This time last year...

It’s been more than six months since I wrote about my trip to Asia. This time last year, I was in planning mode. I had just received my Lonely Planet guidebook for Christmas and was busy getting vaccinated, buying the right gear, packing, and saying my goodbyes to Scott. Now, I’m sitting at the dining room table with Scott as he grades papers, thinking that I should really be making a greater effort to put my trip into story format, complete with pictures. I think back on my trip so often—the landscapes, the people, the food, the weather, how much I missed Scott, my fears and anxieties, my excitement, what a completely different cultural experience it was. I don’t regret anything. I’d do it again. Sometimes, I want to go back, though when I left, I didn’t think I would miss it—the squat toilets; the impossibility of finding vegetarian food; the homesickness; hauling my 40+ pound pack around, day after day; always being on guard in case somebody was trying to rip us off (some of them succeeded); the long and uncomfortable bus rides… But every time I listen to my soundtrack of those months—the two mix CDs Scott had made me and Kiss Each Other Clean by Iron and Wine—I want to be back on one of those buses, staring out at the dry-season’s forests, the bamboo road-side stands filled with cheap snacks and spicy chicken soup, the stray dogs, and the motorbikes racing down curving highways. Maybe I’ll go back… one day.

Flower Festival

On the 4th, we left Bangkok early and took a double-decker bus to Chiang Mai. The bus ride was about 10 hours long. Malone and I had the front seats on the upper deck, right behind the windshield. The ride began with an embarrassing incident: Malone and I were looking at our feet, for some reason—perhaps checking out bug bites or something of the like. As she did so, Malone stretched out her legs, inadvertently pointing her feet at a banner across the top of the windshield that read “Long Live the King!” Now, to point your feet at anything in Southeast Asia is comparable to flipping someone the bird. To point your feet at something that has to do with the king is maybe the most insulting thing you could do. The king is completely idolized. It’s even illegal to step on money in Thailand because the king’s image is on the money. An older Thai woman in the seat across from us began yelling at Malone in Thai until she put her feet down. I wonder what she said. Other than that, the bus ride was pretty uneventful. I tried to read, but couldn’t, because Thai pop music was blasting from every speaker. We didn’t pass much amazing scenery. It took us more than an hour to get out of greater Bangkok. We were given artificially flavored snacks and small bottles of fermented milk. (Yuck.) We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, where I couldn’t find much to eat other than rice and a few fried vegetables. It was either that or the ice in the Cokes on the bus that we were given that made me sick for the duration of my time in Chiang Mai. It was also at that restaurant that I came upon my first squat toilet and was too shocked by it to actually relieve myself.

We arrived in Chiang Mai late and checked into the Little Bird Guest House, where we had reserved two beds in a six-person dorm. We had an uneventful evening and went to sleep. In the morning, we had breakfast at a restaurant called “The Wall” (as in Pink Floyd). This was the beginning of a streak of hearty American breakfasts: scrambled eggs, toast with butter and jam, orange juice, tea, and sometimes fruit or baked beans. I normally never eat breakfasts so big, but I suppose they really gave me the energy necessary for a day of traveling or sight-seeing. After we ate, Malone and I briefly visited a wat near our hostel. The wat was beautiful, and different from those we had seen in Bangkok. On the inside of the wat, behind several sitting Buddhas clothed in orange robes, was a beautiful landscape mural with a giant tree behind the central Buddha. When we had finished viewing the wat, we walked toward the center of the old city of Chiang Mai. Across the canal that borders the city, we came upon the parade of the Flower Festival.




