visual thailand. plus some pictures of me.

Flash Slideshow

quickie wrap up

before i lose steam and this blog goes dormant again. 

january 6th. ayutthaya. hot. rode my bike around and saw all the sights. ayutthaya is a UNESCO 
heritage site and i can see why. it's a town surrounded by rivers and canals and was a major city for 
trade way back in the way back when.  

>>>>>>> aaaargh <<<<<<<<<

screw it. blogger is not word wrapping and sentences are running off the screen. plus, my eyelids are
drooping. i barely slept on the plane last night. it got into kansai at 6 this morning and now i'm at work
doing absolutely nothing. bit early to sneak off into my nap room though.

quickie wrap up to be continued.

january thailand

has passed by in a blur of hot highway air blowing in my face. we haven't stayed in one placed longer than two nights and have been spending a lot of time moving from one place to the next. can't say that i like it much but can't do anything about it because got places to go, things to see and not much time to do it in.

january 1st. we WERE going to hitchhike but it's just too hot and we're too lazy to really make the effort. three buses later we arrive at Prachuap Khiri Khan, famous for the Monkey Temple on a hill. stayed in a VERY luxurious hotel, the likes of which i hadn't seen in over a week. it had hot water and cable and three beds in the room! it was 400baht which mark thought was outrageous but i was very happily paid my 200baht half of it and basked in the glory of cable.

january 2nd. Phetchaburi. famous for cave temples. we went to one but couldn't find the other more spectacular cave temple. a shame. also had a temple on a hill with lots of semi-aggressive monkeys. one tried swiping at my ankle completely unprovoked.

january 3rd. mark and i part ways. he's off to laos and i make my way to Kanchanaburi with a pit stop at Nakhon Pathom where the tallest completed stupa in Thailand is. it's been days since i've been completely on my own and i find that i'm a total idiot. i hop on the wrong train at Nakhon Pathom but with the help of the uniformed train guys, i'm let off at the next station and herded on to the correct train. Kanchanaburi is famous for the Bridge over the River Kwai. lots of sad history. I go to the bridge my first day. make in time to see it at sunset. sit on the river bank and have a moment of reflection thinking about the thousands of men (mostly prisoners of war) who died building the bridge.

january 4th. take a little escape from Kanchaburi's war past and visit Erawan National Park, supposedly the most photographed national park in thailand. Very very beautiful seven-tiered waterfall. see picture at the bottom. I believe that picture is taken at the 3rd tier. 400baht national park admission fee was a bit steep for such a small park. but one of those suck it up and pay purchases. head back into town and visit the JEATH Museum (Japan, England, America, Thailand, Holland the nations involved in building the death railway). it's an open air museum made of thatched hut where the prisoners of war slowly died from brutality, lack of food and medicine.

january 5th. visit the Thai-Burma Railway Museum. very well done. more sad stuff. head to Ayutthaya. four hour very slow bus trip on ordinary buses not a/c buses as i had thought.

>>>>> to be continued. internet time over and i desperately need to pee <<<<<<

an e-mail from Mama Su

Hi Christine. Where do you stay now? tell me please. Bera want to know. andBera talk about you every day Bera think of you to much(me too) we thinkyou enjoye in Sichon and remember big party night and small party inmidnigth. we are think of you to much . Bera think of you to much too enjoyyour thrip in Thailand. Sawaddee. Bera. Su Bow.

thailand. ayutthaya.

is slowly killing me. allergies! in winter! ricockulous. ayutthaya reminds me of kyoto. tripping over temples, sneezing like crazy because of all the greenery. beautiful yet slow torture.

and since i'm in super cheap internet (15baht an hour, sweet!), i'm going to try my best and catch up on all the updating because i know i sure as hell am not going to do it when i get back.

december 29th - january 1st. beach. Sichon Beach, southeastern coast thailand. i finally got the cheap, deserted beach i was dreaming about. no foreigners at all whatsoever. Sichon Beach is a small community where a lot of Thais go for day trips and whatnot. And because it was new year's, there were a lot of them there partying.

