Saturday, April 25, 2009
I have some stories that go back to Cambodia. Hopefully they are not repeats.
"You said maybe later."
We took a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap to go see Angkor Wat and the other temples. The drive was a long 6 or 7 hours and I think that we stopped maybe 2hours into the trip at a bus stop swarming with tourists on other buses bound for Siem Reap and then locals trying to sell anything and everything. Pat and I got off the bus to use the bathroom and as soon as we set foot on the ground we were nearly attacked by small children selling cut pineapples, magoes and bananas. They tried to bargain with us, but bargaining was not necessary because we were not hungry and did not want any fruit. Trying not to be negative or mean while attempting to get the kids to move on Pat said that he would maybe buy something later. As soon as we left the toilets the kids found us again instantly. One girl with a strange British accent says, "But you said maybe later." They tried hard to make their sell, but we were not interested. We talked with them and they claimed it cost $2 a day to go to school and the same girl with the British accent repeats, "But you said maybe later" and continues with "Now I going to cry." She did not end up crying, it was just part of her hard selling act. Now when Pat tries to send off sellers with "Maybe later" we think of the little girl with the British accent.
"But Sir you are not Vietnamese"
After our first night in DaNang, we were set on switching hotels because of the location across the river and the extremely hard and small bed. We took a taxi across the bridge and went into a couple of hotels to see rooms and ask about prices. We went into one hotel and looked at a room and then we were talking about the cost at the reception desk. The woman informed us of the price and pointed at a price list on the counter for the different types of rooms. The price list had two columns, one in Vietnamese Dong and one is US dollars. She told us the price is dollars, but we did not have any USD left so we asked if we could pay in Dong noticing that the Dong prices and USD prices were not equal. Pat asked if we could pay the price listed in Dong and the woman responded, "But Sir you are not Vietnamese." Really? We learned that in Vietnam there are prices for Vietnamese and prices for tourists that are not equal.
Standing in Line in Vietnam and Planes
As Pat mentioned in an earlier post, flights are very cheap in Vietnam, so we have opted to fly from HCMC to DaNang and then Hue to Hanoi (the two longest legs of our trip). When we landed in DaNang as the plane was pulling up to its parking place, not when it stopped, everyone shot out of the seats grabbing their bags and mostly all stood in the isle. It was unbelievable! I usually enjoy taking my time because I know that by rushing to get into the isle does not mean that I will get off the plane first or even get my luggage first at baggage claim. I would save very little time by rushing to stand in the isle and pushing to get off the plane. But sure enough nearly everyone was standing in the isle and pushing to get off the plane. In the States and elsewhere the passengers leave the plane based on where they are sitting. The first row goes then the second and people generally let people who are sitting in front of them get off in front. This was not the case. People did not let you out of your row. Once in the airport if you decide to use the toilet you will run into the same situation in the bathroom. Southeast Asian bathroom lines are individual for each stall there is not just one line where the first person goes to the open stall. So if you happen to choose the wrong stall, you are out of luck. And if you try to form just one line, the local women will push ahead and try to form individual stall lines.
Yesterday we flew from Hue to Hanoi. Hue was a small airport claiming to be international, but I only saw two gates and not much more, so I am not sure where they actually fly other than Hanoi and HCMC that makes it international. Our flight starting boarding at 12:30, so we walked down the stairs to the gate where we loaded (like sardines) an airport bus that drove us probably at most 50 feet. I am not kidding! We could have easily walked and thus saved gas for the two airport buses! The plane was just outside the door of the gate. There was no reason that the airport should have had an airport bus much less two or three and why in the world could we not walk to the plane???
Turning Heads
Soccer/Football is huge in Southeast Asia and they love to follow the European leagues. For Christmas Pat was given a Barcelona jersey with MESSI on the back and a Liverpool TORRES jersey both of which he wears on a regular basis. Every time he wears the jerseys he gets thumbs up with people saying "Barcelona!" "Liverpool!" and then getting excited when they see that it is MESSI or TORRES. Pat can not go anywhere wearing the jerseys without getting some sort of commentary. While we were in Hue, Pat wore his MESSI jersey to dinner one night. We walked across the bridge and as he walked he was turning heads of all the guys sitting on the side of the bridge with friends or their girlfriends. It was as if he were some beautiful, blonde girl with a short skirt. All the guys were staring him down and turning their heads to follow him with their eyes. As we passed they would say something about Barcelona or Messi and continue to stare.
Hue, Vietnam
After several days in Hoi An having clothes made, we took a three hour bus to Hue where we spent three nights. We had reserved the "Penthouse" room at a hotel a couple days before we arrived. The room was great! We had the 6th floor of the hotel to ourselves with a wrap around balcony that overlooked the city where we had our breakfast brought to us the first morning. We had the usual air-con, hot water along with a computer and internet in our room. It was a pretty sweet set-up for only $30 a night. Our first day we visited the Citadel where the Emperor lived in the 1800s. The next day we did a motorbike tour that took us to some sites outside the city including a Japanese covered bridge, an emporer's tomb, some French bunkers with a great view of the river and a Pagoda where we were able to watch a group of monks sing. The tour was really good, the motorbike being the best part. We drove through huge rice paddies and through pine forest. The scenery was beautiful and we have found that motorbikes are a really good way to see a city.
Hanoi, Vietnam
So now we are in Hanoi in the Northern part of Vietnam. (We have a little over a week left before we head to Bangkok for a few days and then fly to California.) We had a hotel booked for last night and the room was good except that the water was not working and the computer was also not working. We switched rooms but the room was not very good, so we ended up switching to a nicer and less expensive hotel down the road. We found a cool restaurant a couple doors down from our new hotel where there is a grill on each table and you cook your own food. We had beef steak and vegetables with a delicious dipping sauce. The food was really good and it was fun to cook it in front of us!
For the next couple of days we will do the touristy things around Hanoi. On Monday we head to Halong Bay for a three-day, two-night tour of the bay, which looks beautiful and like a lot of fun.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Pocahontas Party in Vietnam
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Our two-day, one-night tour of the Mekong Delta was touristy but pretty good. We took a 3-hr boat ride down the Saigon River early the first morning and started the activities off with Unicorn Island where we tasted local honey, banana wine, tropical fruits and listened to traditional Vietnamese music. We enjoyed rowing in row boats down a skinny canal wearing the pointed cone hats that you imagine of when you think about Vietnam. We went to Ben Tre to look at fruit orchards, watch the making of coconut candy and taste it, and ride bikes through the town. We took a few different boats to Can Tho where we stayed for the night, which is the 5th biggest city in Vietnam. The following morning we took a boat to the biggest floating market in the area where they hang the available produce from poles high in the sky. If a boat was selling pineapples, a pineapple would be hanging from a tall pole as advertising. Our final stop was a risk husking factory where we learned about rice and its many forms.
We returned to Ho Chi Minh City in the evening of the second day only to find that our hotel (where we had stayed for 6 days) did not reserve a room that we had asked for. They took us to a different hotel, but the room was smelly and the shower was no good. We walked around and eventually found a place that had really comfortable beds and was perfect for the night. The following day we flew to DaNang in central Vietnam.
We found DaNang to be cute but fairly boring. Our first night in the city as we walked along the river in search of dinner memories of our first weeks in Trang haunted us. Everyone was starring at us and yelling hello with no follow up. A man with a small child in his arms ran up to us to give his kid a closer look. At the restaurant we found, we struggled to order. The waitstaff knew no English and we had no Vietnamese to offer. Overall in DaNang we struggled to find good food. The places that would have the best local food likely did not have a menu and we had no idea what to order.
We met up with a friend at the local bar Seventeen Saloon, which was very much a cowboy and indians kind of place. The band was Filipino and sang some wonderful American hits. We were planning on heading out of DaNang the following day, but after learning there would be a Pocahontas Party the next night we decided we had to stay and check it out. After our first night at Seventeen Saloon, we went out for some late night food, fresh seafood on the beach. We had clams, steamed squid, frog and fish lettuce wraps. The food was incredibly fresh and delicious. We also had some locals with us who knew where to eat and what to order.
The Pocahontas Party was simply stunning. When we arrived there was a bonfire and a teepee at the front door. Inside we found that all the staff were wearing Indian costumes. The men were shirtless with their chests painted and the women where wearing little burlap and pleather outfits with their faces painted. Even the band was decked out with Indian garb. The night included some themed activities and competitions: face painting, fish spearing and a raffle drawing. I was volunteered for the face painting competition, so I painted a 40-year old Vietnamese guy's face. We ended up winning the contest and I now have a black tshirt with a horse on the front and the back! It is quite a terrible shirt. Patrick tried out the fish spearing and we had no luck with the raffle. At one point 4 of the waitresses did a dance routine in their outfits to Shakira (which is not quite Indian music). The whole night was quite amusing! We do have pictures, but I will not be able to post those until we get back to the States.
We are currently in Hoi An, a city 45 minutes South of DaNang. It is a World Heritage Site and it is known for its tailor and shoemaking shops. We are having a few things made. Pat designed a pair of UNC hightop basketball shoes that should be ready this morning and we are also having some clothes made (shorts, pants, and a dress). We will let you know how those turn out. The center part of Hoi An is the "ancient" city and no motorbikes or cars are allowed to drive through, so it is really peaceful to walk through. The ancient city is very quaint and the shops are very cute. I think today we will spend some time at the beach because it is really hot and the beach is only 3 km away.
Our two-day, one-night tour of the Mekong Delta was touristy but pretty good. We took a 3-hr boat ride down the Saigon River early the first morning and started the activities off with Unicorn Island where we tasted local honey, banana wine, tropical fruits and listened to traditional Vietnamese music. We enjoyed rowing in row boats down a skinny canal wearing the pointed cone hats that you imagine of when you think about Vietnam. We went to Ben Tre to look at fruit orchards, watch the making of coconut candy and taste it, and ride bikes through the town. We took a few different boats to Can Tho where we stayed for the night, which is the 5th biggest city in Vietnam. The following morning we took a boat to the biggest floating market in the area where they hang the available produce from poles high in the sky. If a boat was selling pineapples, a pineapple would be hanging from a tall pole as advertising. Our final stop was a risk husking factory where we learned about rice and its many forms.
We returned to Ho Chi Minh City in the evening of the second day only to find that our hotel (where we had stayed for 6 days) did not reserve a room that we had asked for. They took us to a different hotel, but the room was smelly and the shower was no good. We walked around and eventually found a place that had really comfortable beds and was perfect for the night. The following day we flew to DaNang in central Vietnam.
We found DaNang to be cute but fairly boring. Our first night in the city as we walked along the river in search of dinner memories of our first weeks in Trang haunted us. Everyone was starring at us and yelling hello with no follow up. A man with a small child in his arms ran up to us to give his kid a closer look. At the restaurant we found, we struggled to order. The waitstaff knew no English and we had no Vietnamese to offer. Overall in DaNang we struggled to find good food. The places that would have the best local food likely did not have a menu and we had no idea what to order.
We met up with a friend at the local bar Seventeen Saloon, which was very much a cowboy and indians kind of place. The band was Filipino and sang some wonderful American hits. We were planning on heading out of DaNang the following day, but after learning there would be a Pocahontas Party the next night we decided we had to stay and check it out. After our first night at Seventeen Saloon, we went out for some late night food, fresh seafood on the beach. We had clams, steamed squid, frog and fish lettuce wraps. The food was incredibly fresh and delicious. We also had some locals with us who knew where to eat and what to order.
The Pocahontas Party was simply stunning. When we arrived there was a bonfire and a teepee at the front door. Inside we found that all the staff were wearing Indian costumes. The men were shirtless with their chests painted and the women where wearing little burlap and pleather outfits with their faces painted. Even the band was decked out with Indian garb. The night included some themed activities and competitions: face painting, fish spearing and a raffle drawing. I was volunteered for the face painting competition, so I painted a 40-year old Vietnamese guy's face. We ended up winning the contest and I now have a black tshirt with a horse on the front and the back! It is quite a terrible shirt. Patrick tried out the fish spearing and we had no luck with the raffle. At one point 4 of the waitresses did a dance routine in their outfits to Shakira (which is not quite Indian music). The whole night was quite amusing! We do have pictures, but I will not be able to post those until we get back to the States.
We are currently in Hoi An, a city 45 minutes South of DaNang. It is a World Heritage Site and it is known for its tailor and shoemaking shops. We are having a few things made. Pat designed a pair of UNC hightop basketball shoes that should be ready this morning and we are also having some clothes made (shorts, pants, and a dress). We will let you know how those turn out. The center part of Hoi An is the "ancient" city and no motorbikes or cars are allowed to drive through, so it is really peaceful to walk through. The ancient city is very quaint and the shops are very cute. I think today we will spend some time at the beach because it is really hot and the beach is only 3 km away.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Its been a while
So it has been quite a while since I have written anything about my time here in Southeast Asia. I think it has been around 4 months or something like that. In the span of that time a lot of stuff has happened and I feel like I need to write some of it down while it is somewhat fresh in my mind or I'll lose it forever. One of the first things I wanted to talk about was to make a list of things that I will and won't miss about Trang. I think I'll start with the things I won't miss first.
1. Having people just shout hello at me while I ride by on a motorbike. If your gonna yell at someone at least have a follow up to hello.
2. I won't miss the general confusion that comes from a huge language barrier. While that can be kind of interesting sometimes, and it is all part of living in another place, a lot of times it just gets frustrating.
I'm sure I could think of others but it is a lot more fun to think about the things you will miss. So I'll go ahead and list those.
I think I'll ditch the number format for this one and just go off the top of my head.
I'm going to miss seeing the kids that I taught. Its very strange to go from seeing them everyday to knowing that you will never see any of them again. I'll miss some of the staff at Wichienmatu, not many but there are a few people that I will miss. Being able to eat lunch for 50 cents a day will also be dearly missed. I'll miss when my dinner bill is over a dollar and I think that is expensive. I'll miss being able to ride my motor bike around and park it right in front of wherever I want to go. Being able to fill it up for the week and only spend two dollars will also be missed. I'll miss the good food and being able to eat from a street stall. I'll miss the friends I made, especially Joe and Hok those guys were awesome. And especially I will miss being one of the better basketball players in the city that I live in. Its back to being perhaps slightly above average when I get back home. But I digress. I think I will mainly miss the experience of living and working in a foreign place where English is not the main spoken language. I know I was complaining about it earlier but that made the experience challenging and difficult and in the end that was what made it rewarding. It will be strange to go from being a novelty to look at in Thailand to being just another white person in the United States. Its gonna be a tough transition and I'm not sure how I will handle it but we will find out in about a month.
