Shouzer

Kanchanaburi Trip

The time is 5:30am on a Saturday, and I’ve just walked 20 minutes up the road to meet my friend to head out on our grand Kanchanaburi adventure. We flag down a taxi, as the ferry isn’t even running yet, and hand the driver a slip of paper with the address we need in Thai. Unfortunately for us, he can’t see it because it’s still dark, and the dome light isn’t providing enough light. He jumps out of the cab to use the headlight to read the address. Unbelievable, this is the man who will be driving us across town this morning, and he’s blindish. He’s also got a cool Michael Jackson glove thing going on. No sparkles, but a solitary white glove adorns his driving hand. I don’t exaggerate when I say that this is the craziest taxi driver since I’ve been here, and the car died on the way. I’m glad I don’t believe in omens.

And I’m right to do so, because this trip was an absolute blast. We started out at the floating markets, which were pretty cool to be honest. I didn’t buy anything, but then again, I hate shopping. Most of the vendors had the same “original” statues and for some reason, photo albums. Don’t ask, because I don’t know why.

At the end of the floating market, we saw a little demonstration of how sugar is refined from coconuts here. The basically boil sap from the tree to get a solid, sugary substance. We got to sample a bit, and it tasted pretty good. They also gave us raw coconut milk on ice, which was also quite nice.

After this, we headed to a place where they did these amazing wood carvings, and of course, they had a huge gift shop. I don’t remember this being on the itinerary.

Next, we headed down this insanely bumpy road to the middle of nowhere to see a waterfall. It was honestly a bit of a letdown, but it was really nice to get out in the wilderness again for a while. Although, I was really wishing I had taken my malaria prophylactic at this point. I know it wasn’t on the itinerary because I would have been on it if it was. I think my risk is still pretty low though.

Next, they take us to an orchid farm. Basically, we were just dumped here while they took the two Korean girls on our tour to some hot spring. It cost extra, and we didn’t feel the need to pay. I’m starting to wonder when we’re going to see the stuff we paid to see, but I’m still pretty happy because everything has been pretty cool. It was quite an adventure sitting in this van, waiting to see what random site we were going to arrive at next.

We actually drove to Kanchanaburi next, but first we stopped outside the city to see a cave temple. It was pretty cool to walk through this cave and see all of these Buddha images.

We stopped off at a cemetery for Allied soldiers killed on the Death Railway before heading to the hotel.

The hotel was a bamboo hut that was literally floating on the river. It was probably the coolest place I have ever stayed. They gave us dinner at the hotel as well, and it was one of the best meals I’ve had since I got here. It was a massive portion of green curry that was just delicious, an omelet, and fresh pineapple for dessert. After dinner, we met up with some friends who had also come to Kanchanburi for the weekend. I haven’t seen so many white people in one room since I left! Their hostel was absolutely packed with them. I got reverse culture shock because it was really weird that nobody was staring at me, but I digress. They were going to a floating disco. We opted not to go because it wasn’t getting back until 1am, and we had to get up early for more site seeing the next day. It sounded like a lot of fun though. How often do you go to a disco that floats down the river? Actually, I’ve never been to a regular disco.

The next morning, we floated down the river on a bamboo raft to a Chinese/Vietnamese style temple. Not really a highlight.

We walked up to a museum about the death railway which was very interesting. Hundreds of thousands of POWs died here building a railway from Thailand to Burma. The conditions were appalling for them as they were malnourished and over-worked. Most of the men who died here were Malays and Burmese although there were some POWs from western countries as well.

We took a train along the death railway over the Bridge over the River Kwai. I felt really guilty because I was having trouble staying awake. It seemed like it should have been a very chilling, gut wrenching experience, but it just wasn’t. I kept reminding myself of the atrocities that had been committed there, but there just wasn’t any visible proof. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, except the ladies walking down the isles of the train selling hats and t-shirts and the tourists taking pictures of the bridge as we went by. Other than that, it was a pretty normal train ride.

After the train ride, we went elephant trekking, which basically consisted of a walk around this little elephant camp. That part wasn’t so great, but the elephant bathing was the highlight of the trip. We got on an elephant bareback, and they took it down to the river. The elephant got in the water, and the guide told it to submerge in various different rolls and dips. It was really hard to stay on, especially for me as I was on the back of the elephant, and there was nothing and nobody to hold onto. My friend was in front of me, but she is quite scrawny. I ended up falling off once. It was so much fun though. It was like a ride at a theme park, except there were no safety belts. It was so cool to feel the elephant moving beneath me. His (her?) spine moved around so much.

