As we were landing on our 6 hour flight from Seoul to Bangkok, I was, in truth, a little disappointed that Bangkok looked like any other city from up in the sky. I guess, since I knew that Thailand is so vastly different from both the USA and South Korea, I expected it to look different even from above. The unique aspects of Thailand were made immediately and visibly apparent on our taxi ride to our hostel that night and even more so the next day when we went sight seeing around Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok at around 9:30pm. Thailand is two hours behind Korea, so we were exactly 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard for the two weeks. One thing I didn't expect to be different between Thailand and Korea was the bowing style. In Korea you bow with your arms at your side, but in Thailand they bow their heads slightly with their hands in prayer position up by their mouths. We only had one large suitcase between the two of us, so it wasn't too much stuff, but we didn't feel like figuring out how to take the subway to the hostel, so we grabbed a taxi.We didn't know if Thailand was a tipping culture or not (we later asked the woman at the train station tour office, and she didn't seem to think it was necessary unless we thought the person did a good job), so we didn't end up tipping him. We also didn't really want to give him a tip because the entire ride there, the car kept stalling! I didn't really notice at first, but then he kept drawing attention to it and talking to us about it (like we knew how to fix the problem!). This was one of the tamest experiences we had driving in Thailand too! They are more crazy than in Korea. Scooters and tuk tuks are really common, and they will drive on the other side of the road if no one is coming. They drive so freaking fast, and it left me to wonder what their car accident rate is. Yikes! Mom you would hate this: I repeatedly saw people on scooters with absolutely no helmet. Some of the people with scooters are like taxi-scooters, and they typically give a helmet to the person they are driving. But there were tons of people with no helmets on, driving like crazy people. They even had small children on the scooters with no helmet! That's so dangerous! Twice, I saw a family of four (mother, father, and two young children) all on one scooter! It was actually the most dangerous driving place I've ever been. We got to the hostel safely though and got our key to our room. I booked entirely private rooms with ensuite bathrooms for us for this trip because the prices of things were so inexpensive, and it was really nice not to have to share in a dorm style, like at other hostels. Our room at our hostel in Bangkok was HUGE and very modern and nice looking! While it is close to the subway station, the only downside is that it is kind of far away from any of the tourist attractions and the center of Bangkok. I guess that might have been a good thing in this case due to the protests happening in Bangkok during our trip and still now. We got a nice night sleep, but didn't want to wake up too late because we had a big day of sight-seeing planned.
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| The golden Buddha |
The hostel offered free breakfast, which was nice, but I wish it had been a bit more substantial as it was primarily just toast and bananas. The manager there gave us a map with instructions on how to get places, and our first stop was to the train station, Hua Lamphong, to get train tickets to Chiang Mai on the overnight train. Unfortunately, when we got there, all the tickets were sold out. What happens is private companies buy out all the tickets so that you have to get it from them at, probably, a more expensive price. It's really annoying. I had heard about this, so Gianni and I tried our hand at getting tickets from one of the private companies in the train station to no avail. I didn't realize that they tell you in order to buy a train ticket (because they know it's so popular), you have to buy either a hotel stay or a tour package, and we already had both booked for Chiang Mai. We later found out that our friends pushed a company into letting them just buy train tickets, but I didn't know that was possible. In the end, we ended up with overnight bus tickets that were more expensive than train tickets but less than flights. They also took about 4 hours less time than taking the train, so that's a plus. I'm still a little disappointed that I could have pushed harder to get train tickets because I really wanted the experience of taking the overnight train, but maybe I'll just have to try it in another country. In addition to bus tickets, the company also sold tickets to Calypso, a cabaret, drag performance in Thailand, so we reserved tickets for that night as well. After settling the bus tickets, we started out towards China Town and stopped at one of the temples on my list, Wat (meaning temple in Thai) Traimit or Golden Buddha Temple. You have to pay to get tickets for the temples, and some of the temples had more strict dress codes than others. In most cases, women have to wear a cover up (which you can either rent or they have for free at every temple) if they are not wearing at least capris. Shorts are not acceptable, but Gianni got in to some temples wearing his longer shorts. I think the standards are a bit different for men and women. Sleeveless shirts are never allowed though. I should also mention here that at temples, whenever you enter a building with a Buddha statue in it, you have to take your shoes off out of respect, so we had our shoes off a lot during this trip. We found out later that you are also not supposed to point your feet at Buddha; you should kneel instead. I rented my sarong, and we spent a good deal of time at the temple. This one was only one building, and each floor of the temple had something for us to see. It's called the Golden Buddha temple because on the top floor is the largest solid gold Buddha in the world. The golden Buddha has an interesting story. It was supposed to have been made in the 13th or 14th century but covered in plaster for most of it's history to keep it protected from theft. In 1955, the statue was being moved to a new location within the temple, and during it's lift up to the pedestal, the ropes broke and the Buddha statue fell. Some of the plaster chipped off, and it was only then that anyone knew the statue was actually gold! It was a pretty amazing story. On the other floors of the temple were two exhibits. One was about the restoration of the Golden Buddha, and the other was about China Town in Bangkok. I found it pretty interesting how rich the history between Thailand and China has been. There are a lot of Chinese residents in Thailand, and China was one of the oldest, and probably the most important, trading partner Thailand had. Thailand began to develop more trade with the West after the invention of the steamships decreased travel time and made international cargo and passenger transport more efficient. Trading with the West brought Thailand great economic growth. The steamships also brought an influx of Chinese immigrants looking for work. After taking a look around the temple, we went off to try to find the main road of China Town, Yaowarat Road. Yaowarat Road was built in 1892 in order to improve conditions for the many Chinese immigrants in that area. In walking there, we stopped to take a look at another beautiful Buddhist monument. As I pulled out my map to find out where to go from there, a man started asking us where we were from and directing us about where to go and what to see. It all seemed very nice. He told us not to bother seeing China Town until around dinner time because that's when the food market really starts. Instead, he suggested we take a tuk tuk to a boat pier and take a boat ride along the canal. He called over the closest tuk tuk and directed it for us. By the time we realized what was going on, we were at the boat pier with no clue where we were. At that point, we had to take the boat ride, which was 1,700 baht for the two of us (around $50, I think). I had wanted to go around on the canal anyway, and the boat ride was okay, so I'm not too upset about this happening to us. The canal in Bangkok is called "the Venice of the East," by the way. I think that's hilarious. We saw some houses along the river that were basically just shacks that we both couldn't believe were still standing but some still had
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| This is what many of the houses on the canal look like |
satellite dishes for TV coming off of them. It was really an eye-opening experience to see that level of poverty in person. We also saw some little boys swimming and playing in the canal, which I would never be caught dead doing because the water was so dirty. Before turning back around to the main part of the river, a main in a boat came up to us and was pushing and pushing his souvenirs and drinks on us. It was really annoying. How many times can a person say, "NO!" We got to see some of the famous sites along the river, and the hour-long boat ride ended with our driver dropping us near those sites. Get this: the boat dropped us off at a pier that cost 20 baht to drop at! Insane! We had already paid for the ride, and then we had to pay the pier lady 20 more baht to use her pier! 20 baht isn't a lot of money, but still: what a racket! We stopped to get our first Thai meal because we were starving. I think we stopped at a restaurant/B and B. It was nice. I got some real pad thai and thai ice tea! It was pretty delicious, and I am happy to say thai food at the Amarin (my favorite thai place back home) is actually very authentic. It tasted just like I remember it, but it had been so long since I had thai food. I haven't eaten it in Korea at all. After lunch, we found Wat Pho, another very famous temple. As we were looking for the entrance, another man stopped us to ask us where we were going and helped us out. He told us the temple doesn't open until 4:30pm, so we should stop at a few other locations and come back to this one. He also said the Grand Palace, which is where we were going to go after, was closed for the day. In addition to two temples, which I wanted to
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| The black Buddha may or may not be inside the gold one....scam |
stop at anyway, he told us about an "expo" that sells souvenirs, custom-tailored suits, and jewelry. He called us over a tuk tuk to take us to all these places for only 100 baht, which is really inexpensive for what we were getting. We tried to ask the tuk tuk driver not to take us to the expo, but he tried to explain to us that he had to. Gianni thinks the expo place or the government must pay him to take people there. We went along anyway, and our first stop was Wat Suthat. It was a small but beautiful temple where the walls were covered with really amazing pictures from Buddha's life. It is also called the Black Buddha temple which confused us because the Buddha inside it is not black but golden, like most of the other Buddhas we came across. Someone explained to us later that the black Buddha is actually inside the golden one, so you can't see
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| The view from the Golden Mount |
it. I'm fairly certain this was a scam and there's no Black Buddha at all. Whatever. It was a really pretty temple anyway. Next, we went to Wat Saket or the Golden Mount. It's a really beautiful temple built into a hill. To get up, you have to walk up a staircase with all kinds of plants and nature around it, so it's like you're walking through a jungle. At the top is a beautiful view of the city with a combination of modern buildings, shack-looking houses, and temples poking up. After giving us a chance to check out the view there, the taxi driver took us to the expo. We went in fully expecting to keep our guards up and not buy anything, and that happened for the most part. Gianni can never find suit jackets that fit him--never! They never look right on his shoulders and custom tailoring is so expensive at home. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get him a jacket custom made to fit him. We spent around $160 to get him a black sports coat and also a blue, cotton short sleeve shirt for the summer in Daegu since he doesn't have a whole lot in the way of short sleeve shirts either. With the hope that we weren't getting scammed out of our money and an appointment to go back and try on the jacket after our stint in Chiang Mai, we left with the taxi driver to head back to Wat Pho.
