Thailand Teaser Trip

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I survived my 3rd and final winter in Japan. And I don’t use the word ‘survive’ loosely, it was ridiculously cold this year. My constantly frozen fingers and toes inside my apartment; pumping and breathing-in kerosene, daily; defrosting my olive oil before using it, only heating one room at a time; warming up my PJs with the electric blanket before bed and lest I forget, the unheated schools. After enduring all that (and more…) for the third time, I thought a little trip to the beach would make everything better. What do ya know? I was right😉 Off to Thailand I went…

Last March, Vancouverite Christine Ngan and I traveled to Singapore and Malaysia together, and knowing we could stand each other during traveling, we set off for Thailand in each other’s company on March 10th. Each armed with our packs, sunscreen and guidebooks, we left Sendai airport. Now for those of you who know how thrifty I am, you won’t be surprised that I found two exceptionally cheap tickets leaving from my prefecture, but their only downside was a couple layovers (one which happened to be 22 hours in Beijing, China). In advance, Christine and I had attempted to secure VISAs into China, but it proved too costly and troublesome, so we opted to stay in the airport and amuse ourselves with playing cards and “20 Questions”. However...After a brief layover in Shanghai where we had to go through immigration, we were given a “Power of Stay” for 24 hours, and since we flew domestically in China from Shanghai, we were able to exit the Beijing airport with no immigration line or trouble. We quickly got in a shuttle bus for the closest hostel, amazed that we were actually going to leave the airport.

When we thought we were going to be sleeping in the Beijing Airport, I did some research and found the website www.sleepinginairports.com which recommended the Irish Bar’s couches on the 2nd floor of the terminal as the best place to crash. We later saw these couches but I can’t vouch for their comfort level. Nonetheless, perhaps that site will be useful for some of you.

We ended up in a small hostel around the corner from the Beijing Airport, most notable point about this hostel was that it had a TV in the room…that couldn’t be plugged in. I didn’t really get it, but it made us laugh…it is China!
The next day we enjoyed deliciously authentic Chinese food in the airport (I only mean that half sarcastically), played Crazy 8 countdown for 8 hours straight and FINALLY boarded our last plane to Bangkok, Thailand. And yes, it was still worth the cheap tickets and convenient departure. I’d do anything to avoid Narita airport!

Our first night in Thailand (rather morning, as it’s now 2am), we were driven through the ever-bustling streets of Bangkok by a maniac taxi driver, who, much like the rest of taxi drivers in all Asian cities, thinks he’s in a video game. We arrived safely at Big John’s Guest house and are delighted with the air-conditioned 3-person dorm room that we’ve been given, all to ourselves (for only $4.50/night). As we quickly learned over the next three days, air-conditioning in Bangkok makes you feel like royalty, but alas, as soon as we slid that dorm-door open, we were met with a solid wall of humidity and pollution, (which we had conveniently forgotten about since we were last outside). We opted to only stay in Bangkok for 2 days. On the first day, we shopped like crazy people…I taught Christine to bargain (I felt like a proud mother when she finally ‘came into her own’) and we ended our night by attending one of Bangkok’s famous “girlie-man shows”. Let me explain before you think I’m perverted. The Mambo Theatre produces two wonderfully funny and entertaining shows a night, featuring a group of beautiful Thai women singing covers of famous North American, Chinese and Japanese songs. For example, Gwen Stefani’s “hollaback girl” and The Supremes were among the line-up. However, what I haven’t written yet is that although these women were beautiful, slender and all seemed to be large-breasted, they were all in fact male. And let me tell you, these “men” were the most gorgeous women in the whole theatre! (save of course, Christine and I 😉 After the show was over, we got our picture taken with a couple of the women, and they almost pounced on us for money. We scavenged our pockets for baht but ended up having to stiff the woman who took the picture. She/he was eying my wallet so intensively that we got out of there pretty fast. Chris still has nightmares about the he-woman’s “wallet-stare”.

The next day, we took care of all our domestic flights, night-train and bus tickets, and then hit the Wats (temples). First off was Wat Phra Chetuphon (a.k.a. Wat Po), which houses the famous Reclining Buddha. It was built by Rama I in the 16th century and is the oldest and largest Buddhist temple in Bangkok. The Reclining Buddha itself was huge! It’s more then 140 feet long and 50 feet high. Inside the compound we saw these bronze bowls, which the Thais were dropping 1-satang coins into (like a penny). I later learned (or rather read in the guidebook), that like many other things in Thailand, dropping 1-satang coins into the 108 bronze bowls (corresponding to the 108 characteristics of the Buddha) brings good fortune, and of course helps the monks keep up the Wat. The grounds themselves were majestic and peaceful. All except for the rambunctious dread locked hippie jumping all over the place with his video camera. We saw temples beautifully decorated with gold and jewels, and many other sparkling substances, all of which looked barely weathered by the ages.

