Week 30: All the Ties in Thailand, or, What's Jim Henson Doing Here Anyway?

No, I didn't really meet the king. Let's clear that rumor up right away. I feel like I know him though. 

His picture is everywhere. The Thai people really love their king. He's on the money and his picture is all over billboards and signs. Lots of stores and restaurants also have a picture of him in an esteemed and honored place. Sure, the people don't get a choice in having him on their money and stuff, but I really don't think it's an act. I think they really do love him. He seems like an alright dude, if not a little nerdy.

The king of Thailand was born in Massachusetts, fun fact. He's the only monarch in the history of the world to be born on US soil.

We walked across the border from Cambodia and caught a tuk tuk to the nearest train station. We bought two tickets (for a dollar each!) to Bangkok, and then went to a nearby place for lunch.

Our first taste of Thai food was disappointing. It was cold fish and old rice. Really uninspired stuff, and yet there was such a potent level of spiciness in it that it nearly knocked us on our feet!

The train ride to Bangkok was really long. 8 hours, after a 4 hour bus ride in the morning. It was unbelievably hot, and the trains were not well aerated. The train ride may have been one of my biggest miscalculations of the trip.

Still, it wasn't a total loss. We befriended some kooky characters, including an Irish guy and a German. Plus, I really got a feel for what the average Thai person is like on that train ride. Most of the passengers were just regular man and women on their way to work or to school. The train went across the whole country, but it stopped frequently so there were lots of commuters. I also got to see a lot of the beautiful Thai country, and watch the sun go down on some wonderful farmland.

I think I fell in love with Thailand during the week I spent there. I'm not saying I'm going to go live there after China. I'm definitely ready to come back to the USA. But, even on that train, I knew that this wouldn't be my only time in Thailand.

Our train eventually came to an end and we pulled into Bangkok. The first few days were to be spent with my good friend from college, Rebecca. She met us at the train station and after we exchanged hellos and hugs, we all headed to dinner.

The street food in Bangkok is off the hook. It's everything I wanted it to be, having been a lifelong lover of Thai food. After the mild misstep of our fish lunch, this dinner was a big reassurance that I was in the land of delicious foods. I don't even remember what I had, but I remember that it was delicious!

Rebecca hailed a cab and we headed to the suburbs. Rebecca, like me, is an English teacher at a school for kids. Her school is way out in the Bangbon district of Bangkok, nearly an hour from the city center. Laura and I spent a few days at her apartment, exploring the less flashy and touristy side of Thai life, and wandering around the suburban streets. We enjoyed trading "war stories", and comparing the perks and drawbacks about our various jobs. I'm not sure who came out ahead in the end, but I will say that Rebecca gets a lot more time off than we do...

Along with her other coworkers, the Bangbon crew showed us a great time for those first few nights. We went to this stellar outdoor buffet for dinner one night. It was styled after a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant, but it definitely had a Thai twist. There was a large selection of fresh vegetables and meats to try, and you could just load up a plate and take it back to your table and cook it yourself. I steamed my own crab and also had a whole lot of chicken.

The Hot Pot place also had a selection of meal worms, which I decided to try. Boy was I glad I did! Mealworms are buttery and delicious. They taste like warm roasted hazelnuts, and have a snappy skin on the outside as well! I had quite a few helpings. We finished the meal with some real life western-style ice cream and sprinkles. Not so exotic compared to the meal worms, but it was like a rare and exotic treat to me.

Other Bangbon adventures included going to a fruit market and trying the legendary durian. Durian fruit is often called "The king of fruit", but most westerners cannot stand it. It has a repulsive mind-numbing smell that carries for literally hundreds and hundreds of yards. The smell differs depending on who you ask, but the consensus is somewhere between rotting meat and wet garbage.

I knew I had to try this bizarre fruit. Once while I was in Atlanta I had bought some frozen chunks of durian at an international market. I didn't like it back then, but I also knew that it wasn't the pure experience. Similarly, they sell durian in China but it costs nearly $30 US for just a few pieces, and I knew it wouldn't be too fresh.

But in Thailand durian is everywhere. We bought a few very fresh chunks for a reasonable price. The stench was definitely there, but we persevered anyway. The texture of a durian is sort of mushy and clumpy, not unlike a sort of room temperature goat cheese. The goat cheese metaphor works on a number of levels because it actually tastes sort of cheesy as well. Hot cheese and onions. It's very complex, but not too unpleasant. I do not think you'd want to mix it in with other fruits at all. Durian would not go well in a fruit salad. We also sampled some fresh coconuts during our trip to the fruit market. Also some tiny finger-sized bananas.