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| The massive reclining Budda at Wat Pho |
All in all, it was a nice tuk tuk ride around, and I'm glad we did it. Turns out, Wat Pho was actually open, so we were really confused by the guy telling us it opened at 4:30pm. Anyway, we went inside, and it was probably the most beautiful temple we went to in
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| Wat Pho Temple and it's amazing stupas |
Thailand during our trip. We both loved it. All over this and all the other temples are signs that say "beware of pick pockets," so I had my guard up. The first magnificent sight we saw completely unexpectedly was the statue of the reclining Buddha. It was massive! It took up the entire building, and you couldn't see the whole thing at once unless you stood by it's feet. Totally impressive! The temple also had a lot of really ornately decorated stupas. It seemed each one had a slightly different picture or color, but I think they were all marble-tiled. It was amazing. My descriptions can't do it justice. You have to look at the pictures. I should also mention that at practically every temple, and all over the street really, there were stray dogs. Some seemed to be well-taken care of and some even had collars, so maybe owners just let their dogs roam a lot more there. I felt really bad for the ones that didn't seem well taken care of though. It was kind of hard to see at times, actually. Poor babies. At least the ones at the temples were cared for. Wat Pho seemed to have a lot more stray cats, but I think we saw more stray dogs than cats, in general. We were there until it started to get dark, and we figured we better start making our way to the place where the cabaret show was going to be. We walked outside the temple and right away there are taxi drivers and tuk tuk drivers waiting to take you where you need to go. We were going to take it back to the train station and then get the subway/ferry from there to where we needed to go, but the tuk tuk driver kept asking where we were actually going. He knew we must be trying to take public transportation if we were going back to the train station, and he wanted to get more money to take us to our final destination. He did end up taking us to Asiatique, the place where the cabaret show was, for what we felt was a reasonable price. Asiatique is this upscale outdoor market. It's basically a shopping mall outside. They had a lot of
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| The London Eye |
upscale souvenirs as well as restaurants. They even had a "London Eye of Asiatique," but Gianni and I didn't have the money to ride it. We got some dinner at a place that had live music happening directly behind Gianni's head. The guy was singing English classic rock songs mostly, and some of his mispronunciations were hilarious, but he was pretty good. He also had a really long thumb nail for playing. It looked a little freaky. Now might be a good time to mention that in Thailand "Ladyboys" or "kathoey" are very common. These are men who dress and act like women. In some cases I believe they are just cross-dressers, but in other cases they are actually transgender. I'm not sure why this is such a common occurrence in Thailand. I read that basically this is accepted culturally, so maybe that is why they are so open about it, but I still think homosexuality is a taboo subject. Another reason might be that they can make money doing it. Prostitution
is a huge industry in Thailand, and there are ladyboy prostitutes. The ones in
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| Calypso Cabaret Dancers |
the cabaret shows definitely make money too. There are a few really famous cabaret shows, and tourists are interested in seeing what the deal is with these people. We got a free drink with our show ticket, and I had my first gin and tonic, which was really delicious. The performers did all different kinds of dances and lip synced to the songs. They did KPop and the Korean traditional song, Arirang, which you can see in my video from Thailand. I found the cultural mixing there interesting, and Thai people really do like Kpop I guess. They don't really have a tropical culture in the same way that South and Central America do. The performers did renditions of songs in Spanish, like "Copa Cabana," I think because it's what tourists expect to see when they go to a place in a warm climate. It was interesting to me what things they chose to copy. It was a pretty fun show, and let me tell you: some of those women you could not tell had been guys. We saw them up close after the show (when they were trying to get you to pay for pictures with them), and they had had some good plastic surgery. maybe that's another part of it: the accessibility to plastic surgery allows them to more easily change their gender. I'm not sure why there seems to be a high percentage of men who want to be female in the first place though. Also, I'm not sure if some of them may have been forced to get plastic surgery or not. There was a book I kept seeing around that I didn't buy but I want to read with personal stories of these ladyboys. It's a subject I want to delve further into. We got a taxi (unmetered) back to Hua Lamphong, and I tried to haggle over the price since I knew the tuk tuk we had taken there traveled further than it would take to get to Hua Lamphong from there, but in the end, he wouldn't cut me a deal. Whatever. We went to the train station and hopped on the subway back to our hostel. When we got to the train station, it was like the whole place had changed and turned in to a camp for the homeless. There were mats and tents set up all over the place and people were just sleeping everywhere outside the building. It was the most homeless people I've ever seen in once place. Really sad to see. On the train ride back to the hostel, we ended up in a car full of protesters! They were all wearing things with the Thai flag on them and stuff. I'm not sure if it's increased security from the protests, but there are security checks as you enter the subway. They look in your bag and stuff to make sure you aren't bringing bombs or weapons onto the metro. They didn't care at all about us because we're tourists, but I think they would check the protesters more intensively. I've never been to a city with security checking bags and metal detectors at subway stations before. A little bit of back story: they feel that the prime minister is really the puppet for her brother who was exiled from Thailand and that he is really ruling through her. They want to get rid of her, but they don't agree with holding a new election (which the prime minister agreed to and was scheduled for February 2nd) because they knew that the current prime minister will just win again. It is really only people in Bangkok protesting. Thailand is a little kind the UK in that they have a prime minister and a king. They all LOVE the king: no joke. They have huge pictures of him all over Thailand basically everywhere you look. We got back to the hostel and crashed after a long day out in the Bangkok.
The next day was another Bangkok day, but we had to go back to the train station to catch our overnight bus to Chiang Mai as well. We packed a backpack with only the things we needed for two days in Chiang Mai and were able to store the rest of our luggage at the hostel in Bangkok. We did the same when we went to Phuket. I'm not sure always traveling back to Bangkok was the most economical way to do it, but it was nice to have a base camp and not have to pull around our luggage all the time. We decided to make it kind of a low-key day and just go to the Chatuchak weekend market, which the hostel manager said is the largest open-air market in Asia. We found out that it was
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| Chatuchak Weekend Market |
only a few subway stops away from our hostel, so not very far at all. It was a very large, very touristy market. We spent probably three hours or so there, browsing and buying souvenirs for us and other people and eating street food. Everything is really cheap, but you honestly do have to haggle for everything! Gianni let me do it because he was too nervous to haggle, and I got really good by the end of the trip. We got some nice souvenirs for cheap. The market seemed like it was never going to end. For lunch, we sat down at one of the street stalls and got noddle soups and spring rolls. For dessert, I got coconut ice cream in a coconut dish and some mango sticky rice. Mango sticky rice is one of my new favorite things. They made this special kind of rice, which tastes sweet, and they give you mango slices and sometimes coconut milk or carnation canned milk with it. It's delicious! They are a country obsessed with carnation milk by the walk. They use to make all kinds of drinks and foods and stuff. Kind of makes me wonder how many cans carnation sells there per year. The market was really nice, but it was getting way hot, and we still had a lot of time before our bus. We decided to go back to the hostel and relax there until it was time to go. The hostel gives you the option of ordering food from a restaurant in to the hostel, which is nice. We ordered some food in for dinner and used the internet a bit (and I looked at my maps and planned what to do for the next time we came to Bangkok) before heading out to the train station. We met at the travel office, and they gave us a free shuttle ride to the place where we would meet the bus. We ended up getting seats right at the front of the bus, and it was a double-decker, so there was plenty of leg room. For a 10 hour overnight bus ride, it seemed to go pretty fast. I think we both got some decent shut eye in. They also give you a few snacks on the bus. The only annoying thing was that the lights didn't work even if you wanted to read, so Gianni got a bit frustrated with that.
A quick note about scams in Thailand because it took us about the first two days in Bangkok to really understand what the deal was. We probably should have done some more research before we left. My fault. I've already mentioned some, but here goes: 1. normally dressed men on the street will see you trying to figure out where to and offer to help. They'll tell you where you need to go, but then they'll tell you whatever place you're looking for is closed at the moment (we got "closed for a Buddhist holiday" a lot. Also, we got "the Grand Palace is closed" on three separate occasions. We found out from the foreign couple that the Grand Palace is almost NEVER closed!) or some such thing that prevents you from going there (I expect the protests really helped with these scams because they could just say
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| Tuk Tuk in Thailand |
"there's protests there" and people wouldn't want to go where they originally planned). They then give you some alternative plans and tell you to go back to that original place later. Within the alternative plans is, typically, a scammy place where they want you to go and spend money (examples: our boat ride and the Expo). They will call over a tuk tuk (though I expect the tuk tuk drivers are friends with the guys and follow them around) and put you in it and tell the tuk tuk driver where you want to go. They must get some kind of commission for sending people to these places. Rule of thumb: stick to your plans because the place you want to go to is almost never closed. Also, don't take directions from a guy on the street. Do what we did and ask people, especially women (this may not be true, but it seemed like all the scam artists tended to be guys), in shops for help or even other tourists can be very helpful, especially if they've been to Thailand before. 2. You should ONLY take metered taxis. And even when it says "taxi-meter," it doesn't mean they will turn on the meter (as was the case with us in a story you'll read later on). You need to demand and make sure they turn the meter on. Sometimes they will still try to haggle with you, and you basically think to yourself, "oh, that sounds cheap," but really, if they ran the meter, it would be like half the price they ask you for. It's the same with tuk tuks, but with those, you know they never have meters. They are fun to take, but haggle that price as low as you can if you really want to take one. If you do take an unmetered taxi or tuk tuk, make sure to haggle for the lowest price and agree on it BEFORE you go anywhere. 3. The scalping tour companies buy up all the train tickets. As I mentioned, they will try to sell you a tour package or a hotel stay or something in addition to the tickets, which are all you really want. Push them hard to get what you really want and go in to multiple places if necessary. 4. HAGGLE, HAGGLE, HAGGLE! Literally, haggle for everything. The only thing you shouldn't haggle for is probably food at restaurants.
