Thailand: a Blow by Blow Account in 4 Phases

Edit Richy: I have uploaded 257 or so pictures of our trip. These are what I've deemed the most worthy for the purpose of illustrating our trip out of a total of 1000 or so. And these are only the pictures I took, Katie took a few hundred more with the other camera.

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This was my first trip to Thailand, Richy's second. I was excited to get out of the winter for a while and take a break that would lead my mind away from the daily grind of life and work in Korea.

Phase 1: Arrival in Bangkok

We arrived at our guest house in Bangkok at 3 am after a 6 hour flight that left us pleasantly un-jet-lagged because Seoul and Bangkok only have a 2-hour time difference. The apparent owner of the place, a native English speaker (some manner of British), was wide awake, helpful and welcoming. The next morning we decided to check out the nearby Chatuchak weekend market, one of the biggest outdoor markets in the world. Our walk took us by hundreds of amulet vendors (mostly small Buddha images), which (as I read later) are popular and sometimes expensive spiritual accessories for people in dangerous occupations. Cab drivers especially invest in these to protect them on the roads (lord knows they need it - Thai drivers are even crazier than Korean drivers, which I didn't know was possible). The market itself could only be described as an overwhelming swirl of commerce of all kinds. It was pretty amazing, and although we wandered around there for a few hours that first day, I could only get my head together enough to buy a single pair of earrings. Afterward, we wandered around a nearby park, then took the skytrain to Victory Monument, which lead us on another multi-hour walk toward and around the royal palace. Unfortunately Bangkok's mass transit system is nowhere near as cheap, plentiful and efficient as Seoul's, but walking around seemed more interesting here anyway.

At the palace, we scanned the moat for the abundant and sometimes frightening signs of wildlife. The climax of which was a close encounter with a 4 foot monitor lizard that jumped out of the marigolds and frightened the living daylights out of a young Thai couple walking nearby (they ran away screaming, while we, the tourists, started snapping pictures). We wandered our way down to the tourist district of Khao San Road which was both an interesting and appalling sight. Something about watching white folks having their hair dreaded, beaded and braided into cornrows while wearing traditional Hmong clothing gives me the creeps in that haven't-you-heard-of-cultural-appropriation kind of way. We ate an over-priced and over-rated meal, drank a few beers, watched people get ripped off, and decided we'd had enough walking for the day, so we took a hot pink metered taxi back to the guest house (so nice to see vehicles outside the Korean car color palette of black, white and gray).

The next day we found out our friend Desiree from Seoul (a la Daesungni winter camp) had arrived at the guest house, so we woke her up and made her follow us back to the weekend market for a second, less overwhelmed look. This time we succeeded in doing a little bartering, buying three more pairs of earrings, a skirt, a pair of linen pants, and a linen shirt for Richy. I was probably encouraged a bit by Desiree's no-BS attitude when it comes to shopping. Our shopping ended in a huge, random, torrential downpour of warm rain as we ran for the cover of another neon taxi (luckily we had freshly purchased dry clothes with us in conveniently plastic bags). We decided this would be a good opportunity to go to the train station secure tickets for a night train south to Surat Thani, the jumping off point for some of the most beautiful island beaches in Thailand. We should have known better than to take the third class night train seats when we found out that sleeping cars and air-conditioned second class were sold out. But we were feeling energetic and adventurous, so later that evening we left Desiree behind to find out what 12 hours in third class on a crowded Thai train felt like...

Phase 2: Misadventures in Southeastern Thailand

Waiting for the train itself was a melancholy experience, as it was more than an hour late, and this mood was punctuated by a particularly mournful harmonica player on the platform. When our train finally arrived, it was apparent that our third class car had been built some time in the mid 20th century, probably 1940's or 50's. It had kind of an interesting retro look taken by itself, especially with the mint green interiors and interesting gyrating wire fans installed in the ceiling. However, this charm was lost on the hundreds of people packed like sardines inside, sans air con. We had to keep the windows wide open to breathe, which meant getting a lungful of such wonderful smelling things as thick diesel exhaust, rotten swamp, rotten sewage, rotten garbage, and occasionally a whiff of something edible from one of the station restaurants. All the people aboard wore uniform expressions of boredom and exhaustion for the entire trip, and as the train rolled into jungle, people started spreading newspapers on the floor and crawling under seats to try to find a place to rest their eyes. This became a serious issue of contention for me as I had just finished up reading the section in the guidebook about Thai cultural foot phobias. Apparently stomping on a coin with the king's face on it can have serious social repercussions, as can failing to remove your shoes when entering a culturally-defined no-shoes-zone or inadvertently touching another part of someones body with your foot or a shoe. With all the people on the floor, I spent the whole time super conscious of where I was putting my feet despite the fact that no one seemed to be paying any attention to me whatsoever.