A wat near our hostel

The Chiang Mai Flower Festival is an annual festival in February, when the cool season is ending and flowers are in full bloom. Plant and flower vendors set up stalls around the city, but our full attention was on the parade. When we saw the first float, we rushed to take pictures of it as it passed, not knowing that the parade would continue for hours. The float was covered with white, pink, orange, and purple flowers, and on top of it, men and women dressed in elaborate Thai costume, with detailed gold crowns atop their heads, danced. Each float that passed us by seemed more magnificent than the last. This post would be much better if I knew the names of the flowers that covered each float from top to bottom. Floats had flower sculptures of elephants, rabbits (it’s the year of the rabbit), naga (the mythical serpent found on many temples), peacocks, swans, Hindu gods and Buddhas, and detailed, colorful patterns. The floral scent was subtle, but the flowers themselves were so colorful, brilliant, and lively. Beautiful Thai women, with paper parasols to shield them from the hot sun, and men dressed in traditional costume sat on top of each float. Interspersed between the floats walked groups of people in traditional dress, carrying flowers in bowls, vases, or bouquets. There were dancing groups and marching bands in costume. Our favorite marching band, dressed in gray jumpsuits with red converse high-tops, played several Beatles songs. Monks in orange robes watched the parade from balconies or chairs on the sidewalks in front of temples.










Images from the Flower Festival

We walked in the direction from which the parade was coming, in order to see more. The streets were littered with stepped-on flowers, the sidewalks were crowded with both tourists and Thai people, and the sun was hot. We veered onto a side street and entered the fabric district, where colorful fabrics and hippie clothing hung from hangers outside store doors. We shopped a bit, went back to the main road and had lunch as the parade went by, and walked back toward the canal, where a market was set up with colorful bedspreads and pillowcases, jewelry, wooden instruments, shoes, pottery and wooden dishes, and more. After a rest at the hostel, we went back out to the Night Bazaar, where stalls lined the sidewalks. At first as we walked past the stalls, it looked like the goods being sold were original, but as we continued down the street, the same products kept popping up. We had our first experiences bargaining, always asking for a better price than what was offered and then meeting somewhere in the middle. The stalls were filled with clothes, sunglasses, shoes, bags, artwork, lanterns, toys, and other souvenirs. We didn’t buy much this night, but visited the Night Bazaar on another night in Chiang Mai. This night, we opted for massages. It was the only massage I got during my whole trip, though they only cost about $5 for an hour of massaging. I asked for a neck, shoulder, and back massage, but most of the massage was actually a head massage, and I felt like my masseuse was ripping out every single hair in my head. When she finished, she asked, “Do you want anything?” and, not realizing that the hour was up, I thought she was asking if I wanted her to focus on any specific part of my body. I said, “Sure, you can do my lower back for a bit.” She laughed at me and shook her head. It turned out she had only meant to ask if I wanted any water to drink. Embarrassing. We ended our second night in Chiang Mai with a late dinner—vegetarian Pad Thai and iced tea for me—and went back to the hostel to sleep.

Afternoon in Bangkok

We entered the Grand Palace after walking down a dusty street where vendors sold clothing and sunglasses, or rented long pants and skirts so that tourists dressed inappropriately could enter the palace grounds. When we bought our tickets, a staff member made Malone readjust her fisherman pants so that they covered more of her calves. “More pretty!” he said.

Within the palace grounds, we began at Wat Phra Kaew, a large temple with blue, red, and gold mosaic pillars and small, gold, dragon-faced human-like statues lining the wall outside the entrance. We left our shoes with hundreds of others on the shelves outside of the temple and proceeded barefoot. Inside the temple, it was extremely crowded, so it was hard to even see the Emerald Buddha from where we stood at the back of the temple. The Buddha was small, but sat high on a gold throne, with lights shining on it. It was draped in gold robes and wore a gold headpiece, so only its green face revealed that the statue was carved from jasper. The Emerald Buddha, one of the most famous Buddhas in Thailand, was moved from northern Thailand, hidden in a layer of stucco. Lao forced seized the Buddha regardless of its disguise, but the Thais later recaptured it.





Outside of Wat Phra Kaew
We continued to walk around the temple grounds at Wat Phra Kaew—(a “wat” is a temple complex)—where each building was more beautiful and ornate than the last, if such a thing is possible. Murals depicting the Ramakian, the Thai version of the Ramayana, lined the inner temple walls. A model of Angkor Wat, which we would visit a month later in Siem Reap, Cambodia, was also in this temple complex. My favorite building was topped with a stupa that burst with colorful flower carvings, much like the flower-covered floats we would see in Chiang Mai during the Flower Festival. The intricacy and detail of the architecture inside this temple complex were almost unreal. Gold stupas, mirrored mosaics, gilded statues, and clinquant corners nearly filled my camera’s first memory card.





