Bye Bye Bangkok and Thailand

We have seen many different and wonderful things here, and both marvel at and question the relaxed views on sex in Thailand. We would comment daily on the number of young men and women on the arms of older Western men, saying goodbye in the morning at all of the hotels we have stayed at, and would wonder what kind of life these young people lead and aspire to.

Begging seems almost nonexistent in Thailand but we have seen a little here in Bangkok. It is done with a quiet, almost prayerful reverence that is truly Thai: hands clasped in the traditional Thai “wai” greeting followed by a gentle bow of the head. No aggressive harassment here; that is saved for the sex touts, go-go show promoters and Tuk Tuk drivers.

Thailand is promoted as the land of smiles – this is completely true. We are always greeted with a smiling “sa-wa-dee-krup” and graceful wai. Thailand has been interesting but next time we will approach the country completely differently. Perhaps spend more time in the south, on remote islands or on a 4-5 day live-aboard dive ship. We definitely would not come back during Songkran, and to judge from comments we have overheard in restaurants and our hotel lobby, neither would most other westerners. That is to say that we wouldn’t recommend it. One, maybe two, days, max.

But isn’t that what discovery and travel is all about?

Best of Thailand:

Restaurant: The Whole Earth, Chiang Mai; Ban Klang Nam, Bangkok; but pretty well anywhere in Thailand is going to serve wonderful food.
Best Buy: CD’s: 4 for $12.00 CDN. Also anything bargained for in the Patpong Night Markets.
If you can buy: Thai Silk at Jim Thompson or from a reputable Mom & Pop shop. Beautiful!
Best Bar: Babylon: total experience, good food, good show, nice pool, great environment.
Runner Up: Tawan Bar: Ask me when you see me.
Books we have read: The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin; The Page Turner, David Leavitt; Dirt Music, Tim Winton.

We say “krop-koon-krup” to all the Thais who have made the last two weeks so interesting. Especially the staff at our hotels Tarntawan Place in Bangkok and Club Bamboo in Patong, Phuket.

And now onto India!

I head out early to scout around. There is nobody on the street, so I am safe, for the moment, from the happy Songkranners. But the streets are deserted. This is the most important day of Songkran, and it appears that most of the shops and businesses, at least in our part of town, will remain closed today.

One that will open, according to its sign, is our internet café, and so Greg and I head there shortly after it opens, at 12:30, to update the web, check email, and make some reservations for the next part of our trip. We spend a couple of hours there, and by the time we head out to the street, it is mayhem. There are more people throwing water, and more pick up trucks full of people driving the streets throwing water, than we’ve seen so far. We head into a little restaurant for lunch, while we try to figure out how to get back to the hotel without our computer having a pail of water dumped on it. We come up with a strategy, and it works! We get back safe and sound.

It is Graeme’s last night in Bangkok, so he comes over and we have a drink at our hotel. We head out to dinner to a restaurant suggested by a Thai friend of his, San, called Ban Klang Nam. It is right on the river, and San tells us that it serves excellent seafood.

The taxi ride is, as all taxi rides are, disorienting – we seem to go in circles, down a major street that inexplicably ends, through 4 or 5 sois, then back onto a major street that will soon change directions – all 10 lanes will all of a sudden become 1 way, the wrong way, so we will head down more back streets. Finally, we turn down a soi that could be a movie set of the kind of street you don’t go down after dark, and down at the end is the restaurant. The only other farang in the place have also been brought there by Thais.

We are lucky – we get a table right on the water. San orders the meal, and it is as billed. The fried whole fish is delicious, and the calamari with chillies is even better. We have a nice Australian white with the meal – a real luxury in Thailand, where, as has been true throughout SE Asia, wine is expensive. The meal is still a bargain, just over 500 baht each, about C$17.

We taxi back to Surawong, and carefully shop the night market. Patpong 2 is safe – it has no cars. We move over to Patpong 1, and Graeme and I say no – there is water being thrown everywhere. So we shop back down the other side of Patpong 1, back to Surawong. On the way, we buy a couple of CDs, about $3 each, and I buy a new wallet – no major label, so unlikely to be counterfeit, but made of stingray leather.

We sit and have a beer on the street – the craziness at midnight seems confined to Patpong 2, and then head back to the comfort of the A/C.

Hot, Hot, Hot. The predicted temperature in Bangkok will be 42 degrees! This does not include the humidity.

Some businesses and venues are open; some are closed for day two of Songkran in Bangkok. Staff at our hotel isn't entirely sure what is open or closed. Many of them are too busy throwing buckets of water at passers-by in the street. And they are in their uniforms too!

There is a certain level of frustration growing as we experience the feeling of being trapped in our hotel for yet another Southeast Asian New Year's celebration. First it was Nyepi in Bali, with no lights and no movement outside our hotel for 24 hours. Now, Songkran in Thailand. We can go out but can't keep up with the demand for dry clothes!