Yesterday I went to Khao San Road, home of the backpacker in Thailand. The Lonely Planet describes it as a decompression zone for westerners. I like that. It was mostly a bunch of westernized restaurants, bars, tour dealers, etc. They have a good deal of shopping and food on the street as well. The main story from the trip though, was the people I met along the way.

We took the canal boat there, which was probably my favorite way to travel so far. It was really cheap, and there was no traffic. The boat was quite packed, but so is every other formal of public transport here. Anyway, on to the story.

We got to the pier and sat down to wait for the boat. I hear two little voices behind me shouting, “Farang! Farang! Farang!” (foreigner, westerner). I turn around to see these two little kids in a 50 gallon barrel filled with water. They’re just chilling out in there trying to stay cool. My friend whipped out her camera to take some pictures, and they lit up. She was supposed to have emailed me the pics, but she didn’t. At the time, she said the light wasn’t very good, so maybe they didn’t turn out.

Update: I got the pictures! This is now the longest post ever.

We arrived at Khao San Road:

After hanging out for a while, we were sitting in Burger King, and I saw this guy out the window:

My friend, once again, took some pictures. These she obviously emailed to me. The guy noticed her and was absolutely loving the attention. Here, you can see him pointing to us in the window. She talked to him later, and apparently got his email address. Here’s a better pic of his amazing hair:

Later on, we were rolling down the road, and we saw this little kid with a sweet mohawk in a shop. My friends went in to see him and take some pictures, but I stayed outside to talk on the phone. I’m told that while they were in there photographing him, he pulled out his glorious manhood for the ladies to savor. Although, they tell me it was quite small. I didn’t have the good fortune of seeing it.

Ronald McDonald performing the Thai Wai, used to show respect as a greeting. I do it all the time as well when I go to the schools to teach. I just thought it was really funny to see an American icon in the pose.

Bangkok

New ones are at the end. I went to the National Museum and Dusit Park this weekend. Dusit Park was at one time the compound of a royal palace. Now, the buildings have been converted to museums and other tourist attractions. It was my favorite touristy place that I have been in Bangkok thus far.

Ayutthaya

I went for a day trip to the ruins at Ayutthaya yesterday. The train trip was one of the most interesting parts. The train cost 15 baht which is insanely cheap. Especially since it cost me 50 to get to the train station. The train broke down on the way there somewhere in the middle of Thailand. I actually enjoy these little setbacks because they make for good stories. Ironically, I spend more time laughing about these kinds of things than I do talking about the really cool things I’ve seen. I think pictures tell the story of places better than my words ever could.

Ayutthaya was quite cool once I got there though. It is the old capital of Siam, and there were a lot of ruins from around 1400AD. I spent most of the day seeing old temples. There was a ruin from a palace, but there wasn’t much left of it.

The weirdest thing happened to me yesterday though. I was walking up to temple when this group of girls approached me. There were about 6 of them, and they were in their late teens. One says, “Just one picture please?” I agree, and wait for them to hand me the camera and get in their pose. Then, before I know what’s happening. The girl that asked me stands up next to me, and one of her friends snaps a picture. Then, they pull out a notebook and ask me to write me name and where I’m from, which I did hesitantly. There were half a dozen other names in the book above mine. I walked away from the encounter with a dumbfounded look on my face, and some Thai guy who was selling cokes patted me and the shoulder and laughed. I have no idea why they wanted a picture with me. I was looking incredibly skanky at the time though. I had already been walking around in the heat of the day for about 2 hours, and I was drenched in sweat. (I actually got so sweaty yesterday that I have white streaks all over my shirt from the salt in sweat.)

I wasn’t sure whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. It could be, “Wow, he’s so hot! I must have a picture with him!” Or it could be, “Wow, I’ve never seen a white person before even though I speak English. I want to take a picture of him so we can sit around and laugh at how weird he looks later.” After much soul searching, I decided to take it as a compliment.

One of the coolest things for me is that I already feel like I’m part of the community. Some of the people here that I regularly do business with recognize me and know my “regular” order. The motorcycle guy that takes me to work doesn’t even have to ask where I’m going anymore. He sees me walking up from 2 blocks away, jumps on his bike, pulls it to the spot where I jump on, and then takes me to the office. No verbal communication required. I love this because it saves me from failing to communicate my destination, and it means we have an established fare so I don’t have to try to negotiate.

There’s a guy that sells smoothies at night that are to die for. These things are flat out amazing. He is out at night on the road between my apartment and the skytrain station. I buy one every time I walk by him. He knows me as well which is kinda cool.

They probably know me because I’m white and I stand out. The taxi has the added advantage of seeing my uniform. There are a few other teachers around here as well so he probably knows it better than he knows me. Still, I like that people here know me already.

