Goodbye Thailand

My last few days in Thailand were really great. It turns out that I was supposed to spend one less day there than I thought and was a little late for my flight, but I'll get to that story in a minute. In this post I'll talk about visiting the Jim Thompson House, the story of my travel back, and some thoughts.

My last full day in Thailand, Eve and I decided to visit a place called the Jim Thompson House. It was built by an American architect with that name who vacationed in Thailand while with the military, and then decided to move there. He was so taken with the Thai silk that he had the idea to ship some back home and ended up building a vast fortune. He then used this fortune to build the complex which is about 8 small traditional Thai houses with an absolutely breathtaking collection of statues, paintings, furniture, and well pretty much everything associated with luxury. The tour is very enthralling to see all of this stuff and hear Jim Thompson's story. Only a fraction of the complex allows photography, so I'll get to that.

One of the houses in the complex

This is a Buddha statue from the 7th century. The arm broke off some time ago, but it used to be raised to mean "stop fighting"

Eve in front of some ceramic wall covering

a purdy flower

Me with Eve's fan in the restaurant

Jim Thompson was a man very interested in horoscopes. He had one which told him that he needed to be very careful during his 61st year. When he turned 61, he took a vacation to Malaysia and was never heard from again. That is just part of the Jim Thompson lore, I definitely recommend visiting this place if you are in Bangkok.

Well, I'll get to the exciting part now. My flight was at 7:10 in the morning on Tuesday, so I had thought. I got up that day and checked my flight itinerary, and much to my surprise, the flight had been the day before. That's right, I missed my international flight by a day. This is the kind of moment where your heart stops and your life flashes before your eyes. My biggest concern was that I had to teach the next morning. Luckily, I had Eve with me. We got a cab, and Eve told him to take the express way and step on it. This was fun, the cab cruised to the airport at 140 km/hr while Eve gently slept on my shoulder.

We got to the airport, and unfortunately, none of the customer service stands were open for the airlines. We had breakfast while the sun rose. Finally the counter for Japan Air opened at 6:30 and I asked them about getting a flight. They didn't have anything direct to Seoul so I would have had to book two flights with them. I checked at the Thai airways counter, my airline, which opened at 6:45, and it actually turned out to be no problem at all to get me on another flight. They put me on a flight leaving at 10 in the morning getting to Incheon at about 8:45, no extra charge, no hassle.

The terminals at the Bangkok airport were shaped like the inside of a giant airplane wing

The rest of the travel from there is kind of a blur. I made it to Incheon fine, but the last bus to Seosan left at 6:30 that evening, so I caught a bus to Seoul. I got to Seoul at about 9:45, and it turned out the last bus left at 9:15, and I would have to wait until 6 the next morning. With this time to kill, I spent about three hours in a PC room, about an hour in a Burger King, and then I went to the bus station to sit and wait.

I did get a few hours of sleep at the bus station, and some on the bus, but my combined sleep for those two nights was about 6 hours. I arrived in Seosan at 7:40 with my first class being at 9:40. I was fine teaching in the morning but later in the afternoon I was super drowsy. I would be reading to the students out of a text book and nod off in between sentences. They made fun of me but I got over it. As for recovery from this I slept from 8pm to 8am that night.

Overall, I can pretty safely say that this trip to Bangkok was my favorite vacation I've been on. Meeting Eve was the best part. When we met there was this instant connection and we spent pretty much all of our time together when she wasn't working. She works at a traditional Thai dancing theater, called the Siam Niramit show. I didn't get a chance to see it but it looks pretty good. Leaving her was tough, but I'm going to try to bring her to Korea for a while.

A cutout at the movie theater at MBK

Some tasteful graffiti in Bangkok

This last photo is a good image for how I view Bangkok. I feel like this city is like New York City but on crack. NYC at least has some square streets and all the taxis have meters, but Bangkok is all just so unpredictable. In a way I think that Bangkok is just an airport and a temple surrounded by gift shops. So much of this city just depends on the tourists for their money and so many of them just want to scam tourists that it makes it very hard to trust anybody, but very easy to buy a whole bunch of souvenirs.

