Finally, Thailand

So here we are in Beautiful Downtown Pattaya. Had a hell of a time getting here, too. Everything went fine as we left  Penang and that’s where things fell apart. What with extra stops and an overlong stay in customs and a rest stop, we missed the noon bus to Bangkok from Hat Yai. Next one wouldn’t be until 7 that night. Liz was furious.  I had wondered when the famous SE Asian inefficiency was going to rear its head, so was a bit more philosophical. No matter, we found a taxi (Small Toyota pickup with seats, canvas roof and grab rails installed in the bed, hell of  a nice driver, 6 bucks there and back, probably 12-15 miles, not to mention his interpreter help at the booking window.)to the actual bus terminal. We’d been dropped at an interim point more convenient for vans, which we’d taken from Penang. Another sore point for Liz, she’d expected a Trailways type conveyance. We  verified that the next bus was indeed 7 PM. Went  back into town, had lunch and waited. Long acquaintances of mine have probably heard me rhapsodize about the quality of roadside food in Thailand. I still will. These folks know what spices are for! Not to mention coconut milk. So we hung around town, playing tourist and just killing time. At about 7, the bus pulled in. That’s more like it! A huge double decker with laydown seats and a big TV screen up front. Even an in-flight(?) movie. Okay, the movie was flatly ridiculous, made even worse for me by the star being the captain of the Firefly, my favorite doomed TV series.  That and nice low lighting along with those comfortable laydown seats made sleep easy.

Chicken Curry, with the little green peppers
(maybe bitter melon?) I remember so well

Toyota pickup taxi. Used for in-town, between towns,
cargo, passengers, whatever.

Bangkok at 5AM. Once again Liz was furious, with good reason. We were dropped off in a public park, roused from sleep with the opening of the bus doors, into a mob of taxi drivers bargaining to take us to our destinations. They had less English than I have Thai. If you knew just where you were going, you were fine but otherwise you were on your own. Liz was having none of it. We walked away with our luggage with no idea of where we were and no idea of how to get anywhere else. Turned out to be one of her finest hours. Everything turned out fine. I’ll mention here that it does absolutely no good to lose your temper. Once you get shrill, everybody around is too embarrassed to even see you. Or something like that.  I still have no idea of just where we were, except it seemed to be in one of Bangkok’s western suburbs. A 6 lane boulevard, lots of nice hotels around, many nicely groomed home offices of obscure and not so obscure firms, a few 7-11’s. These, by the way, are ubiquitous in Asia, even more common than in the states. While on the subject I’ll also mention McDonalds, KFC, Subway and Starbucks. This is what the rest of the world sees as exotic American cooking. Sigh. After waiting around for the world to wake up, we made the acquaintance of a very nice Thai girl on her way to her office job (of course I forgot her name, could barely pronounce it) in her late teens (maybe late 20’s or even 30’s - no way of knowing, these women never seem to age except all of a sudden.)  with excellent English who guided us onto a FREE bus that took us to within a kilometer of  the hostel where we were supposed to have spent the night. We negotiated a hot shower and luggage storage and set off to see at least a little of Bangkok. Then a 5 buck (150 baht) taxi ride to a bus station and a 3 hour ride to Pattaya. It took over an hour and a half to leave Bangkok and its suburbs. The place has grown and grown and grown. Factories, warehouses, port facilities, housing for all those workers, population is near 10 million. When I was there in ‘69 it was in the half million range. Didn’t recognize a thing. Not that it’s a huge slum or anything, just huge.

I have no idea where this is.

Note Ronald McDonald's "wai".
Traditional respectful greeting.

