last day in Thailand

Back in Bangkok for the... fifth time! Wow. I've arrived here by pretty much every way you can arrive here: plane, minibus, government bus, and trains from the north and south. My trip yesterday was kind of an adventure. I had bought a joint bus/train ticket from a travel agent in Krabi, which is near the south western coastal town of Ao Nang where I'd been for the last week. But things started to get sketchy around the time we left Krabi.. with the bus company shunting people off into minibuses without telling them what was going on. Then when we got to Surat Thani, the town where some other people's buses were departing from and the town nearest to the train station for my train, the bus company people basically refused to take me to the train station, doing all they could to convince me to take their overnight bus to Bangkok. But... I'd paid 600 baht for the train, which in my experience has been far more comfy for overnight trips than the bus, so I didn't want to take the bus, even if it was free... Eventually I phoned the travel agent who I bought my ticket from and he spoke to the bus people and convinced them to get me a taxi to the train station. I seriously don't know why it was such a big problem to take me there... but apparently it was. So they put me in a "taxi," a car with darkened windows and no taxi meter like almost all the taxis in bangkok.. I think all the other people on the bus (all westerners) were pretty scared for me. And that made me scared for myself, being in this city where there didn't seem to be many foreigners at night in the rain, in this car with darkened windows going who knows where.... but I made it. Thank god. I thanked the driver quite sincerely. I probably should have given him a tip, too..

Then, waiting for my train, there was the cutest puppy I've ever seen. It was fluffy and white and had a really pathetic bark but it would chase around people's feet and grab onto this woman's mop with its teeth and then get lifted off the ground by the woman. It was amazingly cute and hilarious. So I guess that kind of made up for the frightening journey.

Went back to the gigantic Chatuchak weekend market today to pick up some last souveniers. It was great to just be able to wander around. I love markets. And I'm definitely gonna miss thailand. OK, final trip update on those missing few weeks when I get home in... less than 48 hours! It's good to be going home, but I do sort of wish I could stay longer. I got complimented on my thai today when I was buying a necklace, which was cool. My new favorite phrase is "lot dai mai" which means 'can you bring it down?'... the price, that is. It's definitely a good first step in bargaining for anything, but then the people think you can really speak Thai so they start talking to you in Thai... and that's kind of hard, even though I do know all my numbers pretty well.

On the bus to Surat Thani yesterday, I was sitting next to a Texan who had just gotten in to Thailand and was considering staying for a while to try to earn some money teaching English or something.. I taught him a few thai words and tried to give him my extra phrasebook that I never used, but it was too crazy with all the weird bus company people not telling us what was going on. As we were driving into what the texan dubbed "the sketchiest bus station he's ever seen" someone in the bus remarked "all in a day of adventures in asia!" and even though the station was kinda scaring me, that made me pretty sad, to think that I was gonna have to go home the next day.. go home to find a job. Boo! Ah, but the rest of the summer will be great. But.. no worries, I'm definitely coming back here someday. You all should come with me.

filling in the blanks

So there are several weeks that passed which have not been immortalized in blog form.. how about I highlight some of the best parts? Ok. Cool.

So I left Pai after a day or two.. it was the chillest place I went on the entire trip, and if I was back in the north again and had time to spare I'd definitely go back and do some day trips from there to hill tribe villages and waterfalls. But I had to go get my visa renewed, and I had heard wonderful things about this boat trip down the mekong river in Laos... so I decided to take the few days I had left before my mom came and do that.

Good decision. I spent a day in a minivan riding across Northern Thailand (from Pai, via Chiang Mai) to Chiang Khong, which is on the Mekong across the border from Laos. I stayed in this really rustic and cool place on the Mekong called Bamboo Guest House or something like that. My room was the second floor single room in a tiny A-frame thatched house.. it was basically an over head lamp (read: exposed light bulb), a hard matress on the floor, a mosquito net, and a fan, but I loved it! It's low season now in Thailand, so I think the owners had taken off for a vacation (the restaurant, overlooking the mekong, was closed) and left some friendly thai women who spoke no english to care for the place. They were sweet, and taught me how to say "snail" after I kept watching the gigantic snails that seemed to be taking over the paths after it got dark. So, for future reference, snail in Thai is "huay"... I think.

