Two Chopsticks in Thailand: Week One

At the end of our adventure in China, we decided to take a 3 week vacation to Thailand before heading home. We had to jump through a couple of hoops and endure some awkwardness with our boss/school (more on that in a future post) to get our visas prepared for that, but it was totally worth it. So, we packed our bags, said goodbye to Cangzhou and our friends there (which was very difficult and sad), took a train to Beijing, and flew off to Bangkok. To keep in touch while in Thailand, we only brought our little iPod touch, which worked perfectly to write emails to our family members and take little notes about what we did each day. Below are our daily journal entries, with some pictures and hindsight added in.

February 19

First lesson learned: never take 4 huge bags and a backpack on a subway again. Also, the train to Beijing was 1.5 hours late. But it all worked out in the end. Literally, our muscles were totally worn out from carrying luggage.

The train from Cangzhou to Beijing. Fortunately, most of the passengers had gotten off before we got on. We had to take the slow train to fit our luggage, so it was a 3 hour ride.

We dropped off our luggage at the Latimers' (some very gracious church members who live in Beijing - they let us store our 3 big suit cases in their apartment while we went to Thailand). Then we ate at Fat Burger and headed to the airport where our flight was delayed, but that's okay.

Highlight of the day: in one of our transfers on the Beijing subway (think: lots and lots and lots of people), Tom and I were trying to get on the same subway with all of our luggage. I had already gotten kind of swarmed onto one of the cars and the doors were closing, so Tom threw his luggage and himself through the door to stay with me, but he couldn't quite fit in. Cue the professional "pusher". A five-foot-nothing Chinese lady got right behind Tom and put her shoulder to the wheel - aka, she shoved her whole body weight into his backside until the doors shut. I'm not exaggerating: this is her job; she is paid to do this (she had the vest to prove it).

February 20

We did our best to get some sleep at the airport.

We flew to Xishuangbanna, where we went through customs and got straight onto another plane headed straight for Bangkok. Suddenly it was warm! Flying over southern China was fun because we got to see some new landscape - it was so different from other areas of China we'd been to. We could see rice patties and such as we landed and took off.

When we arrived in Bangkok we put most of our cold weather clothes and shoes in a suitcase and ditched it in the airport. We walked away from it for a minute or two and then went back to check something, but by the time we got back into view of it, a man was trying on Tom's shoes. Well, good for him.

As we walked around the city going to markets and such we ran into two sets of elders for the church! We'd been physically cut off (mostly) from other church members and banned from speaking about our beliefs for 6 months, so we were pretty excited to see some missionaries.

We went to the train station to buy our tickets to Chiang Mai, which turned out to be a bit of a fiasco as they were sold out of the tickets we needed. So we made arrangements for a hotel in Ayutthaya, a city along the way, and it all worked out swimmingly in the end.

We ate delicious curry for lunch and had an amazing dinner with the best rice I'd ever had. The waiter seemed very confused that I kept asking for more rice and acting like it was so great. I guess when you grow up in rice paradise, you just don't appreciate a good bowl of it. After checking in with family at the internet cafe and getting our laundry done, we were so worn out that we crashed in our hotel before we could even say a prayer of gratitude for being in such a beautiful place.

February 21

We took a ferry to Wat Arun, a very famous temple in Bangkok.

Tom fit right in.

Had to get our shoes nice and comfy for all the walking.

Wat Arun was very tall with a lot of steep steps.

Yum. Coconut water straight from the source. Very refreshing in the heat.

We ate lunch at the dock on the river, then took a tuktuk around the town. This tuktuk driver told us he'd give us a really cheap ride if we'd go to a few promotional locations with him along the way. It seemed sketchy to me, but we went along with it.

Big guns. Welcome to Thailand.

Some school kids found us and asked us questions in English for an assignment. We signed their papers.