Something similar could be said about Pattaya. Our RCI  accommodations had been there for a few years but the taxi (Toyota truck again) driver didn’t recognize the address. After several discussions with other drivers, he had a vague idea. When we got close, the RCI logo sealed the deal. RCI has done it again. Really nice place, more luxury than we can use (2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 TV‘s, 3 balconies, great air conditioning), good shops, including a tailor and pool on the ground floor (open air, Thai style) an excellent Vietnamese restaurant on the roof affording a full view of Pattaya. Once we walked around the area, I understood a bit better. We are in the center of quite a large expansion with half a dozen condominiums and hotels going up simultaneously around us. The street naming and addressing system could probably use some sprucing up too. At least we’re not far from the old downtown. Sin Strip itself, half a mile long with a beautiful beach a block over. This is one of the places the boys in ‘Nam would head for on R&R and it’s only gotten woollier in the decades since. Remember, this strip is easily avoided by anyone who doesn’t have a taste for girlie bars, short-time girls, short-time boys, ladyboys and who-knows-what-else. So of course it’s crowded. One thing I didn’t expect was open-air girlie bars with lots of pool tables. At 60 cents for a game of eight-ball with plenty of cleavage teamed against you, it’s a wonderful incentive to prolong the game. Lots of country-and-western, 60’s rock and even go-go bars too, almost all open to the street.  Hell of a show. 

For milder tastes, there are lots of shops with great bargains in clothes, woodcarvings, most consumer goods. Two exceptions are electronics and eyeglasses. A laptop computer, electronic camera, phone will cost within ten percent of what it will with some judicious shopping in the states and glasses will cost more, as all the frames you see are high-style designer stuff. I’m sure locals know where to find the less expensive stuff but they’re not telling. Since we’re down to one e-book, I went on the hunt in Singapore to see if I could find something cheap. They’ve never even heard of the things anywhere I’ve asked. The huge bargains are in food, transportation and lodging. Such good food it is, too. Oh, I already mentioned that, didn’t I? I almost forgot the Pattaya Beach. Just a little the way from Sin Strip. Shops, hotels, vendors of tropical fruits and honest to gosh malls on one side of the street, on the other is a beautiful white sand beach, miles long, filled with cabanas and slow-cooked Europeans and vendors of coconuts complete with soda straw and other beverages, alcoholic and not. In the distance are dozens of jet skis, big speedboats, sailboats, parasails, islands bracketed by the city skyline on one side and Pattaya Hill (our hotel is up there somewhere) on the other.

Of course there are also very reasonable tours of the countryside and outlying islands. We took one just yesterday. It’s billed as the 3-island tour. Not an awful price, 90 bucks for the two of us. It included fishing (I caught one small fish, immediately deemed unacceptable by the guides, popeyed sort of thing, maybe 8 inches long, possibly illegal by the quick way they returned it to the wild.), snorkeling, lunch and a few hours lolling on a beautiful beach with a beach chair all our own. Somewhat regimented since this island is a really popular spot and every square foot gets used. For a good quarter mile long and a couple of hundred feet deep. Warm ocean water. Liz loved the snorkeling but I didn’t indulge as the salt water hurt my road-rash. More on that later. The parasailing was a complete gas and no sort of a physical challenge. You leave the tour boat onto a big flat topped barge then they harness you up in an ingenious rig, bring the sail to a halt with the previous passenger attached. Unsnap two clips at his shoulders, snap onto your clips and next thing you know, you’re twenty feet in the air, then 50 or so, towed behind a hell of a big speedboat. A couple of laps around the barge and into a very soft landing, unclip the harness and walk away, pumping adrenaline. If a Cedar Point rollercoaster is a 10, I’d give it an 8. Well worth the 15 bucks.

The road rash. Monday, we rented a scooter (Hey, 6 bucks for the day!) and braved Pattaya traffic. Not that big a deal, biggest danger being fellow tourists. Except for the gravel road we wandered onto. Moved quick to avoid a dog, found a rut. All in slow-motion, maybe 15 mph, except for the wheel grabbing the rut and snapping us off. Thankfully, Liz landed on top of me and the scooter. I , on the other hand was between the scooter and the road. Scraped off a little skin on my ankle, knee, elbows and hands. Looks awful, doesn’t hurt hardly at all. Alcohol, iodine and gauze held in place with the ever-handy duct tape should do the job. Lost a mirror on the scooter, damned embarrassing.

We also took in the Alcazar show. The cabaret is an all-male revue, not that you could tell. Wherethehell do they hide it? Seriously, this is a Las Vegas style and Las Vegas professional show. Great music, costumes and production values. Still, I doubt some proud mother is gushing “My son’s in Show Business!”.  On the other hand, considering relaxed Thai attitudes, I could be wrong.

14,15

One last thing. In a full week I have seen hundreds of cats. One, count’em one has been even vaguely Siamese.