I do head to the front desk and discover that the Grand Palace is open today and we decide to make the journey across town to the house that King Rama I built in 1782. We must of course, be properly attired and this means long pants, sleeved shirts and no flip flops. Ugh! We step outside and immediately break sweat.


From left: the Grand Palace; Palace Grounds

We arrive about noon and the crowds are enormous. We make our way around the various Phras and Chedis and marvel at the detail and beauty of the grounds. We head into the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha with all the other Thais on pilgrimage. The Monastery houses the famous Emerald Buddha and this Wat is the most revered in Thailand because of its connection to the Royal Family. Everyone is out celebrating Songkran and covering the Buddhas with water, both plain and flower scented.


Pilgrims bathing Buddha

The Emerald Buddha is in fact carved from a single block of Jade and was first discovered in 1434 when movers accidentally dropped it, releasing it from inside its plaster Buddha casing. The statue dons a different costume for each of the three seasons in Thailand and is changed by the King himself, who climbs up to the image because it can be lowered for no-one. It is as crowded and policed as the Sistine Chapel is, and we step back and allow the faithful time and room to pray. The walls are covered in beautiful paintings depicting selected events of the Lord Buddha's life. We're not allowed to take photos of the Emerald Buddha.


Paintings in the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha

We move outside, our feet burning on the granite tiles and quickly put our shoes on and head for some shade, but there is not much to be found. There are many, many beautiful things to look at.


From left: View from the Emerald Buddha; around the Grounds

The heat and crowds are beginning to get too much for us and we decide to call it quits and head back to the hotel for late afternoon naps and early evening Songkran yelling and whooping.

Outside our hotel the street is alive with screaming, screeching, whistling water throwers waiting for us to leave our hotel for a wet supper.

Songkran is full on. You don’t want to leave the hotel lest you get soaking wet. And I mean soaking wet. Today is the first day of the “official” three days of Songkran and we grab breakfast and decide to hightail it out of town. We have seen pretty well all we want to in Chiang Mai and so we call the airport and organize an earlier flight and head out to the airport. The car is pelted with water all the way out. It seems the Thais are almost drunk on Songkran. Some of the younger ones literally are.

We arrive in Bangkok to the same drunkenness. We check into our hotel and feel that we are almost prisoners here. John does a quick errand to the 7/11 that is 10 metres from our hotel’s front door, and comes back completely soaked and literally dripping wet; covered also in wet, white powder. We are afraid to take any electronic equipment out into the shrieking, laughing street. They tell us that it stops after 6 pm and in fact this is what happened in Chiang Mai. We have a feeling that Bangkok is probably different.

We plan to meet our friend Graeme from Australia (see Patong Beach, Phuket) who is in stopover mode through Bangkok, and head out for dinner and a beer. The street is aggressively spraying water at everyone and truckloads of kids are driving by with oil drums full of water; their water cannons and dripping buckets ready to hit you twice if they can. Farang are the targets of choice, but we fare pretty well on our short walk to the restaurant. We choose to sit inside.

This is the first night of Songkran in Bangkok, although it started earlier up north. Everyone here is partying. Even the security guards and desk staff at our hotel are caught up in the fun. It is the start of a 3 day holiday here and one only needs to think of New Years Eve in North America to understand what is going on.

Some brief Songkran statistics:
Total road deaths so far during Songkran: 353 April 9 - 13
Total people injured so far during Songkran: 20,293 April 9 - 13
These are mostly motorcycle accidents attributed to drunkenness and not wearing helmets and the highest demographic is young males. It is turning into quite the political scandal here because the government had pledged to lower the road deaths from last year and in fact the totals exceed last years with two days still to go.

We wonder what the next three days will be like. In Chiang Mai, Nokia came up with a clever marketing ploy: they were handing out re-sealable plastic bags that hang around your neck for your mobile or wallet; anything that might potentially get wet. John got four of them. We thought Songkran was sweet in Chiang Mai - it is downright dangerous in Bangkok.

The morning does not start auspiciously – the minibus that is to pick us up for our day in the country-side around Chiang Mai does not appear. Finally, we head out of town, and after about 45 minutes, we stop. Our guide points up a hill and tells us that we are walking up, and up we go – and go – and go, in the heat and dust. There is almost no shade on this walk up the hill to a tribal village.

We finally get to the top. Half our group didn’t make it – they turned when they saw the rickety, bamboo bridge over the river. The 4 who did, Keith and Pat from England, and Greg and I, are all panting and sweating and desperate for water. The village itself is sad – dry, dusty, pigs and chickens and old people and children. There are woven goods to buy, and drinks and ice creams. This is subsistence living. Our guide explains that today, only the very old and the very young live in the villages – everyone else goes to the cities to make money, coming back only for weekends and holidays, leaving the children to be looked after by their grandparents.