Stupas in the Wat Phra Kaew temple complex
From the temple grounds, we walked to the Grand Palace. It was hard to tell which building the Grand Palace actually was, but we couldn’t go inside anyway. There were two open rooms: one was a museum of old guns and pistols, and the other contained spears and other weaponry. I didn’t linger here very long, but wandered to a separate building which housed a museum filled with small and large Buddha statues, glassware and ceramics, beautiful teapots, and other artwork.

Next, we walked to Wat Pho. Along the way, we passed rows of people set up on the sidewalks with mats or tables, selling food or drinks or jewelry or trinkets or shoes or sunglasses or books or other odds and ends. Walking past all these vendors, a bird defecated on my left shoulder. Good luck, right? Except for the fact that not a single vendor had any paper napkins, and it took about 5 minutes of walking before I found someone selling tissues. We stopped on a lawn, facing the river, to rest before entering Wat Pho, one of the oldest and largest temples in Bangkok. Wat Pho is home to the reclining Buddha, a giant statue depicting the Buddha in the final stage: entering Nirvana. There aren’t really words to describe how immense this statue is. It’s at least three times the size I imagined it to be after looking at pictures. Though other Buddhas that we saw that day may have been more beautiful, this one was definitely the most impressive.



The Reclining Buddha
There were many other temples, Buddhas, and stupas in the Wat Pho complex. When visiting one temple, a man came up to us near the entrance and said, “Ladies! You need to cover up!” Malone was wearing a tank top, and the man gave her a scarf to cover her shoulders before entering the temple. Not sure if he intended both of us to wear a scarf (I was wearing a t-shirt), I asked if I needed one as well. The man laughed at me before he said, “No! You’re not sexy!” While the exteriors of the buildings in Wat Phra Kaew could not be matched for their beauty and intricacy, the interiors of the temples and the Buddhas at Wat Pho were perhaps more beautiful. Golden Buddhas, more than we could count, simply lined the walls of this temple complex.





Inside the Wat Pho temple grounds
When we left Wat Pho, we bought Cokes and walked to the river boat pier, then took a boat to the pier nearest Chinatown. The riverboats were crowded with tourists, locals, and Buddhist monks in their bright orange robes. It was Chinese New Year, and we hoped that an event would be happening near Chinatown, but we must have missed the parade, because only an award ceremony was taking place. We visited our last wat for the day, Wat Tramit, which houses the 3 meter tall Golden Buddha, which was very shiny and beautiful, but I guess we were a bit Buddha’d out. We headed back to our hostel with sore and dusty feet and dehydrated bodies, but thrilled at our first full day in Thailand.



The Golden Buddha

First Night and Morning in Bangkok

After a layover in Hong Kong and arriving in Bangkok, Thailand, around 8pm on the 2nd, our culture shock was minimal. It was easy to get our visas upon arrival, navigate the airport, find a taxi, and enjoy an amazingly cheap ride through the city to our hostel. The hostel itself—Cozy Bangkok Place—was clean and comfortable, with hot showers and sit-down toilets. (I would see my first squat toilet a few days later and leave without relieving myself—I wasn’t ready for it!) The only difference between this hostel and other hostels I’d been in was that no shoes were allowed past the lobby. Shoe lockers were provided to prevent people from bringing their shoes upstairs. We soon got used to this. Many places, including restaurants, internet cafes, guest houses, museums, and temples all prohibited the wearing of shoes indoors.

After dumping our backpacks in our room, we left the hostel to find some dinner. Our hostel was positioned near an alley-like street, which we walked down to reach a more central part of the city, near the Bangkok train station. Walking down the street, we kept close to the edges to let motorbikes pass. Families had brought folding tables out into the street, where they ate dinner. Potted plants lined the buildings and laundry hung from windows. Reaching a larger street, women sat on mats on the sidewalk, with wicker baskets filled with vegetables, rice, and eggs. We weren’t sure if they were there to prepare food and sell it, or if they were just having night picnics to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Our dinner options were limited to street food—which, throughout the trip, was predominantly meat and rice, usually prepared with chilies, with few vegetables such as bean sprouts or greens, and which I usually tried to avoid—and Hong Kong Noodle, a chain restaurant that we opted for. In the beginning of our trip, we were a little paranoid about food-borne illnesses, so we stuck to restaurants, which seemed safer. It wasn’t long before we became a bit more adventurous, however. At Hong Kong Noodle, we ate noodles with a mildly spicy peanut sauce, and I drank some disgustingly sweet lemongrass juice. We panicked for a little while about the ice in our drinks, but soon gave up our worries, went back to the hostel for much needed showers and much more needed sleep.

