Thailand -- Bought Baht for What Wat?

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We had a pretty rough start to the south-east Asian part of our tour. Nancy's farewell Madagascar meal -- grilled Zebu with peppercorn sauce, left her in very rough shape -- so we were always very aware of the nearest water closet. Fraser, having had a mysterious allergic reaction and severe skin rash during his last week in Madagascar, was already feeling rather weak. So when he also picked up another case of traveller's diarrhea, combined with Nancy's immune system going wacko (and eventually setting off a bad arthritis flare-up), Thailand found us as a slow-moving, hobbling, bathroom seeking, skinny pair of travellers. Did that stop us? Heck no! But it did call for some changes to our plans. After a couple days of deliberation, we traded in some of our independence and flexibility for the easy Stray Asia way of life. We booked ourselves into a small-scale tour group where all our transportation was organized on a set route through south-east Asia, with the option of jumping off at any time. Has the tour been frustrating at times? - yes. Has it been worth it? - absolutely. It was so very hassle-free. For example, we arrived at the Cambodian border hours before the public transit bus would have -- and then we just walked across on our own and had our Visas before we could say khop chai lai lai.

As part of the deal we got when we signed up for our Stray Asia tour (we are slowly becoming better at negotiating. It's all about being, or pretending to be, indecisive!), we were given a free half-day trip to the Bangkok floating market. All we can say is that we were glad it was free! It turned out it wasn't actually in Bangkok, and it wasn't really a floating market. On the bright side though, we did stop to see a cool train market on the way back, where it turns out they don't sell trains (an easy misunderstanding though, right?). The train market was actually a market and was actually situated on a functioning train line. When the train came (every few hours, apparently), all the food and produce were moved and the stalls were quickly folded up, and the train squeezed through. Then, it seemed like within less than a minute the market had magically fully re-assembled and you'd never really know the market was right on the train tracks, except for all the train tracks. Talk about efficient use of space!

But back to our time in Bangkok. That catchy 80's tune claims one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble. Four nights in Bangkok... makes you do crazy things. Well at least it turned Fraser bad-ass: he got a chameleon shaved into his head and a pile of "tattoos", and was volunteered to taste-test a roasted scorpion. An odd birthday present for Nancy but one she requested!

We ended up spending more time in Bangkok than we expected. The city really surprised us; we found it a great place to land after our Madagascar experiences. We had just lived on a carless island for a month, trekking through the forest and doing some island hopping. Prior to that we were mostly bouncing around small poor villages in Tanzania. We figure that explained why we enjoyed the vibrancy and chaos of Bangkok way more than we expected; we'd been out of big cities for so long! We quickly embraced the endless supplies of Phad Thai, noodle soup, coconut juice, homemade ice-cream, delicious matcha green and Thai milk teas, and cheap drop-in street-side massages. All for just a handful of baht. We also managed to find some inexpensive clothes to replace some of our very well-worn travel attire.

Bangkok was a very easy city to explore. We just basically picked a direction and started walking and we'd find something cool. There are temples, or Wats, everywhere. We ended up at a couple great ones. Oddly named Wat Pho had giant and not-so-giant gold buddhas everywhere, and the Golden Mount provided a great view of the city. We also found the Grand Palace, the home of the Royal family -- we just had to share the streets there with thousands of Thai, all dressed in black on their way to the palace to mourn their King. Thailand has been in a one-year mourning period since his death last fall and everyone and their dog was wearing black and buying pictures, pendants, and coins with the King's picture on it. Pictures of the king were sprinkled around town everywhere. No, actually, they weren't so much sprinkled as sprayed around town like they came from a massive fire-house: rarely could you find a place on the streets where you couldn't see at least one picture of the dead dude.

We've found that in every country, the local transportation systems offered us a great deal of entertainment (including both joy and frustration). Bangkok was no exception. First, the joy part: city buses are all free -- but they are ancient beasts that crawl at a snail's pace through the city. But at one point, because of the traffic, we found it was much faster to walk, and jumped off the bus. But when we got too sweaty or had enough walking we could just jump on another bus, sit for a few minutes, and then jump off again! But our favourite was the water-taxis. Similar to taxi-brousses and tuk-tuks, it was dirt cheap jam-packed public transit, but think 10 times larger and put it on the ubiquitous Bangkok canals and rivers and call it the Thai boat-taxi. Then drive it as fast and as loudly as you can. When you want to park it, make sure you overshoot the dock, throw it into hyperdrive reverse and smash-land it into the tire-lined dock. Every single time. Oh, and the whole time everybody on board was spoken at really loudly (shouting really, but not in a mad or mean way) by boat staff in heavily accented English to "Walk inside! Walk inside! Walk inside!" No one was allowed to stay on the outside deck. A hilarious experience. In fact Thai communication in general can be hilarious. It can be so loud and boisterous-- you would think they were angry, but Thai people rarely seem to be anything but happy.

A few more random things about Bangkok. We walked by a hospital that was called Hua Chieu and wondered if they treated cold sufferers...Khaosan Road, aka backpacker central, was quite the party location. Lewd ping-pong ball tricks, laughing gas, and booze by the bucket were up for grabs...Buddhas were everywhere. Not so much on Khaosan Road doing ping pong tricks, more so in the temples where sometimes hundreds of them sat motionless beside each other, each one trying to outshine and out-holy the rest. Some were massive and deserved their own entire building, and others braved the elements and just lounged around in their overly-incensed golden splendour.

After a few days in Bangkok we started our Stray Asia tour with a short bus ride north to Ayutthaya, where we took a boat tour around the town's canals to check out some more classic temples, which, to no ones' surprise, had more golden buddhas. One wat had a massive seated buddha where hundreds of Thai were lined up to contribute their 'wish-scarf' to be wrapped around the enormous figure. We then caught an overnight train to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. It was very different from Bangkok, being much more relaxing, but it still had lots of tasty food on offer. And of course, lots and lots of wats. We spent a couple days there, took a great Thai cooking class, and checked out the impressive markets. Nancy found some heavenly bliss with an aroma steam sauna, a fund-raiser for the local Red Cross. She donated some baht and got to relax while sweating out several months of travel grime.

North of Chiang Mai we popped off the bus at the White Temple, a contemporary creation, done all in sparkling white. This was a pleasant change from the traditional shiny gold wats. It had bizarre drawings of Saddam Hussein, super heroes, and Micheal Jackson, among others, represented inside the temple. After a too-quick visit of the temple, we then bussed a little further north to cross over to Laos, with our entertaining Lao guide Keio and new group of traveling bus friends.

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Photos

Happy fat Chinese buddha
Fraser's meditation: burgers, beer, club sandwich...

Everyone has a lot of fun with Fraser's head!
The street was full of people stopping to watch and take pictures.