december 29th. after getting lost, through no fault of our own, i might add--we (Mark, the dude i met in the jungle) asked the locals "Sichon Beach?" and they pointed us with their vague points down the road. we ended up walking for about two hours i think. well, anyway, it felt like it. everyone gawked (not everyday they see foreigners walking about town looking hot and sweaty and lost with their big backpacks) but no one was helpful. except for one old man who let us hitch a ride on his motorcycle thing with a side car attached.

aside: My theory is that you have to ask at least two thais for directions. they're incapable of saying "go straight, turn left, turn right . . ." they just vaguely point ahead of them, so they point you in the general direction you need to go but if you need to turn somewhere you're fucked. so you have to ask another thai to turn you.

anyhoo, we arrive at the bungalows. there're six small thatched bungalows right on the beach. 200baht a night (kinda steep if you ask me, but it's a thai vacation spot so what can you do) which we split which was good. we just had a chilled evening and went to the restaurant--which we christened The Ladyboy after the androgenous server working there and went to bed.

december 30th. very exciting day! we walked into town and walked back and i did laundry. good stuff.

no, but Mama Su and Bow (the owners of the bungalow) invited us to the village new year's eve party. despite our confusion ("uh . . . isn't TOMORROW new year's eve?") we go and have a blast. it's party, thai style. the whole village is out gorging themselves under a gigantic tent and there's a big stage set up in the middle where people are doing karaoke complete with ENORMOUS speakers blasting thai pop into the next town. unfortunately, we were sitting about 50 feet from the speakers. i cut out early and dragged mark with me before my ears started to bleed.

we met some cool people at the party though. Bera, Nok, guy in a white shirt whose name i can't remember, and a kid who was smoking and drinking who i thought was surely too young to be smoking and drinking (Youngin' , we'll call him).

december 31st. the sun finally came out (the previous couple of days it was overcast and vaguely windy) so spent some time baking my skin. in the evening, we head over to the Ladyboy for some din din and are picked up by Youngin and promptly dropped off at a small hut where some of the guys we met the night before are drinking and karaokeing (namely, bera and nok). they serve us some food and beer (score! love free stuff). the food was pig innards--liver, heart valve, lung and some other stuff i couldn't name--boiled that you dip in this sour spicy stuff. it was amazing. probably the best thing i've had in thailand.

so we're counting down and drinking and making merry. nok is totally ruling karaoke complete with dancing and sunglasses (even though, you know, it's 9 o'clock at night), Youngin' is continually toasting me--which i've come to learn is a way that thai guys show that they're interested. at one point he gestures to me to chug all my beer down and we'd race. all right, fine. this was made very easy by the fact that thais put ice in their beer. goes down quick. i win the beer race and finally work up the nerve to ask Bera how old Youngin' is. He says (after a little thinking) "15." Jesus. like i just drink raced one of my students. he's the same age as my sister!

during all this, Bera is chatting me up. or attempting to. his english was very limited. also, with karaoke speakers behind us, it's hard to hear. it starts innocently enough, where are you from? are you happy? and then it progresses to, is mark your boyfriend? do you sleep in the same bungalow? i would be happier if you didn't. and finally to, stay longer! mark can leave, but you stay! and there were many more gestures i couldn't really begin to understand. like a wedding ring gesture and bringing together his two forefingers toghether gesture. yeesh! had only been sitting next to the guy for a few hours. and i recall that he had introduced me to his "friend" the day before who had looked pretty comfortable with his two kids (he's separated from his wife). i bring her up "Um. Dao?" he looks irritated that i'd remember/mention her and insists that she's just a friend. Riiiight. by this point he's got his arm around me and is laying kisses on me. but not wanting to step into Dao's territory, i don't encourage him TOO much. but i couldn't resist really. he had long eyelashes. i'm a sucker for long eyelashes. we count down to midnight and mark and i make a quick escape back to the bungalow despite Bera's protestations. he followed us back to our place insisting that i ride on the motorcycle. i firmly told him no and we made it back safe to the bungalow.