I did get to try two new forms of transportation. One, I rode in a tuk-tuk, which was super fun. I also rode on the back of small motorbike with a total of three people on it. That wasn't my favorite experience ever, but it was quick and cheap. I might have peed myself a little.

It was this vacation that I started to really feel like a world traveler. I realized this when I looked in my wallet and had currency from three different nations, and none of them were the USA. For the record one of the bills was from Rwanda, and it doesn't really make sense to still have that in my wallet.

Good trip though, good trip.

One Night In Bangkok

I wanted to save a title as deliciously cliche as this one for the right post. I'll tell you right now, this is the right post. Actually, this post is very PG-13 rated, so you know, put the kids to bed or whatever.

You might as well click the play button

One night in Bangkok, Eve and I were thinking of what to do. She brought up Patpong, known infamously to travelers and residents as the dirty spot of Bangkok. Since Bangkok is known somewhat as a dirty city, you can only image what the dirty spot would be like. One of the claims to fame in Patpong is the "ping pong ball trick." Let's just say that ping pong balls are fired out of an orifice. I went ahead and said "OK, I don't see why not." I had read about this area and was curious.

We got there after the cab ride to see all of the bright lights and people. The main street seemed to be all bars with bright neon lights and then market stands in the center.

A real creative name

You can get about anything you want

As soon as we exited the cab, a man came and said something like "blah blah blah, ping pong ball trick." We were like "OK," and we followed the guy to this shady looking upstairs go go bar.

Upstairs was just a club, with a bar to the left and a stage to the right and tables along the wall. Eve and I sat down, ordered some drinks, and were on our way to enjoying the show. Now, by enjoying the show I mean barely being able to look because these are women who had seen much better days and nobody would pay to see them. They danced for a while, a few girls came to us and asked for me to buy them drinks. I said OK a couple of times.

Anyway, they finally get to the ping pong ball trick. We are sitting there, and this lady lays on her side on the stage. I could hear a distinct "pop" and bam, a ping pong ball comes flying at me. I literally had to use an empty cup from the table to deflect these balls away like a lightsaber reflecting the laser blasts. Many were headed toward my face. I caught one in the cup.

Finally, this whole ordeal was over, and another woman came to the table and slapped this bill down on the table. It read:

Drinks: 1600 baht

Looking fee: 2000 baht

And there we were, stuck with a 3600 baht bill. Now I literally started to panic. I rifled through my pockets looking for money, knowing I only had about 2000 baht and some change. I thought I was going to spend some time in Bangkok prison. They said "just get out what you have" and I did. Eve started yelling at them, and the second she mentioned calling the police on them (this was all in Thai) they stuffed the bill into their pocket, grabbed the money, and shuffled us out of the bar. That was that. What they were doing was illegal and the mention of the police frightened them pretty badly, so they were very happy for what money they got out of me.

So basically I learned a nice expensive lesson. Never go to the ping pong ball trick in Bangkok. Or at least go to one with a cover charge so you know what you have to pay up front.

Just to break the seriousness, here's a nice mascot I saw in Patpong:

"I'm a pretty little octopus, aren't I?"

A Day at the Palace

One of the Bangkok tourist attractions I knew I wanted to see was The Grand Palace. It is basically this giant complex of these elaborately decorated buildings, monuments, and statues that used to house the king of Thailand. I decided to see this on my first full day in Bangkok. Lucky for me, I had a personal tour guide I had met the night before, Eve. She was very nice to show me around the place and could give good answers to my stupid questions because she is a Buddhist and had been there a bunch of times.

This post is mostly pictures, so enjoy.

A walkway leading to the Palace

Some statue that I thought was cool, but can't remember who it is. The background shows some of the amazing decor of the Palace.

This is a statue believed to have healing power.

Just showing the real solid gold tiles

This is a replica of Ayuthaya. Looks like a nice place.

I just love this photo of the columns

Here was a giant painted wall mural

I posed for a pic with a royal guard. I think I make him look like a little girl.

