World Wide Wanderment

While in Ayuthaya and not feeling that excited about it I thought maybe it’d be worth giving couch surfing a try again when I headed for Chiang Mai since it worked so well in Canada. Chiang Mai is a big city, second to Bangkok, and there are dozens of couch surfers registered there. I only contacted one couch surfer and got a response saying I was welcome. I picked this couch because it’s owner sounded cool, they had hosted several couch surfers before and spoke several languages which is always been something I admire. Little did I know that this would turn into what might be the most posh couch surfing experience ever. My host told me they’d try to be available to meet me at the train station, but if they couldn’t meet them then I could just meet them at a particular restaurant. I thought nothing strange of it and figured it was just because the taxis and tuk-tuks are used to finding restaurants and guesthouses. I assumed my host would then show me from the restaurant to their home and couch. When I arrived at the restaurant I was a bit confused, my host told me the restaurant was expecting me and she’d be along shortly. When I arrived a staff member greeted me and offered to take my bag. Only he started walking my bag towards the guest house attached to the restaurant and put it in a room. I was really confused and tried to explain that I wasn’t stay here, a very nice guesthouse well out of my price range, I was just meeting someone here. My host, who still hadn’t arrived, had told me just to sit down at the restaurant and have whatever I wanted she’d meet me there and take care of the bill. About an hour later things finally started to make sense when my host arrived and explained they owned the restaurant and guesthouse and that I was welcome there for free, both in the guesthouse and the restaurant. My couch wasn’t a couch; it was a gorgeous room in an old teak house. That’s all I can say about it and that might be too much. The host keeps what’s offered a secret until people show up, lest everyone request to stay here expecting more than a couch. The guesthouse hosts lots of paying customers as well, basically just filling up a few of the extra rooms when available with couch surfers. I had only planned to stay a couple days while I searched for a nice guesthouse in Chiang Mai to stay at for a longer period of time. However, after hanging out and talking with my host and learning they had had CS guests stay as long as a month (which was over staying their welcome) I asked if it would be alright to stay a few more days… it turned into a week which I don’t feel bad about since I spent an entire day setting up their wireless internet to cover the entire property.

So I must admit here that as I write this, and try to write in a consistent tense, I’m really in Koh Pangan on January 19th.. lying in a hammock… in a bathing suit… watching the rain fall which is why I’m not out playing in the water… Anyway, my efforts of keeping “current” with the blog are failing as I’m a month behind. Sometimes I scribble down a little just to know what I want to write about if/when I find the time to come back to it, so it’s not like I’m about write a months worth of entries purely from memory, but this is bad… Since I’m really a month behind expect the next couple weeks to be brief as I try to catch up and I apologize if sometimes I switch tense as I write about the past and present it’s hard to keep straight when writing about a month ago and posting as if it was written a month ago…

Anyway back to Novemeber and Chiang Mai…

My first day in Chiang Mai (Nov 26th) I spent at the Sunday Market. The Sunday Market in Chaing Mai is huge and goes from around 10am until 10pm (I’ll check the exact hours some other time, but those are rough). I arrived just as some of the vendors were setting up and stayed until close wondering the through endless stalls of vendors, food sellers and massage stations. Showing up early was interesting because the vendors are all eager to make a sale to their first customer of the day. It’s one of the superstitions that is popular here, if you make a sale to the first customer it is a sign of a lucky day. Although sometimes I wonder if the vendors don’t just say that as a gimmick to imply they are giving you a better deal than they really are. The other odd superstition is that whenever they make a sale they’ll often take the newly received money and touch it to each items remaining to be sold. I assume transferring the luck from this new money into those items and being post sale it’s certainly something they believe not just a gimmick. My goal for the market was to pick up lots of wonderful things for my beloved back home. With the holidays coming up I figured this would be a good time to buy a bunch of stuff and ship it all home in one big batch. Buying stuff here and carrying it home with you is very cost effective, as I learned shipping it home isn’t so much so. Anyway, I spent the day shopping for Elena and found all sorts of wonderful things I’m sure she’ll love, if and when it ever actually arrives. I won’t detail what I sent here since I don’t want ot ruin the surprise of what she’s getting… I’m quite confident she’ll like it all though As a side note since I’m actually writing this now on January 22nd, the things I sent hoping they’d arrive by Christmas still haven’t arrived.

On Monday (Nov. 27th) I spent the day relaxing at the guest house, catching up on photo editing and my blog. It was amazing to have somewhere comfortable with free and fast internet access to relax all day. At some point during the morning I mentioned to my host that the WiFi signal in the rooms was week and they could get a repeater to strength the signal. My host responded that they had one, their partner hadn’t been around to install it yet… so I offered my services and spent the next 4-5 hours installing a WiFi repeater, which would have been simple if it could be installed the way the instructions said it could, with WEP encryption enabled. It turns out after a 2 hours online chat session with Linksys technical support that the documentation it wrong and they it needs to initially be setup with WEP disabled and then one can go about re-activating WEP on the network. Anyway, it was an ordeal, but I’m glad I could help my host out and to my own benefit it meant I now had reliable internet in my room as well as in the restaurant area, in fact everyone in the building now should have reliable in room WiFi. Considering what I was getting from my host it was the least I could do to return the generosity.

I think it was on Monday that my host also let me know the exciting news that another couch surfer would be showing up in a couple days so I might have someone to tour around with. While I really enjoyed my host and the staff I was missing having fellow travlers around to go see sights with. This guesthouse is much more upscale than a typical back packer place so the normal clientele is general much older and not really the sort actively meeting up with random fellow travelers. I did have several interesting chats with other guest in the restaurant which I was making my personal lounge, including a older German couple who were very excited about the concept of couch surfing and eager to host couch surfers back in Germany. Being a couch surfer and have free access to anything I want I was a bit of a special guest to the staff. It was interesting while at first they treated me solely as a respected guest they became more friendly and casual with me as I joked with them as they generously and patiently helped me learn Thai and I helped them improve there English.