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| Wat Chedi Luang |
We arrived in Chiang Mai at 6am, and got a tuk tuk to our hostel. The only problem was that we arrived an hour before the office was open, so the front gate was locked. Only while sitting there, waiting in the cold for it to be open, did I realize that that information I had on the hostel said to let them know if you were arriving before 7am. Ugh! Dumb mistakes. Eventually, someone came to open the gate, but it took even longer before someone finally came out for us to talk to. We wanted to see if we could check in early, which was, unfortunately, not possible because the place was fully booked. But the woman who runs the hostel was nice enough to let us eat breakfast, change and take showers, and she even loaned me one of her scarves to cover my arms because I was cold. It was a bit chilly in the morning and Chiang Mai is in the northern part of the country. We got our toast breakfast and made a plan about what to do for the rest of the day. The woman told us some sights to go see, so we walked around the city checking it all out. Chiang Mai has an old city (where our hostel was and where we walked around) that is square surrounded by walls and a mote. The Old City is about 1km wide. It was kind of nice to be in a smaller city. The houses seemed to be bigger, and I just got an overall more relaxed vibe from Chiang Mai. We walked around to visit some temples first. There was a really cool one, Wat Chedi Luang, where the main spire was just a ruin. It had elephants all on one tier and a Buddha way up a long set of crumbling stairs, but the majority of the building was a ruin. The temple was built in the late 1300's, and an earthquake in 1545 toppled the spire. It was really tall and amazing to see. We went to a few other recommended temples before heading back to the hostel at around noon when we could actually check in. On the way back, we stopped at a small restaurant on the side of the road. This place had a booth on the street but also a bit of seating under an overhang. Gianni and I got some noodle soup that was pretty decent. When we were checking in, I noticed some pamphlets for Khontoke dinners. Khon dancing is traditional Thai dancing. It usually involves people in masks dancing/acting out a story. I think there are a few different kinds though, and the name might have morphed to just mean traditional Thai folk dancing. We booked ourselves tickets for that night to go to Khontoke dinner or dinner and a Khon dancing. There was also a massage place right across from our hostel, but the hostel owner suggested another spa for us to visit and made us reservations for that afternoon. In this hostel, the ground floor has a the reception area/car garage/kitchen (open floor plan, not really separated), then you have to take your shoes off to go up to your rooms. Our room was nice enough, but not really that modern. It was perfectly fine though. Gianni took a nap for a few hours while I looked over my information to make sure we got everything
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| Our beautiful spa |
done. It was almost time for our massages, and someone from the spa came to pick us up and take us there for free. They have great service at the quality places. The spa was absolutely beautiful. Inside was a pond with a walkway leading to various massage rooms. They gave us some juice and rice cakes before our massage also. We asked to be in the same room, and instead of undressing, like at home, they gave us loosely fitting clothes to put on. The massaged us with these on, which was better because it was much less awkward than massages can be. We also weren't on tables, but instead on mats on the floor. Thai massages are pretty strong as well. They use every part of their bodies to massage you--feet, knees, elbows, they even climb on top of you! I also thought it was interesting that they will try to crack your bones. You are not all that passive in the massage either. These girls stretch your muscles and contort you into various positions while they massage you. It's crazy. It's like no other massage I've ever had. I tried to point out some of these differences to Gianni because it was his first professional massage ever. After the massage, they gave us some nice tea. It was super relaxing and felt amazing. This was a middle of the range priced place, and we paid 450 baht (around $12) per person for an hour long massage. I wish I could always live in a country where massages were that cheap. Amazing! After the massage, the car service drove us back to our hostel, and we spent a few more hours relaxing before the khontoke dinner. Again, the driver picked us up for the show for free. The actually dinner was
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| The long nails dance |
apparently what royalty would eat. It wasn't exactly in courses, but it was a lot of small dishes and things to try. Pretty good. I also got a mai thai cocktail that came served in a pineapple, which was pretty cool. Gianni was happy because it looked like you had to sit on the group, but it turns out that there were holes under the tables for you to put your feet down, making it much more comfortable. While we ate, we watched the khon show. It was kind of a variety show featuring different thai dances. The costumes were really pretty. There was a group of girls who did dances together. For the first dance, they all wore these metal things on their
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| The candle dance |
fingers making them look like they had really long finger nails. There was a guy who did some drum playing and another one who did a cool sword performance. You can see all these acts in the video of Thailand that I made. Before each act, the announcer was giving a little bit of the significance of each, but I, unfortunately, could not hear her because of everyone in the room talking. It was a seriously tourist thing to do, but still pretty fun, I thought. I liked seeming some culture, even if I couldn't hear the meaning. After the show, instead of taking us back to the hostel, we had the driver take us to the night bazaar outside the old city. It was seriously an impressive market. It was mostly souvenir stuff, but like the weekend market in Bangkok, it was sprawling. There was a main street, but there were alleys off of it and underground stores and a
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| The Night Bazaar |
whole food section we didn't really get to because we'd already had dinner. It was really cool and, again, really cheap. I ended up buying some "fisherman pants" that have elastic at the bottom and are kind of like parachute pants. They have this really nice pattern at the top by the waist. They're made of cotton and really comfy. I got another pair in Phuket later that are basically the same thing but lighter and with an elephant pattern all over them. I might get the courage to wear them out in Korea some time, but, for now, they are PJ pants. It was a nice market, and we got a reasonably-priced, open-air bus back. The modes of transportation in Thailand seemed funny. There were tuk tuk, taxis, buses, subways, and these truck-buses where it looks like they built seating in the back of a pickup truck.
We woke up really early the next morning for our tour of Chiang Mai. We went downstairs to meet our friend who we hadn't seen yet but was staying in the same hostel and going on the tour with us. The tour pickup time was 6am. We saw her downstairs, but she decided not to come because otherwise she wouldn't have money for the hostel in her next city, and her credit card wasn't working for her. It was too bad, but we ended up going without her. We had to bring all our stuff on the tour because we were headed back to Bangkok that night on the overnight bus again. I had a mini-fight on the phone with the owner of the tour company. He was trying to increase the price because we ended up being 2 people instead of 3. He said, "well, then I will refuse to let you come on our tour" because I wouldn't pay what was basically a fee because our friend couldn't come. In the end, I reminded him that we agreed on a price in our emails, he checked, and he let us have the tour at the agreed upon price (4000 baht or $121
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| The local market on our tour |
each person). It was probably the most expensive activity we did in Thailand, but it was so worth it. We had an excellent tour guide whose name was Kai. He spoke pretty good English and answered all my annoying questions. Our first stop was a small, fresh food market. The Thai people get up early to go to these things. There, he bought us some rice with custard on top and some fruit for our breakfast to eat at the next location. It was cool to be at a market without tourists. Our next stop was a little bit of a drive outside of Chiang Mai to the place where we would do our elephant trek! Owning and training elephants was passed down generations for our elephant trek manager who we called Bobby. His land was beautiful. We sat on a balcony overlooking this huge open area with elephants walking around, mountains in the background, and a river running through it. It turns out some of our other friends from
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| The beautiful scenery at our elephant camp |
Daegu were also on our same tour just with a different tour guide. I'm not sure if our other friend who couldn't make it told them about it or not, but it was nice to get to hang out with them during the day for a little while. First, we got changed into some loose fitting clothes they provide for us so as not to get our actual clothes all dirty and wet. Then, we ate our breakfast and Bobby went over basic elephant commands in Thai with us. He's quite a character--really funny guy. Then, he walked us around to meet the elephants, including his one male. Bobby made the male toot it's trunk at us, which was cool. We bowed to them and gave commands for them to open their mouths, feeding them bananas. It's so cool how they use their trunks to take bananas from your hand too. They do drip on you a little, but its so worth it to get to see and touch these animals. They were so amazing. After giving them a few treats, he took us over to look at the water buffalo he has before each taking turns getting up on an elephant and walking around on it a bit.
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| This was the highlight of our trip |
Then, we got on the elephants in pairs. I was in the back and Gianni was in the front (it was backwards. I totally should have been in the front because I'm smaller, but he just ended up getting on first.). The trainers helped us walk the elephants up a hillside to an area with a lot of bamboo, from there we were supposed to use our commands and walk around with the elephants. At least that's what we thought we were supposed to do. Turns out the elephants don't give a shit what you have to say to them. They only listen to the trainers, and the trainers didn't really care if the elephants were moving or not. Either way, it was amazing to be up that high on an elephant. They all kept eating bamboo the whole time, intermittently putting their trunks up to ask for a banana. It was hilarious and adorable. If you didn't have any more bananas or wouldn't give them out, they started breathing more heavily on you with their trunks. Too cute! When we'd been up there for enough time, the trainers came out and helped lead the elephants down the hill again, which was terrifying because you felt like you were going to fall off the elephant. They do give you a rope to hold on to, but it hurts your hands because it's wrapped tightly around the elephant. It really hurts your legs trying to hold on to the back of the elephant because that's where it starts to get fatter. We walked the elephants down to the river to bath them. We were given a brush and a pan to splash water
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| Getting sprayed! |
on to them. The trainers made the elephants get down, and we just had to hop off them into the water. It was really cold at first too! It was really fun, but I'm not sure how good a job we actually did. While we were bathing them, Bobby came over on his male elephant and started making his spray water out of it's trunk at us! I know I'm saying a lot of stuff was cool, but it really was. Being able to see, and furthermore to touch, an animal you've only ever seen on TV or in books was an amazingly awesome feeling. After a bit of water fun, we hopped back up on the elephants (this time with me in the front) and walked them back to their posts. Elephants' heads have this hair on them that is really coarse and almost prickly. It's not the soft hair you might think or that we have on our heads. Their skin is so rough and tough that it feels like calluses all
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| Beautiful orchids |