This statue was carved out of stone with a ball inside the mouth that rolls around. really amazing work.

The Vimanmek Palace

A little accident I had with my iced coffee at the Vimanmek Palace coffee shop when I was trying to put the lid on it.

My ticket to the Grand Palace also got me into this place called the Vimanmek Palace, which I was somewhat more impressed with than the Grand Palace. The Vimanmek houses all of these gifts what were given to the king and the queen, so it was basically filled with golden boats, thrones, etc. which were also covered in diamonds and small pieces of beetle wing. I know that sounds weird, but the beetle wings had this very vibrant green color. I was hoping they would sell some beetle wings at the gift shop, but they didn't. Unfortunately, this place did not allow photography.

My favorite part of all of the exhibits at the Palace was that they listed the time and number of artisans it took to create each piece. For example, this one giant (approximately) 8' x 10' wood carving with elaborate flowers and animals and people said that it took a year and a half and about 50 artisans to create. Some of the items took up to two year/200 artisans. You could say they really like the King.

The Road to Thailand

Well, now I'm back, (almost) readjusted to Korea time again, and ready to blog. I plan to write four or five posts about my trip in the rest of this week, so stay tuned.

My travel was again pleasant, as I had hoped it would be. For me, travel is such a strange thing, it's like purgatory. We can be traveling half-way around the world, but are trapped the entire time in a tiny box. A tiny area to wait for the plane, a small airplane seat (especially when you're 6'4''), and a bathroom that can make one easily feel claustrophobic. But, awaiting for us often times is an unknown distant tropical paradise, heaven.

One good thing about my travel was that we had a small layover, and I took the time to make some new friends. I met two other English teachers, Paco and Travis, who live in Busan, Korea. It ended up that we were staying in hotels about a block away from each other, so we decided to split a taxi, check-in, and hit a club or two afterwards as a group. They only had one night in Bangkok as there were headed to Phuket, so they didn't mind me tagging along for the night.

The travel was going well until we got to the taxi queue at the airport. We went to a sign that said metered taxi, knowing it is important to do this to not get overcharged. We got a station wagon taxi, and jumped in with our backpacks. When we got in, we told him Khaosan road, where we were staying, and were off. Then, Travis noticed there was no meter in the taxi. He said "meter? meter taxi?" and the driver pulls over. He told us "Khaosan road, 450 baht." We finally said OK, just get us there. Even getting ripped off, we paid 150 baht apiece for the 45 minute ride, which is about $5.

After, we managed to find our hotels, and hit a few bars and clubs for some beer. I ended up meeting a girl named Eve who would later serve as my good friend and tour guide of Bangkok. More about her later.

Anyway, now for some photos....

This is Khaosan Road. Littered with foreigners, shops, and pretty much anything you can think of.

A small troupe of break dancing boys on Khaosan. They were really good.

These two children were at their parent's T-shirt shop. Cutest kids ever.

Some street food. On the left is coconut curry, which ended up being one of my favorite meals ever.

One meal I was eating and a woman came up to me. She had a sign that said "Deaf, I sell these to pay for living. 1 - 30 baht, 2 - 50 baht" or something close to this. I thought I could use one of these little keychain trinkets she was selling, so I went ahead and bought one. I pulled out the money in my pocket, and realized I only had 1000 baht bills. I looked at her and shrugged, and with a determined look, she nodded, grabbed the bill, set her stuff down and ran away. I thought, OK, there goes my money. She was very honest, though, she just left, made change, and came right back. I decided to get a picture with her.

On my last full day I decided to get a Thai massage. The picture above generally describes what you get. It's a lot of punching, beating, and getting walked on, but I felt a lot better afterwards. And, its only 200 baht ($6 per hour).

I got a photo with my masseuse, Walissa. She is standing on a stool.

I wanted to put in these cute little kitties who sleep outside one of the doors of my hotel.

Well, don't worry, tons more to come. Tomorrow I'll show the Grand Palace and Vimanmek Mansion.