Trip to Thailand

January 7, 2008

I have just gotten back to Kyzylorda after two weeks in Thailand and I must say that my trip was both good and bad. Good in that the food was great, the people were super friendly, the weather was amazing, and the country is beautiful, and bad in that I was only there for two weeks. It was definitely the perfect plac
I ended up going to Thailand with two other Peace Corps volunteers because I figured that it would be safer and more fun to explore a new country and culture with friends, and I also knew that it would probably make my mom feel better. In retrospect this wasn’t really necessary and in fact if I ever go again I think I will go by myself. While I definitely enjoyed having my friends around, the people of Thailand are so friendly, and there are so many European and Australian tourists around that it is impossible to ever feel lonely there. Furthermore, I found traveling in Thailand as a group to be a bit unwieldy. There is so much to see there, and that you cannot really see the things that you want unless everyone can go off and do their own thing.  
Anyway, we left Almaty on the 22nd, and the first interesting thing about the trip was the plane itself; it was filled with Thai tourists on their way home. The three of us were amazed, being unable to imagine anyone going to Kazakhstan for vacation, especially during the winter. The only conclusion we could make was that perhaps they had come in order to finally see snow. We got to Thailand at around five in the afternoon and immediately began to sweat. Even after taking off our sweaters and jackets on the plane, the temperature difference was something to get used to, though we quickly came to enjoy it. We spent our first night at the lub-d hostel in Bangkok, getting ourselves organized for trips down to the islands, and the next morning we explored the area around the Grand Palace, particularly the Amulet market which not only had some very cool cheap Buddhist trinkets, but some amazing street food.  
In fact, let me take this opportunity to say that everyone should go to Thailand, if for no other reason than the food. After a year and a half of eating meat, potatoes and onions and where fresh fruit is often prohibitably expensive, it was amazing to go to a place where you could buy large hunks of pineapple for a dollar, and eat delicious curries and stir fries with fresh vegetables for not much more. I also imbibed large quantites of Thai iced coffee on my trip; doing my best to make up for a year of dehydrated flakes, and in a moment of weakness even treated myself to Starbucks.
Anyway, in the afternoon of the 23rd we got on a bus and headed down to Koh Samet. We ended up not staying in Koh Samet proper, but rather Rayong, a small town on the mainland nearby. The place we stayed at was called Roots-the Reggae house, for good reason. The owner and operator was this really nice German guy who was probably stoned half the time, and his main help was an equally relaxed American expat/Rastafarian who last lived in the U.S. in 1974. The place was already pretty cheap to start with, and then once we got there he knocked another 20 bucks off the final bill. I think most of the guests were what would be described as “long-term,” and looking at the terms of long-term stay, I could see why they would. Not only were they in a beautiful location, but the food served was good, and as a long term guest you got your seventh day, week, month, year, etc. for free. Even though we slept in Rayong we spent most of the 24th, 25th, and 26th on Koh Samet, which was easily reachable by ferry. It turned out that we made the right choice by not staying on Koh Samet because it was a good bit more expensive and packed with tourists, and it was nice to be able to escape all of that at the end of the day. We had a really great Christmas Eve and Christmas on Koh Samet swimming and relaxing and eating more of that great thai food.  
On the 26th we headed to another island, Koh Chang. The main difference between Koh Chang and Ko Samet is that Koh Chang is a much bigger, self-sufficient, and has fewer beaches. Unlike Koh Samet’s miles of low, smooth coastline, Koh Chang is filled with tall mountains, and has a very rugged coastline. It is also surrounded by coral reefs and is a minor mecca for scuba divers. While we did not partake in scuba diving, we had plenty of other adventures on Koh Chang, beginning with the trip there. The bus ride and the ferry boat were no problem, but once we got onto the island we ran into some problems. The hostel my friend had found was on the east side of the island, which is much more undeveloped, and none of the taxis were willing to head that way for less than 1000 baht or about 40 dollars. Even split three ways that was way too much, so we took the cheap cabs to the west side of the island, figuring that we could find a small ferry to take us to the other side. Unfortunately, when we got there the boats were gone, and when we called the hostel to ask what we should do, the person who answered the phone said that we had the wrong number and that the hostel was out of business. So, while my friends went to stop payment on the hostel deposit, I went around to various places to find rooms, and I quickly found some rooms near a small shop over the water. They were dirt cheap, and even though they did not have the best view, they proved to be a good base of operations for the days ahead.  