On Tuesday (Nov. 28th) I spent the day walking the city and getting my bearings for navigating what is a really pleasant small city. I walked along the river, walked through the day and night markets, walked in and out of the touristy zone. As I wandered I took the time to visit a few wats but my concept of visiting wats is changing. Before I got to Thailand I viewed the wats (temples) as an important sight to see on my travels around Thailand. There are dozens of temples in ever town and typically a few of them are considered “important” and are tourist destinations. Now however I don’t see them as sights to see as destinations. I’m starting to rather see them as they were originally intended, as a nice place to drop in for a rest from the hustle and bustle outside when I happen to be walking by.

On Wednesday (Nov. 29th) my couch surfing host treated me and the morning staff for lunch “modern Thai style” at an MK Restaurant at Airport Plaza (A big shopping mall). MK restaurant is something like dim sum crossed with shabu shabu. You have a pot of boiling water on your table in which you cook dumplings, veggies, meat or whatever. It was good and we at a ton of food, I was doubly happy to have Thai speakers to help order. I was really starting to get spoiled on great food between eating at my host’s restaurant and now being treated to a meal out. I was starting to wonder if I could ever go back to the budget backpacker lifestyle. In the afternoon the other couch surfer showed up and was equally as stunned as I was upon arriving… it was good to know I wasn’t alone in my initial confusion.

On Thursday (Nov. 30th) the other couch surfer and I teamed up to go the Royal Flower Exhibition which is a huge flower show being put on in honor the king’s 60th year of ruling the kingdom of Thailand. It really is impressive how consistently loved the king is here. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I fundamentally have trouble understanding even the concept of a king, but here over the last 60 years the king has been an amazingly stabilizing force through many coups and changes of government. Looking at the prosperity of Thailand relative to most of it’s neighbors (Cambodia, Laos, Burma and to an extent Vietnam) it has prospered tremendously more so. Further the king really only does good stuff here, donating money to royal projects that help rural communities, taking the noble stand on things, etc… Even if 60 years ago the kings accession to the through was controversial (read the history) there is little question that 60 years later Thailand is a phenomenally better place socially and economically than it’s neighboring countries. The flower show was huge and beautiful and amazing with the expectation of the one thing I expected to be… the lily pad exhibition. Some may remember my love affair with the Victoria Longwood Water Platters at Longwood gardens in Pennsylvania. Well, they have some of the exact same plants here, only they are miserable pathetic things on the bring of shriveling up and dying…. I really expected here in Thailand were lily pads naturally grow in water ponds along the side of the road they’d be even more spectacular… but no. With the expectation the flower show was quite impressive. It was amusing that one of the most popular exhibitions with Thai people was the cacti green house. Walking in I was struck by the warm dry air that contrasted with the cool humid air outside. The exhibits though reminded me of driving between California and Arizona and were about as exciting.

In addition to the couch surfer there were two groups of younger travelers staying at the guest house. Some on a short vacation from studying in Singapore (Crystal and Myuko) and some on a short vacation from volunteer work in Bangkok (Karina, Karena and Gail). Enjoying the good life of luxury couch surfing and good company I asked my host if I could stay a few more days and they were happy to oblige but warned space was filling up and they had a couch surfing couple from Russia arriving the next day as well so if I wanted to stay longer I needed to let them know or there might not be space for me. My host then went on to explain that they owned an empty apartment building and that if need be I could stay there, but they didn’t feel good about that because there wouldn’t be any daily maid service or food, but maybe the staff could bring me some food over on occasion…. yikes my host is really too generous for words… I’m in Chaing Mai heaven.

On the way to Ayuthaya I called a couple guest houses looking for somewhere to stay. My first choice told me to call back later because they thought they’d have a vacancy after someone checked out. Upon calling back I was pleased to be told they would have a room available.

When one arrives in Ayuthaya by train one has two choices. Take a ridiculously over-priced tuk-tuk from the train station the “long” way around to cross a bridge and then into the city, or to walk 20 meters, take a 3 Baht ferry across the moat, and then find cheap transport to wherever one wants to go. This is one of the few things I really do like about carrying a guide book, typically they point things like this out. I knowingly walked past the tuk-tuks and took the ferry across. Then rather than take cheap transport to my guest house decided I’d just walk there… This wasn’t the smartest thing. It wasn’t far, per se, but I was carrying my packs and it was hot… and it was further than I thought it was.

When I made it to my guest house, Baan Lotus, I was saddened to discover the person that was supposed to be checking out hadn’t and so they had no space available. The woman however was very apologetic and offered me a bottle of water and a car ride to a nearby guest house (more of a mini-hotel) that was the same price in her own car and that if I didn’t like it she’d drive me around until I found something I liked. The place she took me too was satisfactory, it was clean and nice, but didn’t have a guest house feel to it. I took it and figured at worst I could move somewhere the next day.

That evening I rented a bike and took a ride around Ayuthaya. Ayuthaya is smaller than I expected and I say all the Wats I wanted to see that afternoon. The top of the list was Wat Prha Mahathat, which is home to the often photographed Buddha head wrapped in strangler figs. I also went inside another Wat with a large Prang, but the rest of the Wats I just toured from the outside. In Ayuthaya it seems like there is a Wat on every corner, or at least one per city block. Unfortunately they’ve taken to charging foreigners 30THB to enter each one, which adds up quickly. That’s ok, many are beautiful from the outside, especially as night falls and some are lit up at night. The ride didn’t have the happiest of ending though… After riding through the big central park area, watching joggers and some locals playing football (soccer) I was on the other side of the city from my guest house when my rear bike rim bent to the point of not spinning any more. It’s been a bit out of true all day, but suddenly it got much worse and now it was firmly contacting the seat and chain stays. I tried to “bend” it back to usable… Unsuccessfully I was happy to see a tuk-tuk driver sitting nearby reading the paper.