Liz in Pattaya, Thailand

Yesterday we took an all day tour to 3 Islands for 1500 baht each or with drinks and a parasail ride the trip was $110.  Fine white sand beaches, water that mirrors the sky and great wind for sailing make Pattaya an international destination. I miss the Atlantic Ocean’s waves. I snorkeled but saw nothing of note; no reef, a few tiny fish without color and some rocks.  I learned to avoid the stink from jet skiis and motorboats.

Traveling with Mike is fun and it is extra fun since Mike speaks a little Thai and asks questions and tries to learn words. His attempts to speak charms. Cab drivers ask him to sit up front with them in taxi trucks. 

A taxi truck (carries 10-13 passengers) picked us up from our timeshare. On board were 3 Norwegian sisters in their 60’s. They said that Norway’s population is 5 million people and it is a very expensive place to live and visit. North Sea oil wealth keeps them too rich to join the Euro zone but meanwhile the sisters do not feel rich. Then the taxi picked up some Arab men. Some were late or hard for our driver to find.

We were the only Americans on our tour boat of 30. I counted when we stopped for fishing, shocked that so many people would cast reels off the boat. But it was a good task to bond us.

A pair of New York men were on another boat. I approached them because one of them was African American so I guessed correctly that they were Americans.  Signage on the city blocks here change by nationality. Russian, Arabic, Korean, British, Thai and as Mike noted American chains line the tourist streets off the beach. Imagine Lebanese restaurateurs leaving their bombed out Beirut Riviera and starting over in peaceful Thailand. The Norwegian sisters shared our surprise that so many Russians visit here. Like us they had no idea that Pattaya was a Russian holiday destination. The manager of our timeshare building, Pattaya Hill is a Russian, Tatiana Yashchuk.

An ecstatically grateful Libyan sat next to us on our ride back from the beach trip. Using lots of video sound effects he told us what a poverty stricken police state Libya was under Mummer Khadafy.  He said (with lots of Pow Pows) that he fought with rebels for the overthrow. He said his English language comes from videos. He thanked France’s President Sarkosy and Obama. I put in a plug for Hillary. We wished him well and told him to transform Libya into a tourist destination like Pattaya.

I like Thai food! Like Mike always said the food in Thailand is really good. Thais are the gourmets of the Orient. Such a relief after disappointment of Malaysian food. Our Asian breakfast staple ever since Singapore is white bread (like Sunbeam or Holsum) made from rice flour.  We toast it and add butter and jam. Tea and coffee are in coffee pots just like pots in any US diner. Fruit if served is watermelon. Fruit juice is orange juice but I think it tastes artificial, certainly off. A variety of hot Asian dishes appear in a big buffet.  One chafing dish holds fried rice while another holds fried eggs. 

Kelvin our Chinese day tour guide in the Malaysian Cameron Highlands told us that the Chinese eat dogs. He did not know first hand of people eating cats. The Chinese criteria for eating an animal is, “Does the animal’s backbone face the sky?” Kelvin said that monkeys were OK to eat under this rule since they walk on their front arms. Small skinny cats are accepted to walk around our timeshare resort. Cats were accepted in Bali too probably because they keep away mice and other vermin. Thailand is mostly Buddhist and has a live and let live attitude. 

How do I feel? That is always the hardest question for me to answer. I have to talk a long time to figure it out. This difficulty is why I practiced  my answer with a psychologist for so many years. Last night we watched The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher’s story played by Meryl Strep. It was dark, truth seeking and not flattering. Margaret Thatcher was confounded by the question of feelings. When asked, “How do you feel?” she ranted against her doctor for asking. Her sarcasm was cryptic. She demanded thoughts that turned into action, results, character development and then leadership. The Iron Lady is  nothing like the portrayal of personality integration and enlightenment found in The King’s Speech. I will not suggest this movie for parents (Oldies as the Australians say) unless the parent is an avid movie goer and not easily depressed.. Thatcher as an iron lady cannot allow herself to say that she feels lonely. Alzheimers sets in and she has a running imaginary conversation with her husband that she will not admit to. She does not have friends only secretaries. She is not loving towards her daughter and even insults her and tries to chase her away. While her daughter assists her she tells her daughter that the daughter is unattractive. Thatcher berates her for assisting her, her mother. Meanwhile let me say thank you to our highly independent parents. We are grateful and lucky to have such independent parents who do not make any demands upon us. Also we heartily thank our siblings for attending to our parents while we are so far away. All we do is mail postcards.

