directed into various vans depending on our trip (not everyone went to the Tiger Temple after the Floating Market). The Floating Market was in a village on a river, and the locals all got around by boat. We got into a sturdy wooden canoe, and paddled to the market, which was so packed with boats we inevitably bumped into one another while slowly moving forward. It was like a traffic jam at a Phish concert except we were in boats not cars. The locals grabbed our boat as we floated by and would pressure us to
Floating Market
One of the few pics I got before my Memory Card broke. buy fruit or tourist trinkets that they had piled up in their canoe. It was a spectacular sight!
Next I was demanded to walk to the other side of the parking lot for the next leg of the trip. Then I boarded another van that took us to the River Kwai and then the Tiger Temple. The Tiger Temple is the only place I found in Thailand that acknowledged liability, and we had to sign a waver just in case a Tiger mulled us. As we walked in, there were deer, water buffalo, wild boars, peacocks, and miniature horses just roaming around us. Of course we were all there for the tigers, so we started walking down what looked like a restricted tiger pit at a zoo. This man who passed us from the bottom of the pit said jokingly “Watch out, there’s tigers down there.” And as we laughed we heard a tremendous roar that made me second guess the waiver. At the bottom of the pit there were about 10 tigers chained to different posts with a big crowd and line to touch them. I queue up and watch the people in front of me being led
Patpong II
Mmm...Thai Beer to different tigers. Now the tremendous roar I heard earlier must have been from this one tiger that kept fussing. It was obviously pissed off, and I thought to myself “Surly when the tiger is grumpy, they skip that one and have you pet the other better tempered ones.” Well, finally it was my turn and a staff member grabbed my arm to lead me to the VERY PISSED OFF TIGER!!! So I smile nervously and ask, “Can I touch it?” To which she replied, “Yes”. They also took me to the nicer tigers that were exposing their bellies in a playful gesture. I took about a million pictures of this, but unfortunately my memory card broke and none of them saved. (Kind of like when the elephant chased Barbara, Wyatt, and I down the mountain and all I got was a voice recording of Barbara saying “God damnit Alex, and your stupid 30 seconds”) But luckily I met a guy from Georgia who took some pictures and emailed them to me.
The next day I took a bus to Pak Chong to meet Barbara and Wyatt again, and had better luck with the leaches (mainly because I refused
Floating Market
Another pic before my camera went on the fritz. to go out in the forest and tried to only walk on concrete). Then we went to Bangkok for a few days and decided to take a bus to Poi Pet and walk across the boarder to Cambodia. We got there in the evening, so we spent the night and planned on walking across in the morning. In Poi Pet we met a guy from California who was on his way to Ankor Watt. We had dinner together, and he told us all kinds of fascinating stories about the different exotic places he’s traveled too. In the morning we went to the boarder, and I felt completely unprepared. I had heard some warnings about things to look out for (like the cab driver who took us to the bus station said “Oh Cambodia, lots of bombs”), but I didn’t know what to expect. As we got in line, people who just looked like ordinary civilians would interrogate you and tell you where to go; I still don’t know who were official boarder control and who were nosy citizens looking to weasel a buck. When we finally got our passports stamped and walked out into Cambodia, about 5 or 6 guys
Hair Cut
The last time I get a Thai hair cut. on motorbikes surrounded us and started asking where we were going. This one guy in a hat with a black and white checkered ribbon above the rim started following us with question after question. We had to walk away and completely ignore him for a while to get him to leave. About 2 minuets later we got back in line to cross into Thailand again, and I swore I’d never go back to Cambodia. Although I have heard since then that Ankor Watt is pretty cool, and I guess many boarder towns are pretty sleazy.
After that we went to Bangkok, and Barbara and Wyatt went back to Koa Yai. I left for Sydney, Australia in November for about a week. After being in Thailand, Sydney just reminded me of the US, except they drive on the left and have funny accents. Then I went to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Singapore was really cool, and it was strange going into convenient stores and seeing a display of mints at the counter (like convenient stores in the States), but no gum. The zoo in Singapore was hands down the best zoo I’ve ever been too! After about 4 days
Floating Market
Yes, another floating market... in Singapore, we took a bus up to Kuala Lumpur. I have never seen more palm trees in my life! There were vast fields as far as I could see in all directions of Palm Trees in rows. I heard they are one of the world’s largest producers of palm oil, but I’m a little confused on how they get the oil from the tree.
We flew to Phuket (no, not “fuck it” but “poo ket”) after a few days, and spent our days on the beach and our evenings roaming the very seedy Patong area. It was actually kind of disturbing because the prostitution was more prevalent or at least more out in the open. There were many sleazy old men with young Thai girls. I was watching one guy in his 50’s dancing with a young Thai girl to a band. The girl was obviously embarrassed and uncomfortable with the guy’s erratic middle aged white guy dance, but along with the typical arrhythmic spasms found in middle age white guy dancing, this particular guy was trying to be sexy on top of it (like heavy petting on the dance floor)! Now, there is nothing wrong with the middle age white guy dance; I sometimes dance like a middle aged white guy…it is fun and liberating to wiggle around without regard to beat, but there is absolutely nothing sexy about it and trying to make it sexy should probably never be attempted. The long and short of my little tangent is that I have no desire to go back to Phuket.
The last week abroad was spent in Bangkok at the Patpong 1 area. It’s known as the red light district, but despite having to dodge people selling ping pong and banana shows, it is not as sleazy as Phuket and you see a lot of families there.
So that is the synopsis of my travels through December. If you want me to elaborate on anything I kind of breezed over, just let me know and I will try and add it.
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