Back to School

I'll admit, I was a little less excited than maybe I should have been to get back to teaching. Mostly, I blame the lack of enthusiasm on my first day back in Doembangnangbuat, a few days before classes actually started.

I arrived home with my bulked out backpack and a few extra plastic bags around dinner time. One of the teachers met me at the school, which turned out to be a good thing because my bicycle tires were flat. He offered me a lift home, which was great. What wasn't so great, I discovered later, was that without a bicycle, I had no way to get to the market if I needed to go shopping. Which I did. I had no water left in the house, other than the water that comes out of the tap in my bathroom--which isn't safe to drink. I also had no food other than a few snacks I'd gotten at the bus station in Bangkok. And I'd planned on topping up my internet card first thing when I got home, so I also had no internet. As for the rest of the welcome home . . . well, I had to sweep up several dead creepy-crawlies (I suppose if I hadn't left a bug-killer hanging from a door handle, they might not have been so dead), including a six-inch centipede in my bedroom. Brrr. Also, the refrigerator decided to have it out with the extension cord while I was gone, so I came home to scorched plastic and a fridge I wasn't sure would work if I plugged it into a different extension cord. And the air conditioning, boon of my bedroom, also decided it had had enough--or rather, that the batteries in the remote had had enough. All in all, not a great first night back. Instead, it was a sweaty, thirsty, buggy sort of night. Hilarious in retrospect--sometimes the story-worthy, adventurous things don't happen exactly when you expect them.

Most of all that got fixed the next day (well, not the bugs--those got cleared up almost as soon as I stepped in the door the first night). One of the workers at the school pumped up my bicycle tires, which meant I could go shopping for food, water, internet, and batteries for the air conditioning remote. I asked the other teachers about the fridge problem, bringing in the burnt out extension cord as evidence. I was sure it was some sort of problem with the electrical bits of the fridge itself, but as it turns out, it just needed a different model of extension cord. Good as new.

My first day back at school didn't involve teaching, much to my surprise. Instead, I got to introduce myself to two different assemblies full of parents. And in the second one, I also helped give out achievement certificates of some kind to the students. Introducing myself was a little intimidating, but kind of fun. I'd forgotten what it was like to be the only westerner in town (while traveling, I was always just one of the ubiquitous tourists), and as soon as I opened with "sawat dee ka," I got a huge round of applause. Both times. Guess I'm back to being the exotic foreigner who can say a few cute phrases in Thai. I'm trying desperately to learn more, of course, but it's a tough language, and the words just don't seem to stick in my head. I'm also back to getting tons of smiles and waves whenever I ride my bicycle through town, which is fun, and probably my favorite part of most days. Can I do this for another semester? I think I can, yes.

The Last Half of the Holiday

I discovered some things about my tolerance for traveling. First of all, I can't keep up the traditional backpacker pace for long--you know, staying somewhere for one or two nights, seeing all the sights, and then heading off to the next place for one or two nights. It just gets exhausting. I ended up enjoying places more when I stayed for a week--a day to recover from traveling (especially if I used a night bus), a few days of sightseeing, and a few days of chill time before dealing with more public transportation.

Also, being sick while you travel is Not Fun, capital N, capital F. At the end of my first week on Koh Tao, I got food poisoning for the first time ever. I'd take the stomach flu over food poisoning any day--it's gentler. My stomach was determined to turn itself inside out from that pad thai. I had sore abs for a few days just from one night of throwing up--apparently it took more muscles than I possess.

On a brighter note, I spent a second week on Koh Tao learning to scuba dive. I got my PADI certification and even did a couple of deep dives. Ok, so we didn't see anything that experienced divers label as exciting, like turtles or whalesharks, but it was a blast anyway. I've never really understood the drive some people have to do things like skydiving or hang gliding, and I don't really get the "high" (ha, ha) that my brother does from mountain climbing, but I can understand why people might get addicted to scuba diving. I did scrape my foot on some coral while doing the swim test for the certification, and I can say that diving in salt water with a scrape is not fun (oh, the stinging!), but the rest was worth it. I would list all the different kinds of fish we saw, but it's pretty long, and I can't imagine that reading a list of the different kinds is anything close to as much fun as seeing them.