over. Before heading out to our next place, we had a few more snacks. They have these really delicious rice cakes all over Thailand with some kind of sweet sauce sprinkled on them. Our next stop was pretty close by, an orchid farm. I don't pretend to be a horticulturist, but these flowers were very beautiful. They had all different colors, and the petals had all different patterns on them. At the same place, there was also a butterfly enclosure. At their gift store, they actually made jewelry using the real flowers. They put something on them to make them shiny and protected forever. After spending a bit of time there, we headed to the Tiger Kingdom, a tiger enclosure that lets you go in to the cages and touch and take pictures with the tigers! We bought our tickets before lunch because the line to get in to pet the tiger is really long. Buying the tickets reserves a place for you in line, and you have to wait for your number to be called. The baby tigers cost more to take pictures with because the little ones will actually sort of play with you or jump on you and stuff. We opted to go the cheap option and pose with some of the biggest tigers. In the enclosure you
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| Gianni and I with a majestic tiger |
can go see the baby tigers that are just a few months old, and they also had a pretty cool white tiger. When it was our turn to go in, you basically stay in there long enough for the trainers to get you a good picture. We laid on the tiger a bit, held its tail, and got a picture with it looking at the camera. You think their tails wouldn't be very heavy, but they are! You can feel the power in these animals even by just holding their tails. At one point I was posing with our tiger and another one came over to chill with our guy. The trainers try to keep this from happening because it can be dangerous--they might get into a fight while people are in there or something. As they were trying to separate them, we got a cool picture of one of them growling. You are not allowed to touch the tiger's face or make sudden movements when you're in there, and the tigers seems
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| Tiger roaring |
pretty subdued. They obviously deal with this all the time. Neat experience anyway. Also something I want to mention here: while we were at the Tiger Kingdom, there was a middle-aged dude walking around holding the hands of two young Thai women. They were clearly prostitutes. This is something you see a lot. Middle aged men with Thai women out on what seems like dates. I think as part of their arrangement, they must have to take the girls out also. It's like getting the girlfriend experience. Prostitution is a huge thing in Thailand. We didn't experience too much of it because we were a couple traveling together, but men traveling alone or with groups are, apparently, propositioned all the time. Our last stop on the tour was a temple called Doi Suthep. It's a really famous temple outside Chiang Mai that is built
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| Doi Suthep Temple |
on a hill, so it gives you some great views over the city. Kai told us the temple was built in 1385 but the windy road up to it was only built in 1955. Before that, people used to take elephants up to the top. The road reminded me of the scary one up to Smuggler's Notch in Vermont. The temple is really ornate and has gold everywhere. The golden pagoda contained Buddha relics. There's also a white elephant monument at the temple. Apparently, there was a king who had some Buddha relics, and he tied them to a white elephant (a very important animal in Thailand). He decided that wherever the elephant stopped, that's where he would
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| The White Elephant Statue |
build a temple for the relics, and the white elephant stopped on the top of Doi Suthep mountain. Kai also taught us a little bit about Buddhism, like the fact that monks are novices for 20 years and they start as young boys. We'd been seeing all these young boys walking around in monk clothes, and it seems like a really hard decision to go into the monks order at that age, but they are allowed to quit I guess. All parents want their sons to be monks, though, because it's a virtuous career field. We learned later that it is tradition for every new king of Thailand to enter the monkhood for a period of time as well. Kai also told us that in Thailand uses the year of Buddha's death as the first year of their calendar, so right now in Thailand it is the year 2557. They actually use that in practice though. Later in the day, we saw an ad on the subway that said a concert or event or something was February 2557. The things you don't know about other countries, geez. I also had no idea they drive on the other side of the road in Thailand either--feel like that was something I should have known before going there but whatever. A little history of Buddhism: Buddha's name before he was a monk was Prince Sitaka. Buddha's mother had a dream of a white elephant holding a lotus flower, and she had a fortune teller interpret the dream. The fortune teller told her that her baby would be either a great ruler or a great religious leader. She died only a week after Buddha was born. Buddha got married and had a son, but then he became a Hindu monk at the age of 24. The fact that Buddha was actually a Hindu monk is the reason there is
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| The stairs down from the temple! |
sometimes a lot of crossover between Hinduism and Buddhism. We even saw some Hindu god statues around the temples and things. I got really interested in the poses of Buddha. There are like 10 postures that you will see Buddha statues in and each of them has a story behind it from the life of Buddha. They are really cool stories. I only know a few, but I like the subduing Mara pose. This is the posture he was sitting in when he was praying and waiting to receive enlightenment. Mara, a demon, came with his armies to kill Buddha, but Buddha called upon Mother Earth to speak to his virtues. Mother Earth told Mara about Buddha's virtues and then used water flowing from her hair to create a flood to drown Mara and his armies. In another position, Abhaya Mudra, Buddha has one hand out. There were two cities that were fighting over the only remaining water during a water shortage, but Buddha was related to people on both sides of the fight, so this is his gesture telling them to stop fighting. Before this trip I knew nothing about Buddhism, so I found all of this really interesting. Also, random question that I've had myself but that my friend asked me when we got back from Korea. She wanted to know why Buddha is depicted as fat sometimes and skinny other times. I had to look up the answer last night, and it turns out that there are different forms of Buddhism. One kind is practiced in Thailand and another China and Korea. The fat guy isn't Buddha, but instead Budai, an important monk from China. Buddha just means that he was enlightened, so there are several people in Buddhism who technically count as Buddhas but who were not THE Buddha. This guy is really important to the Chinese form of Buddhism, but less important in Thailand where we actually only saw a few of the fat Budai. Learning a little bit there abotu the second oldest religion in the world. At the end of the tour, Kai dropped us off at the tour office where we had to meet the bus to go right back to Bangkok. Unfortunately, we only got a few days in Chiang Mai. It was a beautiful place, and we would have liked to stay. The tour office ended up being really close to the night bazaar from last night, and Kai
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| Delicious Thom Ka Kai soup |
recommended an excellent place for us to eat dinner. He gave us kind of vague directions on how to get there involving "the hamburger place, go right, a yellow sign." We figured out the "hamburger place" was burger king, and we ended up finding it. I'm really glad we did find this place because it was one of the best meals we had in Thailand--a bit expensive but excellent. I tried to branch out from pad thai, and I found something I love almost as much. I got a coconut milk based soup with chicken and lemon grass in it. It has a great citrus but sweet flavor. Loved it. I stuck with my thai iced tea though. After dinner, we got on the bus for another 10 hour bus ride back to Bangkok. Again, not that bad, but it was a bit more uncomfortable because we didn't get the front seat this time, and the dude in front of me decided to basically sleep in my lap. Ugh!
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| Just a small part of the Grand Palace |
We ended up back in Bangkok around 6am again, and we got a taxi to Hua Lamphong and took the subway back to our hostel. While we waited for the room to be ready, Gianni took a shower, and we got washed up. We moved all our stuff back into a hostel room before heading out for another day of sight seeing in Bangkok. This time, we went out armed with the knowledge gleaned from the first two days in Bangkok about how to avoid scams and haggle better. We had a little bit of trouble trying to get from the train station to find the pier to get the city ferries (that around only 15 baht per person all the way along the river). We had two separate nicely dressed men try to stop us and get a tuk tuk and divert our plans by telling us the Grand Palace was closed. We ended up finding our own way to the edge of the water at long last, but we couldn't figure out where the actual pier was. I decided to ask an older couple of tourists who were nice enough to walk us to our destination. They also told us about the scam where they tell people that a place is closed when it really isn't. Such valuable insights. They were really helpful. We were trying to get to the Grand Palace, and we ended up getting the ferry to very close to it without a problem. You have to find the pier and wait for a boat heading in the right direction with the flag color that coordinates to the colors of the pier you want to go to. Simple...and much cheaper than the tuk tuks or taxis! The Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew are really famous and beautiful with about four museums inside of it. You can see all kinds of artifacts from Thai history. It was all very interesting. The palace used to be where the King and Queen lived, but I believe they now live at another palace in Bangkok called Dusit Palace. The palace and temple are connected, and we spent almost the entire day seeing all of it. Probably the most famous part of the temple is the Emerald Buddha inside. It is small but made of solid Emerald. They actually change the clothing on the Buddha four times a year to fit the season, which I found really interesting. My favorite part was the Queen Sirikit textile museum. It was a display of the current Queen of Thailand's clothing. The King and Queen have a largely social role in Thailand now, and the Queen devoted a lot of Thai and energy to giving Thailand their traditional style of dress back. After World War II, Thailand went really Western, and all but lost their Thai-style of dress. When she was going to go on a tour of America, she employed some European fashion designers as well as some silk artisans in Thailand to make her clothes. She studied really old photos and fabric fragments to make her clothing a combination of modern and Thai styles. She's like the Jackie Kennedy of Thailand. One woman gave Thailand back it's traditions. She started a group called the Support
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| Wat Arun |
Foundation to encourage and train farmers to weave silk in order to provide a second source of income for their families. Textiles replaced opium production as a source of income in some of the hill tribes with the help of the Support Foundation. After we were finished at the Palace, we wanted to head across the river to Wat Arun. We ate lunch at a market set up right at the boat pier and then headed across for only 5
baht. Wat Arun was pretty cool. I'm not clear on the history, but this was the only temple you could actually climb up! We climbed up what I think was a pagoda or something to get amazing views of the city and the canal. It was so freaking scary getting up and down from there though! The stairs didn't look the most solid and they were soooooo steep! You were dying if you fell--no doubt! I'm not normally scared of heights, but I don't like doing things without ropes and safety harnesses. Still, it was beautiful from up there. After we were finished, we took the ferry back to the China Town pier because we wanted
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| The beautiful view from Wat Arun |
to stop at the Expo place again for Gianni to go try on his new suit jacket. We eventually found a taxi that could take us there. It was more expensive than I was hoping, but it was rush hour time. We were in the Expo for all of 10 minutes, and Gianni's suit fit perfectly, so we took it back with us that day. It's the only suit jacket that's actually looked nice on him. We took the subway to the hostel for a break before dinner. We thought we'd go to the market we'd seen by the train station for dinner, but a woman who works at the hostel told us that was only during the day. Instead, she pointed us in the direction of a local food market for dinner. It
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| The local market near our hostel |
was a bit of a walk, but amazing! The food was so cheap and really good. It was totally not touristy, so
we got to have another authentic experience in Thailand. We got giant fruit smoothies for only 25 baht and a giant plate of food for 35 baht. Basically, we ordered rice and chose three kinds of food to put on it, but we had no idea what anything was. After dinner, we stopped to get some mango sticky rice from a nice old lady. We also got some jello-y banana desserts that were pretty yummy. They like jello-y desserts in Thailand. We brought those back to the hostel to eat while we watched TV.
