Thailand was Everything

Oh hello there, and belated happy new year! I’m now somewhere between 2-4 weeks behind on this here blog, but as they said in Rome, better late than never. I had originally envisioned my 19 days in Thailand split into three posts – 6 days in the north, 6 beach/scuba days in the south, and 7 split between the jungle and Bangkok. But, due to my tardiness, I’ve lumped them all into one. So here goes…

Now let me take you back to December 15, when I flew from Siem Reap to Chiang Mai (via Bangkok – my first and maybe only layover of the trip). Chiang Mai is a quiet and touristy northern city full of good food, many temples, spiritual people, and some capacity for debauchery. My Thai time was almost entirely with company. When I arrived at the “party hostel” where we were staying in Chiang Mai, the first thing I did was wake Gary up. For the uninitiated, Gary is a high school friend, and in 2013 we discussed doing a month or so in southeast Asia. I backed out of this prospective trip when I got my job in Boston, so everything now came full circle, 6.5 years later.

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I had convinced Gary that situationally a hostel was preferable to other lodging for the financial and social benefits. As we began gearing up for the evening we chatted with the hostel manager, who mentioned how they sometimes send guests to their other ‘non-party’ hostel because not everyone loves their scene. I had stayed in a couple of self-proclaimed party hostels on the trip thus far (notably Prague and Siem Reap) and made some dismissive comment about how they can be a bit noisy but they’re all the same. His response: “our parties are a little different.” I shrugged and figured he was prideful but nothing would set this place apart. Three hours later he and another male staff member went skinny dipping. It was then that I understood what he was talking about. We wound up capitalizing on the activity without being too deterred by the nudity, as we drank with people from the hostel two of our first three nights of the trip and headed to the local nightclub Spicy. The second evening we did manage to take one “night off” where Gary adjusted his jetlag which was conducive to our getting up bright and early to meet some elephants.

We boarded a small transport vehicle where we met four NYC-area based 23-year-olds, two of whom were SUNY Buffalo alums like myself, which took us to the Maerim Elephant Sanctuary. It was amazing. We were given outfits to wear, got a quick orientation, and loaded up our satchels with bananas to feed to our new friends. The sanctuary had 6 elephants all of which were rescued from a former life of work (a.k.a. abuse), with the exception of a 1.5 year old bull. Feeding them was great, they used their trunks to take one or two bananas at a time from our hands, sometimes quicker than we could get bananas out from our sacks. The young guy was a little particular and would drop them if they were too unripe or still had the peels on.

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We fed them some roughage as well and then washed up for our lunch. After that we walked them to a watering hole and a mudpit. We were repeatedly told this was the best mud on earth; red and white clay that they transported from the mountains. So we all got in and rolled around in it and had a mudfight I still can’t decide if this was the right idea or not (I stopped taking photos at that point for fear of phone destruction). We rinsed the elephants in some murky waist-deep water and said our farewells.

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And the first song from Thialand (each region gets a track in the playlist that is this blog… the first was elephant inspired):

Back at the hostel we had discussed a light night but wound up participating in a beer pong tournament and then very aggressively peer pressured by the young cockneyed Emily, who was something of an alcohol-centric cheerleader. So we took one more bite of the Spicy Apple. Again, a party hostel not for the faint of heart. Some more of Chiang Mai (mostly in the daylight):

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In addition to Chiang Mai, Gary and I had heard multiple recommendations to visit the nearby town of Pai. No one could articulate exactly what made it worthy, but many told us to go, so go we did. The one road from Chiang Mai to Pai had 762 turns. It was a curvy switchbacking mountainous route that was beyond picturesque at moments. Some took motorcycles, but that wasn’t our speed. We looked into taking a bus but wound up going for the slightly more ambitious option of renting a car for 3 days and driving ourselves. This afforded us schedule flexibility, the vehicle for small daytrips out of Pai, stops along the way, and an adventure. Unlike Vietnam and Cambodia, Thailand cars are on the opposite side, so on Gary’s drive there and my drive home the passenger had special responsibilities for a second pair of eyes, and to laugh as the driver kept activating the wipers when trying to use the turn signal. The car wound up being a good choice and there were fortunately no issues.

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On the way up we stopped at a waterfall and bamboo bridge over some rice paddies.

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After a short while in Pai we understood why people loved it and why they were unable to tell us more than that. Pai is just one of those places with a vibe. Warm days, cool nights, crunchy granola backpackers, good food, interesting albeit kitchy shopping, fun nightlife, breathtaking scenery, pervasive calmness all contributed to it just being special. While not truly authentic, as the entire small place seemed to cater to backpackers, being there made us happy. We only stayed two nights and thus did not fall into the “Pai hole” where backpackers come and never leave.