We woke up early the following morning, had a cup of tea in the hostel, and then set out. We crossed through the crowded intersection near the train station, where we had walked the night before. It was filled with brightly colored taxis, motorbikes, and tuk-tuks, the infamous 3-wheeled vehicles that transport you from point A to point B. I saw one tuk-tuk nearly tip over as it took a turn too fast, and said to Malone, “I’m definitely not getting in one of those.” Ha! They soon became our most common form of transportation, after buses, at least. A woman offered to help us find our way. We showed her our map out of politeness, because we knew where we were going; I think some people just see foreigners and jump on the chance to practice a little English. We soon walked on quieter streets, looking for breakfast. I had a hard time finding anything—most of it was chicken—but when we reached the pier, where we were to take a river boat to the Grand Palace, we stopped so Malone could eat something. I ended up getting a small plastic bag of sticky rice for 5 baht, which is about 15 cents. I borrowed one of Malone’s utensils to eat it; most people eat sticky rice with their fingers.



The crowded city streets of Bangkok

At the pier, we waited on the shaky dock for a little while before jumping on the Express River Boat. Taking these boats is an easy way to get around the city, avoiding the traffic of the streets. We passed Wat Arun, “Temple of the Dawn” on our left, a tall, intricate temple, then got off the boat a few stops up-river.



View of Wat Arun from the river boat

We found ourselves on a busy street corner, with the white walls enclosing the Grand Palace across the street. Before we could make our way there, however, a well-dressed man stopped us and asked to see our map. Now, the Lonely Planet guidebook warns travelers against well-dressed men asking to see your map. They take the map, circle points of interest, call a tuk-tuk driver to their side, shuffle you in, and then take a cut of pay after the driver brings you to gem outlets and other businesses that want nothing more than to scam you to get ahold of some of your Western money. It also told us to ignore anybody who told us the Grand Palace was closed. They sometimes use this excuse to get you to go to other sites in the city. But when this man told us that the Grand Palace wasn’t going to open til noon, because of the Chinese New Year, we sort of believed him. Maybe he was telling the truth. We couldn’t find out, because we didn’t end up going to the Grand Palace until after noon anyway. Because, as two smart young women, we gave the man our map, enjoyed a friendly conversation as he circled points of interest on our map, and then trusted him when he told us to take the navy blue tuk-tuks, instead of the colored ones, because they are the public tuk-tuks, cheaper than the private ones. Then we got in the tuk-tuk he waved down for us.



Our first tuk-tuk ride

Well, it was only 40 baht for the whole day. That’s about $1.30. And we didn’t really get scammed…we just had to awkwardly walk through a gem store and pretend we were interested before leaving without buying anything, despite the simultaneously angry and disappointed stares of the workers there. But our driver did bring us to some interesting temples. The first temple we went to was small, but its roof was beautiful, with mosaics made out of shiny pieces of glass and gilded edges. Inside this temple was the famous Black Buddha, which was brought to Bangkok more than 200 years ago, when it became the capital of Thailand. About 500 years old, the Black Buddha was once black. Now, it’s completely gold. Also known as the Lucky Buddha, people pray to it to cure ailments of themselves or their loved ones. If someone has a stomach problem, the person will pray to this Buddha, placing a thin, gold leaf on the Buddha’s stomach, pressing it there. At many of the temples we visited throughout our trip, it was possible to obtain a golden leaf, usually with sticks of incense, to make an offering and pray for a cure. But the Black Buddha is best known for this practice.