Here I would like to take some time to congratulate the UNC basketball team. I know many on the team are regular readers, so congratulations boys you earned it. Its funny Keats and I were in Phnom Penh, its the capital of Cambodia in case you don't know, and we were hanging out with my buddy Sam who lives and works there. We were walking around just talking and we passed by a sports bar and he told me if I wanted to watch the championship game live there we would be able to. I though he was just being a jackass and messing around with me because he went to Duke. And we all know that people who went to Duke love being jackasses. But lo and behold he was not and I decided we had to stay an extra day in the city to watch the game. It ended up not being very exciting but I'll take a beatdown in the national championship as opposed to a thrilling loss any day. I hope Franklin Street was crazy and I'm sorry I missed it, but I think it was a worthwhile trade.
Our travels so far have been a lot of fun. We had some great times in Bangkok with my brother. Who knew a dirty disgusting city could look so great 57 stories up. Laos was fun, we stayed in one city a bit to long but it was still a good time. Cambodia was a bit of a dump. Angkor Wat was truly amazing but everything else about the country was a bit depressing and very dirty. But that will happen when the smartest people in your country are systematically murdered. But at least they had the championship game for me to watch. You will be remembered fondly for that Cambodia don't you worry. We are in Vietnam now and it has been a really good and interesting place. I have never been in a country that my country was formerly at war with. It is extremely sad to walk around and see a man with no arms or legs or a badly burnt face and know that your country probably had a great deal to do with why his life sucks so bad. I think we view war in the US differently than other countries because we pretty much always get to pack up and leave a war zone, whereas the other country has to stay and rebuild there way of life. The physical damage done to the land that is evidenced here is something that cannot be forgotten quickly because it simply cannot go away. People die or grow up but for the most part bomb craters stay where they are.
Tomorrow Keats and I are heading to the Mekong Delta, an area to the South of Saigon. I am really looking forward to that. After that we are heading to Danang. We found out it was either a 19 hour bus ride there or a 34 dollar flight. The decision pretty much made itself. I will try to write a bit more in the next few weeks just to get my thoughts down somewhere before they get lost. Anyway let me end this the only fitting way I see.
GO HEELS.
1. Having people just shout hello at me while I ride by on a motorbike. If your gonna yell at someone at least have a follow up to hello.
2. I won't miss the general confusion that comes from a huge language barrier. While that can be kind of interesting sometimes, and it is all part of living in another place, a lot of times it just gets frustrating.
I'm sure I could think of others but it is a lot more fun to think about the things you will miss. So I'll go ahead and list those.
I think I'll ditch the number format for this one and just go off the top of my head.
I'm going to miss seeing the kids that I taught. Its very strange to go from seeing them everyday to knowing that you will never see any of them again. I'll miss some of the staff at Wichienmatu, not many but there are a few people that I will miss. Being able to eat lunch for 50 cents a day will also be dearly missed. I'll miss when my dinner bill is over a dollar and I think that is expensive. I'll miss being able to ride my motor bike around and park it right in front of wherever I want to go. Being able to fill it up for the week and only spend two dollars will also be missed. I'll miss the good food and being able to eat from a street stall. I'll miss the friends I made, especially Joe and Hok those guys were awesome. And especially I will miss being one of the better basketball players in the city that I live in. Its back to being perhaps slightly above average when I get back home. But I digress. I think I will mainly miss the experience of living and working in a foreign place where English is not the main spoken language. I know I was complaining about it earlier but that made the experience challenging and difficult and in the end that was what made it rewarding. It will be strange to go from being a novelty to look at in Thailand to being just another white person in the United States. Its gonna be a tough transition and I'm not sure how I will handle it but we will find out in about a month.
Here I would like to take some time to congratulate the UNC basketball team. I know many on the team are regular readers, so congratulations boys you earned it. Its funny Keats and I were in Phnom Penh, its the capital of Cambodia in case you don't know, and we were hanging out with my buddy Sam who lives and works there. We were walking around just talking and we passed by a sports bar and he told me if I wanted to watch the championship game live there we would be able to. I though he was just being a jackass and messing around with me because he went to Duke. And we all know that people who went to Duke love being jackasses. But lo and behold he was not and I decided we had to stay an extra day in the city to watch the game. It ended up not being very exciting but I'll take a beatdown in the national championship as opposed to a thrilling loss any day. I hope Franklin Street was crazy and I'm sorry I missed it, but I think it was a worthwhile trade.
Our travels so far have been a lot of fun. We had some great times in Bangkok with my brother. Who knew a dirty disgusting city could look so great 57 stories up. Laos was fun, we stayed in one city a bit to long but it was still a good time. Cambodia was a bit of a dump. Angkor Wat was truly amazing but everything else about the country was a bit depressing and very dirty. But that will happen when the smartest people in your country are systematically murdered. But at least they had the championship game for me to watch. You will be remembered fondly for that Cambodia don't you worry. We are in Vietnam now and it has been a really good and interesting place. I have never been in a country that my country was formerly at war with. It is extremely sad to walk around and see a man with no arms or legs or a badly burnt face and know that your country probably had a great deal to do with why his life sucks so bad. I think we view war in the US differently than other countries because we pretty much always get to pack up and leave a war zone, whereas the other country has to stay and rebuild there way of life. The physical damage done to the land that is evidenced here is something that cannot be forgotten quickly because it simply cannot go away. People die or grow up but for the most part bomb craters stay where they are.
Tomorrow Keats and I are heading to the Mekong Delta, an area to the South of Saigon. I am really looking forward to that. After that we are heading to Danang. We found out it was either a 19 hour bus ride there or a 34 dollar flight. The decision pretty much made itself. I will try to write a bit more in the next few weeks just to get my thoughts down somewhere before they get lost. Anyway let me end this the only fitting way I see.
GO HEELS.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Ho Chi Minh City--Vietnam
Thursday, April 10, 2009
Since our last post...
We stayed in Luang Prabang a few days too long, but our stay was relaxing and restful. On March 30 we flew to Bangkok and spent one night in the city and then the following day flew to Phnom Penh (PP), Cambodia a city that falls lower than Bangkok on my list of places I would rather not spend much time in. Our plan was to take a taxi to a hotel that we had found in our guidebook and look at a room. If the room was not what we wanted we would walk and check out a couple of other options that I thought were nearby. Well the hotel was not what we wanted and they were asking way more than we wanted to pay, so we walked around the area realizing there was not much else around and that we were likely not in the best part of the city. Directly across from the hotel was S21 the interrogation prison during the Khmer Rouge reign that was previously a secondary school. Something like 20,000 Cambodians passed through the prison before being taken to be murdered at the Killing Fields outside of the city. We were not to keen about spending our days across the street from the prison. We quickly found another option in our guide books, the River View Hotel, and asked a tuk-tuk driver to take us there. As we drove we realized that there were definitely some nicer parts of the city and that the area near the river was significantly nicer than where we started. Strangely our driver turned away from the river and drove us in the opposite direction stopping in front of a hotel. We asked a guy working at the hotel if it was the River View Hotel. He said that it was so we went in checked out a room and agreed to stay for the night. Only later in the evening when I was taking a card with the hotel's name and address did I realize that we were actually staying at Her Royal Highness Hotel. I was extremely angry and ready to move our things in the morning, but in the morning we had too much to accomplish and ended up staying at Her Royal Highness a second night before taking a bus to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and the other ancient temples. During our full day in PP we found out that we could get our Vietnam Visa in a day, so we tried to accomplish everything that we wanted to in one day so as to minimize our time in the city. We went to the Killing Fields to see the mass graves from the Khmer Rouge. We went to S21 to see the classrooms that had been converted to torture chambers and holding cells and that housed portraits of prisoners that had been murdered. The reign of the Khmer Rouge is terrifying and that it only happened 30 years ago is unbelievable. After the museum we went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda leaving us exhausted.
A quick complaint about our bathroom set up in two hotels in PP. At Her Royal Highness, we had hot water and even a bath tub. At first sight the bath tub was impressive, but if you looked a bit closer...there was no water fixture for the actual tub and the shower head was placed halfway between the tub and the toilet. So do you shower over the toilet and not have to hold the shower head or do you shower over the tub and hold the shower head? We thought this strange, but did not think too much about it. When we returned to PP and stayed in a different hotel, there was the same set up. Why in the world? I would love any explanation that any one has about this because it simply baffles me.
We took a bus to Siem Reap and bought a three-day pass to see the temples. We spent two full days of wandering the incredible temples. The temples are hard to describe. They were incredible. We went to Angkor Wat first which is the best known temple and it was enormous and beautiful and we were in awe of how it could have been built. The next temple we went to was the Bayon in Angkor Thom and it was our favorite of all the temples that we saw. There were large carved faces all over the structure. The more that you looked at the temple the more faces that you saw. Some of the temples you could climb to the top and walk all around them while others were a bit more restricted. We hired a tuk-tuk driver for both days and he drove us from temple to temple since the entire area is huge. After seeing Angkor Wat and the Bayon, we wanted to know more about the temples and the history, so we talked with our driver about hiring a guide. He said he knew of someone and that his English was good and he was offering a price $5 less than the hotel. We agreed, but the next morning when we picked up the guide, we knew we had made a mistake. The guide struggled to introduce himself and the first thing he pointed out was a souvenir shop. Yes, he pointed to a souvenir shop and said, "That is a souvenir shop." As we drove onto the grounds, we struggled to understand the guide's English, but we decided to give him a chance with Angkor Wat. We were hoping maybe his English would improve and that he would have some interesting facts to offer. We were wrong. He spoke very little and what little he had to offer was usually obvious. He explained that a wall of bas-reliefs was of a war. Well there were definitely soldiers with weapons, so I would have guessed that there was a war being fought. It was painful and would be waste of time for him and for us. Pat and I decided that we would pay him for the morning and then explain that we would continue on without him. We played "rock paper scissors" to see who would have the honors, and I lost and I was the one to fire our guide. At first he did not understand, but we eventually conveyed our point and he headed home. We felt really bad, but we were relieved when we were able to enjoy the rest of our day exploring the temples and reading about them in a guidebook.
After three nights in Siem Reap, we took the bus back to PP and planned on leaving the following day for Vietnam. The bus ride was painful as was the bus to Siem Reap. The roads of Cambodia are not great and the 6-7 hour ride was spent jolting from side to side and bumping up and down. And the road we took between Siem Reap and PP is one of the main highways in the country. I cannot imagine the secondary and tertiary roads.
Back in Phnom Penh we met up with one of Pat's friends, Sam, from Durham and looked forward to heading to Vietnam. As we wandered the streets with Sam, we past a sportsbar where he claimed that he was able to watch the UNC Final Four game. At first we did not believe him because ESPN Asia does not cover basketball especially not college basketball, but sure enough he did get the Final Four game and he was going to get the NCAA Finals. So we postponed our trip to Vietnam for a day so that we could watch the UNC v. Michigan State game. While the game was not too exciting, it was great to watch and the whole thing made Pat especially happy.
We are now in Ho Chi Minh City and have been for the past three nights. We visited the War Remnants Museum from the Vietnam War (which is called the American War here) and we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Viet Cong lived and waged war from an intricate system of underground tunnels. We are really enjoying HCMC and think that it totally trumps PP. The streets are clean here whereas in PP they were littered with trash piles. Some of the main roads in PP branched off to dirt roads (in the city!) while the roads here are well paved. Here in HCMC there are a whole lot of motorbikes!! There are some intersections with traffic lights while others the traffic just goes and pedestrians just walk. As a pedestrian you have to walk across the streets at a constant pace and not stop and then the motorbikes will go around you. If you stop, you confuse the drivers and you are likely to be hit. We have been able to walk around a lot and we have found some really nice parts of town with ice cream shops, little restaurants and boutique shops. Our hotel is simple but comfortable. We get a bagette with jam and coffee in the mornings and pho noodles and spring rolls for dinner, and the staff has been incredible helpful and kind. We will probably stay for a few more nights and do one or two nights in the Mekong Delta before heading to Central Vietnam.
Sorry for the long and somewhat boring blog post. I just felt like I needed to catch everyone up on where we are and what we are up to.
Since our last post...
We stayed in Luang Prabang a few days too long, but our stay was relaxing and restful. On March 30 we flew to Bangkok and spent one night in the city and then the following day flew to Phnom Penh (PP), Cambodia a city that falls lower than Bangkok on my list of places I would rather not spend much time in. Our plan was to take a taxi to a hotel that we had found in our guidebook and look at a room. If the room was not what we wanted we would walk and check out a couple of other options that I thought were nearby. Well the hotel was not what we wanted and they were asking way more than we wanted to pay, so we walked around the area realizing there was not much else around and that we were likely not in the best part of the city. Directly across from the hotel was S21 the interrogation prison during the Khmer Rouge reign that was previously a secondary school. Something like 20,000 Cambodians passed through the prison before being taken to be murdered at the Killing Fields outside of the city. We were not to keen about spending our days across the street from the prison. We quickly found another option in our guide books, the River View Hotel, and asked a tuk-tuk driver to take us there. As we drove we realized that there were definitely some nicer parts of the city and that the area near the river was significantly nicer than where we started. Strangely our driver turned away from the river and drove us in the opposite direction stopping in front of a hotel. We asked a guy working at the hotel if it was the River View Hotel. He said that it was so we went in checked out a room and agreed to stay for the night. Only later in the evening when I was taking a card with the hotel's name and address did I realize that we were actually staying at Her Royal Highness Hotel. I was extremely angry and ready to move our things in the morning, but in the morning we had too much to accomplish and ended up staying at Her Royal Highness a second night before taking a bus to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and the other ancient temples. During our full day in PP we found out that we could get our Vietnam Visa in a day, so we tried to accomplish everything that we wanted to in one day so as to minimize our time in the city. We went to the Killing Fields to see the mass graves from the Khmer Rouge. We went to S21 to see the classrooms that had been converted to torture chambers and holding cells and that housed portraits of prisoners that had been murdered. The reign of the Khmer Rouge is terrifying and that it only happened 30 years ago is unbelievable. After the museum we went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda leaving us exhausted.
A quick complaint about our bathroom set up in two hotels in PP. At Her Royal Highness, we had hot water and even a bath tub. At first sight the bath tub was impressive, but if you looked a bit closer...there was no water fixture for the actual tub and the shower head was placed halfway between the tub and the toilet. So do you shower over the toilet and not have to hold the shower head or do you shower over the tub and hold the shower head? We thought this strange, but did not think too much about it. When we returned to PP and stayed in a different hotel, there was the same set up. Why in the world? I would love any explanation that any one has about this because it simply baffles me.