Next was the Grand Palace. Little did we know that the 45 minute walk from the Southern Wat Po gates to the Northern Grand Palace gates would leave us so breathless and close to heat exhaustion! One thing I should mention is that to enter the majority of these temples, you must be suitably attired; meaning long pants, proper shoes, no arms showing etc. So, despite the heat, we had to be dressed accordingly and this obviously sucked. By the time we reached the Grand Palace gates, we could barely stand up straight. We quickly found a hole-in-the-wall café that had air conditioning, and rested there for quite awhile.

Tidbits on the Grand Palace: It was built by King Rama I, when he moved the capital buildings from Thonburi to the Chinese district (and subsequently kicked all the Chinese out). He wanted to recreate the grandeur that was once present in the old Capital town of Ayutthaya (more on Ayutthaya later). I was told all sorts of facts about the Grand Palace by a friendly Thai tour guide who I befriended outside the complex. Of many things I learned from him, he told me how the renovations to the Grand Palace in the last 200 years, were greatly influenced by Western architecture, including colonial and Victorian motifs, largely in part to Anna--tutor to the son of Rama IV and the central figure in the story The King and I--who once lived there.

That night, we tried our best to go see some authentic Muay Thai boxing at the Ratchadamneon Stadium but it turned out the fighters were a little too talented and famous for our budgets (cheapest standing-room only tickets were $30 and up), so we scratched boxing and opted for Thai massages instead. What a fair trade that was!! Although painful enough to cause bruising the next day, a Thai massage was the perfect escape from the hustle bustle of Bangkok and the air-con was pretty nice as well 😉 In fact we liked the massage place so much, we went back for an hour-long foot massage after dinner! And as terribly touristy as this sounds, it was delightful to have a good-looking Thai man rub my feet for an hour for only $6. Ahhhh…life is good.

Before I move on, I should include the part of the trip that wasn’t so pleasant. The sex slave industry in Asia, which we saw too closely for comfort throughout our whole trip, was most obvious and dehumanizing in Bangkok. One doesn’t automatically realize what’s going on, especially if you’re from a diversified country like Christine and I are. But it becomes painfully obvious when you start over-hearing conversations or witness transactions…just what is happening beneath your nose. The Asian sex slave industry is something that many people know lots about, and shamefully, all too many Western men know first hand all about it. Everywhere you look in Bangkok you can see white men with Thai women. Mostly older men, and beautiful, young (and frowning) Thais. These women are ‘leased’ to men for any period of time: a night, week, weekend, month etc. In one particular area we saw a few men with contracts in their hands and walking with their new Thai escorts. We over heard one man say, “I’ll make a copy for you, but from now on you do what I say!” He was so loud and didn’t care who heard him. It was disgusting, and I felt awful for the woman. We heard from many people that these women come to the city to sell themselves so they can eventually take their cash back to their villages in the North. Even though prostitution is heavily looked down upon in the Thai mindset, these women who return to help their families financially are held in great respect. Go figure.
When we were in a taxi one day, both Christine and I watched on as a young white man was approached by one of the so-called pimps and edged-on to “rent” a woman. We felt like the angels on this man’s shoulders, as we chanted from the back of the taxi, “don’t do it!” etc. We watched as he struggled with the decision, but eventually walked away. And don’t even get me started on the up rise in AIDS/HIV cases in Thailand…

Sorry for digressing. Back to the trip stuff…

The next morning, we headed up to Ayutthaya, Thailand’s formal capital city, about 50 miles Northwest of Bangkok. My friend Nicky recommended that we stop by this beautiful city on our way to Chiang Mai, and we were certainly happy we did. After a dangerous one hour van ride with a bunch of locals, Christine and I found ourselves somewhere in Ayutthaya. We walked around until we found the train station (which involved walking quite a ways with our packs and taking a large-canoe like boat across the mud river). We left our packs at the train station and found ourselves an adorable older Thai gentlemen and his wife to take us around the ruins. The man spoke fairly decent English and played tour guide for us at every stop. Instead of explaining each individual Wat we saw, I’ll give you a small historical rundown of this once-tortured capital city.

Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand from its establishment in 1350 by King U-Thong (Rama I) until 1767. In all that time, Ayutthaya was home to 33 kings of various dynasties. To give you an idea of how vast and majestic this city was, it encompassed 3 palaces, and 400 temples on an island threaded with 35 miles of canals. In short, there’s plenty to see. One thing that comes to light very quickly upon visiting this city is how hauntingly sad it is. Every temple we saw bore the marks of the 15-month Burmese siege and eventual destruction of the capital that occurred in 1569. There were lines of head-less Buddha statues everywhere.

We explored as many Wats as we could until nightfall. Our friendly tour guides posed for pictures with us, gave us their address so they we might send them a postcard from Japan, and they left us at a floating restaurant, 3 hours before our night train to Chiang Mai.

The infamous Chiang Mai “Night Train”. Was that ever fun! For 12 hours, the clinkety-clank train took us from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai in the far North of Thailand, under two hours to the border of Burma (Myanmar). We were in a 2nd class sleeper car, meaning we were with 40 other travelers, we had a bed with a curtain and a cute little Thai man came to ‘turn down’ our beds and fetch us Singan beer whenever we so desired it. There was a dining car attached to ours complete with 90’s American rock music, and of course toilets that went right out the bottom (as in, don’t fall thru!) We didn’t sleep very much, but we had a riot playing cards into the wee hours of the morning, while half the country passed us by in the darkness.

Upon arrival in Chiang Mai at 10am, we checked into our hostel, aptly named the Chiang Mai International Youth Hostel. We relished the comforts of a good shower and then once again, hit the town for some serious sightseeing. “Serious” sighting seeing became “Let’s have lunch at that place, then see how we feel”. We eventually tired of being lazy eating tourists and we hailed a songtao (red pick up truck-like taxi) to take us up to Doi Suthep Temple.

It took 2 songtaos and quite a headache worth of negotiating, but we finally got a driver to take us through the mountains to Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. Only 15 km from Chaing Mai, this temple’s location was chosen in a very uncommon fashion. Buddhist relics were placed upon an elephant’s back and it was determined that wherever the elephant stopped, the Buddhists would build their temple. Low and behold the elephant traveled quite a distance (from where, our book didn’t say) and half way up this particular mountain, it stopped dead from exhaustion. This is where the Doi Suthep temple is now built (complete with shrine to the elephant of course). Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep has a large number of Temple bells ("rakhang" in Thai). There was one massive bell is the centre of the “bell” area (I guess you could say), and then several smaller bells in a row that visitors were encouraged to each ring. Our patient driver, who had waited an hour for us to finish at the mountain wat, took us back to Chaing Mai and dropped us off for another Thai foot massage. No, we didn’t spoil ourselves at all.

That night we explored all the goodies that the night markets had to offer. Christine, putting her new bargaining talent to work, first bought a huge canvas bag, and over the next few hours managed to fill it with something from practically every stall there. She was out of control if you ask me! I was happy enough to find a patch stand. With all the countries I’ve been to in the last three years, I haven’t done a fairly good job with securing patches for my pack, but thanks to a kind little Thai lady who I bargained down to 20Baht/patch, I’m all good till August. Once Chris couldn’t hold anymore and got that “I just can’t go any further” look on her face, we went back to the hostel to get a good night sleep for our trekking trip the next day.


8:27am the following day. BANG BANG BANG.
“What the…?”
“The bus is here! The bus is here! You need to go!!! The bus is here!!!”
“Aw, crap, give us 4 minutes would ya?”

What I hadn’t mentioned earlier was that this particular hostel had TVs and air conditioning, still for the very cheap price of $4.50/night. And after returning from the markets the night before, we enjoyed the AC and TV comforts a little too much and accidentally stayed up until 2am watching the movie channel. Whoops! No wonder we didn’t hear our alarm go off.
We apologized profusely to the waiting driver, tour guide and five other foreigners and sheepishly got in the van. After a childish, yet cute, game of “what’s your name, where do you come from, yahta yahta yahta”, we were on our way to our first stop.
We drove up to the elephant camp and commenced with our “look, look!” exclamations. There were about 20 elephants all roaming about the camp. Their grandeur was fascinating to behold; (especially since the last time I saw an elephant was through a fence at a zoo on a school field trip). We left our day packs in the van and were quickly guided to the ramp used for getting up on these massive creatures. Christine and I were propped up atop the elephants and our small teen aged guide sat comfortably on its head. We roamed through the dry hot-as-hell jungle for over an hour. It was really fun and quite the exceptional experience! Scary parts included going up the mountains, and looking behind us…it’s a long drop. I got some of our screaming on video, so remind me to show it to you when I’m home next. The videos are quite amusing, and I’ll admit…embarrassing. Next we headed to a small and fairly poor village. The guides take us there a) for a little culture, to show us how the poor of Thailand live with so little, and b) so that we (rich?) tourists might buy some of their handicrafts. The village homes were made completely of leaves and wood. Pigs and stray dogs walked freely among us, and it was explained to us that the black dogs are the tastiest. Yeah…they eat the dogs…all I could think about was Brandy (our family’s Golden Retriever)…safe at home in Canada. We then trekked through the woods for an hour and then down a pretty steep ledge to a beautiful waterfall, which bordered another village. We were given an hour to rest and relax, so into the water I went! Swimming in the middle of the jungle in a waterfall is an amazing thing. I can hardly describe it. The sights reminded me a lot of Pagsanjan waterfall in the Philippines. Both in the middle of nowhere, with so much beauty yet only a handful of people ever get to see it.