Bridge; the climb up


1st village; some of Greg's friends

We hike back down the hill, and head off for lunch in a roadside stand. We watch as the locals, including our guide, pitch bucket after bucket of water at the cars, scooters and Tuk Tuks passing by. After lunch, we head to a 2nd native village. Same story, different tribe.


Leaf construction materials; villager in the 2nd village


Houses in the 2nd village

From there we head to a waterfall swimming hole. It is quite busy – because Songkran is a big holiday, many people who live in the cities are visiting their ancestral villages, and come here for relaxation. Despite the crowds, there is room enough for everyone, and of course the Thai courtesy and gentleness that we have come to love is everywhere apparent. Sa-wa-dee-krup! It certainly makes one wonder why we in North America are, generally, so unpleasant to one another in our public demeanour. Life would certainly be nicer if we could adopt a more Thai-like attitude.


Swimming hole and waterfall

We walk back up the big hill to our minibus, and head off again. Although the best parts of the day are yet to come, everyone is feeling weary. But off we go, and as soon as we spot the elephants we are about to ride, everyone revives. As with my previous elephant ride, we walk up some stairs to a platform to take our places on the elephant’s back. And off we go. The elephants are sure-footed, and although we wonder how they keep stable on part of the walk, they have no problems and evidence no worries.


All Aboard!; mahout riding elephant

We cross a little river twice, and both times the elephants stop and frolic, enjoying the coolness of the water, filling their trunks and spraying themselves, and us. Everyday must be Songkran for elephants. From time-to-time, our elephant makes this deep rumble for a few seconds; if she were a cat, we would say she was purring. We find out that she is 25 years old, that her mother, who is about 50, is the elephant in front of us. But the English skills of the mahouts don’t go far enough for us to find out what the purring noise is all about.


River fun with Pat and Keith; gotta scratch that itchy trunk!

Back at the platform are huge bunches of bananas for sale, 20 baht (60 cents) each. I buy one, and the mother elephant very deftly takes the complete bunch away from me before I know what is going on. The other 3 elephants are now crowding around, and Pat and I buy more bunches, now knowing to stand far enough away that we can rip off 2 or 3 bananas at a time and hand them to the elephants, who take them with the end of their trunks and stuff them into their mouths. We have some eyeball-to-eyeball moments, and the elephants again make their pleasure known.


Please, may I have some bananas?; yum, that’s good!; eyeball-to-eyeball

On the way back to the mini-bus, Pat, Keith, Greg and I talk about the mahouts, and the sticks they carry with short metal spikes that curve slightly at the end, which they use to control the elephants. We worry about whether this is cruel to the elephants, but at the same time we reckon that if the elephants didn’t want to be carrying us around, nobody with a stick and a short spike is going to be able to make them. So, with thousands of years of symbiosis between elephant and mahout, and with the existence of both elephant and mahout completely intertwined and interdependent, we don’t feel that we can impose our westernized, and totally impressionistic, feelings onto what is a lifelong relationship between the elephant and the mahout.

From here, it is a short ride to our last event of the marathon day – bamboo rafting down the river. There are 3 of us and a driver to each raft, which is made of 10 bamboo logs lashed together, each log about 5 metres longs. Our guide tells us that in the wet season the ride would be much longer, but that because the water level is so low, it will be a slow passage. We head off, and sure enough, the way is full of rocks to be navigated around. As we go down the river, we pass many families doing exactly the same thing – we have the benefit of a professional driver, who knows where the obstacles are and who thus avoids getting caught in most of the traffic jams we pass. Each raft we go by splashes water at us – “Happy Songkran” – and we in turn do the same. All of it wonderful fun, and being wet in a beautiful river on a very hot day, full of people enjoying themselves, is not a bad way at all to spend an hour.


Happy Songkran!

The drive back to Chiang Mai is slow – every few metres a group of people stands at the side of the road, buckets in hand, drenching everyone passing by. At one point, an elegant young woman on a scooter gives a bunch of them the dirtiest look we’ve seen in Thailand, and we wonder what she was expecting – this is so clearly just the way it is, and apparently the way it is going to be until Thursday, when Songkran finally ends.

Back at the hotel, we barely have enough energy to go out for dinner after our long day – the only thing that convinces us is the room service menu, which is full of items like club sandwiches and hamburgers. No amount of exhaustion is worth eating this for dinner, when there are wonderful Thai restaurants lining the streets around the hotel. So out we go – all the merry Songkranners have gone home for the night – and we plop into seats at the first restaurant we come across, too tired to go further – but rewarded for our doggedness by wonderfully delicious food.