After a few days in the suburbs, we migrated to the city proper for some urban adventures. The night life in Bangkok is a bit nuts. The city has a longtime reputation for being notoriously seedy and gritty, and there is still a little bit of that going on. I have to say, though, a lot of it has been "Disneyfied". There are more tourists in Bangkok now than there ever have been before, including lots of families and young people. A lot of the frit and grime of the city seems to have been washed away, or at least brushed into more secluded corners.

Still, you can't walk from one end of the street to the other at night without having people approach you and clandestinely ask if you want to buy a watch, or if you want to go to a "sexy show". These people are best ignored though, and they aren't too aggressive.

Rebecca was a great host and took us all over, showing all the sights and the good hangout spots. We spent a number of nights around Cheap Charlies, a sort of outdoor bar/alley way. It was right next to a different place called Charlies that was a Mexican restaurant. I'm not sure if they were owned by the same Charles or not. But Charlies the Mexican restaurant had really great chimichangas.

During the days in the city we spent time exploring. Bangkok has a huge Chinatown and we spent a lot of time just wandering the streets. I won't say that we were homesick for China, but it absolutely felt more comfortable and homey than I thought it would. There is a certain smell that hits you when you enter a China town. It smells like cooking meat, raw meat, garbage, and also like Chinese medicine. It is wonderful and disgusting at the same time. If you smell that then you know you are in a real China town.

Bangkok has its own Royal Palace complex, along with a bunch of holy temple complexes. The royal palace was under construction and, according to our friend Leon, was largely closed. So instead we spent a day at the Wat Pho temple. Wat Pho is known for its enormous reclining Buddha. Between the Buddha and some of the pyramid-style memorials for Thai kings of the past, Wat Pho was a pretty good time. I couldn't believe how big the reclining Buddha's feet were! Bigger than mine even.

One day Rebecca accompanied Laura and I to the Jim Thompson house. I kept confusing this guy with Jim Henson, but they were really quite different. The Jim Thompson house is the former home of James Thompson (obviously), a man who was stationed in Thailand during world war II. He fell in love with the place and decided to stay there forever. He discovered some villagers making clothes with Thai silk one day, and he decided to bring the art back to the masses. He revived the ancient art and made a fortune for himself in the process. His house is now a museum about his life, but thanks to all the ancient art and artifacts he collected, it serves as a museum about Southeast Asian culture as well. Jim Thompson went on vacation to Malaysia with some friends at some point in the 1960s. He got up early one day and went for a walk by himself. He was never seen or heard from again. His mysterious disappearance left an eerie and somber tone over the museum. Everything was really fascinating though, and it was amazing to see a lot of the art that he collected.

Bangkok wasn't all great, though. A lot of the cab drivers tried to rip us off, and so did a lot of the food vendors. Worst of all was the guy who stole Laura and Rebecca's phones. This guy, obviously, really sucked.  He stayed in our hostel with us for a few days, and we actually had a few conversations with him. Laura said, after the fact, that she thought he was very sketchy, but I totally didn't catch any bad vibes.

Nevertheless he was definitely a bad guy. He nabbed their phones and took some money and just disappeared. He put a huge damper on the week, but we decided to try and have a good time anyway.

One of the strangest things that happened to us was one night we got off the elevated train and saw a huge crowd congregating near one of the railways. We went over and looked into the distance and saw some sort of red carpet show going on. Come to find out, none other than Jackie Chan, Adrian Brody, and John Cusack were all in Bangkok promoting their new movie. I actually saw all those guys in real life! It was pretty cool.

Perhaps my favorite memory from the time I spent in Bangkok was the afternoon that we spent watching the sunset across the river from the Temple of Dawn. We sipped some enjoyable cocktails and enjoyed one of the greatest views in all of Thailand. The temple couldn't be enjoyed any better way, I don't think.

After we finished our cocktails and then took a boat ride on the river ferry. Once upon a time, the river taxi was the only form of mass transit in the city, and it is still one of the cheapest and busiest ways to get around. The ferry was stuffed; it was so jam-packed that I was worried someone was going to fall into the river.

The way people pay for public transport such as water ferrys and buses is kind of silly. There's just a short of stout shouting woman who runs around asking people to give her money to put into her pocket. It is really inefficient, and especially on the ferry I wonder how many people get out of paying for their ride.