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| Protest T-shirts |
With all the protests happening in Bangkok, things were getting a little bit ramped up. I really wanted to see some of the sights that were right in the protest area though, so I decided that if we were going to brave the protests, we should do it before it gets any closer to the set election day or else things might get really bad. The hostel manager didn't seem to think it would be a problem. They really aren't targeting tourists, but you never know what you might get involved in. With some hesitation, we decided to go to the heart of the protest zone in Bangkok to visit the Jim Thompson House Museum as well as the MBK Shopping Center and the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. It was a stupendous day, and we learned fairly quickly what kind of protest it really is here in Bangkok. The public subway system in Bangkok only has one or two lines, but a private company owns the "sky train" lines that are above group. We got to
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| The protest stage |
take the sky train to get to the Siam Square area (Siam was the old name for Thailand. It was changed in 1939.). It was cool to see the city from above like that. We got off the train and the street was lined with people selling Thai flags, shutdown Bangkok shirts, arm bands, etc. More people capitalizing off the protests than actually protesting. It seemed like a well-organized protests with speakers all over the place and a stage. People were camped out in tents on the streets and stuff. It was pretty impressive that they could shut down what must typically be REALLY busy streets in the shopping center of Bangkok. We didn't feel
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| Bangkok Art and Culture Center |
threatened or anything. Our first stop was the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, which was smaller than expected. It was a nice, open building with a few rooms of local artist exhibits and two floors of one artists who took photographs of other famous Thai artists standing with their paintings. It was interesting to be able to read about the work of all these famous artists in Thailand. Next, we went to the Jim Thompson House Museum. This was one of the places I really wanted to visit because it has such an interesting story. Jim Thompson moved to Thailand after he got out of the army at the end of World War II, and he single-handedly revived the Thai silk industry. Then, on a trip to Malaysia, he just disappeared and was never heard from again. People think he might have been in the CIA or something. His house was like an oasis in Bangkok. The front of the house faces the canal so that he could easily access it by boat, and there were exotic trees in his garden outside. Such an escape from the huge city buildings, especially in
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| Jim Thompson House oasis |
that part of Bangkok. Gianni and I got a discount on our entrance for being under 25! Seemed a little bit of a random age to choose, but good for us! First, we checked out a silk art exhibit in the museum with some amazing works of art. After that, we got an English tour of his house. You aren't allowed in without a tour guide because he has so many really old pieces of Thai artwork in it. The oldest piece in his art collection is a Buddha statue from the 7th century. The statue is missing it's head and hands, but it is still amazing that it is still displayed outside despite its age. The oldest painting in the collect is from the 17th century,
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| The oldest statue in the collection |
and most of the paintings are done on cotton. In his kitchen, Mr. Thompson used Chinese porcelain ware but sent Thai patterns to the porcelain painters who painted them. Most of the porcelain is painted in five main colors: black, white, green, yellow, and red. Mr. Thompson even has chandeliers around his house that are from Thai palaces. Our tour guide told us that when a Buddha is depicted with long ears, as some of those in Mr. Thompson's collection have, that means long life. The house was completed in 1959, and Mr. Thompson tried to keep to the traditional Thai style but added modern, western conveniences. For example, he had indoor bathrooms and a dining room table (the table is made from mahjong boards, so he apparently liked to play). Most Thai people eat on floor mats, which is why it is so important to take your shoes off when you enter a house. They eat almost on the floor. The house is made from putting together six buildings, all of which were transported to their current location from other places around Thiland, including the old Thai capital, Ayutthaya (in Thai they never pronounce the H in TH). The oldest building in the house is the living room area, which is 200 years old. The house is built on stilts, like most Thai homes, to protect from flooding. It is made of teak wood and has 8 rooms (two bedrooms), a maid's house, and a gardener's house. You have to step over a piece of wood at the doorway of most of the rooms. The tour guide told us that this was done to help the house structurally, to keep the bad spirits out (because they can't step in), and to keep small babies from falling into canals (because houses were typically built on the canals). So this is one element of a traditional Thai house. Another cool thing was in his office they had a framed fortune made by a fortune teller for Mr. Thompson. Mr. Thompson was born in the year of the horse, and those born in the year of the horse are supposed to be careful in their 61st year of life. That's what the fortune in his office says. Mr. Thompson ended up going missing when he was 61! Creepy! As is the Thai custom, there is a spirit house in the north east corner of the complex. Spirit houses are actually from Hinduism, but Buddhism borrowed it. Mr. Thompson revived the Thai silk industry when he brought some silk samples back to the US to the editor of
Vogue Magazine. He developed a relationship with Vogue who kept placing orders for silks. Jim Thompson's silk was used in the movie,
The King and I. The house was moderately sized for one person. He never had any kids, so he left the house to his nephew who then
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| MBK: the weirdest mall on earth |
turned it over to the Thai government to make it into a museum. It was a really great experience, and I'm really happy we went there despite the protests. Our next stop was the MBK center for lunch. They have a big food court with all kinds of food from around the world. They give you a card when you go in, and so you charge all your food to that and pay for it at the end. It was kind of a cool system. They also have waiters who will go and get your food for you when it's ready and bring it to you. The entire MBK center was pretty interesting. It was a MASSIVE shopping mall structure, but it was all stalls like you would find at a market outside. It wasn't your typical shopping mall experience. After that, we walked back up to the Siam sky train stop to go back to the hostel. There are three shopping malls right there (the ritzy kind with fancy brand names). I don't understand how Siam Discovery, Siam Paragon, and Siam Center can all be shopping malls literally adjoining each other. I didn't see anything that seemed to be different about them. They are all upscale shopping malls. I don't get it. After we got back to the hostel, we relaxed for a little while and then went to get foot massages at the place to hostel manager had told us about just down the street. It wasn't as nice a spa as the first one we went to, but it was a really nice foot massage with a little back massage at the end. We went right from there to get dinner at the market again because it was so good the night before.
In the morning, it was an early wake up to get the taxi to the other airport in Bangkok and fly to Phuket in the south. Don Mueng Airport was closer to us than the one we flew in to initially. There was no delay or anything on the flight, and we landed in Phuket at the expected time of 9:30am. It was a short hour and a half long flight. Since it was a travel day, we wanted to keep it low key. We paid an extremely large sum it seemed to get from the airport to our hostel in Old Town Phuket, and we were able to check in to our hostel about a half hour after we got there once it had been cleaned. The hostel owner, Mai, was really nice and answered all of my questions about how to get around town, what tours to do to different islands, and what beaches to see. He gave us some recommendations of where to eat and what to see in Old Town, so we decided to follow that plan for the day. First, we got unpacked in the room. This hostel was above a their
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| Food at the Kopi Tiam |
cafe. It was a small room containing only a bed with a drawer underneath for storage, a TV on the wall, and an ensuite bathroom with the sink outside the bathroom. It did have a balcony though too, which was good for drying our towel and bathing suits later. It was actually kind of cozy and nice. Once we got settled in, we headed out to go check out Old Town. We started off by going to a Thai restaurant called Kopi Tiam
that the hostel owner suggested to us for lunch. It was fantastic! They have all kinds of specialty drinks and a huge selection of food, and they have breakfast all day! It's run by a family (mother, father, and daughter), and they actually run another restaurant--with the same kitchen and menu--a few doors down that looks more like a cafe style restaurant. It was delicious, and we ended up going to the Kopi Tiam every night that we were in Phuket for dinner. You can see all of the food we ordered there amongst the pictures from Phuket. After lunch, we walked around the street of Old Town. The houses and buildings in that area are all Portuguese-style and many are painted different pastel colors. This is also the area of Phuket's China town, so there are Chinese lanterns hanging up all over the place and a lot of gold
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| Our jello-y desserts at Kopi Tiam |
shops, run by Chinese people. I really enjoyed seeing the European and Thai styles of architecture mixed together. I found out later, at the National Museum in Bangkok (more on that later), that the reason for the Portuguese influence is more than likely because Portugal was one of the first Western countries to have a close trading relationship with Thailand. Portugal began trading with Thailand in 1511. The Portuguese, as well as the other Western nations to come to Thailand (like the Spanish, British, Dutch, and French), attempted to spread Christianity, assisted in technical matters (canal building, surveying, etc.), and gave military advice. The introduction of cannons to the Ayutthaya army is one of the most important Western contributions. The Thai people especially like Portuguese desserts. Thailand adopted bread from Portugal and even called it "pang," which I guess is close to or the same as the Portuguese word for it. I found this fun fact interesting because our friend told us that the Korean word for bread, "bbang," comes from the French, "pain." The mixing between Eastern and Western countries is so fascinating! While walking around, we decided to stop in a souvenir shop that sold and mailed post cards. We each wrote and sent
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| Old Town Phuket: pastel-colored Portugues-style buildings |
out a post card to our parents back home. It wasn't a big area, so we went back to the hostel when we were finished looking around. Gianni was thrilled by the fact that the TV in the hostel got English news channels, so we watched some TV until it was time to go find dinner. We were told that there was a special market going on for today only, so we went to check it out. It turned out to be a really local market where not many of the tourists in the area went. We think the local high school band was playing (because all the teenage girls were screaming for them when they were on stage). It was a small market where people were selling things, and there
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| The local market in Phuket |
were a bunch of food stalls in the back selling a range of things. I ended up with this Thai-style omelet thing where they give you an omelet with a few things mixed in on top of rice. Gianni got some dumplings. We also found the Thai equivalent of Korean toast. They take a piece of toast, add either butter or garlic butter depending on your choice of sweet or savory topping, toast it on a grill, and then add your topping, and it is served on a stick. We got a chocolate one, and it tasted as you might expect: white bread on a stick...not the best, but not terrible. It was a pretty nice little market, and dinner was good. We went back to the hostel and finalized plans to take a tour of Krabi Island the next day. The hostel owner arranged it with a tour company for us to make sure we got a good deal. He was really helpful doing this with taxis as well.
We met the driver who was going to take us to the pier in the morning at around 7am. He picked up
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| Some of the islands around Krabi |
some people from a few other hotels and hostels in the area before taking us there. When we got to the pier, there were a ton of other people, all going to different places and on different tours. They gave us stickers to identify what tour we were on and shuffled us all on to a boat. Unfortunately, we didn't get to sit outside to take pictures, but it was comfortable in seats inside the boat. We didn't realize it would take so long, but we drove in the boat for about an hour to get to our island drop off location. When we got there, it was a bit chaotic. They had to separate all the different tours. We were all going to the same place, but not everyone was going on the full-day tour. Some people were going to one island or one beach, and we all had to get off the main boat onto smaller speed boats. The speed boats would pull up next to our boat and the tour guides would call sticker colors. You kind of had to hop off onto the speed boats whenever they
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Pranang Cave
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Pranang cave
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pointed at you, and the boats were bouncing up and down in the waves a bit. We got on our boat for our 4 island tour of the islands of Krabi. Krabi is, itself, an island, but within it's territory are smaller islands. Our first stop was Pranang beach, a beach on the main island of Krabi that had a really cool "cave." I say, "cave," because it wasn't what you'd generally think of as a cave because you don't really go inside. It is more like a cool rock formation that you climb around on. It looks like a cave because there were stalactites and stalagmites, but it's not like walking in to darkness. In part of the cave, there was shrine also. We spent most of the time we had there looking around the cave area. The water in Thailand is perfectly clear and turquoise colored. No matter how far you swim out, you can always look down and see clearly through the water. It was absolutely beautiful. As you looked around, you could see other islands in the distance, and some closer also, that made for really pretty pictures because it wasn't just the ocean in the shots. Also, Gianni and I both noticed the sand was not the same as at home. At first, we couldn't tell why, but later on we stopped at a beach for lunch where the transition was more clear, and you could see the stages from coral to sand. We think the sand on these islands is almost entirely made of coral bits. It makes the sand even more beautiful and white. It also made for some really cool beach scavenging. Gianni and I found all kinds of cool pieces of coral as well as some shells that I have never seen on a beach before. I have some that are small but are the kinds of things you only see in the souvenir shops in Maine, so I had a good time looking around for things on the beach. After 45 minutes or so, we got back on the boat and headed to
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| Aptly named Chicken Island |
our next stop, Chicken Island. It is named that because the island looks like a chicken. There's a rock formation on it that looks exactly like a chicken's head. We didn't exactly go on the island so much as snorkeled next to it. I have a really hard time with snorkeling at first. I've only ever been twice, but both times took me a little while to adjust. As a swimmer, I don't understand the concept of breathing underwater or using a full face mask that covers my nose. It's always a weird sensation for me. Once I got the hang of it, it was fun. We had schools of fish just swimming around us, which was incredible. The coolest thing I
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| snorkeling off Chicken Island |
saw though was a rainbow fish! At least I assume that's what it was. It was beautiful. It was so colorful and vibrant. Gianni also pointed out a wild monkey climbing around on the rocks by the beach. It was a cute little guy. The wildlife in Thailand is really impressive. I really like the idea that you can see such cool animals just roaming around out in the wild. I guess I'm used to the idea of deer, bear, and moose from home, but not so used to thinking about seeing monkeys and elephants. After snorkeling was lunch time, which was good because we were starving. Gianni and I hadn't had time for breakfast. We stopped at Poda Island (Turtle Island) and had a fried chicken lunch on the beach. It was absolutely delicious. We spent some time walking around on the beach there, but the tide was coming in. There's a beach walkway between Poda and
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| Sand bar connecting Poda and Tup Islands |
Tup Island at low tide, so we walked across that. By the time we were walking on it, the water was up to my thighs, but it was still cool to be able to walk between the islands. Tup is only a really small island, but there weren't many people, so we got some nice swimming in. Our last stop on the tour for the day was Railay Beach where we spent some time swimming before the big boat came back to pick us up and take us back to the pier. Again, it was a little chaotic getting back on, and it was a long boat ride back, but it was a really nice tour. I'm so happy we got to go to some of the
islands because they are absolutely beautiful, and the sand on the beaches was different than the normal sand on the beaches on mainland Phuket.