Riding in taxis in Bangkok could best be described as trippy, even though Microsoft Word tells me that trippy is not a word. The first thing that hits you is the music. A grown man is driving the taxi, but you would never know it based on the music. It sounds more like a 13 year old girl’s room. On the way to school this morning, I heard N’Sync, that sound from Music and Lyrics (I only know that because I saw that movie on the plane), and Gloria Estefan, at least, I think it was Gloria Estefan. I’m really just guessing about that last one to be honest.

The other thing that hits you about the taxi riding experience is the insanity of Bangkok traffic. I’d like to consider myself to be fairly adventurous about driving in cities, but I would never drive here. Rules of the road? There are none.

Right of way is given to the driver with the most courage. People make right turns here (the drive on the left) by inching into oncoming traffic until they are far enough into it that said traffic has to stop. Then, if there are other cars waiting behind to turn, they force themselves in as well until the cars going straight make similar headway into the row of turning cars.

Thankfully, the motorbikes don’t really do this. They do piggy back other cars making these moves though. They also drive past long lines of cars waiting at stoplights by driving on the wrong side of the road. They drive down the middle of the road between opposite flowing traffic. They also ignore stoplights as much as possible.

The highways are not much better. The lines painted on the pavement are really more guidelines than they are rules. People drive on the shoulder here, except it’s not an entire car length wide. So they are half in a lane and half on the shoulder. The cars in the first lane spill into the second and so on. Merging and changing lanes is similar to turning. You just move into the next lane and get as close as possible to the other cars until they get out of your way.

Luckily, you get used to it. It doesn’t really bother me that much. Actually, it never really did. What’s really weird is even though it seems like chaos to me; all of the drivers seem to understand what’s going on. They aren’t bothered when people cut them off or driver half in their lane. It’s just the way things are done here. Wrecks are avoided because the behavior of other drivers is predictable. It’s just different from America.

6-11-07 A land of adventure

My absolute favorite part of Bangkok is the seemingly endless opportunity for exploration and learning. I have learned most places I have been in a matter of weeks, and there has been little left that I cared to discover. Sure, there would be some random restaurant I’d stumble upon or a minor facet of the public transportation system that I had yet to learn, but on the whole, I felt like I knew my way around. Bangkok is the complete opposite. I have been here for two weeks, and I still have so much to learn.

For example, I have still yet to ride a bus or a canal boat, and unfortunately, these are the cheapest modes of transportation around the city. So why haven’t I ridden them yet? Well, I have no idea how to find out where any of them go. There isn’t really a good English map for their routes, and I don’t know the locale well enough to figure out where I am at a given time. So I take taxis, the Skytrain, and I walk. I’ll get there soon enough.

The other big thing is food. Most places to eat in Bangkok do not have a menu. You simply tell them what you want, and they try to cook it. This throws a major wrench in the works of my normal ordering procedure, which is to point at a menu. It basically means that I have to learn the Thai words for food that I want to eat. Cow is rice, Pad is fried, Guy is chicken, and Moo is pork. That’s all I know so far. I can combine those to Cow Pad Guy to get chicken fried rice or Cow Pad Moo to get pork fried rice. I’ve mostly been eating prepared food or at places that have pictures. That leaves much to be desired though because, as I said before, that eliminates the most common and cheapest food. I’m going to have to fix that soon.

I love this need to learn new things though. It feels like it will take me all year to get the hang of it, and I’m looking forward to the adventure.

I have more pictures to make you jealous (it’s the same album, but there are new shots at the front):

Bangkok

And my newest travel diary entry:

6-10-07 Reflections

I went to a nice park in Silom this afternoon for a stroll and to do some reading. It was nice to get out of the hustle and bustle for a bit. With all of the trees and shrubs around, it felt as if the air was cleaner, but I might have just been imagining that.

It was a fairly pretty park, but I couldn’t help but remember how beautiful Prague was. That city was just physically stunning and breathtaking. Bangkok isn’t really that pretty of a city. I enjoy living here and all; it just doesn’t have that same mystique about it.

I think one of the problems with traveling around and living in numerous cities is that each one of them takes part of your heart. Each place has its own personality, and I love each one of them differently. Even though I was ready to leave, Prague will always hold a special place with me. Just as when I leave Bangkok, I will probably miss it as well, but for different reasons. Everywhere I have lived is like that, even the places I didn’t like very much, like Terre Haute and Detroit. They each had their little something to offer, and I miss those peculiarities.

More writing from my travel diary. This is fresh off the presses though. I just wrote it about 2 minutes ago. Also, this is the 1000th post here at Shouzer.