It is the hot season here, which means it is the dry season. We saw in this morning's newspaper that yesterday the temperature here in Chiang Mai reached 41 degrees.

We head out early - me to book a trek for tomorrow, Greg to update the website. We meet for a quick lunch, and it feels hotter today than yesterday.

Other than the occasional bucket of water hurled in our direction in honour of Songkran, there is no escape. And even those are few and far between in the heat of midday. We make a strategic decision - to retreat! Greg opts for a 2 hour massage/reflexology treatment, I opt for the hotel pool - except that there is no shade available there, and the coolness of the water isn't worth the hotter than H-E-double hockeysticks environment at the pool. So up to the air conditioned wonderfulness of the room, and a good book.

N 18
E 099
This turns out to be a wonderful, magical and somewhat mystical day.


Outside our Hotel

It starts late for us, even John sleeps in to 9:00. We head downstairs for our “American Breakfast”and are out by 10:30. I am not feeling 100% this morning. I am dealing with a cold and am a little run down but figure that this will work itself out as the day progresses. On arrival yesterday, our pilot tells us that it is 30 degrees and we gleefully think, how Australian the weather is! That changes today as we head out into the heat of the day for our Wat tour of Chiang Mai. Of course, etiquette demands that you must wear long pants and sleeved shirts when you enter the temples and we do so despite the blistering heat.

Our first stop is the Wat Bupparam, housing the famous 400 year old Teak Buddah, and we are met at the gates by two women bearing small baskets and we think, “oh, no, more touts. Religious touts this time”. They nab John and we quickly realize that these baskets are housing doves that, upon release, bring good luck to those who have let them free. It is Songkran after all. We pay our 200 baht for 2, and John lets them go.


John wishing for Good Luck

The wat is huge and has the many traditional Pra Chedi housing relics of the Lord Buddha. An old women graciously greets us at the temple door, asks us to remove our shoes and shows us in. I am overcome with a need to cry. Of course, the North American in me quickly squashes this emotion but still I move up to the Lord Buddha and crouch down on my knees and say a little prayer. Don’t know why. It just seem like the right thing to do. My stomach does heave a bit as I continue to squelch the emotion. As we leave, one of the old women, says in her very limited English, essentially, that we are crazy to be out in the heat and that we should take a Tuk Tuk to all the wats. At least, this is our interpretation of what she said.


From left: Buddhas, The Teak Buddha, the ceiling of the Wat

We continue along the main street bisecting Chiang Mai and enter another temple. Here the temple is locked, and we are only allowed to enter the grounds, which are completely deserted. We try to stay in the shade as much as possible and our shirts are already soaking wet and clinging to us.


Views from the Wat

We continue our Wat Trek along the main street. This is a very non-descript area of town with no high end shopping plazas or even night market type stalls on this part of the street but we pass a jewellery store and something catches our eye. We decide to enter, as we have in many stores in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore, not expecting much but still, in search of our wedding bands.

We walk out of Nova with our wedding bands!

Nova is creative co-operative dealing with young and interesting designers and both John and I love the rings we have chosen. They are two floating bands, interlocking scallops, one gold and the other is sandblasted sterling silver. The wonderful thing is that they go perfectly with the bands we already wear. I get to wear mine out but John needs his re-sized. We will return later in the day to retrieve his. Those lucky birds that John set free at the first temple really meant something!

We celebrate over a lavish $8 CDN lunch run by a sweet girl just two doors down and continue our trek to the biggest temple, Phra Singh. This compound was built during the zenith of Chiang Mai’s power and is one of the more venerated shrines in the city, and more than 700 monks study here. During Songkran, it is the center of the festival.


From left, some young monks, Buddha


From left, Greg receiving water blessing, reclining Buddha

We are exhausted at this point and grab a Tuk Tuk back to the hotel for quick naps and a change of clothes before heading out again for 5:00 and the Songkran Parade at the main park in Chiang Mai.

Now, we have heard that people get sprayed with water for the entire time of this festival so at the very least we expect to get some water guns fired at us . We hail our first open air Tuk Tuk, I notice, and no sooner are we at the first traffic lights when a truck load of kids comes by and douses us with a bucket of water! We were wise not to bring any camera equipment with us because by the time we get to the park, we are soaking wet. They are even grabbing buckets of water from the moat around the old walled city, and hurling them across the traffic at us. Farang (foreigners) supposedly are a sought-after target and we are very popular Farang! We feel badly for our Tuk Tuk driver because he is as wet as we are. What you going to do except laugh and laugh. And we do. And so does our driver.