We took a bus to Siem Reap and bought a three-day pass to see the temples. We spent two full days of wandering the incredible temples. The temples are hard to describe. They were incredible. We went to Angkor Wat first which is the best known temple and it was enormous and beautiful and we were in awe of how it could have been built. The next temple we went to was the Bayon in Angkor Thom and it was our favorite of all the temples that we saw. There were large carved faces all over the structure. The more that you looked at the temple the more faces that you saw. Some of the temples you could climb to the top and walk all around them while others were a bit more restricted. We hired a tuk-tuk driver for both days and he drove us from temple to temple since the entire area is huge. After seeing Angkor Wat and the Bayon, we wanted to know more about the temples and the history, so we talked with our driver about hiring a guide. He said he knew of someone and that his English was good and he was offering a price $5 less than the hotel. We agreed, but the next morning when we picked up the guide, we knew we had made a mistake. The guide struggled to introduce himself and the first thing he pointed out was a souvenir shop. Yes, he pointed to a souvenir shop and said, "That is a souvenir shop." As we drove onto the grounds, we struggled to understand the guide's English, but we decided to give him a chance with Angkor Wat. We were hoping maybe his English would improve and that he would have some interesting facts to offer. We were wrong. He spoke very little and what little he had to offer was usually obvious. He explained that a wall of bas-reliefs was of a war. Well there were definitely soldiers with weapons, so I would have guessed that there was a war being fought. It was painful and would be waste of time for him and for us. Pat and I decided that we would pay him for the morning and then explain that we would continue on without him. We played "rock paper scissors" to see who would have the honors, and I lost and I was the one to fire our guide. At first he did not understand, but we eventually conveyed our point and he headed home. We felt really bad, but we were relieved when we were able to enjoy the rest of our day exploring the temples and reading about them in a guidebook.
After three nights in Siem Reap, we took the bus back to PP and planned on leaving the following day for Vietnam. The bus ride was painful as was the bus to Siem Reap. The roads of Cambodia are not great and the 6-7 hour ride was spent jolting from side to side and bumping up and down. And the road we took between Siem Reap and PP is one of the main highways in the country. I cannot imagine the secondary and tertiary roads.
Back in Phnom Penh we met up with one of Pat's friends, Sam, from Durham and looked forward to heading to Vietnam. As we wandered the streets with Sam, we past a sportsbar where he claimed that he was able to watch the UNC Final Four game. At first we did not believe him because ESPN Asia does not cover basketball especially not college basketball, but sure enough he did get the Final Four game and he was going to get the NCAA Finals. So we postponed our trip to Vietnam for a day so that we could watch the UNC v. Michigan State game. While the game was not too exciting, it was great to watch and the whole thing made Pat especially happy.
We are now in Ho Chi Minh City and have been for the past three nights. We visited the War Remnants Museum from the Vietnam War (which is called the American War here) and we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Viet Cong lived and waged war from an intricate system of underground tunnels. We are really enjoying HCMC and think that it totally trumps PP. The streets are clean here whereas in PP they were littered with trash piles. Some of the main roads in PP branched off to dirt roads (in the city!) while the roads here are well paved. Here in HCMC there are a whole lot of motorbikes!! There are some intersections with traffic lights while others the traffic just goes and pedestrians just walk. As a pedestrian you have to walk across the streets at a constant pace and not stop and then the motorbikes will go around you. If you stop, you confuse the drivers and you are likely to be hit. We have been able to walk around a lot and we have found some really nice parts of town with ice cream shops, little restaurants and boutique shops. Our hotel is simple but comfortable. We get a bagette with jam and coffee in the mornings and pho noodles and spring rolls for dinner, and the staff has been incredible helpful and kind. We will probably stay for a few more nights and do one or two nights in the Mekong Delta before heading to Central Vietnam.
Sorry for the long and somewhat boring blog post. I just felt like I needed to catch everyone up on where we are and what we are up to.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Stories to Be Told
Sunday, March 29, 2009
I know that yesterday I posted a long post, but there are some stories that need to be told from the past couple of weeks starting with Bangkok...
On Rod's first day in town, we headed to the Gourmet Market in the nicest mall that Pat and I have ever been in. We were in search of limes, tonic water (no where to be found near our hotel) and pastries for the morning. We found what we needed and headed to the curb to hail a taxi. We were motioned to get in the taxi line, so we waited behind a couple of other people. We got into the first cab verifying they had a meter and asked to be taken to our hotel. He drove up a bit and said that he would not take us there. The traffic was bad, but there were plenty of taxis. We hopped out and tried another. Again after getting into the taxi and driving a little bit, we were told that the driver would not take us there. We were baffled by the drivers as you would expect them to drive you where you wanted to go as it is their job. Even if the traffic is bad or the hotel is across town, that means that they make more money, right? In another taxi attempt, the guy explained to us that the fare would be 20 baht, but that we needed to stop by a store first. Red Flags!! Absolutely not!! We had read about similar scams in the guidebooks, but had not yet experienced them so that was a first. After trying out several taxis and only making it a few feet at a time, we found a taker. The traffic was bad and it took quite a while, but we made it back to our hotel.
As a side note...Traffic in Bangkok is TERRIBLE!!! It can be 10am or 10pm and there is rush hour traffic! As you ride through the city in the taxi or walking on the streets, you wonder why anyone would be driving their personal car yet you see plenty of non-commercial vehicles. What are they thinking?!?! Pat recently read in a book that a family that lives in Bangkok now carries around a chemical toilet when they take family trips because they got caught in traffic for 17 hours and only moved something like 3 miles. So traffic is bad, but it also makes no sense. As we have likely mentioned before, in Thailand you can not turn across traffic. In Thailand you drive on the left side of the road, so that means that you cannot make a right turn (in most situations--at some intersections you can turn right). Instead of being able to make a right turn, you have to drive past where you want to go and make a U-turn and then turn left where you originally wanted to turn right. This is not too terrible in a place like Trang, only inconvenient. In Bangkok it means sitting terrible traffic then making a U-turn to sit in more traffic!! What were they thinking when they made the road rules!
So now we return to Laos and Luang Prabang. When we arrived on Monday, Pat and I went to go exchange a bit of Thai baht for some Laos kip. We exchanged about 4,000 baht each, which gave us just short of 1 million kip. Yes, that is right, we were almost millionaires in Laos!!! The exchange rate is around 8,000 kip to $1, but many of the restaurants, stores and hotels accept baht, kip and dollars. Supposedly, the kip has no value outside of Laos, so if you happened to have some kip left over after leaving the country, you would not be able to exchange it to anything. You would be stuck with some strange looking bills that all look strangely similar to each other. So do not take any kip outside of Laos, but if you want to be a millionaire, Laos is the place to be.
While we were staying with Rod at the riverside bungalows, we would take the hotel minivan into town inviting the driver and another staff member (who we will call Ta) to have a drink or a bit of food with us. The first night we learned that the driver, who was 30 years old at the most, had been married three times already and had "cancelled" the first two. Yes, he referred to the first two marriages as being cancelled, but his current wife is pregnant so I am thinking he is happy and not cancelling her. We also learned that Ta had just been married the previous week and was around 23 years old. The second night after a couple of beers we learned that Ta had another very beautiful woman in his life who did not know that he was married. He said that she had not been beautiful or nice, but that he saw her this year and that she was so beautiful (emphasis on so) and sometimes he cried. I am not sure if he cried about her being beautiful or...I'm not real sure, but he said sometimes he cried. We asked when he would tell this beautiful girl that he was married. He said something along the lines of "When she knows alone, she knows." So basically when she finds our on her own. The situation is not so comical, but the way that it was presented and explained was priceless.
On a different note, this morning I opted to wake up early to watch the alms ceremony when the monks accept food offerings at dawn. Rod had passed on this opportunity while he was in town and 6am is too early for Pat (as many of us know). I woke up this morning around 5:45am with my camera backpack strapped to my back, ready to conquer the streets. The left side of the street was lined with people giving offerings of mostly cooked rice and bananas. The other side of the street was lined with minibuses from different hotels. Vendors were selling rice and bananas to tourists to give to the monks, but I opted not to based on information passed on to me. Rod had told me that in the past monks had been given bad food by tourists and become sick. They had not wanted to continue the early morning tradition, but the government would hear none of that. The government said that the monks must continue for the tourists or that they would be replaced by actors. I had imagined sitting on the curb with my camera taking pictures of the "ceremony" inconspicuously, but tourists were lining the streets with point-and-shot cameras and video cameras blocking what view I may have had from the opposite curb. I took some pictures from a distance, but also knelt beside the curb (so as to be below the monks) to get some closer images. The whole ceremony was a bit bizarre. There were maybe 100 monks walking in a line collecting food from offerers. Instead of giving the monks a package of rice, each monk received a small fist full in their baskets. So in the end the monks received a pile of plain rice that each lump had been touched by a different strangers hand. None of the monks looked to excited about this prospect, but instead looked blankly as they completed a daily task. It was very interesting.
I know that yesterday I posted a long post, but there are some stories that need to be told from the past couple of weeks starting with Bangkok...
On Rod's first day in town, we headed to the Gourmet Market in the nicest mall that Pat and I have ever been in. We were in search of limes, tonic water (no where to be found near our hotel) and pastries for the morning. We found what we needed and headed to the curb to hail a taxi. We were motioned to get in the taxi line, so we waited behind a couple of other people. We got into the first cab verifying they had a meter and asked to be taken to our hotel. He drove up a bit and said that he would not take us there. The traffic was bad, but there were plenty of taxis. We hopped out and tried another. Again after getting into the taxi and driving a little bit, we were told that the driver would not take us there. We were baffled by the drivers as you would expect them to drive you where you wanted to go as it is their job. Even if the traffic is bad or the hotel is across town, that means that they make more money, right? In another taxi attempt, the guy explained to us that the fare would be 20 baht, but that we needed to stop by a store first. Red Flags!! Absolutely not!! We had read about similar scams in the guidebooks, but had not yet experienced them so that was a first. After trying out several taxis and only making it a few feet at a time, we found a taker. The traffic was bad and it took quite a while, but we made it back to our hotel.
As a side note...Traffic in Bangkok is TERRIBLE!!! It can be 10am or 10pm and there is rush hour traffic! As you ride through the city in the taxi or walking on the streets, you wonder why anyone would be driving their personal car yet you see plenty of non-commercial vehicles. What are they thinking?!?! Pat recently read in a book that a family that lives in Bangkok now carries around a chemical toilet when they take family trips because they got caught in traffic for 17 hours and only moved something like 3 miles. So traffic is bad, but it also makes no sense. As we have likely mentioned before, in Thailand you can not turn across traffic. In Thailand you drive on the left side of the road, so that means that you cannot make a right turn (in most situations--at some intersections you can turn right). Instead of being able to make a right turn, you have to drive past where you want to go and make a U-turn and then turn left where you originally wanted to turn right. This is not too terrible in a place like Trang, only inconvenient. In Bangkok it means sitting terrible traffic then making a U-turn to sit in more traffic!! What were they thinking when they made the road rules!
So now we return to Laos and Luang Prabang. When we arrived on Monday, Pat and I went to go exchange a bit of Thai baht for some Laos kip. We exchanged about 4,000 baht each, which gave us just short of 1 million kip. Yes, that is right, we were almost millionaires in Laos!!! The exchange rate is around 8,000 kip to $1, but many of the restaurants, stores and hotels accept baht, kip and dollars. Supposedly, the kip has no value outside of Laos, so if you happened to have some kip left over after leaving the country, you would not be able to exchange it to anything. You would be stuck with some strange looking bills that all look strangely similar to each other. So do not take any kip outside of Laos, but if you want to be a millionaire, Laos is the place to be.
While we were staying with Rod at the riverside bungalows, we would take the hotel minivan into town inviting the driver and another staff member (who we will call Ta) to have a drink or a bit of food with us. The first night we learned that the driver, who was 30 years old at the most, had been married three times already and had "cancelled" the first two. Yes, he referred to the first two marriages as being cancelled, but his current wife is pregnant so I am thinking he is happy and not cancelling her. We also learned that Ta had just been married the previous week and was around 23 years old. The second night after a couple of beers we learned that Ta had another very beautiful woman in his life who did not know that he was married. He said that she had not been beautiful or nice, but that he saw her this year and that she was so beautiful (emphasis on so) and sometimes he cried. I am not sure if he cried about her being beautiful or...I'm not real sure, but he said sometimes he cried. We asked when he would tell this beautiful girl that he was married. He said something along the lines of "When she knows alone, she knows." So basically when she finds our on her own. The situation is not so comical, but the way that it was presented and explained was priceless.
On a different note, this morning I opted to wake up early to watch the alms ceremony when the monks accept food offerings at dawn. Rod had passed on this opportunity while he was in town and 6am is too early for Pat (as many of us know). I woke up this morning around 5:45am with my camera backpack strapped to my back, ready to conquer the streets. The left side of the street was lined with people giving offerings of mostly cooked rice and bananas. The other side of the street was lined with minibuses from different hotels. Vendors were selling rice and bananas to tourists to give to the monks, but I opted not to based on information passed on to me. Rod had told me that in the past monks had been given bad food by tourists and become sick. They had not wanted to continue the early morning tradition, but the government would hear none of that. The government said that the monks must continue for the tourists or that they would be replaced by actors. I had imagined sitting on the curb with my camera taking pictures of the "ceremony" inconspicuously, but tourists were lining the streets with point-and-shot cameras and video cameras blocking what view I may have had from the opposite curb. I took some pictures from a distance, but also knelt beside the curb (so as to be below the monks) to get some closer images. The whole ceremony was a bit bizarre. There were maybe 100 monks walking in a line collecting food from offerers. Instead of giving the monks a package of rice, each monk received a small fist full in their baskets. So in the end the monks received a pile of plain rice that each lump had been touched by a different strangers hand. None of the monks looked to excited about this prospect, but instead looked blankly as they completed a daily task. It was very interesting.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Living Like Rock Stars
Saturday, March 28, 2009
We successfully moved out of our apartment in Trang thanks to the help of our friends Hok and Joe. On Wednesday Joe and Hok spent the day with us taking us to lunch, helping us get rid of the stuff we no longer wanted and Hok picked us up in his pick up truck to take our suitcases and backpacks to the train station. Our night train to Bangkok was okay. We had a little compartment with a Russian couple which was quieter and more private than our previous train adventures. The air-con was extremely cold which is expected as someone running the trains does not understand moderation. Around 7:30am we were awaken by our Russian compartment-mates who informed us that the train was broken and that we had 5 minutes to switch trains. We scrambled to get our belongings together and we hopped on the neighboring train. Unfortunately our large luggage (2 suitcases and 2 hiking backpacks) was in the luggage car and did not make it on to the second train. We ended up riding the second train for 2.5hrs in the luggage car with a rooster, some motorbikes, lots of moving boxes and a few other people. When we arrived in Bangkok we were informed that our luggage would arrive in the afternoon. We took a taxi to our hotel (which took a while because our taxi driver got lost even after speaking with our hotel). We stayed at the Atlanta hotel, which is the oldest unchanged hotel in Bangkok. It is about 60 years old. The lobby was very interesting looking, but the rooms were very minimal. Walls throughout the hotel were plastered with rules which included no complaining ("not at these prices"), no sex tourist (which is fine, but at the same time does a sign in the front need to say in huge bold type "SEX TOURIST NOT WELCOME") and something like 10 more rules. These rules were in the lobby and posted on all the rest of the floors. Interesting...After trying to recover from the night train and early morning, we headed back to the train station to find our bags. We asked a couple of people who seemed a bit confused about the broken train, but we found one person who knew exactly what we were talking about and led us directly to our bags. We took our suitcases to storage where they will stay for 6 weeks and took our backpacks with us.
