Accidental Tourism

Overnight train took so much longer than we thought! What we thought was a twelve hour train ride actually was fourteen hours – almost as long as it took us to get to Beijing from L.A. We didn’t arrive in Chiang Mai until lunch time.

At the train station we were offered a free ride to town to check out a hotel. A quick google revealed some odd reviews on TripAdvisor, but it was nice and had air-conditioning so we stayed. We could do a heckuva lot worse for $16/night! (The bad reviews were regarding the owner’s aggressive tourism services sales, and his questionable reactions if you turned him down. Several people talk about being kicked out after not booking tour services through him. We didn’t find him to be a problem, although we just listened to his sales pitch and then told him we were still thinking about it.)

We were instructed to find this line of red taxis that would take you to a temple on the far outskirts of town. We weren’t sure why only the red ones would take you, but there must have been some reason! We were walking along and got some bomb smoothies for like, seventy five cents each for lunch.

somebody is trying to please a red-soda-loving spirit

We finally found the line of red taxis and pointed out the temple on the map. They nodded and we haggled price, and they handed us a brochure – should have been our first clue – and asked, “it’s okay?” We assume it is, because I pointed out the temple on the map, with a picture and everything.

We get there – it takes much less time than the hotel receptionist told us it would – and my mom keeps asking about a cable car to take us to the top that she heard about. They put us in a horse drawn carriage which was cheaper than a tram shuttle kind of thing – maybe they thought this was the car she was referring to.

this doesn't look like you need a cable car to get to the top... — this doesn’t look like you need a cable car to get to the top…

My mom still thinks this might not be right, but we go with it. Our carriage driver doesn’t speak much English, but is funny and has pictures and explanations of what we are seeing in English. We stopped at a few different temple ruins in a loop, and our driver shows us pictures of how a flood a few years ago affected them. Mom asked him what he was doing during the flooding? “Swimming!” he replied, and we all had a good laugh. He even pointed out his house as we rolled by it. We got back to our songthaew ready to leave, and the driver was taking a nap in back and told us to go walk around and give him a few more minutes!

Later that night, while looking up stuff to do around town the next day, my mom realized we were not at the temple we thought we were at, but instead at the old city ruins or something. We thought we were at like TripAdvisor’s #2 attraction in Chiang Mai, but really we were at like #47 of 49. We had a pretty good laugh about that.

Honestly, we probably enjoyed chatting with our guide and hearing about the flood then another temple at this point, so it worked out.

I love this part of traveling – stumbling on to something unexpected.

shiny trees — can anybody explain what’s going on here? saw these at a temple

We Get ThisClose to Royalty (both of the Thai & Transportation Variety)

On our own again this morning, after a familial farewell breakfast. We headed to the Grand Palace, where people were shouting “hurry, hurry, gates close in ten minutes!” Um at eleven am? But still, we hurried… to wait in line.

There were a ton of people milling around. The guy behind me was apparently so anxious to see the place, he was crowding me something fierce. So much so that I finally turned, said “you are much too close to me,” and put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him off me. He was impervious! It didn’t even give him pause, and this time he was pushing me forward. Miserable.

We gleaned that since it was a holiday, the princess would be worshipping there – hence the early closure. The temples in the grounds would be closed all day, as well. This mean we weren’t able to see the Emerald Buddha, but once I learned it was carved from jade and not literally a giant emerald I wasn’t too bummed too miss it. (Hey, we’ve been to a lot of temples so far. This is day 8.)

Next we walked to Wat Po to see the giant reclining Buddha. And when I say giant, I mean GIANT. The funny thing is, the building he’s in is barely big enough to house him. Visitors can only stand up close.

While we were walking around the statue (traffic flows one way, because there is little walking space between the wall and the statue), I wondered aloud if Scrooge McDuck was counting his pennies somewhere in the temple. The sounds of coins clinking was overwhelming, especial given the small space. Apparently your drop these pennies in all these copper bowls for good fortune or something? We skipped it since we weren’t exact sure what that was for, and didn’t want to intrude on any Buddhist ceremonies, just in case. I’m not going to lie, the long line of penny droppers holding up the flow of traffic was also a factor.

Next we walked to the riverside, having heard about a tourist boat that will take you down the Chao Phraya river and tell you what you’re looking at. We started at a long boat pier, which were noisy and expensive, so we walked a little further and got to a public boat dock, where we learned that the tourist boat really only started and stopped at two different docks and we were right in the middle of both. So we hopped on a public transit boat, took that to the sky train, took that to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed out to the train station.