The parade is quite spectacular with many Thai provinces and 5 countries besides Thailand represented: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China and Myanmar. Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, the two host provinces, are at the tail end of the parade. All have beautiful floats and processions, each representing their cultures. The parade goes on for over 2 hours. All of the delegations bring gifts and homage to Buddha. Some in their hands and some on their backs, with each country and province bringing gifts that represent their uniqueness. The offerings include beautiful floral arrangements, food, and cleansing materials (this is a cleansing festival) including, oddly enough, lots of dishsoap and paper towels.

After the parade ends, we wander through the crowds and endless traffic jam. For the first time since arriving in Thailand, the traffic fumes overwhelm us, and we move away from the crowd, and finally make our way to a steet where the traffic is moving, at least in the direction we want to go, grabbing a Tuk Tuk back to the night market near our hotel.


Buddha blesses all

Breakfast by the pool at 8, to say goodbye to Tony and Graeme. Tony has stopped in Phuket on his way home from a business trip to Europe, and today he heads to Singapore for a couple more days R&R. Graeme will stay in Phuket until Monday, when he heads to Bangkok. We hope to see him in Bangkok when we return next week. And this afternoon we are off to Chiang Mai, in Thailand’s north. Both Tony and Graeme donate a novel to our sadly depleted library. Thank you, boys!

After breakfast, I grab a Tuk Tuk down to town to the internet café, to pick up email and pay some bills. Yes, sad but true, even in Paradise there are bills to be paid.

Greg and I have lunch by the pool at the Club Bamboo. This little hotel, maybe 35 or 40 rooms and bungalows, has been a wonderful oasis of civilization over the last 5 days. It is built on many levels up the side of the hill above Patong Beach, slightly away from the craziness, but still close enough that 100 baht ($3) in a Tuk Tuk, or 40 baht on the back of a motorcycle, gets you up or down the hill. As I look around, I realize that we have, without question, had the best service here that we have had so far on the trip. It has been quietly efficient, generously given, always knowing what you need before you know it yourself. I will always remember the smile of the woman who made up our room, and I will miss Club Bamboo!

At 1, we leave for the airport. Because of Songkran, the Thai New Year, which starts this weekend, we could not get a non-stop flight to Chiang Mai, so we will fly to Bangkok and connect to Chiang Mai. Which is still better than the alternative, a 24 hour bus ride. We have an amazing view of Bangkok as we arrive (in part because we spend an hour circling, waiting for permission to land). We make our connection without problem. As we approach our destination, the captain makes his standard pre-landing announcement, telling us that the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius in Chiang Mai. We wonder if we will find it cold – we have not experienced temperatures this low since we left Sydney a month ago.

We get to the hotel, unpack quickly, and head out for dinner. Just up the street is a beautiful looking restaurant, The Whole Earth Restaurant, and we go in. It appears to float slightly above ground. The restaurant is situated in a traditional Lanna Thai pavilion. We are asked to remove our shoes before we go up the stairs, and of course the sensation of wood on our feet immediately grounds us. We sit on a long open-air veranda with beautiful views of the gardens. It is a very peaceful place. Our meal is delicious – I have Tom Yum Soup, and the tastes of lemongrass, ginger and chilli are divine on my tongue and Greg’s sweet and sour vegetables are lovely – not too sweet.

The night market is just around the corner, and we spend 30 minutes exploring before we head back to the hotel, and crash, exhausted.

The elephants of Thailand are beautiful! A major part of the Thai lumber industry until recently, there is now only a tiny lumber industry left (the country has gone from 95% forest coverage 100 years ago to a fraction of that today) and it uses machinery, not elephants. As a result, the elephant population has dwindled to about 2,500 in the entire country. Most of those are now employed in the service sector, entertaining tourists. But their life is precarious – they need a lot of attention and care from their mahouts, not to mention food – and so the more people who ride them, the more stable their existence. I am ready to do my bit – by riding elephants at every possible opportunity.

There is an elephant safari just down the road from Club Bamboo, and at 10:00 a taxi takes me there. I go alone. Greg decides to stay at the hotel and update the web journal. At the safari, I climb a set of stairs to a platform about 5 metres above the ground. The mahout stands with me, and calls out to his elephant, who comes over and expertly sidles up to the platform. I cautiously stand on the elephant’s back to get into my seat, and the mahout takes up his position on the elephant’s head.

We quickly cross the main road and start up a hill. I am sitting right behind the mahout, and still sway wildly with each step the elephant takes – it must be worse when there are 2 and each sits on one side of the elephant. Up we go, stopping from time-to-time (at the elephant’s discretion, of course) until the mahout decides that it is time to move. Then he yells at the elephant, and off we go again.

We get to the turnaround at the top of the hill – very clear in the mud that this is where the elephants turn. The view over the Andaman Sea is wonderful. The mahout takes my camera, and tells the elephant to lower his head so he can get down. He takes a couple of pictures of me, then tells me to get out of my seat and to sit on the elephant’s head in the mahout’s position. I do, again cautiously. After a couple of pictures, the mahout calls out to the elephant who starts walking down the hill. I realize that I get to pretend to be the mahout on the way down, and work hard to enjoy the experience.