The Black Buddha

After this stop, we drove through the hot, dusty city streets, passing street vendors on the sidewalks and motorbikes on the streets, gas and diesel fumes everywhere, to the Sapphire and Ruby Emporium. We were expecting something like this; if our tuk-tuk was only 40 baht, there had to be some catch. We tried to tell our driver we didn’t want to go, but, as is often the case, he would receive a gas coupon for bringing tourists, so we went inside for a few minutes. Returning unscathed and with our wallets intact, we explained to him that we only wanted to go to temples. He tried several times to take us to a travel deal/coupon business, but we declined.

Our next stop was Wat Saket, a temple with winding staircases and a giant gold stupa. We began walking up one of the staircases, surrounded by flowers and other plants, before we realized that it was the “down” staircase, so we turned around. At the bottom of the staircase, a beggar squatted, wearing a sarong and with rags wrapped around his ankles and dirty feet. A bowl sat in front of him to collect change. It seemed like an innocent, sad scene, until I noticed that his slightly enlarged penis was completely exposed. Maybe I shouldn’t even use the word “slightly.” I don’t know. I shifted my eyes away from him as quickly as I could. Malone hadn’t noticed, and I hurried to catch up with her before we ascended steps on the other side of the temple. Bells lined the walkway to the top of the temple, and as people walked by, they rang each bell in a row. Other walkways were lined with metal bowls, in which people dropped coin after coin, enjoying the clinking and clattering as they made their offerings. At the top of the temple, pillars of lucky bells stood at the four corners surrounding the stupa, connected by strings where people clipped paper money. Messages were written on the bells, and other Buddhist statues were placed around the stupa. Inside the temple were rich dark green and gold Buddhas. The temple was extremely crowded; probably because it was Chinese New Year. Many people were there to make offerings and prayers for the new year.



Offerings at Wat Saket

When we left Wat Saket (we descended the correct staircase and found that the beggar had covered himself up), we found our tuk-tuk driver, who drove us back to the corner near the entrance of the Grand Palace. We paid our driver and stopped for lunch—I had green curry, which was a little too spicy, and a lime soda—before entering the Grand Palace.

New Places

Is it strange to blog about my trip to Southeast Asia after it already happened? I never even finished writing about Australia: arriving in Sydney in the cool winter air, spending the day in the sunshine in the gardens and by the harbor, running into Avery near the ferry station in a small suburb of the city, eating fresh spring rolls and grilled cheese on the rooftop of our hostel; or about my trip to New Zealand when Kelly and I left Sydney together: flying over the green islands near Auckland at sunset, visiting volcanic islands and bird sanctuaries, the cliff-hugged coast at Dunedin, and the snow-capped mountains of Queenstown. And there have been so many places in between: a small, Bavarian town in Germany; the extravagant palaces of Austria; the Matterhorn in Switzerland; a small, quiet beach and mangrove-lined river in Jamaica; the cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica; the beaches and Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota; the city sidewalks of London; the white cliffs at Dover; the cobblestone streets of Canterbury; the pebbled beach at Brighton; the craggly mountains of Snowdonia in Wales; the bioluminescent bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

I’ve been so lucky to have traveled to so many places, and that’s what I created this blog for: my journeys to new places. So I’ll continue it, just skipping a little bit in between, and write about my most recent trip—my Southeast Asian Odyssey, which has left me $2,000 in debt to my mother and no closer to finding a job, but filled and exhilarated by the experience.

I suppose my adventure began before I arrived. On February 1st, flying some 30,000 feet up in the air, I was conflicted about my feelings. My sadness at leaving Scott had somehow quelled much of my enthusiasm for the trip, and I was waiting for excitement to arrive. As dusk turned into the deep blue that lingers for only moments before night’s blackness arrives, I looked out the jet’s window to see Greenland below me. It felt like I was so low in the sky, but it was just because the mountains were so big. Completely white, and bright amongst the shadowy blues of the night, the snow-covered mountains lined dark rivers and snowy beaches. Icebergs dotted the black water, and icy glaciers filled gorges. Though they move slowly, I could tell from above the patterns in which the masses of snow and ice flowed. It was so peaceful, the night sky and bright stars perfectly matching the dark water and wintery whites.





How lucky I was! On my way to visit a tropical region—rainforests, beaches, reefs, hot cities—I looked down upon a quiet winter landscape, more beautiful than any ice or snow I’d ever seen. There’s something about seeing a new place that makes you realize, at the same time, both how large and how small the world is.