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Our hostel was located just off “Walking Street” which was nightly closed to cars and became a market.

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Our big daytrip out of town was to the Pai Canyon, essentially a dusty ridge with some narrow and steep portions. in every direction small mountains could be seen in the distance, separated by a jungled lowland. It was pretty and a good trip, although it turned out to be a sweaty one.

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The next physical exertion was walking up to the giant white Buddha that overlooks Pai. Many steps. Many many steps. We hung out and decompressed while some other visitors meditated. After watching the sunset at Buddha’s feet we descended back to town.

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Our last night in Pai we went to the Fire Show at a hostel on the outskirts of town. The hostel was a compound not unlike a sleepaway camp, where an overwhelming majority of guests were Israeli. We were impressed by most of the fire twirling that ensued.

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We drove back to Chiang Mai for a quiet evening with only one thing on our agenda: seeing Star Wars in theaters. Gary and I agreed that it was terrible. In the morning we flew to Phuket, then boarded a ferry to the island of Ko Phi Phi (where they filmed The Beach starring a young Leonardo Dicaprio).

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We had heard mixed things about Ko Phi Phi – either that it was toursity and crowded and overbuilt, or that it was beautiful and a must-see part of Thailand. We recognized the dichotomy. It was both of these things. With no cars on the island, the narrow streetscapes were overwhelming in the moments after the ferry arrived bringing hundreds of tourists with their luggage in tow. The streets were lined with restaurants with lots of western fare, tourist shops, and dive shops. I witnessed no activity on the island that didn’t support tourism. But the beaches weren’t crowded and it was stunningly beautiful. While understanding that this wasn’t an untouched and authentic place, it was quite an enjoyable three days.

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Our first full day in Ko Phi Phi I went diving. This was my first recreational dive ever. Visibility was great and I started to get my sea legs, although I had a lot of work to do to stay calm, and regulate my breathing/buoyancy. I didn’t take any photos underwater but I did from the boat. We had lunch overlooking Maya Bay, the signature beach from the film The Beach. Visitors used to be able to swim and hang out on the sand but it was closed to protect the coral and marine life.

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The nights on the beach were concentrated around 3 or 4 adjacent bars. Each had an evening fire show that put the one in Pai to shame. Insanely athletic and dexterous locals were entertaining performers and they carried out their every-evening routines. The fire show eventually became community limbo, double dutch jump roping, and then a dance party that would abruptly end at 1am.

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In the end while we recognized why some might complain about Ko Phi Phi, but had nothing bad to say about it. Next stop, Phuket airport again, where we met Tim and Lauren (remember in an early post when I said I officiated a wedding right before leaving Boston? It was their’s) and took a shuttle up to Khao Lak, where we stayed at the luxurious JW Marriott thanks to Gary’s member points. Despite the luxury, our room had only 2 twin beds. After an unnecessarily long arbitration hearing with the front desk staff, we made do by supplementing it with a rollaway that they declared a Christmas gift to us.

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Khao Lak was a jumping off point for Lauren, Tim, and I to head out to the Siliman Islands in the Andaman Sea where we spent one night on a liveaboard and did 6 dives in 2 days. Again, sorry, no underwater photos. But we saw a turtle and octopus head and a barracuda and 4 napoleon wrasses and scorpion/lion/clown/parrot/trigger fish etc.

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The liveaboard was impressive. We all agreed that the food was good and the whole experience was very efficient. Some staffmembers stay on the boat for 7 month at a time (particularly the captain and cook, who were married). The boat moves around the island to the dive sites, while the speed boat makes daily trips delivering passengers. There were 4 dives from the boat each day, we did 3 per day because we were in transit during the first/last, respectively.

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And for this time underwater, Thailand’s track #2:

From the Silimans we returned to Khao Lak and met back up with Gary for an evening on the beach, our last night in this lovely oceanside town.

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In the interest of aliteration, we next ventured from Khao Lak to Khao Sok National Park. This was about a two hour drive northeast into the jungle. We were staying at the “Jungle Huts” and they lived up to the name.

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Our first evening we did a guided night trek on a trail in the jungle. We saw around 100 spiders, some lizards, some stickbugs, a couple of monkeys, one bird, one bat, and a few lizards. Arm was an excellent guide. He would sometimes call our attention to a spot on the ground or a tree trunk, and after a few seconds of us staring and not knowing what to look for he would slowly pan up to reveal a massive spider.

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The big draw of Khao Sok was the boat trip through a mostly manmade lake. It was dammed in 1982 and made for stunning scenery, that would of been near as stunning with or without the flooded waters. we took a ride about an hour east to get to the entry to the lake.

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We stopped for lunch at a floating restaurant and ‘resort’ before heading to a natural lake.

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On primitive bamboo boats we made our way over to a cave where we checked out some stalagmites and tites. Bats and spiders seemed to be the primary inhabitants.