The tuk-tuk’s in Ayuthaya a different than any I’ve seen elsewhere in Thailand. Each city has it’s own flavor of tuk-tuk in terms of design and size. These are the only ones I’ve seen however were instead of having a single seat where 2-4 people can sit facing forward, these have two benches facing each other like a Songtaew. This came in very handy however since I could easily load my defective bike into the back. The bike rental was 50THB, the tuk-tuk ride back to my guest house was 50THB. I’m sure I could have made a big deal about it… but I I don’t think I would have enjoyed it any more than the guest house operators. The guest house had another bike brought over from where ever this bike had come from and in about 15 minutes I was back on the streets to explore the evening market and get some food.

I wasn’t really thrilled with Ayuthaya. I thought I’d spend several days here, but I’d already seen what I wanted to see and didn’t like the heat after being in the cool of Khao Yai National Park the previous few days. I’d told the guest house I’d stay two nights (to start), but I was thinking about leaving the next day for Chiang Mai. For better or worse I couldn’t get a train ticket the next day to Chiang Mai, so I got one the following day.

I spent day two in Ayuthaya again riding my bike around, which is a really great way to see this city. On a whim I headed out of the city towards and elephant camp. Along the side of the road reaching over the fence I found an Australian woman, I think named Kate, feeding the elephants some bananas. We chatted for a while and traded advice on Ayuthaya. I shared that I was thinking about taking a little sunset boat tour around the city that afternoon and she mentioned a place she’d been the night before that had live folk music that was fun.

We rode back to the city together and shared lunch which is nice since you get to try twice as much food in one meal. Then she joined me on the boat ride around the city which turned out to be much better than I expected. I thought it was just a little tour around the moat, but it included stops at several of the temples on the far side of the moat. It was a really a nice way to see the temples that are not within the moat as well as see life along the waters edge. After the boat ride we grabbed some more food at the market before heading towards the tiny little bar she’d mentioned earlier.

She, like me, is traveling alone with a partner at home. Hers however was coming out to met her in a few weeks, whereas I have a bit longer to wait for Elena. It was nice to know I’m not totally alone in this and share some feelings about it…

The music was not by most standards good music, expect when she was singing, but it was a lot of fun. The Thai guy alone on stage played great guitar, but he wasn’t the best of signers. She would sign along so some songs with a fabulous voice and all of the four people in the place including the guy on stage encouraged her to get up on stage and sing. She obliged for a couple songs, but it seemed if he knew the melody she didn’t know the words and if she knew the words he didn’t know the melody. Regardless it was a lot of fun for everyone.

I still didn’t feel like I’d had enough of Surin, so a bit of searching and I got the idea to go to Khao Yai National Park. I through ti was time to see some jungle and wildlife. So from Surin I took a train west to Pak Chong. From Pak Chong I took a Songtaew about 30 minutes south to a guest house that also offered tours. All the guest houses around here seem to offered a “complete” stay. Trekking/Tours, food, etc… The rooms are also inexpensive for what you get leading me to believe they really make there money off the fact that once you’re there you are somewhat trapped. There is no where you can walk to to get market food or any easy way to get back to Pak Chong. Anyway, at least at Green Leaf which I was staying the food and treks are reasonably priced so it’s not a big deal, just you’re noticeably trapped.

I got into the Guesthouse mid-day which was perfect. They run their treks as a half-day followed by a full day. I had called earlier that morning to make sure they had room available, upon arrival though there seemed to be some confusion and no record I’d called. Regardless they found me a room and I set about getting settled, showered, and fed. The staff is all very nice here. For the treks it’s all young energetic guys who speak good to very good English and around the guest house the women are all attentive and friendly.

That afternoon we set out on the first part of the tour. First we took a swim in some natural pools. After the swim headed to some limestone caves where we saw what seemed like a lot of bats hanging around in the caves. I saw it seemed like a lot because nothing could compare to what came later. In the caves with what seemed like a lot of bats there were a dozen or more Buddha images which would often be used by mediating monks, although none were presently sitting in the caves. After the caves we headed out by truck across fields to where there was a view of “the bat cave”. The bat cave is a small hole high up on the side of a mountain. Around sunset millions of bats exit this cave. It literally takes a couple hours for all of the bats to stream out of the cave. We watched and photographed in awe for about an hour. On the way back to the guest house we stopped off to see the biggest geckos I’ve ever seen, about 12 inches long not including the tail. These monster geckos click like the little ones, only much much louder. It sounds like a person clapping their hands.

That evening the group that had been on the trek together all gathered for dinners and a few drinks. Most of us would be going again tomorrow on the full day trek. It was a nice group of Belgians, Germans and Danes.

On the second day we had two trucks (really nice Songtaews) worth of trekkers. Each truck had a driver and a wildlife spotter riding in the front seats and 8 trekkers riding on the benches on the back.

Our first stop was to see some birds (I think parrots) which made for a great photo against the dead white tree and the deep blue sky. We continued into the park where to stumbled across a red tipped razor snake crossing the road. The snake was about 2 meters long! After many photos of this gorgeous creature the guides moved the snake out of the dangerous road. We then headed into the jungle we’d just released the snake into because on of the guides spotted a hornbill. Hornbills are the birds with the giant beaks. I did get a couple pictures of them, but none were particularly good because they were so far away. I was carrying a small set of binoculars though that my mother (thank you) had given me several years ago so I got several good views of them. As the day went on I would be constantly amazed at how our guide could spot these birds. He was seeing them with his eyes a hundred meters away through jungle foliage. He’d point and we’d all raise binoculars or the spotting scope the guide brought to share and then I’d still barely be able to see the bird. Often with guided anything I question if I couldn’t have just wandered on my own and found these things, in this case there is no way I would have. I would have been lucky to have spotted one of the dozens of wild creatures we’d see that day. Rather than spend the time recounting the minute by minute wonders of the day I’ll try to be brief. Driving through the park we stopped and saw Macaks and Gibbons. Trekking through the jungle we saw dozens of kinds of birds, but only one more of the magnificent hornbills. I was quite excited as well to see a giant white squirrel, water monitor lizard and more. That afternoon we swam in the pool below the waterfall used in the movie “The Beach”. That evening we drove around the park in search of wild elephants which occasionally walk along the roads in the park and were treated to seeing a huge pack. 18-20 Elephants in total of all ages. The group the day before had been excited they’d seen one elephant. I thought I’d be over elephants after Surin, but it’s something different to see them in the wild and they are truly amazing.