A funny thing happened at the train station. My mom and I share a love for Agatha Christie novels, and in fact were watching a documentary about the television adaption of Murder on the Orient Express right before we left on this trip. The old platform sign said our train would be departing from 3, so I went out there and The Orient Express train was sitting in platform 3! I was so excited, I thought there had been some train mix up or we got tickets on a certain leg of the trip or something. Taking a ride on the Orient Express is supposed to be like taking a cruise – it’s luxurious, you are pampered and everything is taken care of. I go tell Mom the good news, and she thinks there’s a mistake somewhere, there’s no way this is our train, but I remain optimistic. I go ask a station worker, just to be on the safe side.

The sign is broken. Our train departs from platform 8. It needs some cleaning, a new paint job and some WD-40. It is most definitely not The Orient Express.

Oh well, an overnight train is still an adventure, just a less luxurious one I let myself imagine for about three minutes. We got on the train at seven, and the attendant started turning our seats into our bunks at 7:30! We were riding second class, which meant we each had a bunk with a curtain, but the car was open – we were across the aisle from two more bunks with only curtains separating us, and so on throughout the whole car. Luckily, we heard that to eat in the dining car is more fun, so we sat in there a while instead of just going to bed at eight. Hardly anybody was in the small dining car, most having opted to eat in their seats (or beds). The dining car had blinking Christmas lights strung up all over the place, and some 70s (maybe?) German pop band reunion concert was blaring on the tv. Side note: I think I may be really into 970s German pop music.

After dinner, we resigned to our perspective bunks where I was relegated to the top bunk. I definitely got the short end of that deal, as the bunk was on an incline, and I felt every pitch and roll the train car experienced for the rest of the night. Also somebody had candy up there at some point which had melted and got green sticky stuff everywhere. Not the greatest night of sleep, but a bad night of sleep in Thailand is much better than a bad night of sleep in Texas!

We Out-Bizarre Foods the Bizarre Foods Guy

At seven am we hit an appointment market near Koi and Cotton’s house. They had everything there. Clothes for your traditional and modern needs. Shoes. Fruit. Soup. Live turtles in baskets. French fries. DVDs. Vegetables. Beats by Dre. Live fish flopping around. Candy. Sweets. Crepes. Diapers. Fermented fish. A baby elephant. People everywhere. It was nuts.

Yes, I said baby elephant.

i think the term ‘fire ant eggs’ was mentioned, (top left corner) – although i’m not certain

We wondered through several aisles of stalls and carts in front of a temple, asking questions about Thai fruit that we had never seen, or surprise treats wrapped in banana leaves. We tasted some green candy/jello stuff, some tiny grilled balls of coconut-y goodness (I have been on a search for them ever since, haven’t been able to find them yet!), some skewered things – and we bought much more for breakfast.

We stopped to feed a baby elephant, which I had some qualms about. You aren’t supposed to encourage this sort of behavior and it feeds into a vicious cycle of possible abuse or poverty-driven neglect. But when you are standing next to a baby elephant, with somebody telling you this is how these teenage boys make money to feed the elephant and themselves, it’s hard to say no.

After the elephant, we moved on to durian.

http://youtu.be/-o_1qillkJs?t=2m38s

(Skip to 2:38 for durian-specifics, although I’ve tried fish maw soup and horseshoe crab roe salad, and now kind of think Andrew Zimmern might be a wuss.)

As we were waiting in line for the vendor (a little old lady with two oven mitts on one hand to handle the prickly fruit), I thought to myself – this doesn’t smell so bad. As we stood there a little longer, a terrible smell gradually took over. “A-ha! I get it now,” I thought. Just as I began to inwardly hype myself up to taste this famed smelly fruit, Cotton told us he wanted to show us something Thai people really liked that he just could not develop a taste for in all his years in Thailand. We turned around and walked a few feet, and there was a vendor selling fermented fish.

Durian doesn’t have anything but a mildly fruity smell, y’all. Twelve buckets of various blends of rotting fish three feet behind you, however, does. Thai people use it for seasoning, and Cotton and Koi keep a bucket of it in their kitchen. I just can’t. Durian, however, tastes pretty good. It’s kind of a weird texture, but it smells fine.

Some fruit, soups, curries, sticky rice and fried pork were on the breakfast menu that morning. People in Asia don’t really seem to differentiate breakfast food from other food, so even though the pork soup or noodles with beef sounds good for lunch or dinner, it simply doesn’t appeal to me at eight am. Maybe that’s just me? I did get down on some fried pork.

