This Blog is a Pipe Bomb

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

"Wat" we've been up to...

Hello from Nakhon Si Thammarat! I'm currently in the back of a gaming internet cafe in Southern Thailand. School just got out so the place is packed with kids playing Starcraft, Fifa, and some other kind of fantasy fighting games I don't recognize. There's a pungent smell coming in from food cooking on the street and from the adolescent boys around me. It's the perfect locale to update you on our recent adventures.

Maia and I just got in this morning and checked into the monolithic and notably empty Thai Hotel on Nakhon's main drag. The hotel's a concrete ghost town with a weird flea market on the 3rd floor (we discovered when the elevator stopped and opened up there), but it's very comfortable primarily because it's the first place we've had with air conditioning in the last 5 days and Thailand is freaking humid. The town itself is much livelier, and as an added bonus, we seem to be pretty much the only westerners around. People like to shout "hello!" to us and when we say "hi" back they laugh. As Maia put it, since we're here to ogle them, their culture and country, it seems only right to just allow and enjoy the reciprocal ogling. Ogle on, Thailand.

Wat Phramahathat Woramaha Wihan. Asking for directions was a mouthful. But worth it.

We spent the steamy afternoon checking out the town's big attraction...surprise, surprise...a wat! What's a wat? Glad you asked! A wat's a temple and they're strewn all over the place here. However, Nakhon's wat WAS particularly nice. Lots of gold buddha statues hanging out in different positions (standing, reclining, fat), incense burning everywhere, a staircase to nowhere, a big gong bell you can ring. I don't know anything about Buddhism.

Maia kayaking in Angthong Marine Park. We won the race around a small island against some Germans and Australians. We also saw a HUGE jellyfish en route.

In the last few days since the last post and before we arrived here in Nakhon, Maia and I were enjoying the island life on Ko Tao and Ko Phangan in Thailand's southern gulf. Both islands lay along main arteries of the Backpacker Path (a.k.a. Gringo Trail), but both were really beautiful and we managed to find some quiet spots in which to avoid the drunk Australians. We did a one day snorkeling tour around Ko Tao, which was incredible, rented mopeds on Ko Phangan to explore the island on our own, and also did a speedboat day trip off of Ko Phangan to see Angthong Marine Park, where they filmed The Beach (y'know...the one with Leo DiCaprio running around looking for Nirvana or drugs or something...I didn't actually ever see it). Maia got a traditional Thai massage and I sampled some different tropical cocktails. We had breakfast by the beach every morning. We're both much tanner. Yes, I'm trying to make you jealous.

From here on out, however, we're expecting to leave the relative ease of traveling in Thailand behind and get into the nitty gritty of Malaysia. On the horizon are some good birding locations that may require some adruous jungle trekking, colonial towns, shadow puppet shows, and an increasingly impenetrable language barrier.

Okay. The internet speed here has been great (thanks, gamers!), but I think we're going to go seek out some dinner at the night market. Adios!

Breakfast by the beach: coffee, fresh-squeezed juice, eggs, and toast. Ahhhh!

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Day 1 Highlights: Lumpini Park and Food Poisoning

We spent our first full day in SE Asia in Bangkok yesterday, adjusting to the climate, time zone, culture, and food. Ah, the food. It was either the ice in my morning iced coffee (which may or may not have been frozen from drinkable water) or the crab/pork/shrimp noodle thing I ate for lunch at the food court in the Siam Paragon, but by about 5:00pm I was barfing in my hotel room. I actually feel pretty good about it; I thought I handled it like a pro. A few sweaty, uncomfortable skirmishes with my head over the toilet bowl and then I promptly fell asleep and woke up around 1:00 in the morning feeling 100% better. Diet-wise, today, I'm taking it much slower, like the doctor recommended, just eating little bits of new things instead of devouring entire plates of food I'm not sure of. I'm also looking out for ice, although it's so hot here that iced beverages are super tempting.

Because the sweltering humidity wasn't making me sweat enough.

Travel travails aside, Bangkok was actually really fun. We mostly wandered around and absorbed the architecture and incredible bustle of the streets, taking various forms of transportation to see the city from different angles and at different speeds. We took a fast tuk tuk through Chinatown, the SkyTrain (an elevated tram) through downtown, and a longboat up the river the length of Old Bangkok. We saw the Jim Thompson house, which is an expat residence and silk production center turned museum, and visited a couple of air-conditioned megamalls, but the real highlight was spending the morning in Lumpini Park. Lumpini is in central Bangkok, surrounded by towering, half-finished skyscrapers, but it is surprisingly calm and was full of wildlife. As we walked a loop around the park, over a floating island, past tai chi classes, and through an outdoor gym, Maia and I saw about six new, cool bird species, snakes wrapped around tree trunks, and giant water lizards things swimming in the ponds. Check out the pictures on Maia's blog, since she got the better shots with her awesome new camera. We also had some fun trying out the outdoor exercise equipment including a Tony Little syle swinging walker thing.

Pumping iron in Lumpini Park.

Today, we took a train out of Bangkok and are cooling our heels in a little bar in Chumpon, waiting to catch the overnight ferry to Ko Tao, and island were we hope to do some snorkelling, hiking, and beach-sitting. Will report more when we arrive there!

Maia under a big silk thing at the Jim Thompson House, Bangkok.

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Arrival at Khao San Road

After a marathon 18-hour flight on Korean Air, we arrived last night, tired and bleary, but excited to be in Southeast Asia. We took a taxi through a sprawling, pretty nighttime Bangkok to Khao San Road where we checked ourselves into a cheap hostel and then headed right back out to the street for a short stroll to take it all in. Khao San is pretty much just how I remember it from 2006. There are food carts, vendors of distasteful t-shirts and cheap merch, bars, clubs, 7-elevens, and tattoo parlors lining the street and spilling off the sidewalks. Lots of westerners wander around whooping it up. If any change has occurred, however, I would say that Khao San has become just a tetch more upscale. A lot of the businesses appear to be thriving and they've upgraded their storefronts. Restaurants are more colorful and sleek than I remember them. Maybe it's a trick of memory though; this place is still just a lovable little skeazball.

We don't have much else to report as of yet. We're going to spend the day in Bangkok getting our bearings and maybe seeing a few temples or the zoo or something, but then we plan to book a bus for the South. Half the reason for this internet cafe visit this morning is to figure out the name of the next destination.

Check back later for pictures, videos, and more news!

Monday, July 02, 2012

Asia, here we come!

We're leaving today on a plane from LAX to Bangkok via Seoul. The trip is six weeks and we'll be making our way down the Malay peninsula and through Indonesia to the tip of Bali before catching a quick flight back to Bangkok and back home in mid-August. We've packed super-light and have no itinerary to speak of, so we'll just go with the flow from here on out.

It's summertime, so the blog is back up and running. Pictures and stories to come!