It's a Thai!

Monkey!
Originally uploaded by PhoJones

This picture is actually of Cambodia, but I've reached the stage of travel where viewing the hyper-documentation of others has given way to an appropriate now-ness of things.

Anyway, since I updated about a week ago we have crossed into Thailand, spent some thia-me (ha!) in Bangkok, the islands and Bangkok again. So far Thailand has lived up to every positive thing we've heard about it.

Our first day in Thailand landed us in Bangkok wandering the streets of Baglamphu ("the backpacker's district"). At first the only sign of protests were a few bouts of red graffiti on national landmarks. After some food and rest we made our way to the main train station to secure transport to the islands that night. With about five hours to kill, we took the Bangkok metro over to Lumphini park. The metro is impeccably run. You pay for the distance you travel (similar to London's zones), have air conditioning, clear announcements and general cleanliness. NYC could learn quite a bit (ie- they have a glass barriers protecting people from stumbling on to/dropping things on the tracks).

After wandering the Silom district for a bit we found the park and immediately noticed the large amount of oversized lizards that live there. Surprisingly no tourist information even vaguely mentioned this (all prided the park on it's opportunity for aerobic activity), but these things were everywhere. They were the size of fat crocs. Initially we though they were Kimono dragons before reading about how Kimono dragons eat full grown deer and buffalo for meals, which wouldn't really suit them for a public park.

After the park we headed through the south end of the park, which held several protest camps. While several countries had issued travel warnings to Thailand because of the red shirt protests, being actually confronted with the action was surprisingly non threatening. They sold us some cheap water, a woman followed me for a bit saying things to the affect of "do you know what my government did," and people seemed more concerned with passing the time than anything else. We proceeded to the Silom mall complex and ate tiny sausages with Thai Iced Tea (Iced Tea with coconut milk).

That evening we took a night bus/ferry to Ko Phi Phi on Liam's suggestion. The bus played us an insanely good movie called "K2" that had great lines such as "It's a chance of a lifetime! [retort] A chance of a lifetime to get yourself killed!" Really high-art stuff.

The 12 hours of travel plopped us in one of the most objectively beautiful places I've ever seen. Huge cliffs, crystal waters, fine white beaches: the works. After checking into a fairly cheap room, we went out to find a beach and surprisingly found one a completely abandoned one near or room. After grabbing some beers and chairs, we tucked in to swim, sunbathe and watch the sunset.

The following day we took a boat tour around the islands where we quickly discovered why the first beach was abandoned. Each place we stopped had a new twist: one covered in monkies (not kidding, I fed a baby), one where you could walk about a mile with the water reaching your waist, one where they actually filmed "the beach." Between these we snorkled around the reefs and managed to see all the fish from movies. Every last movie-fish.

After this we caught a ferry/bus/ferry to Ko-Phagnan, which is the home of the legendary "full-moon party." We arrived the evening before a half-moon party: a drum and bass fare set in the jungle and seemingly attracting every party monkey west of India. What transpired over the next two days turned out to be an enigma of what the party does vs. what we do. We fully intended on staying at a beach that was a bit removed from full-moon-party-ground-zero of Hai Ann, but when they dropped a group of British boys (on gap year, of course) in the area it seemed utterly dead. The party migration/onslaught of wasted 18 y/os were not around, so we opted to stay right in the thick of it. The beach was certainly equipped for the 8K people it claimed to house during full-swing times, but there were easily only about 100 people there. I'm thinking we benefited from a bizarre mix of events that caused people to avoid Thailand: the protests scared them off, the Icelandic volcano grounded theme and the rainy season made them avoid it all together. In the end, we were smack in the middle of a party shell without any meat.

On the 21st (the day of the half-moon party), we toyed with the idea of taking a boat around but once again found ourselves within a short walk to one of the most gorgeous beaches I'd ever seen, so we opted to plant anchors in the shade of palm trees, and snack on nuts and rum until the sun went down. That evening we spent about 2 hours toying with the idea of going to this half-moon jungle party. Everything about a jungle-rave/party dj/western d&b haven runs counter to what both alex and I generally look for when out to have a good time, but we also were so close to this huge phenomenon. We spent about an hour having drinks on our balcony watching the migration go out. A seemingly endless run of drunk, annoying, scantily clad kids hailed the tuk-tuks to whisk them to the jungle, and by the time we figured out that it was 200B to get there at 500B each to get in, it seemed stupid. At one point Alex rather hilariously explained our predicament in the following terms: "it's like when the nazis had killed half the jews. whether they stopped or kept going, most reasonable people knew they made a terrible mistake." (Apologies if this comes off as offensive; it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek).

In the end we decided to pace the beach and once again return to the bar that had people dancing with long sticks of fire to the counting crows and other hits. The night ended well and much cheaper than being stuck in the jungle with ravers. (Side note: every hostel/hotel we looked out had a charge for getting neon paint on any towel or sheet. This was a very legitimate threat for property damage.)

The day after half-moon we caught a ferry/bus back to an overnight train, which arrived an hour and a half late but provided me with one of my best nights sleep thus far. We had a nice first-class, air-con private car that we procured on a third-times-a-charm basis after two agents told us all trains to BKK were full. Never trust a lackey on the first go!