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Now time to head back to where we started, the sun beginning to drop behind the lakeside mountains was stunning.

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Day two in Khao Sok had a slow start. Gary and I wanted to go tubing while Tim and Lauren hiked, but the tubing operators said the water level in the river was too low. We disagreed, so we bought tubes and DIY’d it. We also bought two lengths of rope a couple of meters long so we could tether ourselves. We would up staying pretty close to the Jungle Huts. Between the cold water, hot sun, relaxation, and funny brief encounters with others on the river, it was a perfect afternoon.

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Our last morning in Khao Sok we did a short hike to a lookout but must have made a wrong turn because we went up and then down a few hundred steps, never found a clearing, and wound up where we started.

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From Khao Sok we got took a cab to Surat Thani airport from which we flew to Bangkok. The nature-rich part of the trip was over, it was time for a concrete jungle. We checked into our AirBnB and headed out to meet Lauren’s brother Matt and his two friends Sam and Billy. They were Bangkok veterans so we yielded to them to lead the itinerary. We went to a market and to an area of bars, some seedier than others.

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All of a sudden New Year’s Eve was upon us. We headed ‘downtown’ (not sure if that’s the official designation) to check out temples and various parts of the city.

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From the Grand Palace we headed to the Golden Buddha. This particular statue, which weighed 5.5 tons and is assumed to have been built sometime around or before 1400. It was covered in plaster to avoid being stolen in 1767. The temple it’s currently in was built in the 1930s, while it’s goldenness was discovered under the plaster in 1954.

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Golden Buddha was right by the entrance to Chinatown, so we headed there next. We walked through some claustrophobia-inducing parts of the Chinese market and picked up some knick-knacks and street food.

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The last sightseeing stop of the day was the Hindu temple. It was beyond colorful, insanely detailed, and beautiful in it’s own right. We split up from here, I went shopping for a New Years outfit and got a haircut before regrouping and then hitting the town.

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For New Year’s Eve we went to Khosan Road, a touristy bar laden crowded part of town. Walking through the crowds was like a mosh pit, we were completely crammed in with traffic dripping in each direction and at points it was difficult to maintain balance. The 7 of us got drinks here and then did a bit of a bar hop.

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This was the first time in a decade that I wasn’t at a concert for New Year’s, and was reminded that the moment of midnight can be a bit anti-climactic. But we had silly string at the bar where the year turned, and that was fun. Sometime in the early morning we made our way back to the airbnb separately, having lost track of each other throughout the night.

Our last day together in Bangkok had a slow start. In the afternoon we headed to the flower market (so many flowers!). Then we caught a beyond stunning sunset.

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After watching the sunset we failed to find some well-reviewed street food, and took a cab to another part of town to go to a crowded market for dinner and last-stop shopping.

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On January 2nd the crew disbanded. Tim and Lauren left in the morning and Gary and I headed to lunch for our farewell. I had booked a redeye to Manila so I had all afternoon and evening to myself to say goodbye to Thailand on my own. I wandered a bit and saw some nice buildings, got a 2 hour massage, and street food diner.

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I was trying to find a specific rooftop bar that didn’t seem to exist and stumbled upon “I’m Park Chula.” Some landscape architect had a field day with this place. It looked pretty new, had some open space, plantings, and stacked green spaces two stories above the sidewalk. A fairly unique space that was neat to spend a few minutes in.

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I found my way to a different rooftop bar as my last stop before the airport. I got a bad pomegranate whiskey cocktail (I sent the first version back and the second was better but still bad). The views were great. I think being up here at night rather than daytime was the right call.

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And thus, Thailand was over. It was incredible. In review, I loved Chiang Mai with it’s slow speeds and elephant sanctuary and temple laden streets. The local dish of Khao Soi was a highlight of the country’s food. Pai was special and I couldn’t tell you why. Ko Phi Phi was an amazing beachy island to retire to. Khao Lak was a nice place to relax while diving along the Similan Islands was unforgettable. Khao Sok was stunning and I think surpassed Vietnam’s Halong Bay for that kind of karst landscape sticking out of the water environment. Bangkok was crazy, however I actually expected it to be dirtier and more chaotic. I was almost disappointed in this regard, that it was cleaner and more modern than many other Asian metropolises I visited. Regardless, it was an appropriate end to my Thai time. Thailand’s popularity amongst tourists was no mystery, between amazing food, people, and environments, all with great variety throughout the country. The mark of tourism was stronger here than other countries in the region which was both good and bad.

Thanks for reading and sorry for the delay in getting this one out, but know that it’s because I’ve been having a great time! Stay tuned for the Philippines and all that follows. And lastly, for both the jungles of Khao Sok and the concrete jungle that was Bankok,