I went for a walk tonight down the main road near my apartment. I should probably clarify that. Bangkok’s addresses are all linked to the main roads. So, for example, I live on Soi Pridi Banomyong 21. Pridi Banomyong is the main road; Soi 21 is the street I live on (soi is the Thai word for a side road). Pridi Banomyong is also known as Sukhumvit 71 because it is the 71st street along Sukhumvit road.

So anyway, I went for a walk down Pridi Banomyong road tonight. What can I say, I didn’t have much else to do. I’m not really used to this not having homework in the nights thing. Along the way, I ran into some pretty interesting things. First, I saw some live chickens on the sidewalk in front of one of the many food stalls/restaurants. I’m assuming they were there to be eaten sometime soon. Then, when I got to the top of the road, I found an open air night market. I had heard about these things, and even though this one was small, it was still pretty cool. There were just lots of stall with people selling random stuff: shoes, clothes, laundry detergent, batteries, cell phones, pots, food, etc. I wandered through that, and then continued my journey. I turned off onto an interesting looking side street. There were people hanging out in the road and in shops and buildings that opened onto the street. Kids played soccer out in the road while their parents watched from porches. It was pretty cool, but unfortunately, this street dead ended after a few random-looking turns. I had to walk back past all of these staring people while trying to look nonchalant.

I bought some food at the night market. It was something I had actually cooked at home before. I’m not sure what it’s really called, but I always just call it rice with mangoes and coconut milk mixed with sugar. It was pretty good here, obviously.

I found myself wondering if I’m ever going to get used to this city. I still find it to be somewhat amazing. I wonder if I will return to the US in a year and be shocked to find that there isn’t a man selling grilled meat on a stick at the end of my driveway, water and laundry machines won’t be found on the street, restaurants won’t have their kitchens in the middle of the sidewalk, and people will actually obey the rules of the road. Is this place going to become normal to me? Am I going to get culture shock in the US in a year from now? That would be weird.

6-3-07 Singing Silly Songs

Well, its 10:30 on a Sunday night, and what am I doing? I am listening to children’s songs of course. The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round….

These are British songs though, so I don’t know most of them. It is important for me to do my homework so I won’t make a fool of myself. Wait, yeah, that’s going to happen anyway.

6-4-07 Potty Training

I ran into one of these toilets today at the school I was teaching at:

It’s an Asian squat toilet, and I have no idea how to use it. I suppose it’s like using a bush, except it flushes. I actually saw one last Saturday too, and I thought it was a urinal at the time. Also, there’s not toilet paper with these things, just a garden hose w/ a sprayer. You figure that one out. My bathroom has a similar hose. I thought it was for cleaning the bathroom, not my bum. It confused me though because the shower head could clean the bathroom much more effective than this thing because it has a longer hose. Now I know. I’m going to have to try this hose cleaning action though, and I can do it in the comfort of my own home. It’s like a manual bidet.

I probably should make a separate entry for this as it has nothing to do with potties, but I’m lazy. Thailand has a very interesting outdoor culture. Pretty much all the “local” stuff is outdoors or at least open air. The store fronts are mostly open, and the business spills out onto the sidewalk. It’s pretty common to walk down the sidewalk through the middle of a restaurant, a florist, or even a motorbike repair shop. I find it very interesting an exciting.

Yeah, I lied. So what? You wanna fight about it?

6-3-07

I went out for a day of site seeing yesterday. One of the major advantages of being near the end of my jet lag cycle is that I can get an early start. I was out the door at around 6am, which is insanely early for Saturday.

I went down the river front to see the Grand Palace and several Wats (Temples). Overall, I’d have to say it was a really good day. I had never been to a Buddhist temple before, and it was an interesting cultural experience. There were lots of rituals going on that I did not understand, but it was still cool.

Some of the Buddha images were simply amazing. I was most impressed with the reclining Buddha due to its immense size. The Emerald Buddha was a lot smaller than I expected, and it was actually carved from Jade. It was originally covered in plaster like all the other Buddha images, but a monk noticed that a spot of green on the nose where some of the plaster had flaked off. He realized that the Buddha was carved from a green stone, and he mistakenly thought it was emerald, hence the name. Still, for a jade sculpture it was pretty big, like a foot tall. It was sitting on the most opulent pedestal in one of the most opulent building I have ever seen. I was not allowed to take a picture.