That evening again was a pleasant little dinner party with the groups comparing days and reminding about what a great trip it had been.

It was so comfortable here I thought about staying around for another day or two, maybe even repeat the trek I’d just done, but they were already booked full which surprised them, but not me. So I slept in a little the next day before taking a free (guest house supplied) ride back to the train station and the train towards Auythaya.

I wanted to spend a little more time in the southern part of Isan (Northeastern Thailand) and see more of the area before leaving. I didn’t want my entire knowledge of southern Isan to be Surin and the Elephant Round-up, as great as I think each is. So, I planned a day trip to a ruined temple just across the border in Cambodia. To get there from Surin I’d take a train a couple hours east to Si Saket, then a bus a couple hours south to Kantharalak then a motor bike taxi about 30 minutes to get to the Cambodian border. Then I’d walk across the boarder and enter the temple complex.

It was all planned out and for the most part went according to plan… I did however have a less than pleasant bus ride… About half way through my bowels started not feeling so well… I hadn’t had much stomach trouble since I got here, just a little and it’d never been a problem. Now however I had major gas pains and really would have liked some quality time on a nice western toilet. Unfortunately there isn’t much in between Si Saket and Kathrakalek. The bus stops are simple shade structures next to rice fields and that’s it. I started thinking about just jumping off the bus at the next stop and squatting in a rice field… then just hoping the next bus (in about an hour) would let me on. I had all sorts of crazy thoughts… all were fairly embarrassing. The cold sweets, the dry skin and goose bumps, the stabbing pains would come in waves. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore I’d get a few minutes of relative comfort… then it would start again. Somehow, and I don’t actually know “how” I did it, but made it to the bus station in Kathanralek. I quickly exit the bus and was glad to quickly find a rest room. I ran inside and had I not been in such dire need probably would have taken a moment to be horrified to be confronted with my first non-flushing squat toilet without a sprayer. You see, I don’t mind squat toilets, I don’t mind non-flushing toilets, I don’t mind toilets that have a sprayer (for washing your butt) but don’t have toilet paper… but this was just a nasty squat toilet, a large bucket of water and a small bucket to scoop water out of the big bucket… that’s it. I didn’t really have time to think about it, so I did my business and used the facilities exactly as a local would… and from now I will forever appreciate why in many countries (including Thailand) you don’t use your left hand for anything… anything else that is.

With business taken care of I set about finding a ride to Prah Wihan. It was too late in the day to get a Songtaew, so it was going to be a moto-taxi ride. He wanted 10 Baht per Kilometer, for a 36 km trip, or 360. Not bad for round trip actually. I bargained him down to 330, which seemed fair enough and off we went.

It’s not a cheap trip by Thailand standards, at least not for foreigners who in addition to the transport costs are charged an outrageously inflated fee to enter Thai National Parks. You see the only way to access the temple is by a road running through a Thai National Park. In one of the more atrocious cases of being legally ripped off, the fee to enter the Thai National park is now 400 Baht for foreigners, not outrageous by US standards, but considering Thai’s pay 20 or 40 Baht it’s a bit exploitive. Even more so in this case since 99% of the people entering the park are not doing so to see anything inside the Thai National Park, but rather just to reach Prah Wihan in Cambodia. Cambodia charges you 5 Baht to cross the border for the day (no visas needed). Then at the entry to Prah Wihan you’re charged 200 Baht to enter the complex. So Thailand is now charging double what Cambodia is charging to see Cambodia’s temple. It is bizarre that Cambodia charges 5 baht at the border then another 200 Baht after you’ve walked the 500 meters to the temple entrance.

One of the reasons for all this bizarrness is because of Prah Wihan’s history. The temple complex was long claimed by both Thailand and Cambodia. The world court finally awarded it to Cambodia, I forget exactly when but it was fairly recent. Considering there is literally no way to get a motorized vehicle (not even a off-road motorcycle) to it from the Cambodian side, it seems an odd out come, but what would I know. I do suppose with lots of whacking through jungle you might find a path from the plains below up the cliffs the temple sits on, but it’d be lots of whacking through jungle to get down there…

As one approaches the complex you are reminded by many… many… signs to stay on established paths and not to wander do to land mines. Ahhh… the wonders legacies of war. 40 years later and people and cows and dogs and whatever might wander into the jungle are still getting killed. The temple area has been cleared of land mines but there are many paths leading away from the temple towards the small villages setup around it that do have mine fields surrounding them.

As with most tourist attractions there are plenty of adults and kids hawking tourist stuff: water, beer, cigarettes, post cards, handicrafts, etc… Which is nice just in case you needed a beer and a smoke while you hiked around the temples steep steps.

Mid-way through the temple complex while exploring a sunken water reservoir just off the main tourist path, I caught a glimpse of a rainbow in the distance. A little girl who’d been following me as I strolled off the main path was standing nearby. I called her over to point towards the rainbow, but she just kept telling me that what I was looking at was “three countries, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia”. Which she had a postcard of that she wanted to sell me. I tried the Thai word for rainbow, but I’m not sure she ever quite understood. As I wandered further into the ruined temple complex she followed me and point out many of the sights. It was actually nice to have her as a guide since on my own I wouldn’t have noticed a few of a things she pointed out. However, I also felt a bit rushed since I wanted to just sit and enjoy while she was eagerly pointing me to the next thing to see. At the end of the complex is a cliff dropping at least 1500 feet to plains below. On the plains I could see several villages dotting the area, and I was really left wondering how anyone could get from there to where I was now standing. I sat on the edge of cliff meditating for a few minutes, while the young girl sat next to me shielding herself from the sun and probably wondering why I was just sitting in the hot sun… When I got up she lead me through a small opening to a ledge just below the edge of the cliff. Here there were prayer flags and hundreds of sticks stuck into every crack. The sticks are like prayers holding up the slowly crumbling temple and cliffs. At least that’s what I assume. Here she also offered to take a picture of me. I was a bit nervous about putting my big heavy camera in her hands and she was a bit confused why she couldn’t see me on the LCD screen (SLR cameras don’t work that way), but in the end she took a pretty darn good picture of me. She showed me one last thing, a bunker built beside the temple and a large gun aimed back towards Thailand, just another reminder how many battles between all sides had been fought from this lofty perch. I left the temple complex right as it was closing.

