Thailand
I've heard stories about Bangkok's traffic and have even seen pictures...but it's really like that in real life! It's awful! What we thought was going to be a short way to our hotel tuned out to be a very, very long walk. And when asking for directions, we've never encountered such unhelpful Asians before. "The Land of Smiles" was quickly becoming a flat-out lie to us. I was slipping because of the slick sidewalks, light rain, and serious lack of tread on my slippers (flip-flops) that were so thin at this point that they were transparent at the heel. So, needless to say, I wasn't in a great mood as we attempted to find our hotel. By the time we checked in the light rain had become a downpour so we were completely soaked and I was grateful that I changed the way I packed our bags with dirty clothes and the plastic toiletry bag on the top so most of our stuff that was important and clean was still dry (lesson learned from experiencing Cambodia's rain storm).
Where we were staying had so little English around that it made finding food difficult. We hadn't yet learned the phrase "not spicy" in Thai yet, so Jordan was a bit nervous if he could find anything to eat at all. Seeing as how we were really hungry and the rain wasn't letting up any time soon, we trudged back out to a street that caught our attention on our aggravating walk earlier. I wasn't really feeling like eating much of what I saw so I bought a bunch of bananas, but Jordan found a rice dog (similar to a hot dog, but made from rice...which I'm sure you can figure out by what I called it). We stopped at a 7 on the way back so I could get instant ramen and drinks for the two of us. I don't mind spicy food at all, but there's a limit to the amount of spice I enjoy since I still like to taste what I'm eating. That being said, I chose one that didn't have the pepper symbol on the packaging to be on the safe side. After purchasing said ramen, I went to get the hot water for it and began pouring in the seasoning. Noticing that the contents were mostly red, I thought, "Well, I can probably handle it," and was going to leave it as is, but Jordan said to take some of it out. Jordan's stubborness won over mine and I took out about half. He was so right. I was about to sip and slurp a bowl of liquid death. I had to eat a banana after every two or three bites to recover.
We took the boat on the river into the city instead of braving Bangkok traffic in a cab and decided to see as many temples as possible. Apparently we arrived during the time where the government was sponsoring tours around the city via tuk-tuk for only 20 baht, provided we make one mandatory stop at a place called Thai Factory. We thought that was a pretty good idea, so we hopped into one. I was excited at the prospect of having some tailored clothes for cheap, so I talked Jordan into thinking it was a good idea as well. Off we went to temple number one. A huge, 25 meter tall Buddha was there. There were smaller Buddhas around the courtyard, and there were colorful lanterns overhead to decorate the open space. Super impressive.
Next, we saw the reclining Buddha. The caretaker's English was really good so we asked him how to say common greetings as well as "little spicy" and "no spicy" so as not to kill Jordan with culinary carnage. He also explained that for only five minutes of looking while in Thai Factory, the tuk-tuk drivers get a 5L fuel voucher, so both of us get something good out of the stop. Along with the reasoning behind the stop as explained by the caretaker, both Jordan and I felt even better about a slight detour to Thai Factory. Our apprehension subsided. Yeah...not so smart. When we stopped at Thai Factory, I was kind of surprised that it was a really small place that looked like any ordinary tailor's shop. I was expecting a factory of some kind where you could pick and choose among many tailors (or ignore them altogether), which styles of clothes, either western or eastern, that you wanted. Not so. We spent way too much time there looking at material and patterns only to realize at the very end that each item was going to cost very close to what you would pay an American tailor. Even after talking the price down considerably, it was still going to cost upwards of $58-65USD per piece! We finally left, me apologizing profusely to Jordan for having wasted so much time, and we headed to temple number two. We were duped into thinking it was just one mandatory tailor stop...we tried talking our driver out of stopping anywhere else, but he repeated the same thing over and over, "No buy, just looking looking! We go."