 

Back to how am I feeling. Traveling for seven months means that we cannot visit family and friends.  Our most intimacy is shared exchanges via the internet. Thankfully I have a couple of faithful e-mail friends. The random company of strangers and reading  add companionship. After a bout of diarrhea and the loss of our pictures, the loss of electrolytes magnified the loss of the photos. I won’t easily tell about our trip without those photos. Maybe I ought to pay for a luggage scale and weigh myself but I look the same, clothes fit the same.  A nose cold triggered by a scratchy throat due to air conditioning is wearing on both of us. Air con related colds are par for the course in the tropics.

Then the slow motion fall off of motor scooter. What most worried me was Mike’s initial denial. He thought about everything other than injuries. He thought about the accident report and mechanical issues. I bought a bag of ice and tried to ice our wounds. Mike says, “You’re such a girl”, that this is nothing compared to his past dirt biking injuries. I got a few scrapes on my hand and a shoulder bruise/road rash. I was so shocked and I am really thankful to blog to express this more. Mike’s unspoken message is “Don’t feel this; it is insignificant.” But meanwhile he is hiring cabs and not motorbikes. I trust him and would ride with him any time he asks. I wanted him to have fun on motorbikes and feel bad our fun was spoiled so quickly. He has elbow and hand scrapes and a swollen foot where the bike hit him.

I just had diarrhea again. My fault. I drank ice water in the building’s “Le Coffee Shop”. It looked so refreshing that I fell for it. Over and over again when we toured China our guide told us not to drink tap water, that the Chinese themselves do not drink tap water. I do not know who that Thai waitress thinks we are and who can drink this water (maybe the Thais or the Russians) but it is definitely not me! Mike had beer and I may have to start drinking beer myself. I skipped going out to a show last night.  Mike went alone since he’d paid for us to see it. He said it was slightly sleazy with some amazing acts but not too raunchy.

When Mike writes that I was furious about travel delays I am surprised and resist temptation to edit his text. I did not yell. I hardly even spoke to anyone except Mike though I said loudly to Mike so that the dispatcher would hear that that was not the deal; that is not what we agreed to. My GM experience in procuring parts for an assembly plant for 17 years lead me to ask for another bus company. I wanted to know options for going to Bangkok. I was angry with myself for not booking the train in Malaysia before it was sold out. I don’t even know why I hesitated to book that train(except for scattered internet and not feeling so well).  We were promised that the bus would arrive at 7PM for a total transit time of 16 hours versus 27 hours on a train. We agreed to and paid for a 16 hour trip. Before I’d wait 5 hours  and then sleep on a bus all night I looked for another bus company. The ride was smooth and we slept quite well considering.

When we got off the bus in Bangkok we did not hire the first fast talking taxi driver to pressure us. We just woke up, got off the bus and had not even found a toilet when the cab drivers came at us. What is the approach that experienced European travelers take? (Our trip is hardly unique.) Travel guidebooks say the traveler’s biggest waste of money is taxis. Especially for us since we typically stay in centrally located hostels that are close to terminals. We found a decent toilet and a 7-11 provided breakfast. We sat along a beautiful boulevard and  got used to looking at photos of the King of Thailand before taking a free city bus with a wooden floor to our Hostel International  where we showered and freshened up.

Nonetheless our minds played tricks with us due to the odd night. I thought I lost the I-phone but later found it in bottom of back pack. Mike smoked and chatted with a hostel guest outside.  When we proceeded to run some errands he missed his hat and camera. We looked in the shower room several times before I found they’d fallen in a narrow space next to the toilet.

Entering new places is harder on Mike than on me because he works so hard to get oriented right away. He gets agitated trying to figure out where he is. When we had the motorbike spill Mike was distracted by trying to figure out where we were (in addition to a crater in the road and a dog in the crater). We also try to head inside by 3 PM to catch our breathe. Quitting time for GM suits us as travelers too. 