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| Someone took a nice picture for us |
We got our transfer back to the hostel, and I couldn't wait for a shower. I don't think I ever want to shower more than after I get back from the beach. It was then that I noticed that I had a nice sun burn on my upper back and shoulders. Oh the joys of pale skin! After Gianni and I got washed up, we went to Kopi Tiam for dinner again. The restaurant was so crowded that we sat in the other restaurant this time. As I said, it's the same food. The father runs this part of the restaurant, so he served us. He seems like a really nice, older guy. We relaxed in the hostel the rest of the night.
The next day was our first beach day. I had pre-arranged a taxi with the hostel to come get us and bring us to some sights before dropping us off at Kata beach, acclaimed as one of the nicest beaches in Phuket. The transportation around Phuket was really expensive! There aren't really many metered taxis there, so you have to arrange a flat fee with the drivers and the island is pretty big, so sights are spread out. Also, Old Phuket, which is near our hostel, was actually pretty far from the beaches, unfortunately. We got our taxi in the morning, and the driver didn't realize I had already agreed on a price with the hostel owner, so he tried to charge me more. As soon as I told him I had already arranged it, he apologized, and we set out. Within the first few minutes, he started to ask us a question. I thought he was asking if it was okay to stop for gas. Weird, but we agreed. Instead, I think he was asking us if it
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| Wat Cha Long |
was okay to take us to a souvenir market. Another scam! I can't believe that even a taxi that we arranged with the hostel would do this! Ugh! So annoying. He was like, "don't have to buy. Look. Look. 5 minutes." They must get some extra cash to bring tourists to these places. Anyway, I tried looking for a charm for my bracelet, but they only have white gold elephant charms, and I really wanted an elephant. The white gold price was a bit steep, and I didn't even like the shape. I ended up buying some elephant earrings, and I got 2 for 1 for like $6 or something cheap. After that lovely scam, our first real stop was Wat Cha Long, the most important temple in Phuket. It has really interesting architecture on the top of the Grand Pagoda, and you can go inside and walk up the stair to see what's on the different floors. The first two floors had some really nice and colorful paintings of Buddha's life on the walls as well as a ton of Buddha statues in different poses. The top floor offered a really nice view from above where you could see our next stop, Big Buddha, from afar. Inside, there was a glass case with Buddha statues around it. There was what is said to be a real bone fragment of Buddha's in a glass ball on a stand inside the case. It was really beautiful. I'm not sure why, but while we were there, some fireworks kept going off in a chimney-
like thing outside where some people were selling food. It was
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| Big Buddha |
kind of disruptive. Maybe it's a ritual or something. After spending some time at the temple, the taxi driver took us over to the Big Buddha. I'm glad he drove us, and we didn't have to walk, because it was another long, windy road up. There were some elephant trekking places along the way, but we kept telling him we had already done it. At the top of the mountain was the Big Buddha. The size of it was truly impressive. It isn't very old (less than 10 years I believe), but the views over Phuket from up there are gorgeous. Honestly, the construction that is happening on it (because I'm not sure it's entirely finished yet) really hinders the
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| Awesome view from Big Buddha mountain |
view a lot. It was nice, but I wish that hadn't been there. We didn't spend a ton of time there. While there, we did see a sign that taught us that Buddha iconography began during the rule of King Alexander the Great over India. Prior to that, statues and figures of Buddha didn't exist. Therefore, the original style of Buddhist art was Greco-Buddhist. Pretty interesting fun fact there. The taxi driver then dropped us off at our final destination, Kata Beach. After paying for the taxi, I sort of realized I didn't have any more cash, and I thought I had left my card back at the hostel--that kind of put a damper on our day because we were worrying about money and had planned to take the bus back from the beach but couldn't without cash. Anyway, we put our stuff down on the beach (I was worried things might get stolen) and went for a bit of a swim. We only had the one towel, so we couldn't really sit on the beach. Also, they rent beach chairs and umbrellas, which looked nice, but we had no money. We swam for a bit and decided just to go back because we couldn't buy lunch and were worried about how to get back anyway. Kata beach was nice, but there were a lot of people on the beach. Honestly, it couldn't top our island tour from the
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| Kata Beach |
day before anyway. We went in search of a taxi because the taxi would wait for us while we got money at an ATM once I got my card at the hostel. As we were looking for a taxi, I thought, "I'll check the bag one more time for my card." Low and behold: I found it! What a relief! We took out money and decided to get lunch. There was a whole street made up of restaurants, and for some reason Gianni and I were both craving a burger, so that's what we got. After lunch, we found the bus stop. These buses are the kind that are more like big pickup trucks with seating in the back. We grabbed the one headed for Phuket town and headed home. The bus was cheap but so slow! It kept going around and beeping at anyone on the sidewalk, checking to see if they needed a ride into town. It got kind of annoying. It took probably an hour before we made it to our stop. We got back to the hostel and showered. Before heading out for dinner, we decided to stop at a massage place that advertised aloe massages. Gianni and I were both pretty burned, so I thought it
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Pumpkin custard!
|
would be good for our skin. They were kind of expensive, but well worth it. They make you feel like you're being dipped over and over again in a vat of aloe vera. I'm sure it helped our sun burns heal faster. It was a fairly gentle massage just very gooey. They do one area of your body at a time and then just pat off the excess. This massage was a bit awkward though because this time they did make us take our clothes off. They gave us sheets to cover ourselves while we lied down, and despite our refusals, they made both Gianni and I wear these disposable underwear things. I suppose it was more awkward for Gianni than it was for me! Anyway, the massage itself felt nice and cold because of the aloe, and I think it helped our burns. I could have done without her giving me a shoulder rub and trying to crack my shoulders at the very end of the massage though. It made my sun burn feel terrible! We got different massages in every city we visited in Thailand. Massages are the best! We planned on going to the Kopi Tiam again, but there was a food market on the street instead. We later found out that the food market is held every Sunday. It was a nice mix of locals and tourists, and there was a HUGE
assortment of food. Gianni and I took a look around at everything and basically just tried a bunch of
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| The food market |
stuff we thought looked interesting. I had some pad thai. The vendor was swamped with people, so I figured it must be good, and it was! For dessert, I had these flavored gummy things covered in shaved coconut and some pumpkin (or maybe squash?) custard. The custard gets made in the actual pumpkin, so you get the custard and the vegetable. It was really delicious. Gianni got some small fried crabs. They are so small that the smell doesn't matter, and you just eat them like popcorn. It was a really nice market, and I'm glad we got to go to it.
The next day was our last big day in Phuket. I had planned to go to Naiharn Beach, another famous beach in Phuket. The hostel owner said that it was really popular with locals and suggested we go to a quieter and smaller beach near it called Yanui Beach, so we headed there on the bus in Old Town. This one didn't travel nearly as slowly as the bus from the day before, but he did take like 30 extra baht, thinking we didn't know how much the bus was. We didn't protest because 30 baht is like a dollar. We spent all afternoon at the beach. We got there a bit later in the day because we planned on staying out
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| Yanui Beach |
until sunset in order to see sunset at Promthep Cape, a beautiful sunset viewing point that the hostel owner highly recommended seeing. We rented two chairs and an umbrella for only 200 baht ($6), which made the experience of being on the beach so much more pleasant for me than it usually is. Gianni did a ton of reading, and I walked along the small beach looking for seashells. Sitting right in front of us on the beach were two Thai prostitutes (we heard them talking about their "clients") and two Australian girls who they had apparently made friends with. One of the Australians (I think they were at least) was topless sunbathing the entire day. On the beaches in Phuket, it was not entirely uncommon for being just to go around topless. I guess it's
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| dragon fruit |
the European way. I also saw way too many dudes in speedos. Yuck! We also took some nice dips in the beautiful water. I used my goggles a bit too. I'm always more comfortable in the ocean when I can see under it with my face in. There was a bar and a small restaurant on the beach as well, and I couldn't resist drinking a pina colada on the beach in paradise. We also ordered a plate of fruit as a lunch/snack. We tried dragon fruit for the first time for both of us. On the outside, dragon fruit is a cool purple color. It almost looks like a flower with different petal layers. On the inside, it is white with lots of black seeds inside. It must be related to
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| The makings of a beautiful sunset |
kiwis, which Gianni is allergic too. We were a little worried he might have a reaction to it, but he was fine. The fruit in Thailand is so fresh and juicy. They sell it all over the place. As it was getting close to sunset, we talked to the taxi driver waiting for customers across the road from the beach. We couldn't take a bus at that point to get back to the hostel because the buses stop at around 5pm, so we had to go with a taxi. It took a few of the staff members at the restaurant/bar to help him figure out where he had to go and negotiate a price. We wanted to go watch the sunset and have him wait and then take us back to the hostel. We got it all figured
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| Beautiful orange colors |
out, and he said he had some sort of taxi drivers meeting or something, so he would pick us up at the viewpoint after the sunset at 6:40pm, which was fine with us. The cape wasn't actually that far away. The view was incredible! You could see the beach we had just been on as well as some of the islands around the area. It was a panoramic view. There was also a light house there, and it was really interesting to see the Thai version of lighthouses, coming from a place where lighthouses are pretty common. It had the same general purpose, but looked more almost more...military than the picturesque ones
at home. Most of the tourists were sticking to
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| us on Promtep Cape |
the standard viewpoint area, but I saw a bunch of people had walked down to the rocks right at the end of the cape, so we decided to as well. It was a bit of walk (especially the part back), but we got seats on a rock. Gianni and I both think this was the first time we've really stopped to watch the sun set, and it was beautiful. Although I typically love the colors of the sunset when there are clouds around, this unimpeded view of the sun was just as beautiful. We watched the sun come all the way down below the horizon and walked back up to the viewpoint just in time before
the light completely went away. We met the taxi driver who took
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| Mango with green sticky rice? |
us back to the hostel. I had a moment of panic as the ATM I was using to get out money to pay him didn't seem to be working, but it worked out in the end. We had to shower a lot in Phuket, being salty from the beach, but after that we decided it was only fitting to have a last hoorah at Kopi Tiam for dinner. We got some mango sticky rice for dessert too, which comes with coconut ice cream. For some reason they dye the rice green. I guess it's for presentation purposes.