When I got back to the boarder I was pleased to find my moto taxi still waiting for me. I’d been there longer than I thought though and it hadn’t occurred to me I’d need to catch the last bus back to Si Saket if I wanted to make it back to Surin. The moto driver pointed out we need to hurry if I was going to catch the last bus. I got lucky… first my moto driver was an excellent driver, he carefully slowled or avoided every bump in the road like he’d driven the route hundreds of times (which he probably had) and second he had a very fast motorbike. I know we got passed by a few cars, but we passed every motorbike and several cars on the road. He was flying. He got me back literally as the last bus was pulling out of it’s stall. He honked for them to wait for me, which they did. I over paid him with 400THB. More than even his original asking price of 360 and well more than the 330 we’d agreed on. I told him it was in appreciation of his speed and good driving and then ran and hoped on the waiting bus. The ride back to Si Saket and the train ride back to Surin was mostly uneventful. Pretty, but uneventful. When I got back to Surin I was happy to see it sleepy and quiet like it was the first time I arrived, all but a few tourists were long gone, and only a few local elephants remained as well.

The weekend in Surin was a fantastic real start to my travels. Surin is normally off the tourist track, the well worn tourist track in Thailand anyway. It see lots of tourists for just this one weekend a year.

I’m going to starting trying to be more brief with my blog entries… so we will see how it goes.

On Friday the big event was the Elephant parade and jumbo feast. At Joy’s suggestion several of us mounted elephants an rode in the parade. It was an amazing experience to be riding in a parade on elephant back surrounded by scores of elephants all walking shoulder to shoulder. IMHO, there are two times and places it’s worthwhile to take a ride on an elephant. The first is on a the jungle on a trek, which I haven’t done sounds great from the people I’ve talked to. I personally wouldn’t bother riding one around a stadium or “elephant village”. The only time outside a jungle I’d ride one inside a town/city is for a parade, it really just to amazing to put words to. At the end of the parade route is the jumbo feast where the elephants get to eat the tons (literally tons and tons) of food that had been prepared the following day. Each day an average elephant eats several hundred pounds of food. Two fairly good links on the state of elephants in Thailand today are here and here I’ll refrain from writing pages upon pages here on how I feel about it all.

That afternoon was spent “sitting out the front of the hotel” as Joy would say in Aussie English, just watching the spectacle go by. This is why New Hotel was so ideal. The square fronted on one side by the train station and another by New Hotel is the center point of all the non-stadium based elephant activities. So it was an all day show every day.

On Saturday Inga and I went to the stadium to see the big show. It was loads of fun and there are plenty of photos on the Flickr site from the show. The highlights for me was to see the elephants dressed in battle costume, as well as just seeing the spectacle of 300 elephants all together on the same field. I have mixed feelings about all the “tricks” they perform, whether it be painting, bowing, hula hooping, flag waving, dart throwing or anything else I can’t think of at the moment. If you look over the earlier links they explain the reality of these creature lives. That being that they have to do something to feed these giants, and with logging widely banned they are left with domesticated animals that live over 50 years with nothing “productive” to do, so they resort to being a tourist attraction.

Sunday was just a relaxing day to enjoy Surin. Aside from the elephant round-up I really enjoyed Surin as well. It has a pleasant morning market full of produce and food that I loved wandering through each day trying new foods. Surin being well off the tourist track has very few English speakers, especially in the markets, so this was an added impetus to learn some Thai.

I was a bit worried about arriving in Surin at 4:30 in the morning… however since my train was nearly two hours late we got in at 6:30, a much better hour to arrive. Sure enough stepping out of the train station I was greeted by dozens of Tuk-Tuk drivers all eager to take me anywhere I wanted to go. I was headed for New Hotel though, which at least from the map I had looked to be close to the train station. Close enough I thought I could probably walk…. Turns out it was all of about 30 meters from the train station, maybe less.

New Hotel was recommended to me by a woman I met online on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree website. Thorn Tree is a online forum for travelers, unfortunately it’s a poorly organized one. I far prefer Bootsnall.com’s forums, but Thorn Tree still has a larger following. I digress. Turns out New Hotel was an excellent suggestion. The room was very inexpensive, 160 Baht/night regularly (US$4.50) and for Friday and Saturday of the Elephant Round-up they doubled their prices. This was a room without aircon an without TV. They offered aircon and TV in some rooms. IMHO, TV’s are worthless, and aircon is rarely worth it at least not in these season. You really do get used to the heat, for the most part. By Thai budget hotel standards the room was nice. It was clean, big (too big) and had with a large firm bed and a desk. The bathroom was reasonably large with flushing squat toilet. The shower was cold water only, or more appropriately outdoor temperature only. You see, in the morning the water was cold, but in the afternoon the water tank on the roof got super heated and the water would be super hot. It’s a minor annoyance, you get use to cold showers in the morning, but in the afternoon when a cold shower would be really nice you get hot water. I should explain at night the temperature drops to around 80-85F and during the day it’s in the 90’s. I can’t give exact numbers because it’s all Celsius and I haven’t quite got the conversion down in my head/body yet. Anyway, they cleaned the room and changed the sheets daily, as well as bringing a fresh towel every day. I was a bit bothered by the few cockroaches that would occasionally make there way up the plumbing and into the toilet. Only once or twice would they try to make it out of the toilet and onto the outside of the toilet at which point they’d get squished by a shoe. The first night I made the mistake of leaving my lights on while I was out. I came back to find the bright white sheet on my bed covered with small insects. Flys, little crawling things that looked like bed begs but were not, all vet small little bugs that thought this giant shiny white sheet was a great place to hang out. I brushed off the bugs, sprayed some DEET on the sheet, slept in my sleep sack and put DEET on my neck and shoulders. I was very happy when I woke up in the morning and didn’t see a bug anywhere to be found. I’ll also jump ahead and say that in the morning I discovered on of my screen shutters open a crack, duct tape closed it, and that when I left the light off when I went out I came home to no bugs on the bed. Enough on the room, back to my first morning in Surin.