After two weeks with less than stellar internet on Koh Tao, I spent a day just hanging out in a hotel in Chumphon (the ferry point for Koh Tao) just doing internet things and catching up on the rest of the world. Then I headed to Phuket, which was a little bit the way I picture New Orleans would be. If New Orleans were Thai and had a Chinese quarter instead of a French quarter, that is. But I'm pretty sure I spotted the word Bayou in one of the shop names . . . My dad arranged for me to stay at a somewhat nicer hotel than the standard backpackers' destination for the last few days of my break (thanks, Dad!), and I spent those few days reading and enjoying the seaside at a luxurious snail's pace.

I feel like I've gained a lot of independence after spending so much time finding my own way to places. I've also perfected the art of long-term light packing, and I can load a backpack in ten minutes flat (and that's with everything scattered around the room beforehand, thank you very much). It's hard to go back to actual responsibilities after two months away, but I'd also started craving a bit more routine again. I know some of the places I've seen are places I will probably never be able to see again, because I won't have much free time to travel between now and the end of the semester when I return home. But it's been the experience of a lifetime.

I Am Kayak, Hear Me Roar

And what does this picture have to do with the post, you may ask? Well, nothing. I just saw this little statue of Ganesha over a fountain and had to stop and take a picture. On with the real post . . .

After getting a van from Trang to Surat Thani, I got the night ferry to Koh Tao. The guide book warned it was more of a cargo ship than an actual ferry, and so not to expect comfort, but I figured I'd be fine and didn't want to find a hotel room to wait for the next ferry. Riding the night ferry was . . . well, an adventure, if you get to sleep during an adventure. True to the guidebook, the bottom deck was full of cargo, like crates of water and alcoholic beverages. A few motorcycles made it on board. The top two decks were full of very thin, narrow mattresses. And when I say deck--well, perhaps they were hoping to be decks when they grow up a little, because they were only about four feet high. I found my assigned mattress without too much trouble, as it was on an end (lucky), but had to double over to get to it. When I first saw the beds, my first thoughts were: 1) Yay, I get to lay down instead of sitting up all night like on a bus, and 2) You know, the proportions here are a little reminiscent of berths described on slave ships from that movie "Amazing Grace" . . . (great movie, btw. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now.) The girls who crawled in after me and settled on the mattresses next to mine had a more positive view: "it's like an enforced sleep-over!" I did get to sleep, and yeah, it wasn't too bad.

The boat pulled into Koh Tao in the gray, rainy morning. Which meant the island didn't give the best first impression. When the rain stopped, I decided to just walk around for a bit and ask at a few places before I settled on a place to stay. I had lunch, read the first quarter or so of Brahm Stoker's Dracula, took a nap, and walked on the beach. Not a great beach, as beaches go. Not one of those that calls to the world, "come lie on my sands and swim in my water." It was sort of mucky. I did have some very good pizza for dinner, though, and ended my day on an "oh, well" sort of note.

This is the morning that greeted me yesterday:

It's amazing the difference a little bit of sun makes. The beach still qualified as kind of mucky, however, no matter what you might think of the picture. So after a leisurely late breakfast and some more reading, I rented a kayak for half a day:

. . . and spent about four hours paddling around and humming pirate songs to myself (as per the Slater sibling kayaking tradition beginning circa August 2003). The kayak, unlike the ones I've experienced in Seattle, was more a sort of aero-dynamic plastic raft with a paddle than anything else (the ones in the Seattle area almost always have rudders), with strategically placed drainage holes that guaranteed a saturated bum. But at 200 baht per half-day, I wasn't going to complain. I started out from about midway down Sairee Beach and made it all the way around the nearby island Nangyuan--which, given that my upper body strength is, well, negligible, felt like quite the accomplishment.