Richy and I spent the night packed onto a hard, straight-backed bench with a third person, spending the entire night shifting positions every 15 minutes to try to find something relatively comfortable. This effort proved relatively futile, but provided a good activity with which to while away the 12 hour ride. My only consolation was the following mantra: warm white sand, warm white sand, warm white sand...

Upon reaching Surat Thani we found ourselves immediately surrounded by bus ticket hawkers, taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. My head was screaming and all I wanted to do was sleep, so the first guy to grab us was pretty effective at shoving us onto a random bus and making us buy a ticket. Luckily it was going to where we were headed and included a ferry transfer. About four hours later we were getting off a ferry in Thong Sala, the main port town of Ko Phan Ngyan, the island we had been hoping to get to. From here we had planned to meet with our friend Kitho on a somewhat secluded beach called Haad Yuan, so we made arrangements to take a taxi truck to Haad Rin (the big party beach of the island, and way over-developed) and from there, a long tail boat to Haad Yuan. We had been totally confident about being able to find a place to stay on that beach, if not at the same bungalows that Kitho was staying at. Unfortunately, we arrived at the bungalows to find that not only were they full, but they figured that every other guest house and bungalow on that beach was full too. So we sighed a big, long, weary sigh, the kind you only seem to be able to muster when you haven't slept in nearing 30 hours, and let the guy at the guest house lead us to Kitho ("Oh you mean the Korean guy who sleeps all the time? Yeah, room 15." Hehehe.) While Kitho was welcoming and accommodating, and one of the guest house guys offered to let us sleep in his personal bed, it just didn't seem like we could relax without our own room. So wearily, we bid Kitho and his guest house buddies goodbye and got back on the longtail boat to Haad Rin to find a place to crash. Even though we were hungry we were too exhausted to even eat at this point (a fact punctuated by Richy's inability to finish even a small plate of Thai fried rice despite his typical ravenous appetite).

After wandering Haad Rin with our backpacks stopping in at some travel agencies, and asking around, we still couldn't find an open place. Finally we found a guy who said he knew a guy who had a room for 1500 baht for a night (about $45). This was way over our price range (of about 300-600 baht/night - about $10-15), but we were exhausted enough to follow him. Of course when we got to the place the owner said, "No, no, no, one night? 2000 baht." And he could tell by the looks on our faces that we were not happy but also too tired to barter. At least the room was quite nice, with air con, hot water and all, so it was at least a good place for us to recharge. The next morning we set out calling all over the island to find the ideal place to stay, and after a few phone calls and a harrowing truck taxi ride over some pretty rough jungle roads, we found it, a charming private bungalow with a view (partially obscured, but pleasant) and for only 600 baht a night.

I should mention that the reason why we were having such a hard time finding a place to stay had to do with a little Ko Phan Ngyan tradition. Every full moon, the beach at Haad Rin throws a huge all night party, fueled by sex, drugs, alcohol, fire spinning, and apparently lots of German frat boys. Back in the 80's it started as a hippy birthday party, but apparently people had so much fun it became a tradition, growing every year along with the island's infrastructure, now taking on proportions that rival spring break at Cancun or Fort Lauderdale. We weren't really sure if we were going to go check it out or not, I'd heard that it could be pretty disgusting to watch, but we met some Italians at our bungalows that encouraged us to go. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) the decision was taken away from us, as the party was canceled at the last minute due to a little known rule (at least by foreigners) that in Thailand, alcohol cannot be sold on election days. This provincial election happened to coincide with this particular full moon.

So we spent four days lounging on a secluded beach called Than Sadet, at some bungalows collectively called Mai Pen Rai (Thai for "no problem"). We got a little tan, bought a tie-dye hammock and some candles, read a few books, ate delicious Thai food, and played in the surf. We even tried to make friends with a giant spider in the bathroom. It was totally worth all the trouble of getting there. And the coconut shakes were so delicious and fresh, despite their mild laxative properties!