The room in photos:

After dropping my bags in the room, showering and reading up on Surin, I decided on a whim to see if I could get WiFi access in the hotel room. With much amazement it turns out I could, although just barely. I was grabbing a signal from some neighbor, but only if I held my laptop at just the right angle and very close to the window. It was enough I could get to email and browse a couple web pages slowly… but that’s about it.

At this point I wasn’t so sure about my room, not so much because of the “state” of the room, but because it felt like a quiet hotel and I wouldn’t be meeting people to hang out with here. So I thought I’d head out to check out the only Hostel/Guest House in town, Phirom Guesthouse. conveniently the morning market was on the way towards the guest house. Unfortunately after quite a bit of walking, but some yummy food, I discovered a note a the destination saying Phirom’s had moved. So I set about walking to it’s new location as indicated by map on the note. Turns out it has moved well outside the main activities in the center of town… a long way out it was a long hot dusty walk. If I’d realized how long it would be I would have taken a Saam-Loew (bicycle-rickshaw) or Tuk-Tuk. The guest house was nice but too far out of the action for my taste today. If I’d been looking for somewhere to relax away from it all it would be great. Fortunately just as I was leaving so was an older British woman whom had just called a Tuk-Tuk to come pick her up for a ride back to the train station, which I shared. Back at New Hotel, I showered again, something I’d do at least three times a day every day I was in Surin.

With so much done already it felt like afternoon, but in it was actually about 11am, so after a brief rest I headed out again by Tuk-Tuk to the Elephant Stadium to check out the festivities there.

Today was the rehearsal day for the Elephant show and thousands of school kids from the area were all over the place to see the show for free. As I walked into the festival grounds 4-5 young teenage Thai girls came up to ask if they could practice there English with me. I was honored to be able to help, but the brief few questions they asked that I fill out their questioner on the elephant festival. It was just a couple questions, did I enjoy it, could it be better, what did I like most/least. I’m sure they were probably suppose to ask me all the questions, but was still impressed they’d gotten as far as the did before handing me the form. As I walked around the fair grounds adjacent to the stadium I was approached by a half dozen other groups of school girls all wanting to practice English. Surprising each had a different questioner to fill out. Some where more “where are you from” type stuff, some about Surin and more about the elephant festival. Several hours and a couple of stops to eat at the fair I thought I’d move on to the location of the Elephant Feast. As I was leaving the fair ground I was approached by one last group of school girls, after filling out their questioner… I was getting good at this, I thought I’d ask them a question. How do I get to Sri Paket Square (sp?). Their understanding of English wasn’t as good as I expected based on their speaking, but after a few giggles and requests on their part to speak slowly and repeat they helped me figure out on my map where I was headed. I walked away in the direction of the square figuring I’d find a Saam-loew to take me over there. I got about a block away when one of the girls from the last group ran up behind me and began speaking an pantomiming. It took a minute to understand but she was offering to give me a ride to the square on her motor bike. Flattered I couldn’t say no. The entire group of girls lead me down the road to where one of them, not the girl speaking to me, had a motor bike. They helped me cross the street and get on the back of the motor bike and I was off on a fun ride through Surin. It was amazingly fun

At Sri Paket (sp?) I got to watch them set-up for the next days elephant fest. They set up 2km worth of banquet tables along the road and then pile them full of sugar cane, water melon, turnips (?) and pineapples. I do love seeing festivals get set up. It reminds me of being at Octoberfest so many years ago at 5am and seeing the truck after truck unload dozens of kegs of beer in the morning.

I spent the late afternoon back at the hotel where I finally met up with Joy who was the one that had recommended New Hotel. Along with Joy I met Inga, Richard, Faye and Faye’s Father… and suddenly I knew a half dozen people in Surin. This is what I love about traveling. New friends. New Stories. I also have to admit I love having new friends without commitments. If any person sudden decided they don’t want to hang out with the other, you just part ways… no hard feelings… no bad thoughts…. because everybody understands and appreciates each others situation. Everybody is just doing their own thing and it’s totally normal to spend a day or two enjoying time with someone and they say “I feel like wandering alone today”. Then a few days later you might bump into each other in a market and sit down for lunch or just say hi and keep going… it’s wonderful.

I spent the morning figuring out my schedule for the next couple days and when/how I was going to ge to Surin for the Elephant Round-up. I determined I’d be best going on a night train (about 8 hrs). Then headed out to see Wat Phrea Kaew (Temple with the Emerald Buddha) and stop by the train station to buy my ticket.
The Emerald Buddha was beautiful, but a bit disappointing… it’ no where near as large as I expected. Being the most venerated Buddha image in all of Thailand I just expected it to be bigger. It’s most special because it is carved from jade. It is just about life size, which is small in comparison to many of the seated buddha images are several meters tall or more. The Emerald Buddha on an very high alter about 10 meters up in the air… The alter is spectacular, but somewhat overwhelms the Emerald Buddha. Regardless it was wonderful to see and sit and mediate, briefly, before it.
I walked around the temple grounds seeing all the amazing Chedi and Stupas around the grounds. There are also magnificent murals on the walls. As I left the Wat and Grand Palace I decided it’d be fun to make my way down to the train station by river boat.

I walked along river until I found a boat dock. I’m not sure why the river was so high, but much was flooded along the edges, water coming up into the streets. To get to the boat dock you walked through a little set of stores, quite like walking into Kimo’s on Maui. The floor of the stores all had a tiny bit of water on them and they’d built a temporary runway down the middle so that you could walk through to the boat docks without getting your feet wet. The runway however made the ceiling about 5 feet high. The boat dock actually had several docks for boats going to different places. It was all a bit confusing but I wasn’t too worried about getting on the wrong one since it just meant seeing more of the river. It’s not obvious since there are ordinary boats and express boats both going up and down river, as well as a third boat the simply goes across the river to another Wat. Fortutantly I made it on the correct boat, and no it’s not the boat in the picture, that’s a river cruise boat not a taxi boat. It was great to see the city from the water, so many houses and building sitting right on the edge of the water.