Mahout for a day!

At the bottom of the hill, we go back to the platform and I get off. The mahout says something to the elephant, who raises his head so that he and I are looking at each other, eyeball to eyeball. He raises his trunk up onto the platform and we shake, hand to trunk.

Greg and I then head for the beach, and meet up Graeme and Tony for a leisurely lunch in a seaside restaurant. The sea is beautifully calm and warm, and the afternoon passes lazily. After naps back at the hotel, the 4 of us head out for dinner. We go to the Sea Hag, the name of which is not appetizing, but the reviews overcome our hesitation. We are glad we did – the seafood is delicious, and the prices, while high compared to the norm in Thailand, are still low compared to anything at home.

After dinner, we wander over to Paradise! Paradise is a complex of sois (literally: “alleys”, but really “side streets”) around the Royal Paradise Hotel, one of the 3 highrises in Patong Beach. There are 15 or 20 bars and restaurants in the 4 or 5 streets that make up Paradise, and we have adopted them since our arrival. We head to the “James Dean” where we are all greeted by name by Jin, the maitre d’. After a couple of beers, we head to the “Boat Bar” for the 1:00 a.m. drag show. The drags are great, and get the applause they deserve, but the chorus boys are less than enthusiastic. Show over, we all grab a Tuk Tuk back to the Club Bamboo, ready for sleep.

We have made it part of our daily routine to actively introduce ourselves to our fellow travelers and today is no exception. On the Dive Tuk Tuk we meet Pete and his two kids Manda, 16 and Theo, 14. Pete and his wife (who isn’t here) are in the US Army and are stationed in Korea, and the 2 kids live in Korea as well. We talk about how much they are enjoying the experience of living outside the US. We soon pick up more people and realize that the boat will be fuller today than yesterday.


Scenery we pass on the boat

The boat procedure routine is familiar to us this morning and we set off into the hazy sunshine. About 15 minutes into our trip out, the skies turn dark and stormy and we expect rain at any moment. The 3 advanced students (that’s us and Vani from Richmond Hill) are first in the water this morning, working with Azad our instructor, to complete the course.

We have a total of 3 dives to complete today and the first one is the deep dive. We must plummet to 30 meters and complete some basic math equations. We must also observe the differences that depth makes on our gauges and colours and environment. Most importantly we are watching for incidences of Nitrogen Narcosis, the heady, almost drunken feeling of too much nitrogen in your blood steam. This can cause a diver to loose their sense of direction and focus but generally this just makes them look and act stupid. Unfortunately, none of us reaches Nitrogen Nirvana. Too bad! After our work is done, we continue the dive and spot baby bluespot stingrays on the bottom of the ocean floor.



Marine life

Our surface interval is only 50 minutes as we prep for the next dive. This dive will be short – the navigation skills dive. We must perform 4 tasks on the bottom including navigating with a compass and estimating distance by counting fin kicks. There is quite a strong current and all of our exercises are slightly off course but we manage to get through them successfully. Near the “base station” where 2 of us wait while the 3rd completes his skills, Azad spots an octopus. We all swim over to it, and it watches us watching it. Azad is taking many photos, but the octopus is content to watch. At one point, Azad must have gone a little to close for the octopus’ comfort – it changes colours – magic to see! Finally it heads into its cave to escape the relentless attention of the paparazzi. We head up with half tanks of air (a first time for us), have lunch and wait for our 3rd and last dive of the day.


Octopus

Our last dive is a multilevel dive which means we start at 19 meters and work our way up to 12 meters. This is a leisurely dive and we spot lionfish, stonefish, flute fish and a big jelly fish at the end of the dive. A very easy-going, relaxing finish to our advanced course. We’re home by 4 and we sleep soundly until 7:30.

We met 2 guys from Australia staying at our hotel, Tony from Melbourne and Graeme from Sydney, and about 8 we head out for drinks and dinner with them to celebrate our successful completion of our course. After a couple of beers, we head to a street restaurant and have a truly delicious meal.

A gorgeous day! We are on a boat, heading to 2 dive sites in the Andaman Sea, for the 1st day of diving in our advanced scuba certification course. The course consists of 5 different dives over 2 days. Today we will do 2 of them, the wreck dive and the underwater naturalist dive.

We had been picked up at our hotel by the dive shop’s Tuk Tuk, and then driven 30 minutes to Chalong, at the south-east corner of Phuket Island. Phuket is the largest of the many islands in Thailand, slightly larger than Barbados and slightly smaller than Singapore. Then we boarded a boat for the 90 minute trip to the dive sites. On board we met some great people – Maricar from San Francisco, John from Manila, and Vani, who is also doing his advanced certification course, from Richmond Hill. Azad, a Kurd originally from Sweden who has lived and taught diving on Phuket for 5 years, is our instructor. Azad has brought his underwater camera, so we will have photos of today’s dives.