Rod, Pat's older brother, met us in Bangkok Friday. He had booked rooms for us at a lovely hotel, the Banyan Tree, where we had rooms with a view on the 45th floor. Rod, knowing what we had been missing, brought red wine, gin, sausage and cheese, and rosemary crackers for a little snack and drink before dinner on the rooftop restaurant. The view was incredible!! A 360 degree view of the lights of Bangkok!!! Dinner was good but it was wonderful to be with Rod and have such a priceless view of the city. We had no agenda for our time in Bangkok, so we checked out the weekend market, introduced Rod to some of our favorite dishes and Rod and Pat went to a Muay Thai fight. We were supposed to fly out on Sunday to head to Luang Prabang, Laos, but we had thought the flight was later than it was. We arrived at the airport 45 minutes before our flight left and the check-in counter would not let us through. We had a chance to actually make the flight, but as soon as the woman said "no" there was no hope. We tried to talking our way onto the plane, but after 15 minutes at the counter there was no chance. We changed our tickets to the same flight the following day and found a hotel online for one more night in Bangkok. We ended up staying in a 57th floor suite in the Lebua Hotel with a balcony overlooking the city and the river!!! I found that I really liked Bangkok from the 45th or 57th floor of a nice hotel.
After checking into the hotel we went exploring around the area. A man in a striped shirt approached us saying that he worked at the Embassy and was off for the day. He asked where we were going and we told him that we were looking for some food and wanted to head towards an area called Silom. He crossed the street with us and led us to a tuk-tuk. He had written "Silom" on a piece of paper for Pat in English and Thai. He told us we could take the tuk-tuk for 30baht. We told him that we preferred to walk, but he insisted that it was too far (3km). We continued to walk and he yelled "You do not believe me!" and tore up the piece of paper. He continued toyell at us as we walked off. It was a very bizarre situation.
From our 57th floor suite balcony, we drank red wine and gin and tonics watching the sunset and the lights illuminate the city. We had seen a Mexican restaurant earlier during our stay so we took a taxi to the restaurant. The driver was playing "If You Are Going to San Francisco." After we explained that Rod was from San Francisco, he turned up the volume and restarted the song. It was classic!! Pat has been craving Mexican food probably since we left the burrito restaurant in Chiang Mai in early January, so we enjoyed chips and salsa and burritos. The waitresses were wearing jeans and short denim shirts with cowboy hats.
On Monday we made our flight with no problems. The flight from Bangkok to Luang Prabang was only about 2 hours. We landed at a very small airport with only one other plane parked. We walked off the plane, across the "parking lot" and into the basically one-room airport. For the four nights that Rod was with us in Luang Prabang we stayed at a Bungalow beside the river outside of the actual town. Our bungalows had porches with great views of the river. There were one-speed bikes that we could ride into town and also the hotel's minivan could drive us into town.
Luang Prabang is a very quiet and quaint town. Laos is definitely a developing country based on roads and infrastructure, but Luang Prabang is not so. The streets are lined with boutique hotels, small guest houses and really cute shops selling local crafts especially silk woven products. All the bathrooms seem to have flushing toilets with toilet paper and soap (very surprising after our stay in Thailand), which is not usually the case in developing countries. There is a great art scene with art galleries and shops all around. The tourists seem to be either young backpackers or older tourists.
We spent most of our time walking around the town, peaking into different shops and trying different foods. One day we took a slow boat (let me emphasize slow) down the Mekong River to see the Buddha Caves (Pak Ou Caves). Local laotian people would take unused Buddhas to the caves, whether they were broken or had been replaced, and the caves were supposedly full of Buddha images. The caves were not as cool as the guidebooks had said. The boat ride was very nice, but also very slow.
Rod left on Friday to head back home and we moved on to a guest house in town. It was sad to say to see him go as we had had a wonderful time traveling and hanging out with him. We will stay in Luang Prabang until Monday when we fly back to Bangkok. Tuesday we will fly from Bangkok to Cambodia to go check out the temples in Siem Reap including Angkor Wat and work on getting our visas for Vietnam.
We successfully moved out of our apartment in Trang thanks to the help of our friends Hok and Joe. On Wednesday Joe and Hok spent the day with us taking us to lunch, helping us get rid of the stuff we no longer wanted and Hok picked us up in his pick up truck to take our suitcases and backpacks to the train station. Our night train to Bangkok was okay. We had a little compartment with a Russian couple which was quieter and more private than our previous train adventures. The air-con was extremely cold which is expected as someone running the trains does not understand moderation. Around 7:30am we were awaken by our Russian compartment-mates who informed us that the train was broken and that we had 5 minutes to switch trains. We scrambled to get our belongings together and we hopped on the neighboring train. Unfortunately our large luggage (2 suitcases and 2 hiking backpacks) was in the luggage car and did not make it on to the second train. We ended up riding the second train for 2.5hrs in the luggage car with a rooster, some motorbikes, lots of moving boxes and a few other people. When we arrived in Bangkok we were informed that our luggage would arrive in the afternoon. We took a taxi to our hotel (which took a while because our taxi driver got lost even after speaking with our hotel). We stayed at the Atlanta hotel, which is the oldest unchanged hotel in Bangkok. It is about 60 years old. The lobby was very interesting looking, but the rooms were very minimal. Walls throughout the hotel were plastered with rules which included no complaining ("not at these prices"), no sex tourist (which is fine, but at the same time does a sign in the front need to say in huge bold type "SEX TOURIST NOT WELCOME") and something like 10 more rules. These rules were in the lobby and posted on all the rest of the floors. Interesting...After trying to recover from the night train and early morning, we headed back to the train station to find our bags. We asked a couple of people who seemed a bit confused about the broken train, but we found one person who knew exactly what we were talking about and led us directly to our bags. We took our suitcases to storage where they will stay for 6 weeks and took our backpacks with us.
Rod, Pat's older brother, met us in Bangkok Friday. He had booked rooms for us at a lovely hotel, the Banyan Tree, where we had rooms with a view on the 45th floor. Rod, knowing what we had been missing, brought red wine, gin, sausage and cheese, and rosemary crackers for a little snack and drink before dinner on the rooftop restaurant. The view was incredible!! A 360 degree view of the lights of Bangkok!!! Dinner was good but it was wonderful to be with Rod and have such a priceless view of the city. We had no agenda for our time in Bangkok, so we checked out the weekend market, introduced Rod to some of our favorite dishes and Rod and Pat went to a Muay Thai fight. We were supposed to fly out on Sunday to head to Luang Prabang, Laos, but we had thought the flight was later than it was. We arrived at the airport 45 minutes before our flight left and the check-in counter would not let us through. We had a chance to actually make the flight, but as soon as the woman said "no" there was no hope. We tried to talking our way onto the plane, but after 15 minutes at the counter there was no chance. We changed our tickets to the same flight the following day and found a hotel online for one more night in Bangkok. We ended up staying in a 57th floor suite in the Lebua Hotel with a balcony overlooking the city and the river!!! I found that I really liked Bangkok from the 45th or 57th floor of a nice hotel.
After checking into the hotel we went exploring around the area. A man in a striped shirt approached us saying that he worked at the Embassy and was off for the day. He asked where we were going and we told him that we were looking for some food and wanted to head towards an area called Silom. He crossed the street with us and led us to a tuk-tuk. He had written "Silom" on a piece of paper for Pat in English and Thai. He told us we could take the tuk-tuk for 30baht. We told him that we preferred to walk, but he insisted that it was too far (3km). We continued to walk and he yelled "You do not believe me!" and tore up the piece of paper. He continued toyell at us as we walked off. It was a very bizarre situation.
From our 57th floor suite balcony, we drank red wine and gin and tonics watching the sunset and the lights illuminate the city. We had seen a Mexican restaurant earlier during our stay so we took a taxi to the restaurant. The driver was playing "If You Are Going to San Francisco." After we explained that Rod was from San Francisco, he turned up the volume and restarted the song. It was classic!! Pat has been craving Mexican food probably since we left the burrito restaurant in Chiang Mai in early January, so we enjoyed chips and salsa and burritos. The waitresses were wearing jeans and short denim shirts with cowboy hats.
On Monday we made our flight with no problems. The flight from Bangkok to Luang Prabang was only about 2 hours. We landed at a very small airport with only one other plane parked. We walked off the plane, across the "parking lot" and into the basically one-room airport. For the four nights that Rod was with us in Luang Prabang we stayed at a Bungalow beside the river outside of the actual town. Our bungalows had porches with great views of the river. There were one-speed bikes that we could ride into town and also the hotel's minivan could drive us into town.
Luang Prabang is a very quiet and quaint town. Laos is definitely a developing country based on roads and infrastructure, but Luang Prabang is not so. The streets are lined with boutique hotels, small guest houses and really cute shops selling local crafts especially silk woven products. All the bathrooms seem to have flushing toilets with toilet paper and soap (very surprising after our stay in Thailand), which is not usually the case in developing countries. There is a great art scene with art galleries and shops all around. The tourists seem to be either young backpackers or older tourists.
We spent most of our time walking around the town, peaking into different shops and trying different foods. One day we took a slow boat (let me emphasize slow) down the Mekong River to see the Buddha Caves (Pak Ou Caves). Local laotian people would take unused Buddhas to the caves, whether they were broken or had been replaced, and the caves were supposedly full of Buddha images. The caves were not as cool as the guidebooks had said. The boat ride was very nice, but also very slow.
Rod left on Friday to head back home and we moved on to a guest house in town. It was sad to say to see him go as we had had a wonderful time traveling and hanging out with him. We will stay in Luang Prabang until Monday when we fly back to Bangkok. Tuesday we will fly from Bangkok to Cambodia to go check out the temples in Siem Reap including Angkor Wat and work on getting our visas for Vietnam.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Moving Out and Moving On
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Life in Southern Thailand has become quite hectic now that we are finished teaching. Two weeks ago, after Pat turned in his final grades, we headed to our favorite island, Koh Lanta, for some relaxation and sun. From Wednesday until Monday, we spent plenty of time reading, enjoying the sun and sleeping. Our friend Niamh joined us for a couple of nights, and she was heavily pursued by two of the Thai hotel staff fighting for her attention and heart with tropical drinks decorated with heart-shaped pineapple pieces and conversations of broken English. She broke both of their hearts when she left with us Monday morning. One of her pursuers left a hand-written, hand-drawn note with Pat which we later passed on to Niamh. Monday morning was the Carolina v. Duke game. We intentionally stayed longer at the beach because a friend of ours on the staff allowed us to borrow the keys to the internet room to watch the game. We stayed up until 3:00am and watched the game on the glowing computer screen in the dark internet room, Pat pounding his fists in the air and jumping up with shouts. Luckily Carolina won and we were able to sleep well at 5:30am. Go HEELS!!
We spent a couple of days in Trang packing our suitcases in preparation of our move March 18th, hanging out with friends and eating at our favorite restaurants. Last Wednesday we took the 5 hour bus to Phuket in order to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. We arrived in Phuket Town after dark and found a guesthouse within walking distance of the bus station that had everything we needed: air conditioning, hot water, cable TV (with English chanels) and an inexpensive price (around $15). Thursday morning we caught a shuttle to the airport and flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet one of Pat's high school friends for a long weekend. We were on a budget so we decided to take the bus from the airport to our hotel in the city, which ended up taking 2 hours!! Towards the end of the ride when everyone else on the bus had been dropped off, Pat's boredom got the best of him and he spent the rest of the ride messing with me as I tried to read.
Our hotel was in an area known as Chow Kit (known for its market), which ended up not being touristy at all. We saw maybe one other tourist in the area the whole time, which is kind of nice. The hotel was okay, but we ended up moving to the hotel nextdoor, which was much nicer and only a few dollars more a night (and we could see the Petronas Towers from our window and they were filming a movie in the lobby and on our floor). Our first night in KL we tried walking the 5km to the Petronas Towers (the tallest towers in the world until 2004), but ended up at a dead end at an elevated highway. We took the subway the remaining distance and found ourselves in a massive and nice shopping mall that is between the towers (where we spent a lot of our long weekend.) On Friday we slept late and ate lunch at a Curry House near our hotel and enjoyed the Indian influence on Malay food. There are a couple of main influences of Malaysian culture. There are Indian Malays, Chinese Malays and Malaysia Malays. So we found that the food includes a lot of Indian and Chinese foods. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim (we could hear the call to prayer from our hotel) and it was a British colony, so a lot of people speak extremely good English.
On Friday we went back to the shopping mall to watch "Watchmen," which Pat had been anticipating since it came out on March 8th. We explored China Town, which resembled the knock-off markets that we have found in Thailand with pushy vendors and lots of bootleg DVDs and fake Channel handbags. We tried to find Little India, but we headed back at the Curry House for a dinner of fresh naan and curried chicken. Saturday morning we switched hotels and waited for Pat's friend, Becca, to arrive from the airport. After catching up over lunch at the Curry House, the three of us headed to the Lake Gardens and then to the Kuala Lumpur Tower to look over the city from the observation deck. We spent time in the shopping mall at the Petronas Towers chatting over coffee at Starbucks. We avoided the afternoon rain in our hotel and then watched the Liverpool soccer game at a bar in China Town. On Sunday we woke up to Pat's computer not working so we spent the morning trying to fix it and then we took a taxi to Little India for an amazing lunch. Little India was a bit disappointing as all of the shops were selling tacky silk fabrics, headscarves and carpets, but our lunch was well worth the trip. Becca had to catch her plane Sunday evening and our flight was not until Monday morning. Pat and I enjoyed a trip up to the Sky Bridge on the 40th floor of the Petronas Towers as the sun started to set. We had a good weekend and enjoyed seeing and hanging out with Becca, but there is not a whole lot to do in KL.