The ride down the river was wonderful and I started to see the real city of Bangkok. I saw dilapidated shacks falling into the river, next to new-ish high rise condos. It was great to see it all, to take it all in. From where the boat dropped me off I made my way through several non-touristy alleys toward the train station. Apparently I was in the automotive district or something, because every other shop had huge piles of car parts out front and were busily rebuilding engines, transmissions, differentials or whatever… Every few shops there would be a food place, sometimes tiny, sometimes larger. How great to be able to walk five feet to lunch… how horrible to eat the food soaked in diesel fumes all day. The highlight of the walk though was something unexpected as I walked along the channel. Just as I was walking past a local guy pulled a huge catfish out of the water. I gave him a big smile and thumbs up on his catch, he was clearly very proud. I ended up walking a long way down the street behind him as he walked and all the other locals would do the same thing (big smile/thumbs up) and comment on his good catch. So cool… this is the stuff I love about “getting lost on a walk in a new city”.
I finally made it to the train station and found the 8:30pm train was the only one with sleeper cars and it got in at 4:30am. I think it’s strange that neither the 10:00pm, 10:30pm nor the 11:15pm trains had sleeper cars, maybe they were just already booked… oh well.

With that taken care of I made my way back towards the hostel for a foot massage, a shower and dinner before turning around and heading back to the train station. The foot massage was fantastic the one hour massage which was 80% feet, 15% lower legs and 5% neck and back, cost me all of 250 Baht… US$7. It did wonders for getting my body back in balance after the plane flight, walking with an overly heavy pack, and the general lack of sleep.
The train ride started out louder and rougher than I expected but I got use to it and got a little bit a sleep as we went along eventually getting a few hours of sleep, but mostly doing some reading.

Getting out of the airport in Bangkok was simple enough. Immigration had dozens of stations open each with a line of one or two people, so that only took a minute or so to get through. No questions, no hassles just a quick looks at my visa and another stamp in my passport. It does make me wonder how soon I’m going to fill up my passport… but I’ll worry about that if/when it happens. Next was picking up my baggage, which came out onto the carousel rather quickly. I’d already spied several other backpackers and was a bit jealous how much smaller their baggage was than mine. I’d really tried to pack light, but it’s clear I’m in the heavy load camp compared to many. I’m going to have to work on that and whittle down what I’m carrying. Between the baggage carousels was an ATM and a money exchange counter. I don’t know that I’ve ever changed hard US dollars into foreign currency; it’s also just always been easier and often at a better exchange rate to just take money directly out of an ATM. For major purchased I just use a a credit card which again is usually a better rate, although recently Amex changed their policy and now charge a few percent fee on foreign currency purchases, which is stupid and means I’ve hidden my my Amex away as my “just in case of emergencies card” (loss of my Visa credit card). Anyway, while I waited for my bag to come out onto the carousel I got Thai money out of the ATM. It’s pretty money, rather like Canadian money, color coded and size coded. Thankfully unlike Canadian money, there are only three coins 1/5/10 baht. The current exchange rate is about 35 baht to 1 US dollar, although I’ve seen as bad as 30:1 being charged some places. With money in hand my bag popped out from the depth of the airport and it was time to leave the secure international area.
Right at the exit of the international area there were several shops including a mobile phone provider which was what I needed for my last task I wanted to get done at the airport. I purchased a Thai pre-paid phone card for my GSM cell phone. I’d discovered that T-mobile, the global phone company (yeah right), only charges US$2.99/ minute for international roaming calls from Thailand back to the US… Conversely with a pre-paid phone card purchased her in Thailand I can call the US for 9 baht/minute or about $0.25/minute, and calls inside Thailand are just a few baht per minute. Especially nice was that a initial card purchase was just 1000 baht and came with 800 baht in credit, meaning the start up fee was just US$6. I can top that up anytime with more credit which then goes 100% towards phone calls. Compare that with Canada, where I didn’t buy a card. The cheapest card their was CAN$75 and came with CAN$50 in credit. CAN$25 wasted just on the card.
I was finally time to leave the airport. I think I’d been off the plane less than an hour by the time I’d gotten all of this done… not so bad. Outside the secure area there were several people offering to “get me a taxi”. Fortunately, from the advice I’d been given and read frequently I ignored them and went straight to the metered Taxi stand. I think it might have been possible and slightly cheaper to get to the hostel by subway/sky train, but carrying my ridiculously big backpack it’s was worth it to take the taxi and get dropped at the front door. The taxi ride was under 250 baht, including the 50 baht airport fee. I wasn’t really clear if the 50 baht was already shown on the meter or not, but I paid the extra 50 when the taxi driver asked me too. I think the meter showed 187…
The hostel was is wonderfully located on a large alley just behind Sukhumvit. Sukhumvit is a major street with a big night market on it and lots going on. I arrived at night so the shops were all set up and people were bustlingly around all over the place. I was a bit worried the hostel was was going too close to all the action, but it was just the right distance off Sukhumvit. SUk11 is maybe 50 meters from Sukhumvit and the alley itself is not a seedy dark alley, it’s a rather nice large pedestrian alley. Settled in I was excited to find WiFi in my room which I made use of for a few minutes before my first dorm mate came in. Surprisingly he was American (there aren’t that many here lots of Aussie’s and Euro’s). Paul, a student at CU Boulder had differed his last credit to travel while still a student and was half way through a year in Thailand. He’d actually been to Thailand many times and had lots of great advice. With that I headed out the check out the night market, get a bit to eat and try to find a padlock to lock up my computer in the drawer I had next to my bed. Dinner was from a street vendor selling meat on a stick, I opted for fishballs and shrimp. Yummy.
I expected it, but was still shocked by the prostitutes everywhere. It’s disturbing who prevalent and on the surface it is. The old guys walking down the street with 16 year olds don’t have a hint of shame on their faces, and frankly the 16 year old (or less) girls propositioning me didn’t seem the slightest bit shy about it either. I’m sure since I was walking around alone I got propositioned even more than normal. It was nearly constant until I started to recognize and avoid them and then it was just less frequent. I was happy when I got back to the hostel to see a sign above the front desk reading “Sex tourists are not welcome here”. It’s important to keep it in perspective. It’s certainly not most tourists and it’s not just tourists. Somewhere I read 95% of the sex industry here caters to locals… not that that justifies it but it does put a slightly different perspective on it.
I called it an early night, sort of, which meant I sat in bed on my computer working on photos and wishing I felt sleepy. I finally got to sleep around 3am and was up again at 6am. I’ve never felt the slightest jetlag going cross country, not even to Europe, but here the time difference is exactly 12 hours… it really couldn’t be worse.