Sichon had gotten too comfortable with me I felt and i was ready to go on to the next city even though mark wanted to stay because everyone was cool and loved to party. I told him I didn't need the drama; he accused me of creating the drama. (shrug.) maybe i did. maybe drama just follows.

january 1st. we get the fuck out of sichon with bera as entourage. he insisted in seeing us off and looked sad at the bus station.

>>>>>>> whew. jesus. i need to take a break <<<<<<<

i'm too distracted by the need to take a massive dump so no thailand update today. a shame too, i finally found cheap internet. no cheap internets near my "hotel."

gonna go poo.

thailand. take two.

december 24th. left the foreigner-girlie-bar-beach-jungle of Patong Beach, Phuket and headed for Khao Sok National Park. Very nearly running out of money (I had exchanged about 65,000Yen and was down to the last bit of it), I started getting smart about transportation and bungalows. Taking local whenever possible and haggling the bungalows. I made it to the jungle and found some bungalows and haggled them down to 100Baht a night (about $2.50/300Yen). Very sweet.

december 25th. jungle. went on a lake tour which included taking a long tail boat across this ginormous and beautiful lake (serves as a watershed for south thailand) and caving. god i love caves. met a cool guy from Alaska, Mark. we had good rapport throughout trekking about the woods.

december 26th. jungle. rode an elephant and met a very talkative guy from Singapore. his name eludes me. two syllables. Zhi Hou? Anyhoo, he was fun. went on a date with a jungle man who had started crushing on me the 24th and i liked him too. Ja, his name. he was sweet and oddly nervous about time "What time are you going to the bar? What time do you want to meet your friend?" where most Thais in the jungle couldn't even keep track of what day it was. Ja took me to listen to him and his band play. he was the drummer.

as an aside, I think i should add, i was wildly popular in the jungle. I had at least five guys interested in me. I could have had my pick of any one of them to sleep with. It was amazing. Thai people think I'm hot. It's kind of funny.

december 27th. i go to the small tattoo hut to get my tattoo. i had an appointment for the 27th because tattoo dude said that he was going on the jungle tour on the 26th and wouldn't be around. i go to hut only to find that he's preparing to LEAVE for jungle tour. "Uh. Tattoo?" I inquire. he slaps his palm to his forehead. convinces me to come with him and two tourists on the jungle tour (overnight) and that he'd do my tattoo the next day. swear. these jungle men. smoke too many joints.

i let myself get talked into the tour even though i shouldn't have because it cost 2,000Baht that I didn't really have. went jungle touring which was awesome. walked through jungle, scaled rock walls, swam in waterfall pools, looked at freaking AMAZING waterfalls, camped at the top of the waterfall. ate food cooked in bamboo and ate off bamboo plates. slept in hammocks. froze my ass off. even though Ja had helped me pack and knowing that i got cold at night, insisted that i take two blankets. i think i needed about four. and socks probably would have helped.

december 28th. come back from the wilds of the jungle. got tattoo (ankle. thai style using two needles tied to an end of a bamboo). go to a wedding reception with Ja. it was awesome-- girls in lame in a big stage in front, huge (and I mean HUGE tent) with dozens of tables under it filled with people pigging out. there's no way the couple knew all those people. but i guess the more people come, the more popular you look.

later that evening . . .have a fight with Ja in the bar in front of the guys i was playing cards with. he had gotten totally wasted and got into a motorcycle accident. scraped his arm and got himself a limp. i wasn't happy that he hurt himself. and he was drunkenly making a fool of himself trying to get my attention by playing with the fire throwers and nearly setting himself on fire. didn't need the unnecessary drama. decided it was time to leave the jungle.

december 29th. head for beach with Mark, the dude i had the good rapport with from the lake tour.

>>>> tired of typing. more later<<<<<