On the way out; Greg is with John and Maricar

We jump in the water and descend along the mooring line, and the magic of diving is upon us. The sensation of floating, with friends but alone, only the sounds and sights of the ocean, is true freedom.

The 1st dive is at the site of the King Cruiser, a car and passenger ferry that rammed a coral reef in 1997 and slowly sank, with no loss of life. This wreck is clearly exactly that – a ship underwater; it has quite a different feeling from the Liberty wreck in Bali, probably because the Liberty was sunk 60 years ago, and was so coral encrusted that it was not evidently man-made. There is plentiful life everywhere as we swim the around and through the hull. In addition to the usual, angelfish, groupers, sweetlips, we see numerous lionfish, and a pufferfish that has been startled by something and so is scurrying to hide, but at full size. The immediate and dramatic changes in water temperature as we move about the wreck are quite surprising.

After 2 hours on the boat between dives, in which there is a surprisingly good (this is a dive boat, after all – the norm would be more like a cold sandwich) Thai curry and lots of conversation with all our new friends, we go back in for our 2nd dive. The boat has moved a few hundred metres to Shark Point, and Azad promises us that we will see at least 2 kinds of sharks. We do – a nurse shark and bamboo sharks. Bamboo sharks, while clearly sharks, are so cute – they don’t get longer than about 50 centimetres, and they don’t like people. To see them, we have to peer into their hiding spaces, floating upside down. We also see some barracuda, scorpionfish, and some white-eyed moray eels.



Underwater; note lionfish in lower left corner

For each of the 5 dives in the advanced certification, there is a written test, and the answer to one of the questions for this afternoon’s dive, of how humans provoke attacks underwater, includes either assuming the fish are friendly or have human characteristics, and also, to the contrary, assuming that they are inherently dangerous. It is so different underwater – you get so close to the fish without them appearing concerned that it is easy to assume they are friendly: on land you could never get so close to wild creatures without provoking defensive reactions. Even the dangerous fish, such as the lionfish and the scorpionfish, do not react when Azad swims quite close and takes their photos (unlike Balinese temple monkeys).

The day is perfect as we head back to shore!

We plan a quiet day of internet updating and beach. We wake up and have a wonderful breakfast at the hotel – all fresh fruit, fresh squeezed juice, and coffee made in an automatic machine. We head to the internet café we found yesterday. The internet is frustratingly slow – it takes 2 hours to upload 2 days of our journal, and we can’t download all of our email.

Halfway through our internet session, Greg looks at the wall beside me and gasps and points – there is a picture of our friends Alan Cornwall, who went to law school with me, and his partner Paul Meagher. Paul died in 1993, and Alan died in 1995 – we can’t imagine when these pictures were taken. I have a dim recollection of them coming to Thailand, but couldn’t begin to pin it down. But there they are, laughing and happy. We shiver – half way around the world and many years later, the last people we expected to see are Alan and Paul. The rest of the day is spent thinking and talking of times gone by, laughs that we shared, and losses we have suffered. It is a day of ghosts.

Gazillions of Italians, Germans, Swedes and Brits, each family with numerous children, all starting their Easter vacations, all exhausted from their connecting flights from all over the world, converge on Gates 8 through 10 at Bangkok International Airport. Some are headed for Chiang Mai, others to a destination we have never heard of. Most are on the 1:00 flight to Phuket with us.

Our morning has been relatively quite, packing and repacking for the 10 days away from Bangkok; we are leaving our big suitcases at the hotel in Bangkok until we get back. Today we are heading to Phuket for 5 days, and then north to Chiang Mai in time to celebrate Songkran there. Songkran is the Thai Lunar New Year water festival, when Buddah images are bathed, and monks and elders receive the respect of younger Thais through the sprinkling of water (sometimes throwing and squirting with water cannons) over their hands. We understand that a lot of water is generously splashed about and that the parade in Chiang Mai will be attended by thousands.

Our flight is over 40 minutes late in taking off and we ascend into a major lightning storm. But the hour and ten minute flight to Phuket is uneventful, except for the most efficient service of a complete meal we’ve ever seen on an airplane. The tourists on vacation do the typical hand clapping at touch-down and John and I laugh to each other, having accomplished 11 flights since we left Toronto.

