This Land is Your Land, This Land is Thailand

I’ll be honest, I have no idea how to write an interesting blog about my tour of Thailand. Twelve days is enough time to see a lot of really cool things, have some memorable experiences, catch up with old friends, and spend more time than is seemly on a bus, but in terms of the culture and people of Thailand… well, I was a tourist. I tried here and there, but in the end I wanted to eat good food, see some wats, tramp around in the jungle, and enjoy being away from my home in Daejeon for awhile. So congratulations, internet, you’re getting a travel retrospective, lots of little stories about stuff I saw and did, and very little about the country itself. I’m sure it’s the first post like this you’ve ever seen, too! I’ll try to make it as amusingly sarcastic as I can, just for you. Ready? Here we go!

I flew into Bangkok on the night of August 5th and immediately realized that I had not planned anything as well as I thought. My flight got in an hour late. Zach was scheduled to meet me at the airport at a specific time (he’d arrived the day before), and I was late. So I was worried about that. I should’ve been more worried that we never specified a place to meet in the airport. So I spent a good half hour in the Immigration Control line trying to remember just what the hell the name of our guest house was in case I needed to find it alone. Somehow, we found each other in the massive antechamber of the airport (by following the signs that said ‘meeting point’). So that was good.

What can I say about Bangkok? It’s sprawling – unlike places like Seoul or London there really aren’t any central “go here” areas. It’s a city to explore at your leisure and find things that suit you. We found JJ Market, supposedly the largest open air market in the world. We also found Khao San, the neon-colored hyperactive backpacker district, shopping centers that outstrip the Korean ones for sheer insanity, and the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, where we stumbled upon this:

Art!

In JJ Market I experienced Thai massage. This was actually my first massage of any kind, much less a foot massage. Let me be clear: I have extraordinarily ticklish feet. For the first five to ten minutes I was holding back anything ranging from laughter to vomit to face-kicking. I would imagine it looked something like this:

Which is far preferable, of course, to this:

Luckily, we got the massages just in time, as we had long bus rides ahead of us that night. Nick was headed back to his site (he labors for the Peace Corps, bless his soul), while Zach and I were to board an all-night bus from Bangkok to the smaller, more rustic, hippie-populated town of Chiang Mai. In case you’re wondering how far that is, here you go:

This is the Indiana Jones route. The bus’s way was considerably curvier.

This first night bus ride was very pleasant compared to our second (don’t worry, I’ll get to that later). Thanks to my uncanny ability to hold back the natural reaction to someone touching the bottoms of my feet for an extended period of time, my legs weren’t stiff as I dozed on the bus. Anyway, we arrived in Chiang Mai and promptly went to sleep. Then we woke up and explored the streets of the town center, which may hold the most ridiculous density of temples ever. One side of the street was restaurants, the other side was temples. Thai wats, like the temples in Korea, are really cool the first few times you see them. Then after you see twenty or thirty they all start to blend together. Wats are certainly more spectacular, all red and gold with dragons and hydras and pagodas shaped vaguely like those weird little meringue cookies.

   Same same… but different.

We spent only one night in Chiang Mai. I wish we could’ve spent more time there as I’d heard a lot of great things about the city prior to visiting, but we had to get to Pai. This journey is just about the most nauseating thing I’ve ever done aside from that time I squashed dog shit with my foot and then inhaled the smell when I was four.

Yeah, that looks about right.

Pai, for the uninitiated, is a strange little mountain town somewhere close to Chiang Mai. The map claims north, but the road is so twisty that I doubt anyone has ever made the journey and had the sense of direction to figure out where the hell Pai actually is. Most likely someone just gestured vaguely in a random direction and said, “I think Chiang Mai is over there somewhere.”  The thing about Pai is that, while it has many of the things you would expect from a mountain town (an open-air market with fresh produce, meats, and fish, small hole-in-the-wall restaurants and bars), it also has about seven thousand guest houses and almost everyone seems to speak English. Even outside of Pai you’ll find little villages with resorts and restaurants and such tucked inside them. It’s like its own little world stocked with everything a tourist could want, and it seemed that at least a third of the town’s population was a rotating roster of backpackers.