I only spent a night in Chiang Khong, which seemed relatively deserted in terms of tourists aside from the dozen or so people who came in on the minivan I was on from Pai/Chiang Mai. That night I wandered a few kilometers down river to a restaurant that lonely planet reccomended (I was the only person there, and I don't think the thai woman making my dinner actually knew what pizza was, but there were great views of the river) and stopping in this cool antiques shop where the owner said I was her first customer that month (I think it was about the 6th of June). The next monring I got up early and took a boat across the river, got my visa stamped in Laos, and met up with an English couple about my age to head to the pier for slow boats going down the Mekong.

The Mekong slow boat experience was both awesomely beautiful and off-puttingly touristed. The views were great.. mountains coming right down the the river, lovely limestone cliffs and caves, little straw and bamboo huts perched on hills, fishermen in canoes and longtails picking up their nets from the edges of the river. It was a long trip though, and I and many of the other westerners I talked to on the boat got the sense that our suspicions about the guesthouse hawkers and ticket salesmen were not exactly unfounded. It was a two day long trip, about eight hours each day, but the people who sold us the tickets downright lied about the amount of time it would take on the second day, and convinced me to get a room before I left on the first day because they told me there wouldn't be anything available otherwise. Of course, there were tons of places to stay in the little village that's the stopping point for all the slow boats, and I wish I would have waited to actually see a room before I picked something out cause the place I stayed was the worst place I've stayed this whole trip.. It was funny too, cause the Lao currency is called the kip, and it's about 10,000 kip to the dollar, but since the kip is super unstable and not worth much everyone also accepts dollars and baht, which is the thai currency. So in Laos, a price on a restaurant menu or at a guest house might be quoted in kip, but you'll probably get your change in baht or dollars. And some places dont take baht, only dollars or kip... so it was always so confusing to pay for anything, and there were a few times in the town on the first night of the slow boat trip when I was sure I was getting ripped off when I would pay in dollars and get my change in baht... but oh well. It was probably only a few bucks in the end, if anything. It was definitely worth it overall.

So the slow boat trip ended in Luang Prabang, which is this gorgeous city in the middle of Laos. It's a UNESCO world herritage site, and has a ton of cool temples and architecture. I hung out with the same English couple I had met coming across the border. We walked around the city, hiked up to this Wat on a hill in the middle to get a sweet view of the river and the valley and the mountains all around us, and had lunch by the river before paying a few bucks to go swimming in the pool of some swanky hotel. Swimming pools are awesome when its as hot as it is here, and the one that day was absolutely essential to my sanity. Luang Prabang had a really good number of nice silk shops, and I bought a beautiful scarf, and would have gotten more except that Luang Prabang also has no ATMs! It took me an hour or so to find a bank. I was planning on staying two nights in Luang Prabang and going all the way from Luange Prabang to Bangkok on the day and night of the 9th to meet my mom on the 10th, but I was convinced by a tour agent to take an overnight bus to Vientiane on the 8th, then an overnight train the next night to Bangkok. That all worked out fine except that I had 12 hours to kill in Vientiane, no bed or room to hang out in, and I was totally exhausted cause I didn't sleep on the bus. yeah, so I spent a good part of the day in a cafe with comfy chairs (I think there was literally one of those in Vientiane, cause I spent most of the day scouring the city for a comfy place to sit) reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Good book, but kind of a boring city if you are dead tired and just want a place with cushions and a good view of the pedestrians and maybe some vegetarian food.. Ok, I guess that's kind of a lot to ask 3000 miles from home, but... what can I say? It's what I wanted.

So that was my week alone in south east asia. I'll write about all the missing time with my mom next, maybe tomorrow.

is it really sunny?

I just looked over my shoulder and saw that perhaps.. finally! the sun has come out! It's been a day or so since it really stopped raining, or at least was bright out. I'm in Ao Nang, a beach in the south on the Andaman coast that was just supposed to be a transit point to a place we were gonna stay in at Railay Beach... but when we trudged thru the waves to get onto a longtail boat to go over to Railay and got to the hotel there, they didn't have our reservation. Plus, it was kind of a backpacker place anyway, so mom didn't want to stay. So we trudged back thru the waves, back onto the longtail, got soaked in a rainstorm, and arrived back in Ao Nang with nowhere to stay. Thankfully, a policeman with not enough to do (I guess) helped us out.. and now we're at this sweet place a kilometer or so from the beach with amazingly comfy beds and a great view of some limestone cliffs.