Lessons learned from Kuala Lumpur:
-Always insist on taxi drivers using the meter. All the taxis have meters in Kuala Lumpur, but for some reason a majority refuse to use it. Often you tell the driver where you want to go and they name a price between 10 and 20 ringit. If you want you can try to bargain the price. On one ride we bargained for 10 ringit to go from the Kuala Lumpur Tower to the Petronas Towers. The driver had left the meter on and when we arrived at the Petronas Towers we saw that it should have cost no more than 2 ringit. From that point on we asked all the drivers if they had a meter. Most of the time they said they did not have a meter even though one was clearly in sight or they said it did not work. A couple of times we would ask nearly 10 drivers before we found one willing to use his meter.
-Do not take the blue taxis (especially if you are on a budget). On a very rainy afternoon we found a driver willing to use his meter to take us from the Petronas Towers to our hotel (about 5 km). As soon as we got in the driver informed us that his meter started at 6 ringit. We had already asked several drivers about using their meter and it was raining a lot, so we stayed in the taxi. As we drove through the rain and traffic, the price on the meter quickly rose much faster than most taxis. We learned that our taxi was a blue taxi which is an "executive" taxi and therefore cost more and went at a quicker rate. The ride was very pricey and the driver took us to the wrong hotel.
-Make sure your alarm is set to the local time. Our flight was at 7:10 on Monday morning, so we set our alarm for 4:30am and had the hotel call a taxi for us for 5am. Early in the morning our phone rang and the voice informed me that our taxi was waiting. I tried to explain that it was 4:20am and that we did not need a taxi until 5am. The voice corrected me said that it was already 5:20am. Our cell phone was still on Thailand time and we had oversleeped!! We rushed to pack our bags and were in the taxi by 5:35am. The ride ended up taking a full hour even though there was absolutely no traffic. The airport was surprisingly busy! We begged to have our bags checked and we fidgeted in the line for passport control before asking to get in front of eveyone since our flight was leaving in 20 minutes. We ran to the gate and pleaded to be let on the flight only to find that the flight to Phuket had not boarded. We caught our flight and our bags made it to Phuket and by 1pm on Monday we were back in Trang.
Yesterday and today, Pat and I have been trying to pack, clean and get everything ready to move out tomorrow. We head to Bangkok by train tomorrow evening where we will meet Rod, Pat's older brother. This morning we sold our washing machine (which we used only twice) and our fridge for quite a deal for the buyers (because we were getting a little desperate). In the afternoon we sold our motorbike back to the dealership for less than they had promised. We are slowly packing everything up and cleaning out our apartment. It is surprising that we have already spent close to 5 months in Thailand. We are excited about traveling in Southeast Asia, but at the same time we are a bit sad to leave Trang and our friends here. It is very strange to be packing our bags.
Life in Southern Thailand has become quite hectic now that we are finished teaching. Two weeks ago, after Pat turned in his final grades, we headed to our favorite island, Koh Lanta, for some relaxation and sun. From Wednesday until Monday, we spent plenty of time reading, enjoying the sun and sleeping. Our friend Niamh joined us for a couple of nights, and she was heavily pursued by two of the Thai hotel staff fighting for her attention and heart with tropical drinks decorated with heart-shaped pineapple pieces and conversations of broken English. She broke both of their hearts when she left with us Monday morning. One of her pursuers left a hand-written, hand-drawn note with Pat which we later passed on to Niamh. Monday morning was the Carolina v. Duke game. We intentionally stayed longer at the beach because a friend of ours on the staff allowed us to borrow the keys to the internet room to watch the game. We stayed up until 3:00am and watched the game on the glowing computer screen in the dark internet room, Pat pounding his fists in the air and jumping up with shouts. Luckily Carolina won and we were able to sleep well at 5:30am. Go HEELS!!
We spent a couple of days in Trang packing our suitcases in preparation of our move March 18th, hanging out with friends and eating at our favorite restaurants. Last Wednesday we took the 5 hour bus to Phuket in order to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. We arrived in Phuket Town after dark and found a guesthouse within walking distance of the bus station that had everything we needed: air conditioning, hot water, cable TV (with English chanels) and an inexpensive price (around $15). Thursday morning we caught a shuttle to the airport and flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet one of Pat's high school friends for a long weekend. We were on a budget so we decided to take the bus from the airport to our hotel in the city, which ended up taking 2 hours!! Towards the end of the ride when everyone else on the bus had been dropped off, Pat's boredom got the best of him and he spent the rest of the ride messing with me as I tried to read.
Our hotel was in an area known as Chow Kit (known for its market), which ended up not being touristy at all. We saw maybe one other tourist in the area the whole time, which is kind of nice. The hotel was okay, but we ended up moving to the hotel nextdoor, which was much nicer and only a few dollars more a night (and we could see the Petronas Towers from our window and they were filming a movie in the lobby and on our floor). Our first night in KL we tried walking the 5km to the Petronas Towers (the tallest towers in the world until 2004), but ended up at a dead end at an elevated highway. We took the subway the remaining distance and found ourselves in a massive and nice shopping mall that is between the towers (where we spent a lot of our long weekend.) On Friday we slept late and ate lunch at a Curry House near our hotel and enjoyed the Indian influence on Malay food. There are a couple of main influences of Malaysian culture. There are Indian Malays, Chinese Malays and Malaysia Malays. So we found that the food includes a lot of Indian and Chinese foods. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim (we could hear the call to prayer from our hotel) and it was a British colony, so a lot of people speak extremely good English.
On Friday we went back to the shopping mall to watch "Watchmen," which Pat had been anticipating since it came out on March 8th. We explored China Town, which resembled the knock-off markets that we have found in Thailand with pushy vendors and lots of bootleg DVDs and fake Channel handbags. We tried to find Little India, but we headed back at the Curry House for a dinner of fresh naan and curried chicken. Saturday morning we switched hotels and waited for Pat's friend, Becca, to arrive from the airport. After catching up over lunch at the Curry House, the three of us headed to the Lake Gardens and then to the Kuala Lumpur Tower to look over the city from the observation deck. We spent time in the shopping mall at the Petronas Towers chatting over coffee at Starbucks. We avoided the afternoon rain in our hotel and then watched the Liverpool soccer game at a bar in China Town. On Sunday we woke up to Pat's computer not working so we spent the morning trying to fix it and then we took a taxi to Little India for an amazing lunch. Little India was a bit disappointing as all of the shops were selling tacky silk fabrics, headscarves and carpets, but our lunch was well worth the trip. Becca had to catch her plane Sunday evening and our flight was not until Monday morning. Pat and I enjoyed a trip up to the Sky Bridge on the 40th floor of the Petronas Towers as the sun started to set. We had a good weekend and enjoyed seeing and hanging out with Becca, but there is not a whole lot to do in KL.
Lessons learned from Kuala Lumpur:
-Always insist on taxi drivers using the meter. All the taxis have meters in Kuala Lumpur, but for some reason a majority refuse to use it. Often you tell the driver where you want to go and they name a price between 10 and 20 ringit. If you want you can try to bargain the price. On one ride we bargained for 10 ringit to go from the Kuala Lumpur Tower to the Petronas Towers. The driver had left the meter on and when we arrived at the Petronas Towers we saw that it should have cost no more than 2 ringit. From that point on we asked all the drivers if they had a meter. Most of the time they said they did not have a meter even though one was clearly in sight or they said it did not work. A couple of times we would ask nearly 10 drivers before we found one willing to use his meter.
-Do not take the blue taxis (especially if you are on a budget). On a very rainy afternoon we found a driver willing to use his meter to take us from the Petronas Towers to our hotel (about 5 km). As soon as we got in the driver informed us that his meter started at 6 ringit. We had already asked several drivers about using their meter and it was raining a lot, so we stayed in the taxi. As we drove through the rain and traffic, the price on the meter quickly rose much faster than most taxis. We learned that our taxi was a blue taxi which is an "executive" taxi and therefore cost more and went at a quicker rate. The ride was very pricey and the driver took us to the wrong hotel.
-Make sure your alarm is set to the local time. Our flight was at 7:10 on Monday morning, so we set our alarm for 4:30am and had the hotel call a taxi for us for 5am. Early in the morning our phone rang and the voice informed me that our taxi was waiting. I tried to explain that it was 4:20am and that we did not need a taxi until 5am. The voice corrected me said that it was already 5:20am. Our cell phone was still on Thailand time and we had oversleeped!! We rushed to pack our bags and were in the taxi by 5:35am. The ride ended up taking a full hour even though there was absolutely no traffic. The airport was surprisingly busy! We begged to have our bags checked and we fidgeted in the line for passport control before asking to get in front of eveyone since our flight was leaving in 20 minutes. We ran to the gate and pleaded to be let on the flight only to find that the flight to Phuket had not boarded. We caught our flight and our bags made it to Phuket and by 1pm on Monday we were back in Trang.
Yesterday and today, Pat and I have been trying to pack, clean and get everything ready to move out tomorrow. We head to Bangkok by train tomorrow evening where we will meet Rod, Pat's older brother. This morning we sold our washing machine (which we used only twice) and our fridge for quite a deal for the buyers (because we were getting a little desperate). In the afternoon we sold our motorbike back to the dealership for less than they had promised. We are slowly packing everything up and cleaning out our apartment. It is surprising that we have already spent close to 5 months in Thailand. We are excited about traveling in Southeast Asia, but at the same time we are a bit sad to leave Trang and our friends here. It is very strange to be packing our bags.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Good Times in Trang
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Koh Sukorn was the destination for our last weekend trip last weekend. It is an island in Trang Province that is known for its atmosphere and not its beaches. One of the bungalows on Koh Sukorn, Koh Sukorn Beach Bungalows, is very well advertised in Trang with beautiful posters of the grounds and bungalows and there office is located across from the train station in town. I did my research on the price of accommodations and the trip to the island. It looked like it would be 1.5 hrs to the island in a songthaw (a pick up truck with benches) and a longtail boat. The transportation would be around 200 baht per person ($6) and we could get a room for three for a little over 1000 baht ($35). Niamh, Patrick and I were in, so we left Saturday morning for one night on Koh Sukorn. The songthaw took over 45 minutes to get out of Trang. We stopped all over town for the people riding the truck to run errands including a 20-minute stop at Tesco (the local Wal-Mart). We nearly bailed at Tesco because of the heat and frustration of having spent 45 minutes on the truck and still being in Trang, but we powered through and ended up at a pier somewhere. We had already been traveling for about 1.5, so I did not think the longtail boat ride would take long, but we spent 1 hour on the boat crowded with all sorts of supplies including ice right below Pat and Niamh. From the pier on Koh Sukorn we had a 20-minute motorbike taxi ride to the hotel. After such a long and painful trip I was convinced that the hotel was going to be a dump and that we would have a miserable last weekend trip, but the hotel was beautiful! The landscaping was beautiful with bright flowers blooming all over the place. The staff sat us at a table and brought us pineapple juice. One of the owners talked with us and gave us a discount on the room and explained an easier route home for Sunday (that would take closer to 1.5 hrs). Our room was nice enough with a third mattress for the floor. The beach was not to pretty with dark sand, but islands out at the horizon were beautiful. Niamh found herself a place in a beach chair in the sun and Pat and I got massages for $6 for an hour. Towards the end of Pat’s massage there was a massive downpour, the first rain in 2 months, which was beautiful and relaxing. The massage table was outside under a cover that looked over the beach. The massage was lovely and included a menthol butt rub down, which was unexpected. The sunset was absolutely incredible and we could watch it from our dinner table. The food was good and not too expensive. The island was quiet with little to do, so we found ourselves in bed early reading ourselves to sleep. In the morning we enjoyed a breakfast by the beach before heading back to Trang. The motorbike taxi was at most 15 minutes to a closer pier, the longtail boat ride 15-20 minutes. On the mainland we waited a bit for a songthaw, which took us to a taxi stand in Yantakhao (a 35 minute ride) and then we took a taxi from Yantakhao to our house (20 minutes). The trip was much less painful and we experienced the local taxis, which is a new form of transportation for us.
Last week Pat finished up teaching and prepared for his final, which will be Monday and Wednesday. I thought I was finished Monday when I turned in my final grades, but a two-hour discussion with my boss (which was not too pleasant) informed me otherwise. Because I failed some students (around 45 out of 450) I had to do something to allow them another opportunity so that they would not in the end fail. My boss had proposed a two-day workshop that would include 6 hours at Tesco (the local Wal-Mart), but I had no desire to allow students who have been skipping class all semester and failing their work a two-day workshop that would erase all that and allow them to pass. I asked her if they were allowed to make up all their work every year with a two-day workshop, what would keep them from skipping class the following year. She did not respond to that. I wanted my students to have a consequence for not coming to class and therefore failing my class work and exams, but she wanted a way to have as people pass as possible. She said that the students were afraid of me and therefore did not come to class. And she used an instance when I saw a snake on campus as a comparison, but I quickly pointed out that I was not required to look at the snake, but that the students were required to come to class even if they were afraid of me. In the end, I said that I would let the students retake the final if they came to me, so she had me come to school Thursday and Friday (all day). In two days eight students came to retake the exam, four passed (which is over 50%) and four failed. Interesting…
Over the past few weeks Pat and I have become regulars at the sports stadium in town. Around 5:30pm as the temperature begins to drop from 30 or 35 and the sun is not as intense, the stadium starts to fill up. The basketball courts, soccer field and any piece of pavement large enough to play a game of soccer fill with Thai guys between high school age and probably mid-30s. The soccer field is bordered by a track and the women gather there with speakers, sweat bands and spandex for outdoor aerobics. Stray dogs recline between pumping feet and toddlers try to mimic their mothers well off beat. The youngest kids gather at the pool, on the sides of the basketball courts or riding bikes on the loop around the stadium. The middle age men tend to stick to the loop around the stadium running in circles with their short-shorts and sweaty shirts. Pat has found his crowd at the basketball court meeting other guys in their 20s. They play game after game of 4-on-4 until well after the sun goes down and the stadium lights fail to illuminate the dark basketball. While Pat passes and shoots with the others I tend to run and walk with the middle-aged men getting the regular stares and shouts of hello. Sometimes I keep the same pace as other runners and we keep each other silent company as we lap the stadium. They recognize me and give me a thumbs up or a smile. The days when I am too tired to run I walk and get a few jabs of “Run! Run!” from some of the regulars. Yesterday while I was running, distracting myself with music on my iPod, I had a man shout “Slow! Slow!” I pulled out my earbuds as he caught up to me. He quickly explained that he was 72 years old in broken English. I was impressed at how well he kept pace with me. He asked how old I was and he mentioned that his daughter was 34 and lived in Bangkok. He said he saw me at the stadium every day. Our conversation was limited but we ran together for one lap and then he slowed up to join his friends, one of which reminded me that he was 72 years old. So one of my nameless running buddies is an impressive 72 years old.