We are staying at Patong Beach and for those of you who don’t know Phuket, it is busy, gregarious and raucous. We are staying at the Club Bamboo (thanks for the referral, Bill Sumpton), a 5 minute, 100 baht (approximately $3 CDN) Tuk Tuk ride to downtown. We are out of the loud, honky-tonk center of this typical beach town. Our ultimate goal here is to do some diving and we head into town to check out the dive shops and book a day out on Tuesday. We find a $5 CDN all-you-can-eat buffet of scrummy and spicy Thai curries and rice and a couple (several) Singha Beers in the Paradise section of Patong then grab a brightly lit Tuk Tuk home.

N13
E100

Happy Birthday to Liz, John’s sister, on April 5!

We arrived in Bangkok last night long after dark. On the drive from the airport, which was very quick, we couldn’t really tell what we were looking at, other than lots and lots of high-rises. We got to our hotel, and realized that it was smack-dab in the middle of everything – just off Surawong Road, right beside Patpong Market and close to Silom. The taxi driver tells us that we are lucky – it is a long weekend and so the traffic is easy.

When we arrived, we had no plans – a hotel reservation for 1 night and that’s all. So we wake up and, after breakfast, call a travel agent that our friend Bill Sumpton recommended. They are open until noon Saturday, so after a few minutes chat we grab a taxi and head over. An hour later, we have plans – we fly to Phuket tomorrow for 5 days, then we fly to Chiang Mai, in time for the Songkran parade for the Thai New Year, the year of the monkey, we think, next Saturday. We had originally expected that we would take some buses there, but the arrival of Air Asia here in Thailand means that it is virtually the same price to take a 1 hour flight as it is to take a 12 hour bus ride. So we will fly around Thailand on Thai Air International, collecting Aeroplan miles in the process.

We decide to walk back to the hotel, through a wonderful park with a statue of King Rama VI. We are surprised by Bangkok – all that we have heard has led us to expect a really ugly and dirty city. At least for the few kilometres between Wireless Road and Surawong, it is a decidedly modern and prosperous city. We turn onto Surawong Road from King Rama IV Road, and there is the Jim Thompson store. Jim Thompson was an American stationed in Bangkok after WWII, who virtually single-handedly revived the Thai Silk industry in the 1960s. We go in – the silks are truly beautiful, and most of them do not conform to our stereotype of what silk is like. We wander to the 2nd, then the 3rd, and then the 4th floors – to the furniture department and the upholstery silks. These fabrics are absolutely beautiful, and again, for the most part, are not what we expected silk upholstery fabric to look like. We decide that the next time we decorate a home, we are coming to Bangkok, and that there will be a huge amount of silk involved. Greg has asked to leave the store early because of the frustration of not being able to buy anything.

Our hotel is just down the street, and we head in to wash our faces – it is the hot season here, 38 degrees, but not as humid as Bali so we aren’t noticing the heat quite as much as we did there, but the smoke and smog sting our throats and eyes and crust our faces. We head out immediately to walk to the river. After a couple of blocks, a tuk-tuk driver convinces us to go for a ride. He takes us to a pier on the river, and we negotiate (Greg: down to just over 50% of original asking price, yeah! John!) a tour of the river and through the klongs (canals). The tour we get is worth every penny!

On the river


On the klongs

We go through a number of different areas – some clearly very middle class, a couple of homes we pass clearly belong to very wealthy people, but most of what we pass evidences heartbreaking poverty – although this is very decidedly a more prosperous country than what we saw of Indonesia. The thing that gets us today is the number of people – adults and children – swimming and bathing in both the river and the klongs – this is water that you and I would not dream of putting our baby finger into, let along jumping in and frolicking.

Our ride done, we walk back to the hotel – it is now 4 p.m., and the sun is low enough that we can find shade on the west side of the street. It feels like a much shorter walk in shade than it did in full sun. We realize that we haven’t had lunch yet, so find a place and have wonderful Thai curries. Then we grab the computer and find an internet café, where, much to our delight, they have broadband and it doesn’t take an hour to upload 6 pictures.

After washing our faces – again – we head out for supper at about 9. We find a place that we’ve read about in one of our guidebooks, and have more Thai curry – this stuff is absolutely addictive. At the table next to ours is an Aussie, and something happens that makes us all laugh, so the next thing you know we’re into quite the conversation. He’s been working in Asia for over 30 years, and tells us that things have really changed since he started hanging out in Bangkok in the early 70s. He also tells us that he arrived on Wednesday and that just as his taxi pulled away from the airport terminal, the rain started – it took over 5 hours to get to his hotel downtown – about 24 kilometres from the airport.

After supper, we head to a club that Bill S. recommended to us; the only thing we can say is that we saw some things we’ve seen many times before and some things we’ve never seen before – things we still can’t quite believe we saw.

We head for home through the heady Patpong market, still going strong, continuously asked for “what do you want, I have it.” Bangkok, you got it!

© 2004 Tobeeco Corp., all rights reserved | design by Artifex Design | powered by b2