I finally understand the phrase "turquoise waters"--I don't think I'd ever seen a body of water that didn't look more sea green (or murky green) than turquoise, but once I got away from the shore, there was no other word for the color. The guy who carried the kayak down to the beach for me warned that the coral was quite shallow close to the shore, so I'd have to be careful not to scrape the bottom of the kayak and sort of zigzag out into deeper water. I wasn't quite prepared for just how shallow it was--less than two feet down, I got to see tiny fish darting to safety as I passed. You can sort of see it here:

When I got into deeper water, I caught glimpses of schools of fish around the island, some with bright yellow tails, some tiny and silvery, and some with stripes similar to the tiger barbs I kept in an aquarium when I was little. Unlike kayaking in Seattle, there were no seal heads that popped up, and there were more butterflies than sea birds passing overhead. And I got to see things like this:

and this:

Which don't look as huge and impressive in photographs as they did in real life.

You've probably lost all curiosity by now, but the title of my post comes from an episode of Gilmore Girls, in which one of the characters compares herself and her husband to two people paddling a canoe, which will go in circles if one person stops paddling; and then she compares her daughter to one person paddling a kayak, with power to steer herself because she can paddle on both sides instead of just one. Sometimes it's daunting to be traveling alone, and sometimes it's just plain lonely. When I first got to Koh Tao and sat at the dock waiting for the rain to stop, I watched several couples and other tourist groups help each other unpack rain gear. And there have been several moments when I've had the thought, "I'm the only one seeing this" and I haven't had anybody at hand to whom to point out some curiosity or wonder. While there are always new friends to be made, it's mostly brief acquaintances. Not that traveling on my own hasn't been a good experience, overall--I get to choose what to see, travel according to my own preferences and in my own time. But for the past few days I was feeling the lonelier side of the experience. Kayaking helped with that a bit, I think--it's an empowering feeling to go somewhere and see amazing things under your own steam. I don't need to wait for somebody else to do something amazing. I am a kayak, not a canoe.

I'll admit, though, that my arms and shoulders are very sore this morning.

Koh Mook and Trang

As you might be able to tell from the less than friendly sky in the picture above, Thailand is done with its dry season this year. Songkran, the Thai new year, marked the transition into the rainy season, which means there's a good chance of a rain-shower every day, even if only for a half hour or so.

Koh Mook (also spelled Koh Muk) is one of the Trang Islands. Which I find a bit of a misnomer, because Trang Town is actually about an hour from the coast. But if you're going by province name instead of city name, I guess it works. I stayed in Koh Mook for a week, mostly to avoid the Songkran furor--which might seem silly, since it's a big festival and I don't foresee being in Thailand to experience it a second time, but I just wasn't in the mood for crowds. It was nice to have a week in which to swim, read, and chill out on the beach. It wasn't quite as nice as the place Rachael and I stayed on Koh Chang, but I suppose part of traveling is the risk that each new place won't always top the last. But it was a nice beach to swim at--which doesn't always happen--and it was as far from crowded as I could imagine a tourist destination to be. The worst bit was probably the mosquitos that hurried to greet me at the door of my bungalow. I did get to have the experience of sleeping under a mosquito net, however--which was quite fun, actually--and I can at least say that I didn't get a single mosquito bite while I slept. On the downside, the running water in the bungalow bathroom smelled strongly of rust and didn't look the clearest when you got a sink full of it. Sometimes I find it so strange that I used to be able to drink water from the tap in America.

Trang town was more a transition than anything else--a place to regroup and decide where to go next. I stayed at a nice little hotel and thoroughly enjoyed the flushing toilet, air conditioning, lack of mosquitos, and available wifi in the room. Other than that, my two nights there were unremarkable. I did go to a street market while there, which had amazing food (one booth sold fresh-tasting chocolate chip cookies, which was a real nostalgia punch) and really excellent orange slushie-type drinks made from fresh-squeezed orange juice (or possibly tangerine?). The town itself was fairly standard, as Thai towns go, not much remarkable except a main street that boasted a center divid with Christmas lights (I suppose I should just call them twinkle lights since they're not associated with Christmas here?), and decorative street lights:

Chiang Mai

Ok, I've been remiss in posting. I went to Chiang Mai for five days after Phimai, and I haven't been quite sure exactly what to write about it. For a start, though, the picture above is the view from my window at the guest house.