 

In Pattaya and in our comfortable timeshare I pampered myself with a facial and the next day a swim in a perfect pool. Today I ordered a strawberry yogurt parfait for the first time in eons just to up my calorie intake. We tried to replace our Sudafed with another decongestant but no non-drowsy decongestant is sold in Thailand due to methamphetamine addiction. So we might just slow down and take more naps before we take our next bus trip to Cambodia on Sat. Feb. 11. 

Author Rabih Alameddine’s novel, The Storyteller  is an ideal traveling companion. It juxtaposes 1001 Arabian Nights and contemporary life. It is perfect reading in exotic lands especially where women wear veils.

We sent our laundry out this week for the first time since French Polynesia. It cost $18. Several articles of clothing were returned definitely cleaner than ever. They also washed out blood stains from our scrapes. I usually wash out our clothes in the bathsink every third day. Socks take the longest time to dry, a day and/or night and then off we go. REI pants, shirts and underwear dry within hours.  

With less than 90 days of travel remaining I think about how to lighten our load in Vietnam and what if anything to donate or mail home. I do not expect to need my prescription swimming goggles again. I can only guess that it will be colder in Hanoi and Laos in late February or early March so I expect to carry our few items of warm clothing up there in case we get cold. My $35 bag from Australia is not a back pack meaning it does not have straps. That might be an issue in places like Cambodia where sidewalks are irregular at best but since Mike does not hesitate to take a taxi I’ll drop this concern.

Mike gave me a budget of $100 per day at the outset of our trip. We calculate the actual at $150 per day. Mike is satisfied and unconcerned about this cost.   

I have not been impressed with the shopping and won’t get into shopping mode here. The Russians however cannot buy enough clothing and leather goods. We need to replace the power cord for our walkie talkies (which we have yet to use and may never actually need) but we cannot find a Radio Shack type store. I want new eyeglasses with transition lenses but they’d cost $1000. I thought about a quick flight to Hong Kong, world’s eyeglass masters but I don’t know what a Chinese Visa requires and I’ll probably get better faster and certainly more familiar in Michigan.

We read Thom Hartmann’s newsletter and appreciate his reminder of how better than 50% of young adults in the US are unemployed or underemployed. I wonder what I would do if I were entering the work force today. If it weren’t for the luck of my GM career I’d be running a small business somewhere.

In an attempt to inspire let me describe 2 business owners who think outside the box. Diego and Pete are 2 really interesting men who own their own resorts.

We met Diego Angel at breakfast in Kuala Lumpur. He friended us on Facebook shortly after our breakfast with him. Diego is maybe 30 and from a Columbian family with a plantation. He used his trust funds to attend a university in Brisbane, Australia where he met loads of surfers. He fell in love and married an Indonesian. He  bought beachfront land on an island that he shares with Neolithic tribes. Their guests are mostly Australian surfers. He also offers great fishing and they serve great meals. It is not unusual for guests to meet the shaman of the Neolithic tribes in the forest. He is very impressed by how the Neolithic manage their population without exhausting their resources. Diego feels  on an equal footing with his other family members because he does not live in Columbia with his hand out for a cut in their plantation proceeds. He gives credit to his wife’s political connections in Indonesia for the permits that allow them to own rare precious beach front. They raise their 3 year old son and she is earning a degree from a college in Kuala Lumpur. I asked him if he had a car and he looked distressed, no, he’d had to buy a boat with his profits this year to make transport faster and more comfortable for guests. The family still has only the motorbike.

We met Pete from London on the morning leg of our ill fated bus trip to Bangkok. Pete was on the bus to renew his Thai Visa as required quarterly. Pete is about 40 and bought into a resort on the Thai island of Samuii. Pete was an IT manager and worked all over the world. While on a month’s vacation in Samuii he struck up an engagement with Ying, a Thai daughter of the resort. He reorganized his entire life and gives his all for their 22 room resort. Maximum capacity is 75 people. Paradoxically for an IT manager he does not advertise and has no web site, not even a Facebook page. Guests are either returning customers or dropped of by the island’s taxi driver. I asked him about their family and he said that Ying is raising a niece and nephew. He picks them up from school via motorbike quite often and even assists them with their English homework. The children are quiet around him and he seemed to reflect on that after admitting it. If you ever visit Samuii, look up Pete and Ying. Meanwhile he has hardly had a day to just go fishing by himself in the last 6 months.