Through basketball Pat has met several locals including two guys, Joe and Hok, that we hang out with on a regular basis. Joe is around 26 years old. He studied in London as a high school student, he has worked in Bangkok at a hotel and he is heading to Switzerland in April to study hotel management. His English is incredible! Hok is 31 years old and is a civil engineer in Trang. His English is okay. After basketball, we sometimes go to a nearby coffee shop for cocoa yen (iced cocoa) and water and some dinner. Other nights we have headed to other restaurants, Joe and Hok taking it upon themselves to give us a food orientation or maybe disorientation since we are leaving in a few weeks. Last week we went to a restaurant by the bus station where we had eaten with Daniel and his parents. I had been craving coconut curry (gaang gati gai), so in addition to the curry we ordered fried chicken (gai tod grateam) and Joe ordered fried grated catfish (yam blah dook foo), which we had not had since Bangkok. The food was incredible!! Maybe we were just hungry from running and playing basketball, but the curry was delicious, the fried chicken the best I had had with some black pepper in the breading and the catfish was some much better than the fried hairball we had tasted in Bangkok. Hok had brought a Thai dessert with him with coconut milk and water chesnuts. After dinner Joe took us to a dessert stand that he knew of and bought us a couple sweets to take home. While dinner was incredible, the sweets were worth trying but not good enough to find again. Most of them were jelly based which seems to be a Thai favorite. The next night Joe took us to one of his favorite restaurants and Joe and Hok took care of the ordering. We started off with pork sate with peanut sauce and cucumbers in vinegar, honey and limejuice. Delicious! Dinner included a seafood soup that ended up being a bit too spicy; a pork dish with coconut meat, citrus juice and peppers; a chicken and yellow curry plate; and chicken wings with a plum sauce and some sort of beans. After dinner Joe led us to a famous roti stand near his house where we enjoyed roti dipped in sweetened condensed milk and sugar along with cocoa yen. Since then we have met Joe and Hok for a few more lunches, dinners and evening drinks.
This weekend we have already had a fascinating weekend and it is only Sunday morning. One of Pat’s friends from basketball, Yut, is becoming a monk for three months and his initiation was Saturday morning. So yesterday we woke up at 6:15 and 6:45am to meet Joe and Hok (two other basketball friends) for a “real” Thai breakfast. We met at Joe’s house at 7:15 and went to a café down the street. From a tray we picked a few plates of pork fried in different varieties: fried pork, fried toast stuffed with pork, and fried pork spring rolls. Next came the steamed dishes. A stack of bamboo bowls came to the table revealing a variety of steamed pork. Steamed pork dumplings, fish tofu with pork, shrimp and pork balls, mushrooms wrapped in bacon, etc. Due to the early hours we all clutched a coffee or a café yen (iced coffee) to keep our eyes open. The breakfast was a great experience, but the food is nothing that I would rush to eat again. We followed each other in a line of motorbikes to the temple, where we found Yut dressed in white with his family standing behind him. The family ushered us over with the normal Thai downward hand motion and they handed us gifts for Yut that he would need in his monk hood. We walked around the temple three times following Yut and then found a place on the ground in the temple to watch the rest of the ceremony. Yut’s head was completely shaved including his eyebrows. He started out wearing white with a gold headband, but during the ceremony he was ushered outside and changed into the orange robes of a monk. I was able to take pictures throughout the ceremony and I was able to get some good ones. We were not able to really follow the ceremony, but it was fascinating to watch. After an hour, Pat, Joe, Hok and I left. We went into town to see about selling our motorbike back to the dealership, which we will but we have to wait for a final price until the day we will actually sell it. We watched a little TV at Joe’s house before returning to the temple to eat lunch with Yut’s family, girlfriend and her friends. After lunch Joe took us to a restaurant on the far side of town that serves Khao Soy, our favorite noodle dish from the North. It was delicious!!! Exhausted from the early morning we headed home for afternoon naps and slept until it was time to head to the stadium. After basketball we picked up some satay chicken and fried chicken and went to a coffee shop for cocoa yen (iced cocoa) and our snacks. Last night we took Niamh to the roti stand (because she LOVES roti) and enjoyed some roti and tea.
We are definitely settling in to life in Trang just in time to start our Southeast Asian travels. We are having a lot of fun and enjoying some great food with our new friends! Our last weeks will definitely be our best and we are finding that we will miss life in Trang!
Koh Sukorn was the destination for our last weekend trip last weekend. It is an island in Trang Province that is known for its atmosphere and not its beaches. One of the bungalows on Koh Sukorn, Koh Sukorn Beach Bungalows, is very well advertised in Trang with beautiful posters of the grounds and bungalows and there office is located across from the train station in town. I did my research on the price of accommodations and the trip to the island. It looked like it would be 1.5 hrs to the island in a songthaw (a pick up truck with benches) and a longtail boat. The transportation would be around 200 baht per person ($6) and we could get a room for three for a little over 1000 baht ($35). Niamh, Patrick and I were in, so we left Saturday morning for one night on Koh Sukorn. The songthaw took over 45 minutes to get out of Trang. We stopped all over town for the people riding the truck to run errands including a 20-minute stop at Tesco (the local Wal-Mart). We nearly bailed at Tesco because of the heat and frustration of having spent 45 minutes on the truck and still being in Trang, but we powered through and ended up at a pier somewhere. We had already been traveling for about 1.5, so I did not think the longtail boat ride would take long, but we spent 1 hour on the boat crowded with all sorts of supplies including ice right below Pat and Niamh. From the pier on Koh Sukorn we had a 20-minute motorbike taxi ride to the hotel. After such a long and painful trip I was convinced that the hotel was going to be a dump and that we would have a miserable last weekend trip, but the hotel was beautiful! The landscaping was beautiful with bright flowers blooming all over the place. The staff sat us at a table and brought us pineapple juice. One of the owners talked with us and gave us a discount on the room and explained an easier route home for Sunday (that would take closer to 1.5 hrs). Our room was nice enough with a third mattress for the floor. The beach was not to pretty with dark sand, but islands out at the horizon were beautiful. Niamh found herself a place in a beach chair in the sun and Pat and I got massages for $6 for an hour. Towards the end of Pat’s massage there was a massive downpour, the first rain in 2 months, which was beautiful and relaxing. The massage table was outside under a cover that looked over the beach. The massage was lovely and included a menthol butt rub down, which was unexpected. The sunset was absolutely incredible and we could watch it from our dinner table. The food was good and not too expensive. The island was quiet with little to do, so we found ourselves in bed early reading ourselves to sleep. In the morning we enjoyed a breakfast by the beach before heading back to Trang. The motorbike taxi was at most 15 minutes to a closer pier, the longtail boat ride 15-20 minutes. On the mainland we waited a bit for a songthaw, which took us to a taxi stand in Yantakhao (a 35 minute ride) and then we took a taxi from Yantakhao to our house (20 minutes). The trip was much less painful and we experienced the local taxis, which is a new form of transportation for us.
Last week Pat finished up teaching and prepared for his final, which will be Monday and Wednesday. I thought I was finished Monday when I turned in my final grades, but a two-hour discussion with my boss (which was not too pleasant) informed me otherwise. Because I failed some students (around 45 out of 450) I had to do something to allow them another opportunity so that they would not in the end fail. My boss had proposed a two-day workshop that would include 6 hours at Tesco (the local Wal-Mart), but I had no desire to allow students who have been skipping class all semester and failing their work a two-day workshop that would erase all that and allow them to pass. I asked her if they were allowed to make up all their work every year with a two-day workshop, what would keep them from skipping class the following year. She did not respond to that. I wanted my students to have a consequence for not coming to class and therefore failing my class work and exams, but she wanted a way to have as people pass as possible. She said that the students were afraid of me and therefore did not come to class. And she used an instance when I saw a snake on campus as a comparison, but I quickly pointed out that I was not required to look at the snake, but that the students were required to come to class even if they were afraid of me. In the end, I said that I would let the students retake the final if they came to me, so she had me come to school Thursday and Friday (all day). In two days eight students came to retake the exam, four passed (which is over 50%) and four failed. Interesting…
Over the past few weeks Pat and I have become regulars at the sports stadium in town. Around 5:30pm as the temperature begins to drop from 30 or 35 and the sun is not as intense, the stadium starts to fill up. The basketball courts, soccer field and any piece of pavement large enough to play a game of soccer fill with Thai guys between high school age and probably mid-30s. The soccer field is bordered by a track and the women gather there with speakers, sweat bands and spandex for outdoor aerobics. Stray dogs recline between pumping feet and toddlers try to mimic their mothers well off beat. The youngest kids gather at the pool, on the sides of the basketball courts or riding bikes on the loop around the stadium. The middle age men tend to stick to the loop around the stadium running in circles with their short-shorts and sweaty shirts. Pat has found his crowd at the basketball court meeting other guys in their 20s. They play game after game of 4-on-4 until well after the sun goes down and the stadium lights fail to illuminate the dark basketball. While Pat passes and shoots with the others I tend to run and walk with the middle-aged men getting the regular stares and shouts of hello. Sometimes I keep the same pace as other runners and we keep each other silent company as we lap the stadium. They recognize me and give me a thumbs up or a smile. The days when I am too tired to run I walk and get a few jabs of “Run! Run!” from some of the regulars. Yesterday while I was running, distracting myself with music on my iPod, I had a man shout “Slow! Slow!” I pulled out my earbuds as he caught up to me. He quickly explained that he was 72 years old in broken English. I was impressed at how well he kept pace with me. He asked how old I was and he mentioned that his daughter was 34 and lived in Bangkok. He said he saw me at the stadium every day. Our conversation was limited but we ran together for one lap and then he slowed up to join his friends, one of which reminded me that he was 72 years old. So one of my nameless running buddies is an impressive 72 years old.
Through basketball Pat has met several locals including two guys, Joe and Hok, that we hang out with on a regular basis. Joe is around 26 years old. He studied in London as a high school student, he has worked in Bangkok at a hotel and he is heading to Switzerland in April to study hotel management. His English is incredible! Hok is 31 years old and is a civil engineer in Trang. His English is okay. After basketball, we sometimes go to a nearby coffee shop for cocoa yen (iced cocoa) and water and some dinner. Other nights we have headed to other restaurants, Joe and Hok taking it upon themselves to give us a food orientation or maybe disorientation since we are leaving in a few weeks. Last week we went to a restaurant by the bus station where we had eaten with Daniel and his parents. I had been craving coconut curry (gaang gati gai), so in addition to the curry we ordered fried chicken (gai tod grateam) and Joe ordered fried grated catfish (yam blah dook foo), which we had not had since Bangkok. The food was incredible!! Maybe we were just hungry from running and playing basketball, but the curry was delicious, the fried chicken the best I had had with some black pepper in the breading and the catfish was some much better than the fried hairball we had tasted in Bangkok. Hok had brought a Thai dessert with him with coconut milk and water chesnuts. After dinner Joe took us to a dessert stand that he knew of and bought us a couple sweets to take home. While dinner was incredible, the sweets were worth trying but not good enough to find again. Most of them were jelly based which seems to be a Thai favorite. The next night Joe took us to one of his favorite restaurants and Joe and Hok took care of the ordering. We started off with pork sate with peanut sauce and cucumbers in vinegar, honey and limejuice. Delicious! Dinner included a seafood soup that ended up being a bit too spicy; a pork dish with coconut meat, citrus juice and peppers; a chicken and yellow curry plate; and chicken wings with a plum sauce and some sort of beans. After dinner Joe led us to a famous roti stand near his house where we enjoyed roti dipped in sweetened condensed milk and sugar along with cocoa yen. Since then we have met Joe and Hok for a few more lunches, dinners and evening drinks.
This weekend we have already had a fascinating weekend and it is only Sunday morning. One of Pat’s friends from basketball, Yut, is becoming a monk for three months and his initiation was Saturday morning. So yesterday we woke up at 6:15 and 6:45am to meet Joe and Hok (two other basketball friends) for a “real” Thai breakfast. We met at Joe’s house at 7:15 and went to a café down the street. From a tray we picked a few plates of pork fried in different varieties: fried pork, fried toast stuffed with pork, and fried pork spring rolls. Next came the steamed dishes. A stack of bamboo bowls came to the table revealing a variety of steamed pork. Steamed pork dumplings, fish tofu with pork, shrimp and pork balls, mushrooms wrapped in bacon, etc. Due to the early hours we all clutched a coffee or a café yen (iced coffee) to keep our eyes open. The breakfast was a great experience, but the food is nothing that I would rush to eat again. We followed each other in a line of motorbikes to the temple, where we found Yut dressed in white with his family standing behind him. The family ushered us over with the normal Thai downward hand motion and they handed us gifts for Yut that he would need in his monk hood. We walked around the temple three times following Yut and then found a place on the ground in the temple to watch the rest of the ceremony. Yut’s head was completely shaved including his eyebrows. He started out wearing white with a gold headband, but during the ceremony he was ushered outside and changed into the orange robes of a monk. I was able to take pictures throughout the ceremony and I was able to get some good ones. We were not able to really follow the ceremony, but it was fascinating to watch. After an hour, Pat, Joe, Hok and I left. We went into town to see about selling our motorbike back to the dealership, which we will but we have to wait for a final price until the day we will actually sell it. We watched a little TV at Joe’s house before returning to the temple to eat lunch with Yut’s family, girlfriend and her friends. After lunch Joe took us to a restaurant on the far side of town that serves Khao Soy, our favorite noodle dish from the North. It was delicious!!! Exhausted from the early morning we headed home for afternoon naps and slept until it was time to head to the stadium. After basketball we picked up some satay chicken and fried chicken and went to a coffee shop for cocoa yen (iced cocoa) and our snacks. Last night we took Niamh to the roti stand (because she LOVES roti) and enjoyed some roti and tea.
We are definitely settling in to life in Trang just in time to start our Southeast Asian travels. We are having a lot of fun and enjoying some great food with our new friends! Our last weeks will definitely be our best and we are finding that we will miss life in Trang!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Pursuit of the Perfect Sandwich and other foods we have found in Thailand
I had promised at one point (I think) that I would go into more detail about the food that we have found in Thailand. Today is that day. Our most recent discovery are American Club Sandwiches at a bakery near the train station. For 50 baht (less than $1.50) you can get double-decker club sandwich with chicken, ham and veggies and fries!! The sandwich is delicious!! Ever since our discovery of the American Club Sandwich at Sin Ocha Bakery, it has become an after school snack on some afternoons and also a pre and post weekend trip tradition. As you may guess, the American Club Sandwich is far from traditional Thai food, but when you have not had a sandwich in months, it is essential. As for Thai foods, there is of course your pad thai and fried rice (khao phat). When we first arrived we ate plenty of pad thai because our Thai vocabulary was very limited. We have since replaced pad thai with other dishes, but we still enjoy fried rice on a regular basis. Other dishes we enjoy are:
Gai Pad Prik: Stir fried chicken with chillies.