So, what to say about Chiang Mai . . . I think I could quite easily live there. It's beautiful, and it's a big city without the feel of Bangkok's unmanageable traffic. I arrived ridiculously early in the morning from having taken the night bus, and spent a good half hour just wandering around the Old City, which is full of temples and guesthouses and various attractions. All the larger buildings are outside the Old City, which still has the remnants of the old city wall and gates into it.

My favorite part was probably the Sunday walking street market, which is easier to walk around than the weekend market in Bangkok. For the week I was there, one of the main roads in the Old City was being torn up and repaved, which basically meant that part of the walking street market took place on a dirt road. It made for a very strange atmosphere. But it was fun to wander around and see everything that was being sold, taste various things, and listen to music from street performers. (I also went to the Saturday walking street market the day before, which was outside the Old City and very similar, but on a smaller scale--the Sunday one was better.)

I was very lazy about my time in Chiang Mai--partially because I had the beginnings of a sore throat. So I didn't do as much sight-seeing as I might have otherwise, but I had a very enjoyable week of sleeping in, wandering around, drinking fruit smoothies, and writing. I did go to Chiang Mai's art and culture museum (which turned out to be more culture, less art, but was still ok), and to Chiang Mai's zoo and aquarium. The zoo was a bit of a strange experience--far from the norm in American zoos where there are signs against feeding any of the animals, most of the non-carnivore animals had a stand near their enclosures, with baskets of food you could give to them for 20 baht. I'm not in the habit of essentially feeding money to animals, but it did make for some interesting differences in the behavior of the animals--for one thing, it meant all the animals were a lot closer than in American zoos. For another, it meant animals like ostriches and giraffes would follow you along the fences of their enclosures with an expectant look that borders on creepy. One of the funnier things I saw during the entire trip was a hippo surprising a tourist by bursting out of the water right in front of her, mouth open.

The aquarium was, alas, a little disappointing. The Chiang Mai aquarium's claim to fame is having the longest underwater viewing tunnel. It was ok, but what they don't tell you is that it's longest because it zig-zags, not because it goes through a particularly long or large tank. The bigger disappointment was that I'm pretty sure all the coral in the saltwater portion was fake.

A few other random pictures from the zoo, to show you just how close some of the animals were:

And of course, I couldn't visit Chiang Mai without going to see some of the temples. The temple seen from my room at the guest house in the top picture, by the way, is just a small, random temple, not one of the larger or more famous ones. I went to see Wat Chedi Luang around six in the evening, which meant it was almost empty, although I could tell from various signs it's one of the temples that gets a lot of traffic during the day. There was a newer, fairly standard temple in front:

And an older, preserved temple in back:

And some rather beautiful smaller shrines around the edges of the grounds:

My favorite discovery from the visit was actually a sign asking people to remove their shoes, if only because of what was directly above the sign, almost looking as if it would hunt down the people who didn't obey the sign:

I'd love to go back to Chiang Mai sometime. There's too much I didn't see, and it's too beautiful a city to only see once.

Phimai

So, according to statistics, 90% of tourists in Thailand don't visit the northeast region. But, looking through the guidebook, it seemed like there was some pretty cool stuff up there, so I decided to give it a go. After two days, I ended up deciding to follow the 90%. Not because what I saw wasn't completely amazing, but because, looking closer, it's quite difficult to get to a lot of the interesting places. You really need a car or independent (code: more expensive) transportation. But, my short experience was immensely worthwhile. Everyone I met was super friendly, and the things I saw were beautiful.

I took a bus from Bangkok to Korat (short for Nakhon Ratchisma), and a bus from Korat to Phimai. Phimai is just a little bigger than Doembangnangbuat, actually. They have more stoplights and a historical park, but otherwise, it's maybe twice the size of the town where I teach. My general practice while traveling is to arrive somewhere mid-afternoon to early evening, scope out a guesthouse, and just drop in to see if they have rooms available. I'd picked one out from the guidebook, found it, and had to pick another one--the first was under construction and clearly closed. The owners of the second guesthouse, Kru Pom Guesthouse, were really friendly, and we just sat and talked for a while when I first checked in.