Mom leaves tomorrow night, while I'm staying at this hotel for another night. Then I have to find a place for two more nights... and I'm off to Bangkok to head to the states. It's monday night there now, so I will be home in.. five and a half days. I guess I'm glad to be going home, though honestly, I'm not sick of traveling yet. Probably if I had been on my own this whole time since the nitze trip ended I'd be more tired of it, but this vacation with mom has been a great break since we've been staying in nice places and taking taxis and all that stuff I wouldn't have the money to do if I were on my own. Honestly, the most expensive part of coming to Thailand is flying here, and knowing that really makes me want to come back to this area. It's a totally different experience than traveling in Europe because you can do it so cheaply.

Something I've been thinking quite a bit about over the past few weeks is the wya that my experience of Thailand while traveling with the nitze trip was so different than my experience of it while I've been traveling as a tourist. As a tourist, I see so much more the way that an economy based on serving touists alters the Thai identity, automatically equating it with servitude. My sense of this might partially be based on the places where my mom and I have been staying for the past two weeks, where the service is really fantastic for the most part. It is the uniforms, I think, that partly give me the sense that something strange is going on here. Often, Thais who work in nice hotels have these uniforms that are long sleeved and made of silk.. the women wear long skirts... it all looks very Thai, very inspired by traditional Thai dress. And why does that make me uncomfortable? It seems that the "servant" can be identified not by a uniform of any sort, but specifically by his or her Thainess.

More on this later. I really should take advantage of the sun right now. Hope everyone is doing great back home, if anyone's still reading.

Pai is a pretty sweet town

Supposedly its pronounced more like 'bye' than 'pie' but then.. this morning at the guesthouse in chiang mai I told the owner I wanted to go to Pai ('bye') today and she said 'oh, where you want to go to buy?' Yah, I guess the accent isn't quite working for me. But I did use another phrase out of my arsenal today! A Thai lady serving me my lunch asked me whether I speak thai and I told her "nit noy".. a little bit. Huzzah! Three weeks and I have.. what, maybe five or six phrases?

It's really quite ridiculous how pervasive english is here. Basically wherever I've been there's been someone who speaks enough english to be able to figure out what I'm trying to say and respond. I've only very rarely been forced to take out the phrasebook. It seems a bit frightening, doesn't it? That you can travel all around a place and never actually have to learn the language.. that a country that's never been colonized has such a gigantic foreign influence. Of course, on the study tour, in the places where there were absolutely no english speakers, we had Ted, who translated (interpreted) everything for us. There were multiple three hour stretches of straight interpreting on his part, sometimes in the same day. Pretty amazing considering I had a tough time holding my attention to the speaker for a third of that time. But then, it's hard to be attentive to a language you have no idea how to understand.

Anyway, I was gonna write about Pai, which is here, where I am. Compared to Chiang Mai, it's a wonderful escape; very laid back and full of hippie backpackers and awesome handmade clothes. Great setting, too. It's in this valley between not so tremendously tall green mountains (these ones look totally untouched by loggers, unlike the ones near Phra Paisal's temple in Chaiyapoum). Probably the best part of the day today was the bus ride here. I opted for the cheapo non air conditioned public bus where you can put your window all the way down (or up, as it works here in thailand) and let the wind blow over you. It actually got kind of cold up in the mountains, a really nice change from the sticky balm that you usually get pounded with. And it rained on and off til we got over the mountains and were within sight of Pai, when the sun came out and warmed me up. The four hour trip went by so quick.. it was great to just sit back and watch the forest and mountains go by.