We stopped at one more village before heading to lunch. This village was inhabited by the Mong tribe, who were kicked off their land (up in the mountains), and out of their mountainous caves, by the Thai government who wanted to stop them from harvesting opium. Opium (made into heroin) is big business for villagers all over Thailand, and you can hear the distant shouting occasionally from the woods…farmers trying to discreetly sell their crops, “Opium! Opium!”

After lunch, we started our bamboo-rafting venture down the river. Placed on seven thin bamboo logs, accepting the perpetual wet bum and putting our faith into our guide, we set off. The van driver told us not to take our cameras, because we’d drop them into the river. I’m so glad I listened to him cause by the end of the trip, there wasn’t a dry bit left on me and I had needed both hands to hold on! Much like the rapids I’ve been on in Canada, banging against rocks and the feeling of butterflies in your stomach are all expected, and were well enjoyed😉 While floating down the calmer parts of the river, we were greeted by small smiling children, all eager to splash us as they whiled away the afternoon trying to escape the heat. On the riverbank were several huts, like sheltered platforms on stilts where young Thai couples picnicked, or a mother changed a diaper, children laughed at the tourists going by, or as many were doing, simply starring into the water. There was such a peaceful community feeling to the riverside, that I felt terrible for intruding; for parading my Western wealth past them. I never seem to get past those feelings when I travel in poorer regions; a lot of the time, I hate being a tourist.

After our day of trekking, we were exhausted, sun burnt and ridiculously ready for the beach. Our plane was leaving at 9:50am the next morning. Culture done…time for the beach!

We flew Bangkok Airways from Chiang Mai to Koh Samui. Unfortunately, Koh Samui is now built up as a serious tourist city, complete with McDonald’s and Starbucks on every corner (so we got onto a ferry right away). 50B to Buddha Pier and 120B to Koh Phan Ngan and we were out of the insanity of tourist-mania. We did our research of the different Koh Phan Ngan beaches during the hour-long ferry from Koh Samui. We definitely didn’t want to be in the huge party area, and we also opted to stay away from the island during the infamous “Full Moon Party” when over 10,000 people congregate on Haad Rin beach for the biggest rave-styled party in Asia. This trip was primarily about relaxing for Christine and I, but when I go back to Thailand this September, I’ll definitely be checking out the Full Moon Party. So, in choosing a quiet beach, we were also delivering ourselves to the mercies of the inland jungle and surrounding mountains. It was an extremely bumpy hour-long journey to Thong Nai Pan beach on the opposite side of the island from Haad Rin. Only in the past year had this road been completed; before that you had to take one songtoa to a river, cross the river on planks of wood, and wait for another songtoa to pick you up on the other side. Needless to say, we were glad the road was now completed and we also cemented that we’d stay on this beach until it was time to go! No trips into town for us! With such a crazy (and slightly expensive) journey to Thong Nai Pan, we weren’t surprised by the quiet beaches and copious amounts of available bungalows. We settled into Pen’s Bungalows for $4.50/night. And began our week of relaxation on the beach…

Throughout the course of the week, we swam lots, drank ridiculous amounts of fruit shakes, snorkeled, climbed waterfalls, read our books and basically did nothing. It was fantastic and exactly what we wanted to do. I wish I had bought a hammock to hang in my apartment here. I miss them😞 Funny that the first week of our trip took 9 pages to write about, and the 2nd week only took two sentences… sorry for boring some of you with my rambling.

By the end of the 2nd week, we were both ready to face work again. We flew back to Bangkok, again to Beijing, then to Dalian (China), eventually home to Sendai. Four more months of Japan, and I'll be off on my Asian tour!

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Photos

Line em up
Wat Po

Gotta love tourists
Inside the Grand Palace

Ayutthaya
The Tawatchai family drove us around all day

Not as comfortable as you'd think
Chiang Mai trekking tour

Comments

[Meredith]

Yo!
You're such a wench! I'm so jealous!