One of the stops on our sketchy tuktuk tour was a custom suit shop called "Top 10." I had a bad feeling about it, but Tom was pretty excited by the prospect of getting a custom-made suit for 200 USD. So he got measured and picked a fabric and we arranged to come back in the evening for a fitting.

A less sketchy stop we made along the way was another temple, where we saw this giant lizard in the water system.

We took a couple more stops to look at more suits and jewelry, but didn't get sucked into any of those. Then we got dropped off in this little neighborhood to go see a really big Buddha.

This little gold-covered Buddha was at eye level. You can see part of the big Buddha's foot in the background.

We ate at a restaurant with locals, and then took a tuktuk to Tom's fitting. Since all we had were our backpacks, we opted to have them ship the suit home to Utah for us. They said it would take 6 weeks. Well, as of January 2016, we have yet to see that suit. They gave Tom two "free" ties with the suit, which he took along with him in his backpack. Tom now refers to those ties as his "hundred dollar ties."

We headed to the famous Khaosan Road (a melting pot for eastern and western cultures) for dinner, and got some foot massages. I was a happy camper.

Just a couple more notes about our time in Bangkok:
1. There were so many English speaking tourists. Our ears were overloaded. Also, a lot of white people. That was pretty overwhelming after 6 months in "small-town" China.
2. The humidity did great things to Tom's hair. His cute curls came out. I loved it.

February 22

On our train ride to Ayutthaya we sat next to a French woman named Anne. She was such an interesting lady. She was probably about 60 years old, and has spent years - decades maybe - traveling around the world, particularly Asia. She spoke several languages, and had some great stories to keep us entertained on the train ride.

When we first got to Ayutthaya I was a bit peeved because this stop wasn't originally in our plan, but when we found our hotel, my mood turned around pretty quickly. Everything was made of teak wood, and the whole place was so charming.

Our room door.

Ayutthaya is pretty unique geographically in that it is a landlocked island (if that makes any sense). It is surrounded by a river, and so to get into the city, we had to take a ferry (our hotel was right on the banks of the river and had its own ferry). On the ferry we saw this monk chatting on his smartphone. Stereotype: corrected.

We rented a bike to go around the city. Ayutthaya's fairly small, so we figured we could share a bike, with me balancing on back, and make our way around the town easily enough in one day. Well, within about a hundred yards of leaving the rental place we went down. Right in the middle of the road. With a car headed toward us. I was not happy. So, we rented a second bike. It took some practice to drive on the left side of the road, but we eventually got used to it.

Side note: based off of our observations, dogs held a different place in Thai society than in Chinese. In China, dogs were occasionally treated like beloved children, but usually treated like pests that were just there to eat the scraps and get out of the way. In Thailand, stray dogs seemed abundant, but no one seemed bothered by them. They just kind of did their own thing.

Dogs napping at the temple.

Ayutthaya is chock-full of wats. Seriously, lotsa wats. They were really cool, but hard to appreciate because there are so many. There were also so many Buddhas. Some wats were free to enter, others  required a small admission fee. The free wats were almost as cool as the others. It was nice to get away from the tourists by wandering around the wat sites.

We did some meditating at some of the wats. Okay, some of this was posing for pictures. But we really did get some good meditation in  - there's something incredibly peaceful and introspection-inspiring about knowing you're in a place that is ancient and has been used for worship.

The famous Buddha head in tree roots. It's been around so long that the tree roots have grown around it.

We ate dinner (papaya salad, delicious!) at a place where we sat on the ground. At the end of the day, we returned our bikes, went back across the ferry to the hotel, showered, and played poker.

February 23

We had breakfast at the hotel and then walked around Ayutthaya markets. We went to a wat, and accidentally walked into the monk living place. Once we realized where we were, we felt intrusive, so we turned around to leave the area, when a nice monk waved us down and signaled us to wait for a minute. He walked into his little living quarters, and came back out with some snacks and milk for us. We didn't have a common language, so all we could communicate verbally was "kop kun" (thank you), but in his small gesture I felt like that monk exemplified the hospitality and humanity that seemed universal in our travels.