In any case, being tourists, we fit right in. Zach and I rented motorbikes, christening them Brandine (Zach’s) and Red Rocket (mine), and tore ass around the idyllic mountain scenery as The Wolverines, the awesomest and probably only two-man scooter gang this side of Chiang Mai (whichever side of Chiang Mai we might have actually been on).

Aw scoot scoot muthaf&%ckah, aww scoot scoot goddamn! (Goddamn!)

We saw waterfalls, a canyon, some elephants, and floated in some hot springs despite the fact that it was already pretty hot outside (although, my co-workers were shocked to learn, not as hot as Korea is right now). It was, obviously, a beautiful, awesome, and exciting adventure. Only three things went wrong. The first was that it kept raining, but of course it’s rainy season so we couldn’t complain too much. Instead, we just resigned ourselves to being damp and uncomfortable during our outdoor explorations (not to mention risking life and limb to travel in the rain). Second, we kept getting lost thanks to a less-than-stellar map that was supposed to be scoot-friendly.

“Jake, just because there aren’t any cows on the map doesn’t mean we’re in the wrong place.”

Third, I ran out of money. Okay, I didn’t exactly run out of money. I still had plenty in my Korean account. But I had brought enough cash to get me through nearly a week, thinking I would be able to draw more from an ATM or bank with either my US card or my Korean one. But I underestimated the screwiness of international finances. I suppose I should’ve seen it coming, given the amount of time I’ve spent in Korea sitting in various banks trying to convince people that it is not, in fact, illegal to allow me to send my own money home over the internet. But anyways, luckily Zach looked ahead and brought too much money, and that’s how I wound up with a sugar daddy for the final leg of our trip.

After we finished in Pai we boarded another minivan (thanks for the ticket, Zach!) and went back down the impossibly twisty road to Chiang Mai, where we boarded what shall henceforth be referred to as the Devil Bus. Our destination was Koh Chang, an island south of Bangkok. We sat in the very back row of the Devil Bus, the one with five seats all along the wall. I sat on the far left side, against the window, Zach sat on the far right side. In between us sat two large British men. The one sitting next to me loved the Minnesota Vikings, which, being raised in Wisconsin and a lifelong Packer fan, did not make anything easier for me. This is how things started:

Unfortunately, very quickly British Guys 1 and 2 realized that they could share that lovely empty space rather than having to sit next to each other. British Guy 2 also insisted on sleeping, for most of the duration of the ride, curled up in a fetal position taking up a full two and a half seats, which looked more like this:

I tried using my considerably broad shoulders to force British Guy 2 to move, but that resulted in being just as cramped while risking this snoring fetal Favre-loving Brit falling directly into my lap. So instead I tried using my ass to push him a little bit in the direction of his second empty seat, thus facing towards the window. When I somehow managed to fall asleep in this position, I awoke to a startling discover: the wall of the Devil Bus next to the window was decorated with sharp metal pokey things, which I guess are all the rage in vehicular interiors these days. I would fall asleep until we hit a bump, then awake with a sharp stabbing sensation in my face.

“Shh, just go back to sleep. Everything will be okay in the morning…”

When we finally arrived back in Bangkok, it was time for another minivan ride. Four more hours of jostling and leg cramps later, we arrived at the truly spectacular island of Koh Chang, a place where people as pale as me really have no business frolicking.

Around here our journey just about ended. We met up with Nick and few of his fellow Peace Corps people, relaxed on the beach, ate food, drank cocktails, and saw some random cows. And lots and lots of banana hammocks and thong-kinis (seriously, I thought that only happened in the movies). After a couple of nights here, Zach, Nick, and I all headed back to Bangkok, where we gathered for one last picture before Nick headed home. Zach and I tried to have an adventure in our last night together in Thailand, but we were both too exhausted from all the exploring, adventuring, scooting, Devil Bus riding, and beach relaxing to make a go of it. And that’s the story of my trip to Thailand, edited for public consumption.