We didn't just spend the entire week with Rebecca. We ran into all three of our friends from work: Zac, Leon, and Chris. They were all on their own cross-Asia trip, but we happened to just be in Bangkok at the same time. During the first part of the week Leon was in town. He enjoyed a genuine Chocolate milkshake at the Charlies restaurant that was a Mexican place. During the later part of the week, Zac and Chris showed up and we hit up Khao San road.

Khao San was a bit of an adventure. It was really loud and crazy, and it seemed like some sort of Spring Break nightmare. The food and the drinks were cheap though, and it was definitely an adventure. Plus at the end of the night we had some delicious Dönner Kebabs.

Basically our time in Bangkok was the perfect mix of Eastern and Wester, old and new, quiet and loud. I really enjoyed myself. We spent our last day in Bangkok going to the gigantic weekend market. This is the biggest outdoor market in Asia, and it was crazy! We spent several hours walking around and checking out the food and clothes being offered, and I think we only just barely scratched the surface. There were stalls selling art supplies and stalls selling jewelry. We had kind of run out of money at this point, but there were actually some pretty high quality goods there.

Oh! Before I finish this post, I should mention Phuket.

We went down to the sunny tropical island of Phuket in the middle of the week for a snorkeling adventure. We found really cheap plane tickets, and the trip was only about 40 minutes in the air.

Phuket was gorgeous. Sitting in the Indian ocean, it was like an entirely different country from where we had started in Bangkok. The weather was great for both days that we were there. We stayed in Patong Beach, because that was where the dive shop was located. Patong Beach is a huge party zone, but we spent most of the evening walking along the beach and catching little crabs.

Our hostel was pretty nice. It was off of the main party zone track, and had its own private pool. Our room was right off the pool, and there was a pretty nice British guy staying there.

There was a bit of confusion with our snorkeling trip. They moved their office to a different location from where my email had said to go. Once we tracked down the shop (thanks to a friendly local with a cell phone), they had no record of us ever having signed up for the tour or having paid the deposit.

It took a little bit of arguing and convincing but they eventually believed us and told us that we would be picked up the next morning. Early the next day a driver came and got us. Of course, he was confused because he thought he was supposed to pick up four people. He refused to let us get into the car and we were almost late for the boat leaving. It eventually took us having our hostel's concierge call the drivers boss and have the boss assure him that we were the right people.

Once we arrived at the warehouse where the boat leaves from, we were loaded into the boat and started the tour.

The tour was incredible! We had a fantastic time snorkeling and searching for fish. There were plenty of angelfish and parrotfish floating around, but I managed to find a lion fish hiding in some rocks, and even a clown fish in an anemone.

In between the swimming we did some great sightseeing. The islands of Thailand are all gorgeous. We saw a cave where they harvest bird nest soup. We also saw the bay where some Leonardo DiCaprio movie was filmed.

A funny thing happened after our first snorkel stop. Some Chinese guy got lost. He actually got onto the wrong boat and thought that it was his boat. This is already funny enough, but it gets even better. He was with his entire family. His wife, his daughter, his mother and his father were all on the boat with him. He was the only one in his group swimming. He got aboard a boat and never realized that his entire family wasn't onboard.

We almost missed lunch because we had to form a search party for this dude. The tour guide said that it has never happened to him before. Eventually we found him. He was very embarrassed.

Something that really bothered me during the tour. The other guests on our tour were very... um... free with the concept of littering. We were on some of the most beautiful and pristine islands on the planet, and everyone was just dumping garbage everywhere. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to stop these guys and girls, but they were strangers. I didn't know what else to do, so I just sort of picked up after them.

The tour came to a close and the drivers took as back to our hotels. We got the same driver and he caused us more trouble. Since this was just a quick hop down south solely to go snorkeling, we had already booked a return flight. I knew it would take a while to get to the airport, and I wanted to leave some wiggle room. I figured 4 hours from the end of the tour would be plenty of time to get back to our rooms, gather our things, and go to the airport.

Unfortunately I was dead wrong. We got back to the docks rather late, and then it took more than two hours to get to the hotel. We were once again in a "about to miss your plane" situation. We had to hire a private driver and pay an obscene amount of money so to some guy who assured us he could dodge traffic and get us there on time.

This felt like a whole lot of deja vu. Once again we made it to our gate with minutes to spare, only to discover that our plane had been delayed. We ended up sitting for over an hour! It's funny how things work out.

So that was Thailand. We packed a lot of fun into that week, and yet it still went by way too fast. It was great to see some old friends and to make some new ones too. There were lots of highs and lows, but Thailand definitely left me wanting more.

I think I'll go back there as soon as possible...!

We flew back to Foshan and, for a while anyway, thought our month of travel had come to an end.