We headed back to Bangkok after breakfast, stopping along the way to check out a Tesco Lotus – the Thai version of a super Target, just to see what’s going on. Generally, Thai people prefer the fresh market, but you could get some imported stuff – cheese! most importantly to Cotton. Asian people don’t really eat cheese (except, of course, royal cheese). I hadn’t noticed it before, but since then I have not seen anything with cheese that wasn’t Western food.

We went back to the Bourbon Street Hotel, got checked back in and resettled. “Who feels like a rub?” Cotton asked, as he explained that he and Koi haven’t really found a place they like out near where they live. So we went down the street, to the same massage place as earlier that week. This time we opted for the two hour Thai massage. Having barely conquered the pants last time, I did some asking around and was feeling confident in my ability to dress myself. Which is great, except this time my pants didn’t have drawstrings. I just pulled them on and laid down, and it worked out fine. Until I got up to use the restroom (gotta release those toxins somehow!) and my pants fell down. The masseuses closest to me and I all started giggling, and I’m sure we disrupted a few relaxed people. Eh, what are you gonna do?

The massage was intense, and I seriously thought about tapping out at one point (I was on my stomach, she was crouching on the back of my thighs, pressing her knees into my lower back and hands full force into my shoulder blades), but I figured I must have needed it. Besides, by the time I thought all that through, it was over and I was alive. My mom and I both felt awesome the next day, although both of us had a few more bruises to show for it.

After our massages, we went to eat at a delicious little Italian restaurant that Koi and Cotton like to get their foie gras fix when they’re in Bangkok (ah I’ve been missing you, carbs!). After some joking, wait, are you serious, I’m serious if you’re serious discussion, we decided to return to the massage place next to our hotel (yes, the one we just left) and all get another one hour foot massage. I didn’t realize reflexology was a part of a Thai foot massage, so I was very confused when she started poking the bottoms of my feet with a stick. For massage newbies: foot massages also included your calves, arms, shoulders, neck and head. Quite nice for a fraction of the price of a traditional massage.

So far, I am thinking there is no such thing as too much massage – especially when they come this cheap! Judge me if you want, but I hope the other countries we are visiting have a vibrant (and not-sketchy) massage culture. :)

Trip Massage Total: 4 hours

Food, Family and Fresh Air

We got up this morning to meet my mom’s cousin, Cotton, had a nice catch up, and then he took us to the Queen-sponsored Thai handicrafts shop (so you know they were made by actual Thai people with Thai material). We also swung by The Erawan Shrine (one of many, many sacred spots in the city), and Cotton explained some of the Buddhist traditions to us. Apparently we were in the middle of a holiday weekend, sort of like a Buddhist version of Lent. We saw people leaving flowers and lighting incense, buying birds and releasing them, and ladyboys dancing. It was, um… different than how we do it in Baptist land.

For lunch we ate at a real (read: not touristy) Thai restaurant near where Cotton and his wife, Koi, used to live. He ordered a bunch of different things for us to taste. “That’s medium?!” I asked as I started sweating after one bite. Whew!

After lunch, we hopped in the car for an hour or so to where Cotton and Koi work and live. We picked up Koi and their adorable grandbaby, Best. Apparently everybody in Thailand has a nickname, as Thai names tend to be long. Some of them are very, um, honest (fat, toad, fish). I guess Best got the best of that deal. :)

We drove a little further down the road to Bang Sean for a sea side picnic. Koi and Cotton ordered for us from a stand they like to eat from. Each stand had a few of it’s own little tables on mats on a concrete pier right next to the ocean. We took our shoes off and sat on the mat around a two-foot tall table.

And we feasted.

A server brought us two types of green papaya salad, a hot pot of soup, crab legs, giant prawns, horseshoe crab egg salad, some different types of soup and some other things I didn’t catch what they were – but I tried them! We had so much food they had to bring a second table.

Only one thing made me seriously sweat, but general consensus is that I might have eaten a “rat shit” pepper, a terrifying tiny little thing that Thai people put in dang near everything. Yikes! I also ate some things you aren’t supposed to eat, like the stalk of lemongrass in one of the curries (then why put it in there?). We had beer and wine, sat on the ground with the ocean waves crashing on rocks behind us and a market and a concert going on in front of us.

Sigh. It was fabulous.

Tigers – Are They That Grrrrrreat?

Nothing like popcorn and bananas to start the day off right.