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| The sign for our favorite hang out in Chiang Mai |
The next day, we were scheduled to head back to Bangkok. I booked a night flight because I figured we'd want to spend the day in Phuket and maybe go to a beach or something. But when I booked the flight, I didn't realize how far away the beach was. Instead, Gianni and I got to sleep in (which wasn't very common for us). The hostel owner told us how to get to the bus station where we would catch the bus to the airport. We first went there to check the schedule and see what was the best time to get it. It takes about an hour to get from the Old Town to the airport. After checking, we went to the Kopi Tiam for a leisurely breakfast, and then we spent some more time walking around Old Town. I was looking for a silver elephant charm but couldn't find any. There are a lot of used book shops in Old Town. I think it's appropriate considering how much people like to read on the beach.
On our first day in Phuket when we were looking around Old Town, I had to stop at one of the shops to buy a new book since I had finished reading Mary Bonina's memoir,
My Father's Eyes. It was really a wonderful book, and I recommend it to anyone reading this. Just to put it basically: it's about a daughter watching her family struggle as her father gradually goes blind. It is beautifully written and not only paints a picture of the family involved but of that period of history in the greater Worcester area. I couldn't help but think about my own Italian relatives while reading this. More specifically, my grandfather who passed away when I was young. If you are interested in reading this, please visit:
marybonina.com. I actually edit the website, and Mary is Gianni's mother. Believe me though, I am not writing this because I feel obliged to say nice things. It really was an fantastic book made only more great having, as I do, a personal connection to the author and knowing what went in to making this book a reality.
After walking around town for a big longer, we decided to take the bus (it was a van this time) to the airport a bit early for our flights because we were sick of carrying around all our luggage. The bus took about an hour, and we still had to wait at the airport for an hour before we could check in to our flight. We could have gone through security, but we needed to check the backpack since it had some things that couldn't go through security. We had to wait even longer when we got inside the gate area. It was such a small airport; there was one waiting area for all the international departure gates and another waiting area for all the domestic departure gates. Gianni and I bought magazines (for entirely too much money--US magazines are wicked expensive in Asia, fyi) for the flights. I saw a book I really want to read with personal stories of Lady Boys, but it was too expensive at the airport. I'll buy it online somewhere. There were a few jewelry shops at the gate, and I found my silver elephant charm! I like continuing this collection I have. It gives me something inexpensive to keep from all our trips. Although, honestly, this was not the only souvenir I bought myself (guilty!). Also, this charm was more expensive than silver charms I got in Europe. Oh well! When in Thailand! We got some fast food for dinner and read in the terminal while we waited. For some reason, all the flights headed towards Bangkok passed like 4pm started to get delayed due to late arrival at the airport. No idea why that was, but our flight got delayed by about an hour. No problems with the actual flight and we arrived in Bangkok at Don Mueng Airport again. After getting our bag, we made our way to the taxi area and got a taxi to our hostel. There was some traffic (maybe from the protests? not sure.), and it distracted me. I thought the meter had been turned on, and they are supposed to automatically run the meter coming from the airport anyway. I put my guard down for one minute with these people and they take advantage. Anyway, I noticed as we were getting closer to the hostel that the meter wasn't on. I asked him how much, and he wanted to charge me 500 baht! I already knew approximately how much it was since we drove to the airport on the meter before. I said, "No way! 300!," and started yelling about how from the airport they are supposed to turn the meter on. I think he understood that I was mad he hadn't turned on the meter. The he said, "400," but there was no way I was getting scammed because even 300 was generous. He eventually was okay with 300. Whatever dude, no tip for you! We got back to the hostel with enough time to check in before the front desk closed. We got our suitcase from the storage area, and moved in to our last room at the hostel for our last two nights in Thailand. I rearranged our carry-on luggage and packed up the suitcase so that we wouldn't have to do it later.
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| The first discovered writings in Thai |
The next morning was our last day sight seeing in Bangkok and our last full day in Thailand. We had a few last places to see on my agenda that we hadn't gotten to yet. The plan was to take the ferry down to see the National Museum and Khao San Road then take it back and eat dinner in China Town. This time we knew how to get to the piers and avoided any and all scams! Public transportation only for us. We stuck pretty closely to the plan, except I had no idea how big the National Museum was, and we were there for a long time. We even ate lunch at the museum. You would think the prices would be really high since it is a museum restaurant, but they weren't. It was a small, family-run restaurant. The waitress even had her little baby sun bringing water bottles to the tables. He was so adorable! We learned a lot about the
history of Thailand, and I found it
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| Some Khon masks used in Thai dancing |
really fascinating. The museum has so many Buddha statues and religious items from CENTURIES ago! They are all just displayed in such a matter of fact and unceremonious way in
these plain rooms that don't even have carpeting. I would have expected so much more security and concern about these things, but I guess not. In addition to all the relics and old art, there were special exhibits on the history of Thailand, Khon Dancing, and the Royal Funeral Carriages that carry the ashes of the royal family upon their death. The funeral carriages were massive, elaborate pieces. They also had some beautiful
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| Carved elephant tusks |
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One of the royal funeral carriages
|
cremation panels which attach to the funeral pyre to conceal the site and protect from wind. A diety pattern on the panels is used for royal family members. Also at royal funerals are statues of mythical animals. They have special animals like the kinnaree (half woman, half bird) and the apsara siha (half angel, half lion). The Khon Dancing exhibit was interesting but a bit lacking in information...or at least in correct English information. I understood that Khon is a traditional story of Rama, an Indian hero in the Hindu epic entitled
Ramayana. There have been many adaptations and changes in the
Ramayana, and the Thai version of it is the
Ramakien. The story is largely about King Rama waging war against a demon who steals his wife. Dancers are unable to speak because of their masks, so other performers, known as Konpak, recite poetry to describe the scene. One style of Khon was a kind of dance drama to be performed at the royal court, but there are also other, more military, styles of Khon with no dancing, just speaking. In addition, they had displays of old musical instruments and games. I found the room filled with carved and mounted elephant tusks to be a sad, but also really beautiful. Hunting animals for their tusks is a terrible thing to do, but these ones were carved so spectacularly.
At the museum, we learned a lot of the history of Thailand, and because
history was my favorite subject in school, I thought I’d share some of what we
learned. I think history is really important in understanding the culture of a
country. First are foremost, there have been four kingdoms in the history of Thailand: Sukhothai
Kingdom (1238-1448), Ayutthaya Kingdom
(1351-1767), Thonburi Kingdom (1768-1782), and Rattanokosin Kingdom
(1782-1932). Since 1932, there has been a constitutional monarchy in Thailand. Thailand changed its name from Siam on July 20, 1948, so you may hear me
mention both Thailand and Siam
at different times, sorry for any confusion. If you don't feel like reading my whole thing, that's fine! Here's the summary for you: Thai history can only be traced back to the 13th century. Tons of fights and conflicts have occurred between Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). Trade with China is and has always been an important part of the Thai economy, and there are a fair number of Chinese people living in Thailand. As for the Western nations, Portuguese was the first to trade with Thailand, so it had a major impact on Thai culture. As trade with multiple Western countries picked up and some of the rulers of Thailand travelled or studied abroad, modernization and Westernization became the trends, but people, like the current Queen, have also worked to preserve traditional Thai culture.
The History of Thailand that I Gleaned (in a bit more detail):
The museum history introductory video stated that Thai
history seems to begin in the 13th century as that is the time
period for the artifacts that have been found. Before that, they are unsure
where the Thai people were, but there are several theories. The Thai people may
have always been in Thailand,
they could have migrated from Southern China, or they could have migrated from
many different parts of Asia. The first
recorded Thai alphabet was done on a stone tablet in 1292 (you can see it, and
read a bit more of its history, in the photo album). The museum was lacking in
history for the Sukhothai Kingdom and seemed to really focus on the Ayutthaya Kingdom, so that’s where I’ll start
getting in to it. Ayutthaya
was the name of the kingdom as well as the name of the capital city at that
time. The Ayutthaya Kingdom was a very strong and prosperous state, but
it, as well as most of the other Thai kingdoms, tended to conflict with neighboring
Burma (now Myanmar, but I’m going to continue to call it Burma here). The
first of many wars between the countries began in 1538 and was called the
Chiangkran War. In 1568, Burma
attacked Ayutthaya
again, but the king at the time didn’t think much of it. He appointed a man
named Phraya Chakkri as his commander, not knowing that the man was actually a
Burmese spy. Chakkri used any method he could to weaken Ayutthaya,
and the kingdom fell to Burma
in 1569. Struggles between Thailand
and Burma
persisted. Prince Naresuan proclaimed independence from Burma in 1584,
and managed to maintain it. During his 15 year reign, he did great things to
expand Ayutthaya and keep Burma at bay. In
1767, the Burmese finally took over Thailand and collapsed the
Ayutthaya Empire. Despite being unable to save the city, the Ayutthaya king at the time, King Tak Sin,
escaped with some of his troops to Chanthaburi and took over the city. He used
the city as headquarters to recruit new troops and prepare them to fight the
Burmese yet again. King Tak Sin successfully reclaimed Ayutthaya
in October 1767, taking the city of Thonburi
along the way. He decided Ayutthaya
was too damaged to serve as the capital any longer, so he moved the capital to
Thonburi. When Ayutthaya
fell, many of the major towns had formed autonomous city states. It took King
Tak Sin three years to bring them all under the Kingdom of Siam.