Some girls at work told me that I should buy a 1 day tourist pass for the river ferries. At first, I thought this was a huge rip off, and I was upset that I did it. It cost 5x as much as a single ticket, and most of the temples seemed to be fairly close together. I did, however, get there before the tourist boat got started, and so I road a regular ferry, causing me to get lost. So I had to backtrack, there was another trip down. Then, I started walking around, and I got really hot, really fast. According to my computer, it was 95F when I got back to my room, and it felt like it was about 99.9% humidity. I think I got a bit of heat exhaustion to be honest. Anyway, I was really glad to have the unlimited ferry ticket because I could then just hop on a boat in between temples instead of walking. I still did way more walking than was really necessary, but that’ll happen.

There were tons of people that tried to swindle me yesterday. It was tough because they were so nice; I hated to just tell them to leave me alone. Some guy would come up and start talking to me, and then he would inform me that the destination I was near was closed. Then, he would point me to some other minor destination, and try to call a taxi over to take me there. I only got in that deep once or twice. The difficulty was that loads of random Thai people came up to me just to chat. I was not expecting that to happen at all. I was, of course, wary of all of them because they too could have been con-men, but I think many of them weren’t. I met a lady from Chiang Mai who showed me around a smaller temple that I was about to go into anyway. She was on her way to a meditation class that was going to be hosted there, and she was quite nice. Even she, though, tried to direct me to a few other temples, but the ones she recommended were fairly major tourist attractions.

That night, I was out on a hunt for some spring rolls when I ran into a guy from work. He was on his way to a BBQ with some of the other teachers which I went to as well. It was quite lucky that I happened to pass by him on the street, and I was very excited to not have to spend the whole weekend alone. I was also very glad to see that the teachers got together for social events like that.

This is the last one that I have written. I’ll try to keep writing stuff, but honestly, I’ll probably get bored of it soon. Anyway, enjoy:

6-1-07 Part 2

In my pre-trip reading, I learned that one should never raise one’s voice to a Thai person because they will be deeply offended. As you can probably guess, I saw this happen today. I was riding in the taxi on the way to my first day of observing. The taxi driver got lost, badly, and we were late for our first class. In the course of this, the TT got into it with the taxi driver. She was sitting in the front seat, and she got mad and started yelling at him while trying to tell him where to go. The taxi driver started whimpering like a little girl while she scolded him. This little 5ft, 100lb Asian girl was making a grown man whimper. It was hilarious. It was all that I could do to keep from dying in laughter.

On the way to the school, we passed by the Major Cineplex. I have seen the name Major Cineplex on several maps of the area near my apartment, and I had assumed that it was just a generic tag for a movie theater. Nope, there’s actually a theater there called Major Cineplex. I found that somewhat humorous.

The class was really cool. The kids were so unbelievable cute. We started with K1 kids, who are 2.5-3. It was their first English class. We moved up to K2 (4 yrs) and K3 (5-6) later in the day. They, also, were very cute. I was amazed at how good their English was already (the K2-3). It seemed like we weren’t doing that much, but they knew a lot of phrases. Plus, their accents were indistinguishable from Americans’. I was amazed.

The job seems like it will mostly consist of crowd control. We taught the same lesson 5 times, basically, although it was slightly adjusted for the different levels, obviously. I had a great time interacting with the kids. They were so joyful and fun. I think I’m going to really enjoy this job.

Here are the pictures from my site seeing today. Enjoy.

Bangkok

I am almost caught up on my travel diary. I’m leaving to go site seeing in a few minutes so hopefully I’ll have some pictures for you soon.

6-1-07 Bangkok

Well, I thought I was over my jet lag, but apparently not. I woke up this morning at 2am. The food that I ate last night burned as much going out as it did going in, a pleasant thought to be sure. It was like crapping fire. On the up side, it did taste fantastic, especially the spring rolls (though they weren’t the spicy bit).

Tonight is my first night in my new apartment, and I am amazed when I look at the window at how dark it is. I have a perfect view of the skyline, and the buildings have practically no lights on. I guess they do a better job of conserving electricity here than we do in the US. It’s actually kind of nice to see.

My room itself is quite practical as well. For instance, I don’t have a proper shower. There is just a hot water heater unit on the wall of the bathroom, which is all tiled so it can be used as a shower. It allows the bathroom to be about 2/3 of the size that it would otherwise be. I appreciate the pure practicality of it. They had the same sort of design on the dive boat I was on in Australia.

Most of the time here has been spent in utter amazement. I am having a fantastic time experiencing this new culture. Several times a day, I just stop and think, “I’m living in Bangkok. How awesome is that!” It just leaves me feeling very uplifted and joyful. At the same time, I think I’m pretty weird to get off on something so crazy. Normal people don’t seem to have this desire to subject themselves to major culture shock. Of course, I’m not really normal by any stretch of the imagination, and I don’t have much of a problem with that.