The next day, December 27th, we hung out on the extremely misnamed Lonely Beach. While the girls got massages, I went swimming because I was still nursing sunburn from Koh Samet, and I figured that when I got a famous Thai massage, I wanted to do it somewhere where there wasn’t so much sand. Lonely Beach nice, but unfortunately and ironically, extremely crowded and was really small, so we felt no real need to go there again the next day, instead we decided to check out those coral reefs and so took snorkeling trip. The trip was a bit pricy, about 12 dollars, but totally worth it. They took us to four different small islands and reefs and made us a lunch that was so good, many people had to skip the third stop because they were too full. The reefs were beautiful, and filled with some of the most colorful and daring fish I had ever seen. Some people brought pieces of bread to draw schools of fish to them, but even without a bread bribe, I was surrounded. Still, the trip was not all sunshine and tranquility, and a couple of times we found out how treacherous swimming among the reefs can be. Shannon and Susie both accidently cut their feet while treading water, and I sliced my two a little bit at our last stop. There, we parked at a dock and went snorkeling at the small beach nearby. It was a beautiful, but not the most ideal swimming location. First, the water was amazingly shallow. Even twenty-five feet out I could stand easily, and this made swimming a pain because there was barely enough water under me to keep me afloat. Also, the sand ended at about ten feet out and with the rest of the bottom being made up of fragments of dead reefs, shells, and rocks. Thus, most of the time I was not looking at the fish so much as trying to avoid scrapping my stomach on a piece of coral. Still, I made it totally unscathed until I stepped on the small jagged piece that I now have in my living room. 
After Koh Chang we headed back to Bangkok for New Years, site-seeing, cheap souvenirs, and some retail therapy at the three huge shopping malls in the center of Bangkok. The first thing we did when we got to Bangkok was leave Bangkok and head to the small city of Ayataya. Ayataya is the former capital of Thailand, and is the home of several important Buddhist temples and shrines. One of the most interesting sites that we saw at Ayataya was a giant reclining Buddha that had to have been at least sixty feet long. I have a picture of myself standing by its feet, and I am not even as tall as five of its toes. According to the tour guide, the reclining Buddha symbolizes Buddha going to Nirvana, or heaven, and fittingly the area surrounding it was filled with various temples and mausoleums dedicated to the ancient kings of Thailand. Another really interesting thing that we saw was a stone Buddha’s head, the last remaining piece of a slightly larger than life size statue. The body statue had been destroyed and the head had been left lying on the ground. Then, after several years, a tree took root in the ground underneath the head. Gradually, the tree has grown up and around the head, and now the stone head of a Buddha is imbedded inside it about four feet off the ground. It was amazing to see such a merger of the inanimate and animate, and only thing that could have made it more impressive was if the tree had been a Bodhi. After Ayataya we headed back to Bangkok and checked out Khao Shan Road, Bangkok’s backpacker capital. The street was packed with hostels, souvenir stalls, and food sellers, and I think that there were more ex-pats on than Thais. I tried to exercise restraint but must I admit that I probably got too many souvenirs and servings of Pad Thai while I was there.  
The next day, the three of us split off to do our own things. I was a little tired of temples after Ayataya, so I decided that instead of temple hopping again, I would spend the day at the Grand Palace, something that was very easy to do. First, it took me almost an hour to get into the palace between lines for tickets and lines for replacement pants. I was in the same kind of clothes that I had worn yesterday at all the temples at Ayataya but apparently that still was not good enough, and I had to borrow some pants to go in. Still, it was worth that minor aggravation. The palace was huge and beautiful, and I was able to kill to birds with one stone. Not only was the Grand Palace the King’s home and place of business, but it was also the location of another famous shrine, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. If there was anything that I saw in Thailand that I would consider disappointing, the Emerald Buddha would be it. It just did not live up to all the hype. First, it was much smaller than expected, and it turned out that the statue of the Buddha was not even made of emerald, but was in fact jade. Actually, that was not a big deal, and I was very impressed to learn that the whole thing was made from one piece. If the problem was anything in particular it was that it was so poorly lit. Not only was the stature way up high, but it was nearly lost in shadow, which made it really hard to appreciate it. I just figured that a national symbol of such importance would be a little better displayed. The last two days were spent in the more modern, retail world of Bangkok. We went to the big mall in the center of the city and I got some new running shoes, a new mp3/phone to replace my ipod that went kaput right as I got to Thailand, and some new books. New Years, in Thailand was great. We had dinner and drinks at the hostel to keep down costs, and then we went to the center of the city to watch fireworks. A few of the people we were hanging out with that night had a little too much to drink and had to cut out early, but I made it well into 2009 before I headed to bed.
Unfortunately, the 2nd of January finally arrived and it was time to go home. Our flight was not until nine that night so we packed up and went around Bangkok one last time. I also finally got the famous Thai massage, and I have to say it was much nicer and classier than I expected. The masseuse only propositioned me once, and the parlor was very clean and comfortable. Eventually however, it was time to head home to Kazakhstan. I had one last feast of non-Kazakh fast food at the Burger King/Dairy Queen at the airport food court, put on my warm clothes to prepare for the winter we were returning to, and then finally, reluctantly, got on the airplane.