This decoration from the side of a wat (temple) in Ayutthaya, Thailand, looked strangely familiar.

In preparation for our train ride to Chiang Mai, we bought some snacks and headed to the train station. The scenery was beautiful.

February 24

We arrived in Chiang Mai in the middle of the night and arrived at our hotel to find that the hotel guy was waiting up for us. He kindly showed us into our room at something like 3 am. When we got up, we rented a scooter, and headed up the mountain, to Wat Pra That Doi Suthep, a very famous wat. There were A LOT of stairs to get up to the temple, and it was quite crowded with tourists, but was very beautiful. To show respect when entering the main part of the temple, we took off our shoes - boy was that tile hot! We had to run from shade spot to shade spot.

After leaving the wat,we rode over to a little village in the mountains. This little village had clearly morphed into a tourist attraction - it was pretty much just hills of little shops where people sold their handmade crafts, but it was still really cool. There were very few tourists there, and it was peaceful to just walk around and check things out. We bought a few souvenirs there, including some earrings made from coconut shell. We also got a sandwich in a little shop there and the eating area was such a wonderful mix of indoor and outdoor space - just like a lot of the living/dining space in Thailand. It was lovely to sit and feel the breeze and hear the wind-chimes.  

Finally, we rode down the mountain, checked out some markets, and visited the Huay Kaew waterfall. It was really beautiful. 

Highlight of the day: taking the scooter up/down the canyon. So gorgeous. Also, the village in the mountains was super cool.

February 25

Elephants! Before arriving in Thailand, we arranged to spend all day at this non-profit elephant park called Baan Chang Elephant Park. We had read about the abuse that goes into a lot of the elephant attractions in Thailand, so we wanted to be responsible about how we chose to interact with them. We felt good about this organization, as they rescue elephants from abusive situations and try to rehabilitate them, while keeping them in touch with humans (which is the only way these elephants know how to live). The package we bought was an all day "mahout training program". Real mahouts are people who train with and are connected to the elephants. They typically stick with their elephant for years and years and form a strong bond. In our mahout training, we got to learn a little bit about what the life of a mahout is like and how to command the elephants. To learn more about Baan Chang, visit their website: http://www2.baanchangelephantpark.com/

So the people from the park picked us up and drove us out to the park, where we got geared up in the mahout clothes they provided. First, we fed the elephants bananas and sugar cane. An adorable baby elephant (3 yrs old) kissed us. We touched the elephants and got comfortable with them, and then learned commands. We practiced getting on and off of the elephants, then had a break for lunch.

While we were eating lunch, we sat and chatted with a young couple from Germany. They were pleasant to talk to, but the most memorable thing that the guy told us was, "I have to compliment you: you are American, and you're not even fat!" Haha, it was hilarious how serious he was. We chatted with him for a minute about how, yes, the stereotype does hold up to some extent (To be honest, I think we'd forgotten somewhat after being in China for so long. When we returned to America a few weeks after this, we couldn't believe how large (vertically and horizontally) Americans are. It was kind of shocking.), but most Americans become overweight when they get a bit older, and they agreed that the same is true of Germans. They simply had mostly seen older Americans as tourists in Germany.

Anyway, then came the real treat: we rode them (bareback) through the forest to a pond where we washed them and got in a water fight! That was the best part!

The mahouts taught us to never pick up food that we drop in front of the elephants, as most of these elephants had been abused, and might think that you are taking the food away from them. We also learned to not sneak up behind them or stand in their blind spots, so as to not startle them. 

Thank heavens for those mahout clothes - turns out elephants have long wiry hairs that are very poky.

One of the elephants was a very playful adolescent and instigated a water fight with us.

After a long day with the elephants, we were pooped, so we napped. Then we wandered around the city and headed to an internet cafe where we learned via skype that Aaron and Jenny were prego!