We had to be at the older, smaller train station at seven – apparently a peak traffic time in the city. Our taxi driver conferred with our hotel receptionist, who tried to confer with us but once again there was some linguistic confusion. We were a little concerned but we made it to the train station with a few minutes to spare.

There is a market right next to the station, so we thought we’d do a super quick reconnaissance in search of breakfast food – which is how we ended up with a bunch of mini-bananas and a bag of the most delicious kettle corn I’ve ever had (and I am what you might call a kettle corn connoisseur). We grabbed a Coke and hopped on the train to Kanchanaburi. We also rounded out our morning meal with some slices of pomelo that a vendor who had hopped on the train for a few stops sold us. It was served with this sugar/salt mixture that was pink and tasty.

After an unceremonious four hour train ride on the Death Railway, we took a five minute songthaew ride to our hotel (which was unbelievably nice for $25/night!). After we got checked in, we arranged to visit the tiger monastery. This involved a change in clothes (apparently reds, pinks, oranges and bright colors bother the tigers) and a 60 or so km ride down an almost-highway in the back of another songthaew, which is basically two covered benches in the bed of a pickup.

“Do you think this will annoy any tigers?” was never a serious question I’ve had about any of my outfit choices before today.

We got down in the canyon on temple grounds. On one side of a fence there were about ten or so tigers, each with a handler-type person, a couple monks hanging out, and a ton of people in lines on the other side. You could pay extra to take a group photo, where you got to hold the biggest tiger’s head in your lap, but we opted for the individual photos included in admission costs. You go in the fence one by one and hand your camera to somebody, and they hold your hand and walk you from tiger to tiger, telling you when and how to pose. For some reason, I actually had two handlers – an older lady who had no interest in making small talk led me around while a disinterested young lady took my pictures and chatted with my hand holder in Thai.

Being that close to tigers was amazing. They are awesome, in the truest sense of the word. I was in awe of their size and power but also their laziness and indifference. Sooo, pretty much like the rest of the cats I’ve encountered. One of the workers told us that big cats have the same sleeping habits in the wild as house cats do at home – 16 to 20 hours a day spent napping. When I tried to pet one of the tigers, it must have thought I was a fly because it tried to shoo me with it’s tail. The same thing happened to my mom, and they just told her to pet the tigers more firmly. We both got done and I flipped through my pics as soon as I got out of the gate…

My photographer cut my face off in all but one of the thirty pics she took. Seriously.

Mom’s turned out much better.

I was disappointed, but still glad to have the memory of hanging out with some tigers. My mom suggested I ask if I could go again – the worst they could say is no. The line was huge and they were pulling the plug on the photo op soon, since it was almost play time. I told the worker I had an “it can’t hurts to ask question,” and showed him the pics. He got me right to the front of the line and let me go through the whole thing again, which was awesome.

I felt like I shouldn't have been hovering in their peripherals .... — I wouldn’t have gotten so cozy if I had known he was licking his lips!

I have mixed feelings about this experience. Because it was a monastery, I thought it would be more about the relationships between the tigers and the monks. It turned out to be little more than a tourist attraction that the monks used to earn money. We heard both that the tigers were drugged and were not, but their lethargic behavior made sense when they were compared to domesticated cats for us by an employee. I am going to go with sober tigers, just hanging out in the hottest part of the day. It was also a little sad to see them shackled to the ground. (Even though a tiny part of me was glad they were chained up when I was in there with them.) Honestly, it felt kind of like a photo-op to cross off a list but I will say I’ve never had the opportunity to get that close to tigers anywhere else – see what I mean? Mixed feelings.

That evening, we had the hotel call a taxi for us – which happened to be a moto-taxi! Basically a motorcycle with bench for a sidecar. Not for the faint-hearted.

He took us to check out the bridge on the river Kwai, where we also stopped for some coconut milk ice cream with ‘thai sweet’ on top. It looked like shredded cheese, but it was just sugar. The ice cream was awesome!

wait, has anybody ever actually tried shredded cheese on ice cream?

Next we hit the night market. We wandered around trying to make some supper decisions, but couldn’t make up our minds. One obstacle we face is that my mom can’t have gluten/wheat and there are really no universal hand motions for that sort of thing (yet!). Finally we saw some tables under an awning set up on the sidewalk with a sign boasting a buffet of 9.99 Thai Baht (about $3). There was all this uncooked food setting out, and people were loading up plates and taking them back to their table, where a waiter set up a hot pot type thing. It had a fire underneath, a hot water moat and a hot metal dome.

