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.