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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