The drive to JFK was smooth. I’m glad Matt suggested the one way car rental idea, much better and cheaper than the other options I’d researched for getting me from their house to the airport. I left the house exactly at 6am like planned and got the the airport exactly at 9am as planned, 3hrs before my international flight. Which was good because the computers were down and they were checking everyone in by hand.

Eventually the computers got back up and check-in sped up, but in the end the flight was still delayed in taking off by about an hour. I thought I’d make a dozen phone calls in the hour or two waiting to board the plane, but there was no service in the airport terminal. I like a dozen others walked around the terminal with cell phone in hand looking like was tracking a radio collared animal.

When we’d finally boarded and reached the runway we turned around. This was the second time in two week I had a flight make it to the runway then turn around. The first was flying back from Long Beach when someone “didn’t feel well”. This time is was something wrong with a “panel” in the cockpit. Anyway, that added about another hour and a half delay but I had better cell phone reeception sitting on the plane than in the terminal so I made couple calls. Then finally… I left US soil.

So here I sit on the plane, next to a really nice guy, also named Jon, whose been to Asia many many times. He’s gone both in his youth as a back packer as well as his years have started to add up. It’s great to her his stories about India, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. I can’t help but think that I hope many years from now I have similar stories to share some day.. perhaps ones that don’t involve broken legs in a bus accident though.

Finally I’m done updating my blog, at least with the typing, not the uploading. It seem appropriate that at this very instant I’m almost directly over the north pole and crossing to the “other” side of the world. The non-stop flight from JFK to BKK flys almost due north, over Quebec, over the pole, then south over China and into Thailand. Flight time is 16 hours 35 minutes and roughly 8600 miles. We were originally scheduled to land at 5pm local time, but now it looks like it’ll be closer to 7:30pm. Which is why I’m glad I already booked a room at a hostel for the night. I’m also assuming I’ll get some daytime views of the Himalayas out the window of the plane as we fly over (yeah!!!).

The four days in Pennsylvania went quickly.

I spent the Wednesday I had to myself packing and planning as much as I could. Changing phone service, the last credit card billing addresses, insurance information as well as running around trying to find someone to re-weld my cracked exhaust pipe.

On Thursday I took care of a few more errands before heading down to Philly to pick Elena up from the airport. It was wonderful to see her again, and I’m really glad I got to spend this last weekend with her before I go overseas.

Friday, Elena and I spent most of the day together, although she ran out to a spa for a facial and massage with Em which I searched for a new back pack since I’d decided mine was too small. As much as I wanted to squeeze into a tiny pack, there was just now way to pack my boots and carry the minimal clothing I wanted to carry. It all fit in the pack I had no problem until I add the boots and couple small items. Anyway, my search was futile and I decided to make do with one of the two other bags I had with me. Either the fairly big trekking pack I’d taken to Europe which I didn’t like because it’s top loading or the big north face duffle bag I have that has optional shoulder straps but no waist belt As with so many decisions I went back and forth many times… I finally settled on the real back pack since I’ll probably be doing some trekking and don’t want to think of what it would be like to hike with the northface duffle without a waist belt for support. I’ll look for a pack in Thailand, hopefully finding a medium sized panel loader (zippered) and sell or send home this pack.

Saturday was the party which was loads of fun as always. Elena made a vegetarian soup and a pumpkin risotto. Both were fantastic, as was all the food.

Sunday was absolutely crazy. I needed to drop my van off with Mike in Westminster, Maryland (outside Baltimore). I’d gotten a one way car rental from Baltimore Airport (BWI) to JFK. So Elena and I drove down to Baltimore to pick up the car and then to Mikes & Carries new house. Which is big and beautiful and I see Mike and Carries doing a ton of work to . Nearly his entire family was over to help them move in so Elena and I got to sit down and join them all for lunch. It was really nice to see an entire family (Mike’s parents and grandparents as well as sister) stop in the middle of the day to sit down to lunch together. Elena and I headed back towards Pennsylvania in the rental car leaving the Vanagon with Mike. The Vanagon covered roughly 12,000 miles since I left California. The drive home was miserable, they’d shut down 2 of the 3 lanes on I-95 so it was stop and go traffic for two hours. It took nearly five hours to get back to Matt & Em’s, even though it took just under three to get down to Mike and Carrie’s including the stop at the airport. It all made for a very late and harried night where I packed and re-packed again trying to whittle down the amount of stuff I’m taking and making sure I really am happy with my choice of bags… The three of us got to sleep shortly after midnight. Yes it sadly was my last night sleeping with Tucker for a long time as well.

I’m deeply worried about him while I’m gone. I’m far more worried about him than Elena. Elena I can email and talk to all I need. She understands where I am and how long I’m gone for. All he knows is the guy that rescued him from the pound three years ago and that has spent nearly every minute of the last six months with is suddenly going to be gone. I’ve done what I can. I gotten him use to living at Matt and Em’s, use to the other dogs, as settled as I could possibly could… I’ve left him with people I know, love and trust as much as anyone else in the world… but it’s still hard.

In the morning kissed and hugged both my loves tearful good-byes and headed for JFK airport.