Unfortunately we couldn't stay on the beach forever (or maybe we could have if we were willing to make a few changes to our long-term life goals). I was even getting a little bored on the last day, in-between books and laid up from playing in the surf when a big wave scraped my leg across the gritty area of sand and left me without any skin on my knee. So we made plans to leave the island, hopped aboard the most crowded truck taxi I could imagine (finally fitting 15 people into a modified, small, 1995 Mazda pick-up) and made the mistake of booking our trip north with a tiny Thai travel agency. It was however, better than the 3rd class trip on the way down. The highlight was getting dropped off in the middle of a Bangkok highway interchange at 3am to be fed to a pack of crooked cab drivers, most of whom were unwilling to turn on their meters. Luckily we found the only honest one who used a meter and took us to the Northern Bus Terminal. It was 4:30 am by this time and we were faced with a choice: wait until 10:30 to take a bus to Sukothai, or wait 30 minutes to take a bus to Chiang Mai. We chose Chiang Mai.


Phase 3: The Lovely Chiang Mai


We arrived at Chiang Mai on Sunday in the late afternoon and quickly found a pleasant guest house to stay at within the old city wall. Richy knew of a Sunday market he visited when he was here the first time, so we wandered around the old city until we found it. Richy was surprised to see that it had grown a lot since he was there last, but it could also have been the difference in tourist season. I was surprised by how much the community feel of the event reminded me of a typical spring Artswalk Festival in Olympia. There were lots of artists, musicians, food vendors, and a good mix of tourists as well as Thais enjoying themselves. We found ourselves some delicious mangoes and sticky rice and sat down to wonder where all the English-speaking Western kids had come from and why they were walking around all alone. We also pondered the popularity of all-blind music groups playing for change - a government program perhaps? We wandered back to our guest house street and decided to unwind by taking in some beer and snacks in a nearby Kiwi-owned place. About halfway through our large bottles of Beer Chang, a somewhat official-looking man in a suedo-uniform (blue polo shirt and black pants) and carrying a gun, walked in. We thought nothing of it until the staff of the restaurant ran out with big black coffee mugs and started pouring all our beer into them. They were getting rid of all easily seen alcohol consumption evidence... why? Election day. Different province, different election day, same no-alcohol sale rule. Not that that really stopped anyone from drinking. We heard the official-looking guy telling some guys on his way out, "Order a mixed drink, then it just looks like you're drinking juice."

The next day, we decided to rent a motor scooter to go see the Doi Sutep temple on top of a mountain outside of Chiang Mai. I was a little scared, because Richy had never driven a motor scooter before (neither have I) and with Thai drivers being crazier than Korean drivers, anything could happen. But I reassured myself with my second calming mantra of the trip: nothing worth doing is without risk, nothing worth doing is without risk, nothing worth doing is without risk... The first place we went, across the street from the guest house, was run by a kindly old Thai woman who, once she heard we had never ridden a motor scooter before advised us to take a bus or taxi instead. Not wanting to argue with her, we walked several blocks to another rental place we had seen the day before. We didn't exactly tell the guy it was our first try, and Richy took a test spin around the block before I hopped on the back (yes moms, we wore helmets). The first few turns were a little awkward, and I could tell Richy was a little nervous, but by the time we were heading out of the city toward the mountain, we were both feeling pretty comfortable and enjoying the wind on our faces. It was much easier to ride up the mountain anyway, since there was less traffic and almost no intersections to speak of.

We arrived at the temple, took off our shoes, took lots of pictures of the beautiful scenery, and met our first elephant of the trip. But we weren't ready to head back into town. Instead, we continued up the mountain in search of less touristy sights and a little-visited traditional Hmong village we read about in the guidebook. So we kept going until the road turned into dirt, and the jungle-laden hillside began to feature banana trees and coffee shrubs. We saw maybe six other people on the whole ride. We stopped at a peaceful little coffee plantation and had a cup straight from the source, a very black, bitter yet strangely sweet brew. Then we continued to the village just a short way up the road. When we got there, we were a little uncertain about what to do, since it was basically a bunch of wooden shacks with pigs, chickens, and cute little dogs milling about. We bought some drinking water from a little roadside vendor, then continued down the road until we arrived at the largest building in the village, what appeared to be a school. There were English signs pointing to a toilet and a view point, so we checked it out. There was a beautiful sweeping view of the valley and all of Chiang Mai. Back at the scooter, we were met with a Thai man who seemed very happy to see us. He was the English teacher at the school and began giving us a tour, introducing us to students and explaining the history of the place. He offered us more coffee, followed by tea, and took us to his English classroom. The students were all Hmong, most of the teachers Thai (all but one commuting daily from Chiang Mai), the school beginning 35 years ago with a grant from a group of people in India. The school is government funded now, but still has trouble with financing as evidenced from the homemade shampoo and dish soap that the students make to get money for school books and such. We bought two bottles of shampoo (apparently it will keep our hair from turning gray and falling out), and bid the students farewell. Upon leaving Richy and I were thinking: now that's the kind of school I would like to teach in! Of course, a school like that could only hire volunteers, so we'll have to wait until we have some savings to volunteer in any village schools in Southeast Asia...

