Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of updates! Maren and I have safely arrived in Seattle! We spent the last 3 weeks in China, where Blogger (and Facebook) are banned. So I was able to write my blog but unable to post it. I will post blogs over the next week or two to update the last 6 weeks of travels. And we are both working on sorting through many pictures which are going up on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/SkiMania29) Let's start where I left off, in Thailand:
The first thing both Maren and I noticed upon arriving in Bangkok was that we were being completely ignored. What a relief after India! No one was staring at us, and only a handful of touts wasted their time bothering us. There weren’t a large number of tourists in Bangkok due to the recent violence in the city. We saw no sign of unrest during our stay, though I did make a conscious decision not to wear a red shirt. After navigating the public transit, we made our way to the most popular backpacker area of the city along Koh San Road. In the afternoon, we hopped on a tuk tuk, which is pretty similar to the autorickshaws of India, just a bit bigger and generally in much better condition. Our tuk tuk driver drove us around to a couple of sights in the city, waiting for us at each one. Normally we wouldn’t be interested in this type of ‘tour,’ but the price was too good to pass up. The driver was offering some sort of ‘government special’ for tourists for one day. The price was 10 baht (about 25 cents) for both of us, as many sights as we could see in a couple of hours. The only catch was a required stop at ‘tourist information’ which was really a travel agent where the driver collected a commission. We stayed for about 2 minutes. We wandered through several temples and saw a giant golden Buddha statue. We next visited a temple perched high on a hill with great views of the city. Later on I tried my first authentic ‘phad thai’ (famous noodle dish) from a street vendor. For 50 cents it was everything I had hoped for. We finished off the evening with a couple of beers along Koh San Road.
The next day, we exchanged our Lonely Planet India book for Lonely Planet SE Asia. We did some quick research and took a bus out to the train station where we made our travel plans for later. We then took a walk through the city until we reached the main river which divides Bangkok in half. It was fairly easy to hop onto a small passenger ferry at one of the many piers. The views of the city along the river are unique. We passed lots of small boats, temples, giant office towers, and old wooden homes hanging out on stilts over the water. We stopped at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn on the opposite side of the river. The architecture of the main temple, the design and shape, along with the four smaller pillars at each corner, make for an extremely impressive sight. We walked around the temple and through the green surroundings. Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside the temple; we hadn’t remembered reading that there was a dress code and they didn’t like our shorts nor our flip flops. After taking a boat back across the river, we walked to Wat Pho, a massive temple complex. It is filled with a number of small Buddhist temples, lots of Thai architecture, and the highlight: a giant golden statue of the reclining Buddha. It is kind of funny to see a statue of a person lying down, but that is one of a few popular poses of Buddha (sitting cross legged is another common one). The complex was also filled with tons of other statues and relics. As we continued our walk back, we stopped in a market for some delicious and fresh Thai food.
In the evening, we got on a bus heading south. We booked a bus-and-boat combo ticket and joined a gang of other backpackers all headed for the south of Thailand. I am sure there is plenty to see in the rest of Thailand, but Maren and I wanted to spend as much time as possible on the beach ;) Our bus left at a very inconvenient time, which meant we arrived in the port city of Chumphon in the north of the southern peninsula very late at night (more like early in the morning). All of the backpackers had to attempt to sleep on the floor of a room by the pier. We were woken up as it became light out and walked onto our ferry, arriving a couple of hours later at Koh Tao. Off the east coast of Thailand there are three main islands. Each has its own atmosphere and activities, so we decided to see all three, going from north to south, beginning with Koh Tao. Koh Tao is by far the smallest and least touristy of the three islands. It has become famous in the last ten years for diving, and that is certainly the thing to do. Koh Tao is not known for having beautiful beaches, but we quickly learned a funny thing about Thailand: even a ‘bad’ beach can still be pretty damn good! After one failed attempt at a guesthouse our guide book had recommended (out of our price range), we ending up staying at a quirky little guesthouse in a great location, just a one minute walk from a sandy beach. The price for a double was 300 baht (about 7.5 euros) which, ironically, was the exact same price we ending up paying at every place we stayed at during our whole time in Thailand. Koh Tao, like other islands in Thailand, is incredibly green and beautiful. There are wooden bungalows, round rock formations, sandy beaches, palm trees, and tropical weather. In a nutshell, it is paradise!