Our server motioned for us to throw our meat on the dome and add vegetables and other stuff to the water to make soup. I’m not even sure what we ate! It was a fun adventure, we were laughing and trying to guess what we were eating (and if it was thoroughly cooked!).

Although it turns out I liked the bacon the best.

Cruising in Kanchanaburi

We hung out at our sweet hotel this morning, had breakfast and got re-organized.

post-breakfast snooze — post-breakfast nappin’

Then we rented bicycles and rode them to the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery and Wartime Railway Museum. It was quite somber, as you can imagine. They had many personal effects and anecdotal stories. Basically, as they were beginning to build the railway, they asked for the POWs to volunteer. They cited better working and living conditions, but ultimately the POWs were tricked. The Japanese also refused to inform the Allies when POWs were being transported, so a few of the carrying boats were bombed en route. Those working on the railway were mainly Australian and Dutch soldiers. The museum also had a research center, and we saw one guy taken into the records room after we heard him ask about his father.

After a fortifying cuppa (free with admission!), we hopped back on out bikes. We were riding along and stumbled upon this little open-air, isolated temple on the river bank with hardly anybody but us there.

the ceiling at a temple in Kanchanaburi, Thailand — so glad I looked up

For a 360 view of the inside, click here

We crossed the river and biked out in the Thai countryside. We were kind of looking for this temple in a cave, but we felt we didn’t have enough time to get there and back. So we just cruised, passed the odd road side stand, saw some farmers working in their race paddies and gardens and cows just hanging out.

The mountains were dark green in the distance, the sky was blue and cloudless and our immediate surroundings were a million different shades of green. There were trees and hanging vines, open fields and flowering bushes. There were chickens wandering around, birds singing and scooters zooming past. It was awesome.

We arranged for a minibus back to Bangkok, which was air conditioned (!) and should have been half the length of a train trip. Unfortunately, Bangkok traffic added a couple of hours so it took us about the same amount of time (but with air conditioning!).

Got to our New Orleans themed hotel in Bangkok and asked the receptionist about massage places in the area. So we opted for Thai massage instead of dinner – worth it!

They gave us a towel, a cup of tea and washed and scrubbed our feet with kaffir limes. We stepped up on a platform that had two pads on the floor with a pillow each and they drew curtains around us and asked us to change. I just couldn’t figure out the pants.

I know pants aren’t complicated, but it was dark!

Have y’all ever had a Thai massage? It’s rough. It’s uncomfortable. It hurts. In short – it’s wonderful.

They bend, pound, twist and pull you. They straight up comfort you. My mom and I both had bruises the next morning. After the massage, they gave us a cup of hot, sweet tea (yum!) and a coconut water cookie thing (also yum!). Luckily we were less then five minutes from our hotel so we went straight to bed.

Best way to end a long day of biking and traveling ever.

Trip Massage Total: 1 hour

Packing. Like A Boss.

I have been giggling to myself all week. Some of the giggles are of an incredulous nature – I just can’t believe how lucky I am sometimes! Sure, I have no job and my shiny new college degree doesn’t seem to have the magic wand-type power I imagined. But its all good because my mom and I are leaving soon for six weeks in Southeast Asia: a three day layover in Beijing, then on to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. I have surpassed excitement level: Jessie Spano (without getting … so scared).

Actually the rest of my giggles also fall into the incredulous category, now that I think about it. Y’all will not believe how little we are taking for six weeks in five countries! I hardly believe it myself. It’s seriously making me laugh every time I look at my pack.

It’s not like I’m usually a high-maintenance packer – I’m taking the good ol Osprey pack I’ve been toting around the world for the last few years – but this time all that’s in it are my shoes (and a pair of my moms), two large Ziploc of my clothes and my tube cube o’ toiletries.

We’ve never been a family of bag-checkers – strictly carry on for us – but my mom has always been a great rolling bag advocate. (I’m not going to lie – I often envy those wheels about 3/4 through a trip!) We are both taking so little that she has downsized to the backpack my dad uses for weekend trips – could your mom handle that? …that’s what I thought. :)

(Ahem, I am carrying a pair of her shoes)

Crazy, right? Crazy awesome.

It feels awesome to not be weighed down by stuff. Do many other people pack this light, and am I getting excited about nothing? I didn’t even bring a raincoat – and it’s monsoon season!

If you need it, you can always buy it.

I’m not worried at all about our lack of luggage. I am relieved to avoid the overstuffed backpack/overhead bin struggle (even though I am undefeated). But mostly, in the immortal words of The Pointer Sisters (& Jessie Spano), I’m so excited!

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