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.