I finished my first book (I bought two) and bought another. I highly reccomend Everything is Illuninated by Jonathon Safran Foer. Very excellently written family history shrouded in hilarious and emotive narration and travels throughout Ukraine. Multiple narratives.. oh, it's great, go pick it up. It was funny, I finished it on the bus today and reading about these villagers in Ukraine who the protagonist was meeting.. he talks about this woman who had never heard of America (the last person on earth who could claim that ignorance, he supposes) and all these others. I couldn't get the idea that he was actually describing thai villagers out of my head. Of course, I know that thailand today is so connected to the rest of the world (not as much in the smallest vilalges, but even the hill tribes have their tourist economies) but I guess it kind of made me realize that people are so similar everywhere.. I could imagine displacing Foer's story to thailand with so few changes to the personalities.

righto. So now I have a new gigantic book to amuse myself, and maybe a day or two here.. then I think I wantot go to Laos to get my visa renewed and take a slow boat trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang (its supposed to be a great trip).. then back to Bangkok to meet mama and live it up.

check out pictures from the study tour on facebook (Karina Karakulov, and Stephanie Isberg) and Meagn's pics here: http://community.webshots.com/user/megowitz

alone in the north

Showers are kind of useless here. You shower, then you're nasty 30 minutes later. I've definitely come to appreciate the cold shower, though... those things are amazing. Most of the places I've stayed haven't had bathtubs... there's just a shower nozzle mounted on the wall in the bathroom and a drain on the floor. I guess bathtubs are for the swanky spots?

I'm in Chiang Mai, after some troubles with transportation yesterday... turns out the railroad tracks are washed out from the flooding in central thailand, at least for another week (probably two), so the options to get from Bangkok to here were: 7 hour train ride then wait 3 hours in unknown thai city at 3 am for 4 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, or 9 hour bus ride overnight, or 60 bucks for a 1 hour plane trip. I opted for qucikness and comfort and expensiveness.... yeah, 60 dollars isn't that much, right? Anyway. I'm here, and Jason and Becca were supposed to arrive this morning and call me, but they haven't yet so... maybe they are still in Bangkok? Who knows. I'll call them after I finish up here.

So Chaing Mai is all right. It seems like the night market is the only thing I really want to do here, though.. and I have to wait for night time to do that. So today I got my laundry done and walked all around and ate some food.. I guess it's lunchtime now, but.. well... I guess more food adventures await me. The city has a lot of Wats (buddhist temples) and, you know, street life, but not like Bangkok, and not enough to keep me involved for too long.

There are tons of places here in Chaing Mai to get trekking tours of the surrounding hill tribe areas. You pay 1600 bhat and they take you to a couple villages and on an elephant ride, and bamboo rafting.... it's all everywhere. Everyone is selling the same trip, its weird. I think I want to go to some of the smaller towns and do trekking from there, more independently, cause all this here, it just feels super commercialized, and I'm not sure how good this kind of trekking really is for the local people, or the environment. Not that any trekking is really great in terms of eco-tourism... but I guess I want to support a more independent touring company.. or some individual who will take me out a bit.

There is definitely a northern influence here, though.. in the clothes and the other things that shops sell, its all much more.. hill tribe crafty--as opposed to mass produced cheap cotton pants and stuff that's everywhere in Bangkok.. I can't believe anyone can do good business there, its all the same in every shop. Yeah, I like the clothes a lot, but I think I'll wait til I'm back here with my mom to buy anything.

Anyway, so I dont think there's much else I want to do here, so maybe I'll move on tomorrow morning. It has been kind fo weird to be by myself.. I can go wherever I want and I'm really not afraid at all.. but there is some loneliness, and I kind of wish I had someone else around to just hang out with. I met a french woman last night on the way into town from the airport, and we ended up staying at the same place and eating dinner together. She seemed a little worried about me, cause I was traveling alone. She said a woman traveling alone to asia was a very un-french thing to do.. anmd that even though she was 34 she hadn't told her father that she was alone! I guess that made me a bit more wary about being alone, here, but I really do feel safe everywhere, and that's saying a lot because I'm not the kind of person who is at ease in cities when I'm not with someone else. I think that Thai people are just really friendly and not scarry or intimidating at all. It also helps that almost anywhere you go you can find someone who speaks a little english, or even a lot of english. But, even so.. I dont think that this city is the place for me to be.. I kind of want to just go somewhere where I can hang out in a hammock and read for a few days... but the city is not that place.

yah, so... that's what's happening here. write me emails!! nitzes, I miss you!