Commander Somdet Chao Phraya Maha Kasatsuk (what a mouth full!) was
instrumental in this endeavor. The commander was also about to quell riots
occurring in Thonburi around the time of King Tak Sin’s death. These efforts
prompted officials of the royal court to name the Commander the King of Siam in
1782. He took the name of Rama I and was the first king of the Chakri Kingdom.
Rama I moved the capital of the Kingdom to Bangkok in 1785. He thought Bangkok
was strategically safer because it made the Chao Phraya River
a natural moat between the Burmese armies and the capital city on the south and
west sides of the city. More moats were later dug to protest the north and east
sides, creating a secure island for the capital. Additionally, the east bank of
the river had enough space for a new royal palace. Thailand’s
wars with Burma actually ended
during the reign of King Rama II because Burma became preoccupied with
British rule. Thailand did
have a war with Vietnam
between 1833 and 1846. Vietnam
had become stronger, so Thailand
proclaimed a preemptive war to ward off Vietnamese invasion. Vietnam called
for peace in 1846. Other than that, the early period of the Rattanakosin Kingdom
was peaceful, enabling a restoration of, and focus on, traditional culture and
arts as well as the Buddhist religion. This period also saw an influx of
immigrants from China to
work in Thailand.
China
was considered the most important trading partner. Westerners also came to Thailand for
trade and as missionaries. King Rama III was very concerned about protecting
Thai culture and, thus, limiting the scope of Western Influence. It was the
next king, King Rama IV (1851-1868), who opened the country to western
influence and begun modernization. He significantly changed the economy of the
country by making agreements and treaties with various foreign and Western
countries. The first of such treaties, the Bowring Treaty with the British,
ended the Royal trade monopoly, in existence since the 13th century,
and allowed Western powers to expand their Eastern markets. Siam entered
the international market. In 1858, the country acquired a minting machine from
the British to mint the first Thai coins. This was a prosperous time for Thailand. The
Western influence in the Thai economy also increased Western influence in Thai
culture. A western education system partly replaced the teaching by monks in
the country. King Rama IV understood the importance of English and hired missionaries
to teach the children at court. Subsequently, schools were established that
taught English as a subject. Later, King Rama V made strides to ensure all the
civilians were educated. In the mid-1800’s, King Rama IV sought to modernize
transportation to facilitate communication and trade. He built new roads and
canals and brought about the foundation of the railway system. In terms of
communication, the telegraph system was introduced in 1875 for military use and
opened to the public in 1883. The first royal trip to Europe
also happened in 1897. In the early 1900s, King Rama VI did extensive traveling
abroad and brought modern science as well as Western clothing styles. It was
interesting to learn about this after having been to the other museum at the Grand Palace
and finding out that the current queen has worked hard to reverse this process
and bring back Thai fashion with a modern twist. King Rama VI also expanded the
national transportation system by adding railways, creating the first air freight
service, and starting the first radio system. King Rama VII, the youngest
brother of King Rama VI (who had no heir), contributed further to his brother’s
work in these fields. He was able to build bridges to aid in communication and
transportation, establish the first commercial airline, create the first
broadcast company in 1930, and expand telephone and telegraph systems. It was
also he who made Thailand
a constitutional monarchy. He came to power in 1925 but had a difficult time
ruling the country. He realized it should become democratic, and an opposition
group agreed with him. On June 24, 1932, King Rama VII agreed to rule under
constitutional law, and he abdicated on March 2, 1934. He and the queen then
moved to London
where they lived permanently. The current king was actually born at Mount Auburn
Hospital! I had no idea,
and I was so surprised to read that at the museum. He was educated abroad in Switzerland. He
married his wife, whom he gave the name Queen Sirikit upon their marriage, on
April 28, 1950 and was coronated soon after on May 5, 1950.
That’s all for your Thai history lesson.
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| Khao San Ro |
After we finally finished at the museum, we walked to nearby Khao San Road. It's a famous market street, and even though we didn't want to buy anything, I figured we have to see it. We were there around dinner time, so I think it would have been busier at night. It looked like there were a lot of bars and restaurants on it in addition to the souvenir and food stalls lining either side. We walked quickly down it, and I noticed more silver shops where I could have gotten my charm for cheaper, probably. Oh well. The most impressive thing I did was navigate us to the closest ferry pier. It was a different pier from the one we were at in the morning, and the streets were mostly unlabeled to get there. I think I amazed Gianni. I'm usually terrible with directions. We got off the ferry at the China Town pier and found Yaowarat Road, which is the main street in China Town. We spent some time walking down it, looking at the food stalls on the
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| China Town |
street, before we decided just to go inside what seemed to be a dim sum restaurant called Canton House (I thought it was appropriate given where I live in the USA). The food was really good and inexpensive. We just ordered a bunch of stuff. At peak times, this place must get pretty busy because the restaurant was HUGE. There was even a second floor. After all that, we were exhausted, so we walked back to Hua Lamphong to get the train back to our hostel. It turns out that on the first day, when we were trying to find China Town, and I was looking at my map when the first scammer stopped us, we were already on Yaowarat road! It was such a "duh!" moment when we realized. Oh well. Live and learn. We spent the evening in, finishing up the packing. I had taken a massive trash bag for all our dirty laundry from the hostel, and Gianni was impressed when I made it fit in the suitcase.
The next day, we left for the airport around 9am. Our flight wasn't until 1pm, but it was the first airport that was further away, and I was worried about protest traffic and rush hour. We made it well on time and, again, had to wait for the desk for our flight to open up, so we could check in and check our suitcase. While we waited for the flight, Gianni read his book on his kindle (I think he finished something like 4 books while we were on this trip!) while I browsed the shopping areas. We got food in the airport and even got a blizzard at Dairy Queen! That was my airport highlight. When it got closer to the flight time, we went down to our gate. This airport is weird because each gate has it's own, enclosed waiting area. We had to show our passport and boarding pass to get in to the waiting area for that gate. Maybe it's to expedite the boarding process, but we also had to show at least our boarding pass as we boarded also. No problems to report on the flight, but we got a meal again. This was more a lunch, and it was all food that could be served cold--snacks really. The food on the way over was, we agreed, actually some of the more delicious food we've had on airplanes (we got dinner that time since it was a night flight). We landed at the airport in Seoul, which, if you didn't know, is about 4 hours north of Daegu. I was really worried about even being able to get a bus to Daegu that night because it was Lunar New Year's Eve (a big deal in Korea and most of Asia). The line for immigration was HUGE, and they had no idea what was going on. The airport officials kept directing people to other lines, and at one point, our line closed and then reopened. It was ridiculous and totally frustrating. When we finally got through, the luggage from our flight had already been taken off the ramp and piled to the side of it. We got our bag and went straight to the airport bus information center. We found out they were running buses, and there were still three buses for the evening. We bought tickets for the 9:40pm one, which was leaving about 6 minutes after we purchased the tickets, so we booked it for the bus gate area outside. We made it just in time, and got back to Daegu by 1am. Good thing the bus stopped at a rest area so we could get food from the convenience store. We were starving and hadn't really eaten dinner. We grabbed a taxi to take us back to our apartment since the subway was closed for the nice. We crashed as soon as we got home and had a relaxing and really lazy weekend of almost complete immobility in our apartment. This week is, Korean public schools are open. It's graduation week for the third graders in middle school. So the kids have vacation for January, then come back to school one week in February, then have vacation until the beginning of March. It makes no sense. We're teaching on weird schedules this week. Whatever you want to do Korea.
It was nice to get a taste for all the different kinds of cities in Thailand and do different things in each. We got to see the capital of Bangkok, Chiang Mai in the North, and Phuket in the South. If we go back, I'll definitely stay in one place though, but for a first trip, sampling all the cities was nice. I starting thinking of Thailand as a challenge I wanted to overcome. It was one of the most mentally strenuous vacations I've ever been on, but it was also a really beautiful country. I'm so glad I got to experience even a little part of it. Another thing I really liked was seeing just how global a language English really is. I always knew it, but I'd never seen it in practice. I've never been in a place where there were so many languages being spoken--French, Germany, Spanish, Russian, etc. But everyone had to speak to the Thai people in English since most Thais only spoke Thai and a little bit of English. It was the way to bridge the language gap. English: the language of tourism. I'm glad for it though because we had no idea even how to read Thai, which was weird because we can, at least, read Korean. Apparently, Thai has something like 77 letters in it's alphabet, but most of them looked the same to me. It seems like it would be a really difficult language to learn. We had an excellent time on vacation, especially after the first two days. It was a great trip, and I loved seeing another place in Asia. I really never envisioned myself in Asia at all or ever really wanting to travel here, but I can't believe I was so stupid. It's amazing, and every country is so vastly different from the others. Gianni and I kept joking that we are doing our honeymoon now with Korea and all the traveling we're doing here. When we actually get married, we'll just take a long weekend in Maine or something else low key.
I do want to mention that this last weekend we went to a board game cafe! There are so many things to do in Korea that you can't get in the USA: norae bangs (private, karaoke rooms), PC bang (internet cafe/video game room), arcades, photo booth studios, cat and dog cafes, bowling, DVD rooms. It's awesome! We had been wanting to go to the board game cafe for a long time, and we finally went with Maria and Matthew. There are two options: pay by the hour or unlimited game play. We opted for the unlimited game play, which comes with a free drink, for about $5 per person. They have a nice range of really tasty drinks, including coffee, smoothies, and soda. They don't sell alcohol because they probably want to have it be a place kids can go to as well. They have so many games you can play. The people who work at the cafe are supposed to be able to explain the rules to you, but I don't know how they are able to remember the rules for all the games! We saw them explaining the rules to the people near us. I wonder if their English is good enough to