We go, alright... We stopped at a temple where they collected Buddhas from different styles, places, and eras. After taking our shoes off and wandering around a bit, we decided to head out. The sky was getting grayer and grayer, and the time later and later, so we tried to hurry our driver along to the next temple. Well, apparently he wasn't in the mood to listen to us and definitely in the mood to use less English as well as driving to another tailor shop. Okay...homie don't play dat. Once we got to the next shop we saw other tuk-tuks heavy laden with sadly suckered whiteys. We hopped out and I walked down the street to hail a cab and Jordan gave our driver 20 baht, despite his obvious irritation, and hurried to catch up with me. Our cab driver spoke great English and took us exactly where we wanted to go, no questions asked. He made great conversation with us too. He also informed us that we probably wouldn't make it in time to see any more temples for the day since they were all closing at 5pm. So we rushed over and they told us we couldn't enter for two reasons: 1) I wasn't wearing long pants, and 2) it was closed...10 minutes ago. Nice. With only one day in Bangkok, we were glad that it was pretty much over and annoyed that we didn't get to see more. We'll skip Bangkok the next time we're in SE Asia...well, I'd go for the sweet-glazed pork and sticky rice we ate after missing the visit to the last temple. It was heaven on a styrofoam vessel.
Trying to take the right bus to where we were going was a nightmare. It was inconvenient, signs were inaccurate, people were unfriendly, and generally clueless about how to get anywhere even when they were friendly. So we finally hailed a cab after two hours of attempting public transit. Once home we went back to the street from the night before where I got more heaven bananas and Jordan his rice dog. We also used the internet to print out our boarding passes for the next morning's flight to Chiang Mai.
With another pissy dude to drive us to the train station and awful, horrible traffic, we made it to the airport where we left for the best part of our Thailand trip. We ate and wandered and enjoyed our evening. A crepe cart, a huge night market, and finding a great deal for a rafting and elephant ride trip made the day complete, so we called it a night and went back to our hotel for a shower and some sleep.
Chiang Mai is full of super nice people and the tourists don't even piss me off, so that's a huge plus already. Our elephant ride and rafting trip was amazing! The elephants were definitely not starved or beaten, in fact, when they wanted a snack, they got one and the men with reeds to keep them on the trail just stood there until they got their eat on and needed to catch up to the others before whacking their thick hide on their ankles. I got to ride on the neck, so I was immensely pleased...incredibly happy...thrilled...whatever extreme word combination you can think of to describe sheer joy and excitement. The rafting part was awesome too. Our raft leader was fun and we got along really well, so when it was time to swim and I was hesitant because I was wearing contacts, he pulled me in by the life jacket to have a swim with him. Needless to say, we were happy and tired by the time it was over. I want to do it again...right now. Well, maybe not right now, being 8 months pregnant and all, but if I weren't currently pregnant, I would want to do it again um, yeah, right now. When we got back to town we decided to hit up the night market again to narrow down what we wanted and where we could get the best starting price before haggling down further. I had a list of things I wanted that I made before we started the trip so Jordan could be prepared for what I wanted, and so I could keep myself under control. Pleased with our finds of a table runner, a square plate/bowl, baby shoes, and coin purses, we went back to our hotel and packed up for our flight to Phuket.
Okay, let me sum up Phuket for you. Lots of drunk foreigners, stunningly beautiful sunsets, more he-shes than I've ever seen in one place, expensive food, rubbish on the street and beach and in the ocean. Yep, that's pretty much it. We didn't go to any of the outer islands, which I'd do if we ever decide to head out that way again, but we probably won't for quite some time...like maybe ever, but you never know what the future holds. We found a cute Chinese couple that had great noodles at a cart, so we ate their most nights. And we swam in the hotel's pool aaaaallllllllllll the time. It was a really great pool. Almost like being in Bali again where we swam every morning, afternoon, and night in our pool. We also watched a lot of Asian MTV. Oh, and after 5 weeks, I finally took out my cornrows. They lasted as long as they could and my scalp could take no more. They were becoming loose and I had this unbearable scalp itch going on that it was starting to become super unpleasant. So out they came! I left the crazy fro for a day and a half before we got to our Tune hotel in KL on our way to the Philippines...it took 4 washes to get it back to normal and a lot conditioner. Enjoy the final pictures before reading part 6 to come soon...
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