I slept in the first morning, relishing in the fact that I could. But around lunchtime I headed over to the historical park, thinking it would probably be quite small, given the size of the town surrounding it, and unlikely to be worth much attention. I'm happy I was proven so wrong. I explored all the nooks and crannies of the temple thoroughly, and had a great time (if a little hot--it was midday, after all). Some of the interesting happenings: one of the workers chasing a dog out of the main temple building; walking behind a group of young monks (teenagers or even younger, I think) on a guided tour; and having a worker come up to me and hand me half a pomegranate, telling me the word for pomegranate in Thai and having me repeat it (tuptim). The historical park is a beautiful place, and I went a little camera-happy . . .

For those who are curious, the picture at the top of the post is the figure in the main, central temple at Phimai. The thing above the head is a seven-headed snake, or naga.

Entering the main gate in the outer wall

View of the main building from within the outer wall

View from a window

Detail on a door frame

Detail on a door lintel

Path (nee hallway) around the main temple grounds, just inside the outer wall (the windows on the left look in) 

Just inside the main temple

View of main temple figure (the picture at the top of the post) from the side, from a window in the outer wall

A huge tree behind the main temple

Steps leading to the back of the outer wall

Another view behind the outer wall (with a monk in the distance)

Pieces of the ruins piled neatly and respectfully, waiting to be restored someday 

Pomegranate

(Just because I know my mom will read this and want a picture of me) 

The second attraction at Phimai is Sai Ngam, the oldest and largest banyan tree in Thailand. Pom, the owner of the guesthouse and a retired teacher, let me borrow a bicycle to go the 2 kilometers to see the tree. I expected to find something huge that a bunch of people wouldn't be able to link arms around. As it turns out, the banyan tree of Sai Ngam is one of those trees that looks like lots of little trees, but they all come from the same root system. So you get to technically walk "into" the tree, which looks like a forest, and there are lots of streamers tied around various bits, and flags draped over the whole thing, and a shrine complete with incense and the picture of a queen who visited the tree back in the early 1900s. It was very peaceful to walk through, but didn't take much time to see/appreciate. Afterward, having seen just about everything Phimai had to offer, I went back to the guesthouse, looked for more things that would be easy to see in NE Thailand, did some calculations about ease of travel, time, and cost, and made the decision to go straight to Chiang Mai the next day. Farewell to the Northeast. A beautiful, if shortened, experience. 

The entrance--good thing I've been practicing reading Thai letters! 

Next to the shrine

Concrete support for some parts of the tree

Koh Chang

I'll admit, I wasn't quite sure where to go first for my holiday. There's just so much to choose from. I planned on going to Chiang Mai, but changed plans when the school asked me to do the two weeks of activity days. So, after going to Ayutthaya last Friday to take care of my immigration 90-day check-in, I went to Bangkok to meet up with Rachael, as per my usual weekend routine. She'd decided to go to her favorite resort Koh Chang this week, and let me tag along.

We took the night bus on Monday, which saved beach time, but wasn't easy to sleep on. Apparently the bus was faster than normal, because we got to the bus station closest to the island at 5 am instead of 6. After some waiting around (and dozing), we got a sorng-taew to the ferry, the hour-long ferry to the island, and a 45-minute sorng-taew to Nature Resort on Lonely Beach.

It was . . . beautiful. There's no other way to describe it. The water was clear and perfect, and when I went swimming in the morning once, I practically had the beach to myself--little fish swam around my legs, trying to decide if I might be something huge and tasty, but were shy enough not to give me the same kind of trouble as I got from the fish at Erawan Falls. I spent a lot of the week reading and drinking fruit smoothies in the shade. I didn't really feel any pressing need to go trekking or sightseeing or any of the normal island activities. It was a little too easy to just stay put. The accommodation was cheap, the staff were kind, air conditioning was rendered completely unnecessary by sea breezes, butterflies were everywhere around the bungalows, and the whole place was just . . . beautiful. Relaxing. A perfect, easy-going first week to my travels.

Here's the resort, looking back through the restaurant/bar area toward reception, and looking toward the beach:

(For those who are curious, the picture at the top of the post is a half-finished milkshake from a restaurant up the road. Huge, refreshing, and delicious!)

Tomorrow, I'm off to explore the North. And the Northeast. Travel itinerary is ranging from flexible to undecided at the moment, but it will be an adventure!