Arriving back in Chiang Mai, we filled up the gas tank, shocked to find that although we had been driving all day we used less than a gallon of gas (our next vehicle just might have to be a motor scooter). We returned the scooter just 5 minutes before the deadline, and decided to take in a Muay Thai fight for the evening. We were looking forward to a real Thai cultural experience, but unfortunately the only Thais in the arena were either serving drinks or trying to kick each other in the face. Still, it was pretty interesting to watch, and I wondered why we still allow two people to be put in a cage to beat the shit out of each other, but it's illegal to make animals do it. It started with the "Super Kid Fight" between two 66 pound boys who looked like they should still be in Elementaty school, moving up to the "Super Lady Fights" and finally the headliner fight, which actually drew a considerable amount of blood from the forehead of one of the fighters. After the fight, the lights were turned down and all of the ladyboy (transvestite) bartenders disappeared into dressing rooms, only to reappear moments later in the ring, dressed up like Vegas showgirls, dancing and lip syncing to "Dancing Queen" and "I will Survive." Honestly, I enjoyed the drag show much more than the fight.

And here are some videos to illustrate the Muay Thai and drag show:






Phase 4: Amazing Ruins at Sukothai

The next day, we hopped back on a bus heading southward toward Sukothai, hoping to catch some glimpses of what Thailand was like 700 or so years ago. We found another nice guest house with bungalows in back, nestled in garden of beautiful tropical plants and crawling with adorable geckos. This was our cheapest room yet for only 300 baht ($10) for the two of us, and even including a private bathroom with hot water (what a deal!). As usual, we spent the first evening wandering around on foot, and ate dinner at a nearby night market (with delicious banana roti pancakes, and not so delicious ants crawling all over the produce in the kitchens).

Since we deciding that our favorite mode of travel is now via motor scooter, and considering that the Sukothai Historical Park was a thirty minute ride outside the city, we rented yet another motorbike for a day of sight seeing. We started at the main ruins, Richy taking photos, and me trying to effectively sketch the perfectly symmetrical Buddha faces and towering chedis (conical monuments for housing relics). Since we had the scooter, we were able to also see a lot of the less-trafficked ruins outside of the historical park, including some that seemed nearly forgotten (conjuring childhood fantasies of Indiana Jones) and one perched on a 200 meter hill looking down over Sukothai. We also visited a museum, where I learned the symbolism of some of the typical Thai buddha poses: seated, one hand on lap, one raised for subduing the Mara; standing, one hand raised for imparting fearlessness; and the innovative "walking Buddha" which represents Buddha after enlightenment spreading the word. After returning to the main park for sunset, witnessing some people chanting and worshiping near one of the ponds, and trying to get some last photos in the dusk, we headed back to the guest house for our last restful night in Thailand.

The next day we took the 7 hour bus back to Bangkok, and even though we arrived 5 hours before our flight was departing, we couldn't really think of anything to do but go to the airport and try to get checked in early. Unfortunately our plan was thwarted by a Korean golf tour group, who had already camped out at the check in desk and who had apparently booked nearly the whole plane. Even 5 hours early, we were at the end of the line. Oh well. Back to life in Korea.

One thing that I found positively relieving about being back in Korea: even with our touristy backpacks on, no one tried to sell us any rides or hassled us at the airport. We rode the subway back to the apartment in relative anonymity. And the cold weather wasn't as much of a shock as I expected, it seems like spring is well on its way (thank goodness). Now we can look forward to celebrating Richy's birthday and to a possible trip to Japan over my 3 day birthday weekend in May (which is apparently, also Buddha's birthday - coincidence?).

by Katie