Khao Phat Naam Prik Pow: Fried Rice with Chili Paste
Gaang Kiawan: Green Curry (This is absolutely delicious!!! Spicy but mmmmm!)
Gaang Gati Gai: Cocunut Curry with chicken
Laap Gai: Laap is a type of preparation where the meat is diced and cooked with chilies, mint, lime juice and some other stuff—This is really spicy, but delicious!
Gai Tod Grateam: Fried Chicken with garlic. This is served on rice with “sauce prik” which is like sweet and sour sauce, but more like sweet and spicy.
Khao Soy: This is northern dish that we found in Chiang Mai. It is a yellow curry soup with coconut milk and noodles with crunchy noodles on top.
Pad Won Sen Gai: Stir-fried glass noodles with chicken (This is one of Pat’s new favorites.
A lot of dishes are served with fried eggs (“kai dow”) and almost everything is served with rice unless it is a noodle dish.
Thai food is delicious!! We are really enjoying the food, but occasionally we do miss some western foods like pasta, sandwiches, pizza and burritos. There are not too many “western” options in Trang, so we have started making pasta and garlic bread with our hot plate once a week.
As for snacks:
Fresh Fruit from the Market:
• Farang (green guava)- This is like an apple in texture, but a bit different. It is great with “prik gluay” a salt and chili flake dip for fruits.
• Pineapple
• Pomello
• Chompoo (rose apple)- I am not sure how to describe this.
• Dragon Fruit- This fruit has a crazy pink and green skin. The inside is white with lots of small black seeds (that are kind of like kiwi seeds). Dragon Fruit drinks look like floating eyeballs (very strange looking and not very appealing looking).
• Green coconuts- The tops are chopped off and you can drink the coconut water.
• Watermelon
Fried Bananas
Sticky Rice with sweet coconut or with custard (My absolute favorite!!)
Sticky Rice pancakes with black beans
Meats on a stick (any sort of meats you can imagine)
Fried Chicken The best is the chicken made by the Muslim women—I am not trying to be racist—there is a difference in the preparation and spices.
Roti: crepes with bananas in the middle
Waffles: There are stalls in the markets that sell waffles. My favorite ones have corn or raisins mixed with the batter.
I hope that gives you a better idea of what we have been eating!
Gai Pad Prik: Stir fried chicken with chillies.
Khao Phat Naam Prik Pow: Fried Rice with Chili Paste
Gaang Kiawan: Green Curry (This is absolutely delicious!!! Spicy but mmmmm!)
Gaang Gati Gai: Cocunut Curry with chicken
Laap Gai: Laap is a type of preparation where the meat is diced and cooked with chilies, mint, lime juice and some other stuff—This is really spicy, but delicious!
Gai Tod Grateam: Fried Chicken with garlic. This is served on rice with “sauce prik” which is like sweet and sour sauce, but more like sweet and spicy.
Khao Soy: This is northern dish that we found in Chiang Mai. It is a yellow curry soup with coconut milk and noodles with crunchy noodles on top.
Pad Won Sen Gai: Stir-fried glass noodles with chicken (This is one of Pat’s new favorites.
A lot of dishes are served with fried eggs (“kai dow”) and almost everything is served with rice unless it is a noodle dish.
Thai food is delicious!! We are really enjoying the food, but occasionally we do miss some western foods like pasta, sandwiches, pizza and burritos. There are not too many “western” options in Trang, so we have started making pasta and garlic bread with our hot plate once a week.
As for snacks:
Fresh Fruit from the Market:
• Farang (green guava)- This is like an apple in texture, but a bit different. It is great with “prik gluay” a salt and chili flake dip for fruits.
• Pineapple
• Pomello
• Chompoo (rose apple)- I am not sure how to describe this.
• Dragon Fruit- This fruit has a crazy pink and green skin. The inside is white with lots of small black seeds (that are kind of like kiwi seeds). Dragon Fruit drinks look like floating eyeballs (very strange looking and not very appealing looking).
• Green coconuts- The tops are chopped off and you can drink the coconut water.
• Watermelon
Fried Bananas
Sticky Rice with sweet coconut or with custard (My absolute favorite!!)
Sticky Rice pancakes with black beans
Meats on a stick (any sort of meats you can imagine)
Fried Chicken The best is the chicken made by the Muslim women—I am not trying to be racist—there is a difference in the preparation and spices.
Roti: crepes with bananas in the middle
Waffles: There are stalls in the markets that sell waffles. My favorite ones have corn or raisins mixed with the batter.
I hope that gives you a better idea of what we have been eating!
The Past Few Weeks
Friday, February 13, 2009
So it has been several weeks since our last post. Sorry for the lapse. I would say that we have been incredibly busy, but I do not know that we actually have been. School is school and teaching is still continuing. I only have one day left of teaching and then my final is Tuesday, while Pat still has a couple of weeks. So life in Trang…the weather is getting extremely hot. I could not tell you the exact temperature as the news/weather that we would get on our TV would be in Thai and also in Celsius. It is in the 30s (Celsius that is) which is around the 90s. Mornings and evenings are still kind of pleasant with a nice breeze (if there is a breeze), but the classrooms that are lacking both fans and air conditioning are becoming ovens. April is supposed to be the hottest month, so if it is as hot as it is now, I do not want to imagine April. For the most part there is no rain with the exception of Wednesday when there was an afternoon shower that we entirely missed.
We have done a bit of traveling since our last post. The weekend after we arrived back from Chiang Mai we headed back to Phuket to stay with Barry’s house sitter and enjoy the beautiful weekends. The following weekend was my birthday (24th!!) which was spent in Trang as Pat had caught some peculiar stomach illness that kept him near the house for a handful of days. Pat surprised me with a gorgeous and delicious oreo ice cream cake and a bottle of Trang wine that we have yet to open because we cannot find a corkscrew. The last weekend of January we went to Koh Libong, an island in Trang Province. We took a minibus from Trang to Hat Yao and then took a longtail boat to the pier on Koh Libong. From the pier we took motorbike taxis across the island to our hotel. The motorbike ride was incredible. The island is very much a local island with villages here and there. The 30-minute ride was beautiful and tranquil as we passed rubber tree farm after rubber tree farm of perfectly aligned forests. Our hotel was in a remote part of the island with a piece of beach out front. Our bungalow was nice enough with a pristine bathroom and fan that worked during the hours of electricity (8-1 and 5-midnight). The food was ordinary and expensive, the beach was strewn with trash, but the quiet and forced relaxation was lovely. We spent two nights on Koh Libong before heading back to Trang. Last weekend we had planned to visit Koh Lipe, but transportation and accommodation was proving to be too much of a hassle and too expensive, so last minute we decided to go back to Koh Lanta, the island we stayed on during our first week in Trang. We stayed at the same place we had stayed in October and it was lovely! While the rocky beach had not changed, we were able to better appreciate what Koh Lanta had to offer after seeing the crowded beaches and streets of Krabi and Phuket. Koh Lanta is a lot less built up and thus quieter and more relaxing than Krabi or Phuket. The hotel had wonderful food including some much-appreciated Indian food like a delicious curried chicken wrap in nan. Mmmm!!! We ate delicious food and spent several hours reading in hammocks that overlooked the ocean. Again we enjoyed hanging out with the friendly and welcoming staff. Pat and I are really looking forward to heading back to Koh Lanta for a few more days before our Southeast Asian travels begin in mid-March.
This week has been fairly uneventful with the exception of our water getting cut off one morning. I tend to wake up early shower, eat breakfast and do my thing on the internet before waking up Pat who only needs 25 minutes or so to get ready. On Wednesday morning, I was enjoying my tea and cereal while checking my email after an earlier shower. Pat was showering. I went into our kitchen to wash our dishes only to find that there was no water coming out of the kitchen sink. Pat called through the bathroom door to see if there was any water because there was none coming out of the shower. He poked his head out showing that he had a head full of shampoo. I told him I would go see if I could figure anything out. I went in search of our landlord only to find his elderly mother or mother-in-law who speaks no English. I tried to explain in broken Thai “No water (mai naam).” She seemed a bit confused but waddle around the exterior of the house. I headed back to our place and found Pat dressed with seemingly clean hair. In desperation to get the shampoo out of his hair he had used what was left in the water bucket for flushing the toilet. In the end we made it to work a few minutes late and Pat had somewhat clean hair.
So it has been several weeks since our last post. Sorry for the lapse. I would say that we have been incredibly busy, but I do not know that we actually have been. School is school and teaching is still continuing. I only have one day left of teaching and then my final is Tuesday, while Pat still has a couple of weeks. So life in Trang…the weather is getting extremely hot. I could not tell you the exact temperature as the news/weather that we would get on our TV would be in Thai and also in Celsius. It is in the 30s (Celsius that is) which is around the 90s. Mornings and evenings are still kind of pleasant with a nice breeze (if there is a breeze), but the classrooms that are lacking both fans and air conditioning are becoming ovens. April is supposed to be the hottest month, so if it is as hot as it is now, I do not want to imagine April. For the most part there is no rain with the exception of Wednesday when there was an afternoon shower that we entirely missed.
We have done a bit of traveling since our last post. The weekend after we arrived back from Chiang Mai we headed back to Phuket to stay with Barry’s house sitter and enjoy the beautiful weekends. The following weekend was my birthday (24th!!) which was spent in Trang as Pat had caught some peculiar stomach illness that kept him near the house for a handful of days. Pat surprised me with a gorgeous and delicious oreo ice cream cake and a bottle of Trang wine that we have yet to open because we cannot find a corkscrew. The last weekend of January we went to Koh Libong, an island in Trang Province. We took a minibus from Trang to Hat Yao and then took a longtail boat to the pier on Koh Libong. From the pier we took motorbike taxis across the island to our hotel. The motorbike ride was incredible. The island is very much a local island with villages here and there. The 30-minute ride was beautiful and tranquil as we passed rubber tree farm after rubber tree farm of perfectly aligned forests. Our hotel was in a remote part of the island with a piece of beach out front. Our bungalow was nice enough with a pristine bathroom and fan that worked during the hours of electricity (8-1 and 5-midnight). The food was ordinary and expensive, the beach was strewn with trash, but the quiet and forced relaxation was lovely. We spent two nights on Koh Libong before heading back to Trang. Last weekend we had planned to visit Koh Lipe, but transportation and accommodation was proving to be too much of a hassle and too expensive, so last minute we decided to go back to Koh Lanta, the island we stayed on during our first week in Trang. We stayed at the same place we had stayed in October and it was lovely! While the rocky beach had not changed, we were able to better appreciate what Koh Lanta had to offer after seeing the crowded beaches and streets of Krabi and Phuket. Koh Lanta is a lot less built up and thus quieter and more relaxing than Krabi or Phuket. The hotel had wonderful food including some much-appreciated Indian food like a delicious curried chicken wrap in nan. Mmmm!!! We ate delicious food and spent several hours reading in hammocks that overlooked the ocean. Again we enjoyed hanging out with the friendly and welcoming staff. Pat and I are really looking forward to heading back to Koh Lanta for a few more days before our Southeast Asian travels begin in mid-March.
This week has been fairly uneventful with the exception of our water getting cut off one morning. I tend to wake up early shower, eat breakfast and do my thing on the internet before waking up Pat who only needs 25 minutes or so to get ready. On Wednesday morning, I was enjoying my tea and cereal while checking my email after an earlier shower. Pat was showering. I went into our kitchen to wash our dishes only to find that there was no water coming out of the kitchen sink. Pat called through the bathroom door to see if there was any water because there was none coming out of the shower. He poked his head out showing that he had a head full of shampoo. I told him I would go see if I could figure anything out. I went in search of our landlord only to find his elderly mother or mother-in-law who speaks no English. I tried to explain in broken Thai “No water (mai naam).” She seemed a bit confused but waddle around the exterior of the house. I headed back to our place and found Pat dressed with seemingly clean hair. In desperation to get the shampoo out of his hair he had used what was left in the water bucket for flushing the toilet. In the end we made it to work a few minutes late and Pat had somewhat clean hair.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Photographs and more photographs
Hello all! I just wanted to say that we have been posting most of our photos on snapfish, so if you would like to see those send me an email at keatswebb@gmail.com and I will add you to the list. I will try to post a few on the blog in the near future.
Bangkok and Chiang Mai
On the day after this pretty historic event I feel like a moment of reflection is in order. So I will now tell you guys about the past few weeks here in Thailand. I’m gonna go ahead and warn you now that this post is going to be very long and very intense so if your over the age of 65, have a heart condition, or are expecting a child you should turn off your computer immediately. So Kerry that means stop reading this right now. In case some of you don’t know Keats and I just got done with about a two week vacation where we were up in Bangkok and Chiang Mai for about 12 days.
Our trip started out with a night train from Trang to Bangkok that ended up being pretty terrible due to the lack of drugs for combating the loud noises and erratic motions of the train. We got into Bangkok around 8:30 in the morning on New Years Day and proceeded from the train station to the subway and from there to our hotel. Bangkok may be one of the nastiest cities I have ever been in but I must say that they have the cleanest subway I have ever seen its ridiculous. When we got to our hotel which was a bit hard to find as it was on the third floor of some other hotel we were taken to our room. From the moment I walked in the room I felt that I had somehow seen this room layout before and that it seemed vaguely familiar. And then it hit me every single 80’s porn movie was filmed in my hotel room, this room was ridiculous. It was as if the designers had a competition with each other to see who could put mirrors on the most surfaces. There were mirrors on all four walls and of course the ceiling as well. There was also a nice glowing redlight inside one of the walls for that nice subtle hint that in case you didn’t notice already this room used to be where prostitutes worked. I kept looking the whole time for the slot to put my money in to make the bed vibrate but alas I couldn’t find it. I’m sure they sealed it up as that was just to tacky to remain in an establishment as fine as this one. After stepping out of the 80’s porn time warp Keats and I decided it was time for lunch. And not a lunch consisting of rice and some meat and vegetables which had been the basis of pretty much all our lunches for the past month, but rather a delicious alternative. I was on the hunt for a sandwich and a pickle, I don’t know why I just really wanted one. So Keats and I decided to head out to what I’m fairly positive is the nicest mall on the planet. It is called the Siam paragon and if you ever wanted to go spend thousands of dollars in one gigantic air conditioned castle then this is the place for you. They sell luxury cars, clothes, jewelry and pretty much anything else that has luxury in front of it and it is all itemized by floor making it so much easier to spend your hard earned baht. In addition to all that luxury they also have a pretty banging food court where Keats and I got some sandwiches and I had to make due with a bread and butter pickle. I felt like I was turning into a grumpy old person after eating it but it would have to do. After eating we got a cab to Wat Pho which is the second most famous temple in Bangkok after the Grand Palace, they have a statue there called the reclining Buddha which is pretty amazing. We then went back to the hotel and I had decided that since it was New Years I wanted to eat dinner on a rooftop and watch some fireworks. I figured it would be a bit more expensive than usual but hey its Thailand everything is cheap here. I could not have been more wrong, after walking/riding the skytrain around for an hour looking for hotels we finally walked into the Dusit Thani. It had a pretty nice looking rooftop restaurant and I thought that surely we could eat there. We took the elevator up to the top floor only to be informed that dinner for the night was a set menu and that it would be 9,999 baht, and in case you don’t know the conversion rate that’s around 300 dollars oh and it was per person too. We took the elevator downstairs and I saw a big display set up of famous people who had stayed at the hotel. Two that stuck out in my mind were Fifty Cent and Andy Roddick. If Fif and A-Rod are staying there then that place is a bit too classy for me. I meant that’s the dude that used to date Mandy Moore, I think that’s what he’s famous for at least. So after deciding that neither one of us was worth a 300 dollar a person dinner we ended up eating back in the same mall foodcourt for dinner. We then decided that we were way to tired to make it through all of the New Year’s celebrations and we should head back to the hotel early and try to catch some fireworks. So instead of eating a glorious dinner on a rooftop and watching an amazing fireworks display we ended up eating in a mall foodcourt and watching fireworks from the parking lot of an abandoned brothel. It was one of those moments that made you feel good inside you know.