We spent our first day on Koh Tao doing practically nothing except the beach. We walked the length of the sand near our guesthouse and across some rocks to the island’s main beach. The rest of the evening was swimming, relaxing, drinking fresh fruit shakes, and eating yummy Thai food on the beach. It was a great feeling to stay in one spot and relax for the whole day. We rented a motorbike the following day to explore the island. Though Koh Tao is quite small, it is rather hilly, so a bike is necessary to get to the center or to the smaller beaches. This was my first time ever driving a motorcycle (or dirtbike, scooter, etc.) and it took a little while to get used to. Once I did, Maren hopped on the back and away we went. Some of the hills were quite steep, and the underpowered motorbike couldn’t handle both of us. We slowed to a crawl while I revved the engine, then Maren had to hop off the back and walk just before the bike would have come to a complete stop. We first went to a pretty beach on the south end of the island. It was mostly empty except for a couple of guesthouses. The wooden bungalows perched on rocky outcrops right on the water looked like a peaceful way to relax for a week or two. There are only a handful of decent paved roads on Koh Tao, the rest are dirt and rock and some can be pretty bad. On our way to one of the beaches on the far side of the island, we had our first (but only!) crash. It wasn’t too bad considering we were only going about 3km/h up a steep, rocky hill. The tire slid into a rut and I didn’t get my foot out in time before we basically just fell over sideways. Unfortunately we landed on a rock which cut a pretty good gash in my left leg. Maren also got an injury on her leg, though it was from the hot exhaust pipe of the bike searing her skin. We dusted ourselves off and decided to forget that hill. Later on, we made our way into the center of the island. I was driving extremely carefully at this point, and when the road started to get bad, we parked the bike. The walk through the jungle wasn’t too much further to reach one of the highest points on the island. There were fantastic views of the hilly green landscape and the tiny villages along the beaches.
We returned the motorbike the next morning before our planned snorkeling trip and were faced with an unwelcome surprise. Neither Maren nor I had noticed any damage to the bike despite our fall. It seemed so harmless we had hardly considered it. But the bike shop noticed the side of the plastic piece where you rest your foot was a little bit scuffed. I am certain they later just sanded it smooth in about 10 seconds, but they ended up charging us for a replacement piece. It was an agonizing negotiation, especially considering the language barrier, but we finally paid them the incredibly overpriced ‘replacement fee’ of 1300 baht (a little over 30 euros). It was frustrating because that amount of money goes a long way in Thailand when you are on our type of budget. But there wasn’t a whole lot we could do except try to lower their fee, considering they held my passport as a deposit. Luckily, our depression didn’t last long. Our snorkeling trip was fantastic! We got our gear sorted, and then went out on a boat with a small group to 5 different dive spots all around the island. There was quite a bit to see, some interesting coral and types of fish I never knew existed. At one dive, I swam through the largest school of fish I have ever seen. There were thousands upon thousands of them, all moving in unison, dividing as I swam back and forth through them. We ate lunch on the boat and later stopped at a private island. We relaxed on the beach until we got too hot, then we swam through some coral known as the ‘Japanese Garden’ due to the bizarre white color and flower shape. I would have liked to have gone scuba diving, but the prices on Koh Tao if you aren’t certified are pretty high. Snorkeling got us much more to see and the full day trip was only 500 baht each (12 euros).
In the evening, we booked our ferry trip to the next island to the south, and did some shopping in town. The shopping, food, and drinks are all very cheap on the islands, despite them being tourist hotspots. We also continued to feed our new addiction to fruit shakes, which usually only cost between 50 cents and 1 euro and are unbelievably fresh and delicious! In the morning, our ship set sail. Less than two hours later, we arrived on the hippie, beach-party island of Koh Phangan. The island is famous for its full-moon parties, though we didn’t plan our trip using a lunar calendar and therefore completely missed it. We also somehow missed the black moon and half moon parties as well. Because of that, we were on the island during the lowest of the low season, it was nearly deserted! We decided to stay on the ‘full moon beach’ anyway to check it out. The beach supposedly fills up with as many as 15,000 people during the full moon, but it was also cool to experience it the way we did. Most of the people in the area either hadn’t planned around the moon, like us, or they were the permanent expat types. It is easy to see why the island has become an enclave for hippies. The beaches are beautiful, the villages aren’t overdeveloped, and the attitude everywhere is extremely relaxed.
We followed our first day of relaxing and swimming with exploring the island the following day. We rented a motorbike and rode to the eastern side of the island towards a waterfall we had read about. The area was thick jungle; we parked the bike and found the small river. Then we started trekking upstream to find the famous waterfall that had been visited by Thai kings for centuries. There was no obvious trail, so we hiked through the jungle and crisscrossed the river over rocks. We passed several small waterfalls and even found a few inscriptions on rocks written by Thai kings, but the main waterfall we were looking for turned out to be little more than a trickle. We drove our motorbike down to the end of the stream, where there was a nice secluded beach to rest on for the afternoon. We drove back as it was getting dark, stopping for some petrol along the way to make sure we didn’t get stranded. The Full Moon Beach was still pretty empty in the evening, but we drank beer on the beach anyways, and had a cocktail at the one beach bar with a small crowd.
We returned the motorbike in the morning before our ferry left, only to get completely scammed again by the bike shop. I had driven very carefully, never crashed, and we were both certain we had not caused any damage whatsoever to the bike. But the guy, who had seemed friendly the day before, now looked for any possible minor damage he could get us for. He found a few nicks on the underside of the bike and demanded 3000 baht! It was déjà vu, and we hardly argued with him for 5 minutes before agreeing that I would go to the police while Maren waited. I came back an hour later with two sympathetic cops who believed my story. Unfortunately, it was basically this guy’s word versus our word, and the cops insisted we pay something to resolve the situation. After a very long debacle, we walked away with 1000 baht less in our pockets. We agreed to never rent a motorbike ever again in our lives without taking pictures of the bike first. Fortunately, there was another quick cure for the depression caused by overpaying for two motorbikes in a row: Koh Samui.