‘Til next time, dear readers.

I have no excuse for myself.

Summer: Truly the Most Horrifying Time of Year

I know, I know. I more or less promised that I wouldn’t write another post until I got back from Thailand. But you know what? Shut up, that’s what. Because I’ve got something to relate to you. You might remember my mild complaint in my last post about the stifling summertime heat and humidity here in South Korea. After a trip with some friends to Everland (Korean Disneyland, basically) on Sunday I think I can safely say that I undersold the extremity of the situation. I spent five hours outside on Sunday, during which the sun was going and yet I was somehow getting progressively more miserable. If you’ll allow, I will once again make use of my superior artistic abilities to elaborate.

Hour 1: Sweating profusely, but not feeling faint. Adrenaline from roller coasters still managing to help me ignore the bulk of the available misery.

Hour 2: The heat begins to affect my Everland experience ever-so-slightly. Pools of sweat form in spots where I stand for more than thirty seconds. However, a few brief stopovers in air-conditioned areas do a bit to help alleviate the problem.

Hour 3: The sun begins to set, giving the sky a lovely hue known as “Seoul Twilight Smog”. This successfully convinces my body that it might get cooler soon. As a result of that instinct - as well as what is at this point mildly severe dehydration - the sweat begins to slow.

After taking a few swigs of water and trying to walk up a lengthy incline, my body realizes that it has been fooled into thinking it might not be so hot outside anymore, and immediately overcompensates with a sweat frenzy. The Korean Herald’s headline the next day would read: “Sweaty American Drowns Everland, Writes Insensitive Blog on the Subject.”

Most people are familiar with the phrase, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Well, according to my fragile Northern Midwest body temperature regulations, it’s both. Ninety degrees Fahrenheit is hot, and it shouldn’t be foggy out when it’s that hot. And you’d think that it might get cooler when the sun went down, but you’d be wrong. And that line of thinking will get you drowned at Everland.

But as much as I hate the heat, there are creatures in Korea who love it. They love it so, so much, that they sing about it every day. They’re singing about how much they love right now, as a matter of fact. I can hear them. Sometimes, they sing so loudly that if you’re trying to talk to your friend, you have to shout to be heard. They look like this:

Hello! Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it? LALALALALALA.

That would be a Korean cicada. Now, the ones we have in America are pretty big. Not be outdone, though, Korea went and made them bigger. That picture up there, that’s life-sized, more or less. I have seen them, I have heard them, and I am terrified of them. But not as terrified as I am of what I can only assume to be only creature that actually wants to eat that thing.

We interrupt this blog with a special message from your nightmares.

Yup, that’s an Asian Giant Hornet. Before coming to Korea, I had believed this thing to be referred to as the Japanese Giant Hornet. Had I known it was also available to make you shit your pants in Korea, I would have thought much harder about moving here. But wait, it gets worse. How? Well, imagine looking out for giant cicadas falling from trees and dodging massive hornets as you make your way home through ‘air’ that can be better described as ‘hot soup’. You arrive home, switch on your air conditioner, and proceed to do your laundry. As you look out the window of your laundry room, you notice several giant hornets buzzing about the tree right next to your building. You look a little closer and you see this:

 Oh no, you did NOT just bring my mama into this! My mama is a SAINT! A horrifying, bloodthirsty SAINT!

When I saw that, I slammed the window shut and prayed for Autumn. Most times, I love summer. The weather is warm, you can go to the beach and go swimming, sit out in the sun and read a favorite book, or go to an outdoor concert with your friends. Here in Korea, you can sweat until you pass out, at which point giant insects will feast upon your flesh. Or you can make a break for the nearest air conditioning unit and hope nothing too terrible lands on the back of your neck on the way. Once this season passes and I’m able to feasibly go outside for long periods of time again, I will be a much happier man. But ‘til then, dear readers…