We spent the next few days in Bangkok going around to some of the sights and riding up and down the Chow Praya river, which might be the nastiest body of water I’ve ever had the privilege of being on top of. We walked around the Pat-pong district at night and if any of you know Bangkok you know that’s pretty much the classiest place around. If you define class by how many sex shows are going on around you in the bars of course. And not just any sex show a sex show with a menu, I never knew that certain body parts were so versatile.
After a few days in Bangkok we then embarked on another night train to Chiang Mai. However this time I stocked up on the drugs needed to do battle with that steel monster. I bought 10 mg Diazepam at a “pharmacy” and was able to haggle the price down to about 2.50 US. I definitely think that US pharmacies should adopt this business model where a prescription is just a formality as long as you have the money to buy whatever drugs you want. The pills definitely helped us out and we arrived in Chiang Mai a bit more rested and ready to see the city. We got in around 8 in the morning and went to our hotel which was a really nice place run by a gay couple from Hawaii. They told us our room wouldn’t be ready until around 11 and recommended a few sights for us to go see. We ended up going up to Doi Sutthep which is a really famous temple in Chiang Mai. It is located up in the mountains and so it offers a really amazing view of the city. Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand with about 200K people. Bangkok on the other hand has around 8 million. Chiang Mai is really a great little city, I kept having the feeling that I was in Seattle when I was up there for some reason. It just reminds me of a laid back Northern US city. We ended up knowing somebody in Chiang Mai through Keats sister Hart. They had gone to school together for a while and he was living in the city working as an English teacher as well. We met up and he took us out to something that I had been craving for a while, good Mexican food. We got some plates of food and some pitchers of Margarita’s where an extra shot of tequila was only 20 baht so you know I definitely chipped in for some of those. We then went around to the night market and checked out the latest in bootleg fashion and entertainment. During our stay in Chiang Mai Keats and I bought some really cool things there. We got some pretty sweet tea sets, yeah that’s right I bought a tea set. I also bought a really badass knife to reaffirm my manliness. Crocodile Dundee would have definitely agreed on its qualifications. I also ended up buying a travel backpack as the one I had from my brother I’m pretty sure was used sometime during the Great Depression or the Dust Bowl whichever one happened first.
Chiang Mai has two things in great abundance that you really appreciate when you have been out of the country for a while. Great food and great used book stores. And because there are so many tourists there creating so much demand for these things the cost is driven down by all the sellers in the city. Its almost like supply and demand have some kind of magical effect on one another. We ate at some really great restaurants that sold some of the food that we just cant get in Trang. There was a great pizza place, an amazing burrito place with homemade chips and salsa, and an awesome burger place called Mike’s that was open until 3:00 in the morning. Oh and they sold milkshakes too, it’s the only place I’ve been that has been as good as cookout. Besides eating a lot we spent our time hanging out in the city walking around to the various markets. They have one on Sunday called the walking street which is an enormous open air night market that takes up about 8 blocks of space. We got lost a few times but we ended up buying some pretty cool stuff there.
The city was also the place where some of our Christmas presents to each other were located. For me it was two Muay Thai classes and for Keats it was a cooking class. The Muay Thai class was definitely an experience and was pretty interesting. In case you don’t know Muay Thai is Thailand’s national sport and is one of the most badass fighting styles on the planet, take that baseball. The classes were around 2 hours long and consisted of some jogging and jumping rope and then some training with punching bags and trainers. I ended up working a lot with Bee who spoke very little English but could still let me know that pretty much everything he told me to do I was screwing up. After trying and failing several times he would then call this one kid over who must have been about 8 to show me the proper way to do something. There is nothing the ego loves more than being shown up by an 8 year old and still not understanding how to do something. After two hours of pretty intense training I went back to our hotel to eat the food that Keats had brought me from her cooking class. It was really good and I definitely hope she is able to cook some of those things back in the states.
We spent a couple of the nights in Chiang Mai going out with Rob and some of his teacher friends to a few bars and enjoying the finest of watery light Thai beers all with a different animal associated with the brand. There’s Chang(Elephant), Leo(leopard), Tiger(obvious), Archa(Horse), and Heineken(Fat German). We really enjoyed Chiang Mai and all that was in the city, it was strange to be around so many white tourists though. There were a lot of lame Americans around the city that I really did not enjoy seeing or hearing speak. Being in the city really made us regret being about 1200 miles away from it, thanks CIEE. We decided to get an extra day out of the city by flying to back to Bangkok instead of taking the train, because were high class like that. It was weird to be on a plane again. It was also pretty crazy to turn a 14 hour train ride into an hour long flight. We did take the night train back to Trang though but armed with our supply of quality pharmaceuticals we made it through the night unscathed. It was a great vacation and a welcome escape from the pretty boring city of Trang. We got to eat some good food buy some good books and have some great times definitely an enjoyable twelve days. Sorry that was so long but it had to be done. Kerry I hope you didn’t read that whole thing in one sitting if so I hope grasshopper firemtruck is ok.
Pat
Our trip started out with a night train from Trang to Bangkok that ended up being pretty terrible due to the lack of drugs for combating the loud noises and erratic motions of the train. We got into Bangkok around 8:30 in the morning on New Years Day and proceeded from the train station to the subway and from there to our hotel. Bangkok may be one of the nastiest cities I have ever been in but I must say that they have the cleanest subway I have ever seen its ridiculous. When we got to our hotel which was a bit hard to find as it was on the third floor of some other hotel we were taken to our room. From the moment I walked in the room I felt that I had somehow seen this room layout before and that it seemed vaguely familiar. And then it hit me every single 80’s porn movie was filmed in my hotel room, this room was ridiculous. It was as if the designers had a competition with each other to see who could put mirrors on the most surfaces. There were mirrors on all four walls and of course the ceiling as well. There was also a nice glowing redlight inside one of the walls for that nice subtle hint that in case you didn’t notice already this room used to be where prostitutes worked. I kept looking the whole time for the slot to put my money in to make the bed vibrate but alas I couldn’t find it. I’m sure they sealed it up as that was just to tacky to remain in an establishment as fine as this one. After stepping out of the 80’s porn time warp Keats and I decided it was time for lunch. And not a lunch consisting of rice and some meat and vegetables which had been the basis of pretty much all our lunches for the past month, but rather a delicious alternative. I was on the hunt for a sandwich and a pickle, I don’t know why I just really wanted one. So Keats and I decided to head out to what I’m fairly positive is the nicest mall on the planet. It is called the Siam paragon and if you ever wanted to go spend thousands of dollars in one gigantic air conditioned castle then this is the place for you. They sell luxury cars, clothes, jewelry and pretty much anything else that has luxury in front of it and it is all itemized by floor making it so much easier to spend your hard earned baht. In addition to all that luxury they also have a pretty banging food court where Keats and I got some sandwiches and I had to make due with a bread and butter pickle. I felt like I was turning into a grumpy old person after eating it but it would have to do. After eating we got a cab to Wat Pho which is the second most famous temple in Bangkok after the Grand Palace, they have a statue there called the reclining Buddha which is pretty amazing. We then went back to the hotel and I had decided that since it was New Years I wanted to eat dinner on a rooftop and watch some fireworks. I figured it would be a bit more expensive than usual but hey its Thailand everything is cheap here. I could not have been more wrong, after walking/riding the skytrain around for an hour looking for hotels we finally walked into the Dusit Thani. It had a pretty nice looking rooftop restaurant and I thought that surely we could eat there. We took the elevator up to the top floor only to be informed that dinner for the night was a set menu and that it would be 9,999 baht, and in case you don’t know the conversion rate that’s around 300 dollars oh and it was per person too. We took the elevator downstairs and I saw a big display set up of famous people who had stayed at the hotel. Two that stuck out in my mind were Fifty Cent and Andy Roddick. If Fif and A-Rod are staying there then that place is a bit too classy for me. I meant that’s the dude that used to date Mandy Moore, I think that’s what he’s famous for at least. So after deciding that neither one of us was worth a 300 dollar a person dinner we ended up eating back in the same mall foodcourt for dinner. We then decided that we were way to tired to make it through all of the New Year’s celebrations and we should head back to the hotel early and try to catch some fireworks. So instead of eating a glorious dinner on a rooftop and watching an amazing fireworks display we ended up eating in a mall foodcourt and watching fireworks from the parking lot of an abandoned brothel. It was one of those moments that made you feel good inside you know.
We spent the next few days in Bangkok going around to some of the sights and riding up and down the Chow Praya river, which might be the nastiest body of water I’ve ever had the privilege of being on top of. We walked around the Pat-pong district at night and if any of you know Bangkok you know that’s pretty much the classiest place around. If you define class by how many sex shows are going on around you in the bars of course. And not just any sex show a sex show with a menu, I never knew that certain body parts were so versatile.
After a few days in Bangkok we then embarked on another night train to Chiang Mai. However this time I stocked up on the drugs needed to do battle with that steel monster. I bought 10 mg Diazepam at a “pharmacy” and was able to haggle the price down to about 2.50 US. I definitely think that US pharmacies should adopt this business model where a prescription is just a formality as long as you have the money to buy whatever drugs you want. The pills definitely helped us out and we arrived in Chiang Mai a bit more rested and ready to see the city. We got in around 8 in the morning and went to our hotel which was a really nice place run by a gay couple from Hawaii. They told us our room wouldn’t be ready until around 11 and recommended a few sights for us to go see. We ended up going up to Doi Sutthep which is a really famous temple in Chiang Mai. It is located up in the mountains and so it offers a really amazing view of the city. Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand with about 200K people. Bangkok on the other hand has around 8 million. Chiang Mai is really a great little city, I kept having the feeling that I was in Seattle when I was up there for some reason. It just reminds me of a laid back Northern US city. We ended up knowing somebody in Chiang Mai through Keats sister Hart. They had gone to school together for a while and he was living in the city working as an English teacher as well. We met up and he took us out to something that I had been craving for a while, good Mexican food. We got some plates of food and some pitchers of Margarita’s where an extra shot of tequila was only 20 baht so you know I definitely chipped in for some of those. We then went around to the night market and checked out the latest in bootleg fashion and entertainment. During our stay in Chiang Mai Keats and I bought some really cool things there. We got some pretty sweet tea sets, yeah that’s right I bought a tea set. I also bought a really badass knife to reaffirm my manliness. Crocodile Dundee would have definitely agreed on its qualifications. I also ended up buying a travel backpack as the one I had from my brother I’m pretty sure was used sometime during the Great Depression or the Dust Bowl whichever one happened first.
Chiang Mai has two things in great abundance that you really appreciate when you have been out of the country for a while. Great food and great used book stores. And because there are so many tourists there creating so much demand for these things the cost is driven down by all the sellers in the city. Its almost like supply and demand have some kind of magical effect on one another. We ate at some really great restaurants that sold some of the food that we just cant get in Trang. There was a great pizza place, an amazing burrito place with homemade chips and salsa, and an awesome burger place called Mike’s that was open until 3:00 in the morning. Oh and they sold milkshakes too, it’s the only place I’ve been that has been as good as cookout. Besides eating a lot we spent our time hanging out in the city walking around to the various markets. They have one on Sunday called the walking street which is an enormous open air night market that takes up about 8 blocks of space. We got lost a few times but we ended up buying some pretty cool stuff there.
The city was also the place where some of our Christmas presents to each other were located. For me it was two Muay Thai classes and for Keats it was a cooking class. The Muay Thai class was definitely an experience and was pretty interesting. In case you don’t know Muay Thai is Thailand’s national sport and is one of the most badass fighting styles on the planet, take that baseball. The classes were around 2 hours long and consisted of some jogging and jumping rope and then some training with punching bags and trainers. I ended up working a lot with Bee who spoke very little English but could still let me know that pretty much everything he told me to do I was screwing up. After trying and failing several times he would then call this one kid over who must have been about 8 to show me the proper way to do something. There is nothing the ego loves more than being shown up by an 8 year old and still not understanding how to do something. After two hours of pretty intense training I went back to our hotel to eat the food that Keats had brought me from her cooking class. It was really good and I definitely hope she is able to cook some of those things back in the states.
We spent a couple of the nights in Chiang Mai going out with Rob and some of his teacher friends to a few bars and enjoying the finest of watery light Thai beers all with a different animal associated with the brand. There’s Chang(Elephant), Leo(leopard), Tiger(obvious), Archa(Horse), and Heineken(Fat German). We really enjoyed Chiang Mai and all that was in the city, it was strange to be around so many white tourists though. There were a lot of lame Americans around the city that I really did not enjoy seeing or hearing speak. Being in the city really made us regret being about 1200 miles away from it, thanks CIEE. We decided to get an extra day out of the city by flying to back to Bangkok instead of taking the train, because were high class like that. It was weird to be on a plane again. It was also pretty crazy to turn a 14 hour train ride into an hour long flight. We did take the night train back to Trang though but armed with our supply of quality pharmaceuticals we made it through the night unscathed. It was a great vacation and a welcome escape from the pretty boring city of Trang. We got to eat some good food buy some good books and have some great times definitely an enjoyable twelve days. Sorry that was so long but it had to be done. Kerry I hope you didn’t read that whole thing in one sitting if so I hope grasshopper firemtruck is ok.
Pat
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