We arrived in Bangkok yesterday around noon, picked a new hostel with three beds and settled into a nearby Indian restaurant to wait for Alex's friend Todd to arrive from Singapore (he will be traveling with us for the remainder of our journey and, for what it's worth, is a doctor). On the stalwart advice of Sanji from January, I ordered the butter chicken at the Indian restaurant and was exceedingly pleased.

Todd eventually arrived and after some catching/cleaning up, we made our way out to Bangkok for our first proper night on the town. We initially tried to take a ferry to Chinatown but watched two of them go by before realizing how it worked (the boats just barrel up to a ferry port, where you are expected to jump on in about 10 seconds). We lucked into figuring out how it worked by missing the very last ferry run of the night so began to walk. On our way a friendly tuk-tuk driver told us we would certainly be shot and he could take us for 300B to our desired neighborhood's tourist info. Of course we were able to get him down to 90B and he likely got commission off taking us to an agent who tried to sell us transit or lodging or really anything. We have already taken care of our train to Chang Mai so started asking him some of our random questions (what are those giant lizards in Lumphini park? what happens if you overstay your tourist visa (they changed it from 30 to 14 days)? etc.) The most interesting answer he gave us dealt with the areas that are unsafe due to protests (apparently three tourists were killed with a grenade went off in Silom mall, which was where we ate sausages). He told us that we were safe everywhere except for Lumphini park and the Silom area, which is ironically the only places we naturally went the week before when things had not yet escalated.

After speaking with this guy we were taken (free of charge) to a "show", which I did not realize until we were inside was one of the infamous "ping-pong" shows. Don't look up what this means lest you be mildly afraid for the health of humanity.

We were then offered a free tuk-tuk ride to a "go-go club," which we indulged as it also happened to take us about half way back home. The club was full of ladies of the night and featured drinks priced approximately 3x the most expensive drink I'd seen in Asia thus far. What do they think this is, a bar in NYC? No thanks!

After being carted to another free place and suckering various tuk-tuk drivers into a few more free rides, we were home and exhausted.

This entry is getting very long and I apologize for the inevitable lack of coherence that even the mildest of proof-reading could have afforded, but I'm far too weary for that level of scrutiny.

After the strangest night last night, we woke up this morning at 8:00 am, toured the Royal Palace, several Wats (temples), a huge reclining Buddha, Chinatown w/ Dim Sum and Jim Thompson's house (an American architect who moved to Thailand after a stint in the military, founded the Thai Silk Company, which gained fame after the King and I came out, and mysteriously disappeared into the highlands of Malaysia leaving behind an impressive Teak house with a brilliant Asian art collection--some of the most annoying people we have encountered thus far were on this tour (one offered to pee in a porcelain cat that was once used as a chamber pot)).

After that run of sight-seeing we attempted to find a cheap mall with an extensive food court but ended up getting mixed up in a protest camp and found out the mall was shut down because of this. The environment in Bangkok has changed so much in the last week. What seemed like casual protest camps in the park last week has turned into huge barricades surrounded by tires and sticks, police in riot gear, huge trucks, and stickers with very graphic violence and defaced pictures of the king plastered everywhere. Getting stuck in the protest camp was very tense, and although I didn't particularly feel unsafe, we all wanted to leave immediately. Getting out of the chaos proved quite hard, as it all blocked the streets (making jumping into a cab impossible), cut off the pedestrian walkways above ground and generally caused chaos.

We managed to escape the confusing take-over and found two separate taxi drivers who pretended to know where our street was but ended up taking us in the exact opposite direction before giving up. Thankfully the last one happened to drop us off at the largest night market in Bangkok (free of charge, again). There were over 3,700 vendors and a huge stage that featured Thai singers, dancers in short shorts and oodles of food vendors.

After watching a confusing performance where people arbitrarily cheered in the middle of the songs since a Man U v. Tottenham game was on in the background, we grabbed a taxi that actually knew where it was going and finally got back to the hostel. Now I'm totally exhausted writing this at an Internet cafe around the corner. I was surprised that the BBC hardly mentioned Thailand in it's nightly report and all the media outlets seem to indicate that the end is near though it seems far from it on the streets. In my opinion the protests is just a matter of protocol at this point as eventually the government will just change the date of the election and everyone will go back to work. I'm sure it's more nuanced than that, but in the words of a British national who lives in Bangkok that we encountered at the border "Thais are too useless to have a revolution." More accurately, everyone here seems to happy to need a revolution. I'd liken it more to the transit strikes in Paris. Every few years the citizens just want to know what democracy could feel like.

Once again, I hope to upload pictures/videos properly soon, as the one for this post is a monkey in Cambodia. The Thai pictures thus far are striking.

Tomorrow we have an overnight train to Chang Mai and expect to head to more markets/a giant swing tomorrow. As for tonight, we may go dancing with a girl Todd picked up in the mall during the one hour he opted out of touring Jim Thompson's house. More likely I'll be asleep in about ten minutes.

Thai-ered,
Jones